Sponsored Apocalypse, ch 18

Apologies if the editing here is a little rough.

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Sure enough, the general store was near the river.  The road curved enough that we could see it as we kept following the water.  I spotted it before Aldina and touched her arm to make her stop.  Like before, even though her stealth field should block noise, neither of us wanted to make much extra sound when we were being sneaky.

We both crouched down in the underbrush, observing the store from behind it.  The road beyond was just barely visible where we were at.

Some cars were parked in the parking lot of the general store.  I wondered if some people had taken shelter inside when everything had happened the night before.  Maybe they’d still been working, stocking shelves or closing.  Either way, if anyone had still been there last night, they’d met a grim fate.

I used my binoculars that I’d stowed in my backpack to watch the store.  With the magnification, it was easier to spot a goblin on the roof, squinting as it kept watch in a half ass manner.  The other goblin on the roof wasn’t even going through the motions.  The ugly monster was just idly picking its nose and staring at the sky.

“They don’t like to be active during the day,” said Aldina softly.

I nodded and focused on the area around the store.  The glimpses I’d already caught of blood and offal on the ground were much worse through the binoculars.  There were trails of blood across the parking lot.  It looked like some of the trails even extended to the street and across it to a residential area.

Now I was glad I’d made my little demonstration with the hammer back on the gun-toting man’s land.  Setting off an explosion under water was one thing, but that experience had helped me judge how powerful the blast actually was.  The general store was small enough that one of my hammer blasts would give the goblins inside a bad day.

“They didn’t take long to set up shop, did they?”  I didn’t like most other people very much, but what I was seeing and imagining was turning my stomach.

“Worse,” said Aldina.  She gestured with her head.  “Bet the little fuckers were able to catch people who came straight to them, too.  If it was on accident or on purpose, making their base a general store worked out for them.”

I looked where she’d indicated and grimaced.  A car and a truck were partially obscured by the trees, both mostly off the road.  One of them looked like the hood had been smashed up.  It took me a minute to figure out what must have happened.  The goblins must have “killed” the truck to shut off the engine and such after pushing it over there.  It looked like the car hadn’t needed their help.  Someone had just driven it off the road and crashed into a tree.

We both surveyed the scene for a moment longer.  Then Aldina said, “How do you want to play this?  Gonna try your explode-o-hammer?”

I shrugged and nodded.  “Yeah. Except what if there are people inside?  There might still be people who are alive.”

Aldina’s eyes grew dark.  “If they’ve been in a goblin den for this long, and they’re still alive, trust me, they wish they weren’t anymore.  Your conscience can rest secure that you’re not doing anything wrong.”

I frowned.  Aldina had a lot more information than I did, but there was no way I was going to be throwing explosives around based on only a, “Just trust me.”  I asked, “What do you mean?”

“In my time, it was common knowledge that if for whatever reason you were being captured by goblins, it was common knowledge you should off yourself however you could.  Goblins pretty much love to rape anything.  They also like to eat people piece by piece.  If they feel safe and secure enough, they’ll eat people’s limbs first.  Save the best for last.  Keep you alive, and use you as a toy.   They are evil, sadistic little fucks.  They play with their food worse than cats and aren’t cute to make up for it. Hate them.”

“Oh.”  I took one last look through the binoculars before putting them away.

Aldina said, “How about we move up closer.  I’ll kill the look outs and any others outside the building.  Then you can bomb the inside.”

I thought about it, then shook my head.  Aldina was usually on point with everything apocalypse-related, but maybe she hadn’t worked with other people before.  “No,” I said.  “The ones you kill could make noise and after we attack it breaks stealth some.  Probably a better idea to just bomb it first, make sure they don’t know what hit them.  Then we can mop up afterwards.  It’s a lot safer to give the plan fewer ways to go wrong.”

Aldina glanced at me, then the store, bit her lip and nodded.  “Alright.  Makes sense.  But they probably also have scouts around here.  That may be how they got those cars.  Day or not, we need to be careful.  So how about you throw your hammer bomb, then we retreat back to here, by the river so it’s at our backs.  We have some trees and deadfall around here to use as cover if any of the little psycho fucks have gotten ahold of any spears or bows, too.”

I shrugged and made an agreeing face.  That’s a solid plan, I thought.  “Okay.  Ready to go?”

“Yeah.”

We began creeping toward the store, trying to make as little noise as possible.  Every twig I broke or leaf I shook made me cringe.  No goblins raised an alarm.  As we got closer, I realized both of the lookouts I’d spotted were actually more oriented towards the road.  Seemed they were much more concerned about catching any cars as they passed than worried about an attack from the river.

I had my hammer out, but I hadn’t started investing power into it yet.  “Hey Aldina,” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“After I throw this thing, let’s run back to position, like before it goes off.  I’m not sure how powerful it’s gonna be.  Going for full power, though.”

She absently nodded and we continued to creep forward.  Based on her response, I could tell she’d already not been planning to stand in front of the door.  My nerves were just getting to me.

We finally made it close enough to the broken doors for me to reasonably throw the hammer in.  I began to charge my weapon with [Angry Arrows].  The more power built, the more I could feel lit, like a buzz on my skin, a vibration in my teeth.  As I charged the temporary, destructive enchantment, I thought I could hear a cry, a whimper, and other pitiful noises inside the building, punctuated by cruel, hissing laughter.  I pretended I didn’t hear anything.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t pretend not to smell my surroundings. It was awful, a cross between offal, sewer, and some other musk.

My mind wandered for a second, a bad habit of mine that cropped up sometimes in stressful situations.  I remembered the levels I’d gotten for the giant troll, hours after I’d stuck the glaive in its back.  What had actually killed it?

I came back to the present when the hammer was completely charged, starting to bleed off power faster than I could replenish it.  Go time, I thought.  “Fire in the hole!” I whisper-shouted, then threw the hammer as hard as I could.

The enchanted missile just barely cleared the doorway, which was a pucker-worthy event.  I vowed to be more careful the next time I threw a magic bomb as I ran to the side, heading for the river.

It was good that we both started running immediately, because the hammer went off in less than five seconds.  It must have hit something hard enough to detonate it…like the floor.

The ground rumbled and heaved and I lost my balance, rolling, my ears ringing.  The handful of small, high windows of the general store all shattered like angry kaleidascopes.  A roar of debris came jetting out the open door of the store, carrying blood and worse with it.  It looked like a tornado full of sharks had been summoned inside the store.

I got up before Aldina did, but my head was still fuzzy and I couldn’t hear anything.  The goblins on the rooftop that had been our second targets were no longer up there.  One had disappeared, and one had fallen to the ground. The one I could see that had fallen was injured badly but hadn’t been killed by the blast, some of which had erupted through the roof.

In a daze, I walked over to the little monster, unsheathed my antique bayonet, and before it could even come-to and realize I was there, I drove the point into its neck, angling up into its brain.

System notifications had been appearing for a few seconds, and I’d waved them all away, but a new one popped up in a style that caught my attention.

[You have been recognized by the spirit of this blade]

The bayonet in my hand was warm.

[Would you like to establish a contract with the spirit in the bayonet?]

I hit Yes.

[Private Malone’s Last Stand]

This bayonet was attached to an M1917 during World War 1.  Private Malone and one other soldier fought an entire squad of enemy soldiers by themselves in brutal trench warfare.  The heroic charge ended in ultimate disaster, but burned a record of an indomitable warrior’s spirit  in the pages of history.

You may activate this blade for one hour per day.  Activation creates a spectral blade extension. Extension can be activated and halted at will.  All activation time is cumulative per day.  Each activation requires extra stamina, and any more than three activations will cost an extra 5 minutes of the total activation time.

What the heck? I thought.  The fact I’d been carrying the bayonet for the better part of 24 hours and it had just now recognized me shocked me.  Before this, I hadn’t even known it even had a spirit!   The fact I was bonded with it now really showed how little I knew about [Spirits of the Past].  I wondered how many of the items and tools at the antique shop before might have still had a spirit I could.  Maybe all of them did.  Obviously, the bayonet had required some sort of requirements to be met before revealing itself.  

I looked up from the bayonet and saw Aldina frantically waving at me and pointing.  I followed her finger and saw a group of goblins running at us from across the street.  There were…a lot of them.

For a couple precious seconds, I just goggled, but then I cleared my mind.  Fight or flight instincts kicked in.  Running was not an option.

With a thought, I activated [Private Malone’s Last Stand].  A pale reddish purple blade extended from the blade, more than doubling its length.  Then I held out my other hand and used [Lindstrom Family Hammer].  My hammer appeared, none the worse for wear.  I immediately began charging it with [Pulverizing Pebbles].  Explosives right now would be a great way to kill myself.

I almost forgot to activate [Stalwart Pan of the Lonely Mountain].

The first few goblins reached us right before Aldina and I made it to the cover near the river.  She turned and hammered out spikes of ice in rapid succession.  Most attacks found their marks, but three goblins broke through.  I ran one through from behind with my enhanced bayonet, and threw my [Pulverizing Pebbles] enhanced hammer at the goblin closest to me.  The horrible little creature was holding a steel chef’s knife.  My hammer hit the monster in the chest and the goblin looked comically surprised, but the attack hadn’t seemed to do much.

My brain moved about a million miles per second, and I immediately realized what had happened.  The goblin was too close so the enchantment hadn’t armed.  I took a quick step, bent down to scoop up the hammer, and took three running steps before the goblin could react.  Then I threw again.

This time the hammer hit and practically pulverized the goblin’s chest.  I hissed and said, “It’s hammer time!”  right before something slammed into the back of my head.

The blow made me see stars and immediately gave me a splitting headache.  I dove forward, protecting my head with one arm and rolling, faceing being me.  A goblin with a club was chasing me down.  I could feel something wet on the back of my head at the same time as a thrown knife glanced off of my arm.

I swung my enchanted bayonet, chopping into the side of the attacking monster’s neck.  Blood went flying everywhere, but I was surprised that the blow didn’t take its head off.  I doged to the side and stabbed another goblin.  This time the blow was clean, deadly.  The bayonet, enchanted or not, still seemed to function like a bayonet.  It was better for stabbing than slashing.

My head throbbed.  A small part of me wondered if I’d still be alive if I hadn’t made my bones stronger.  The thought actually pissed me off and turned me into a whirl of action.

I ran to Aldina, delivering a flying kick to the back of a goblin armed with a pair of branch cutters.  When the creature hit the ground rolling, I chased it down, stabbing it once, twice, three times with my glowing, rapier-length bayonet.

Out the corner of my eye, I saw a flashing blade and barely managed to block it with my bayonet.  I summoned my hammer just in time to block another wicked attack.  A half second later, an ice spike slammed into the side of the goblin’s head.

That gave enough breathing room to scamper behind a log near the river.  Aldina followed me there, and for the next few minutes, I protected the flanks while she threw ice magic like a magical sentry turret.

Only a few minutes later, what felt like an eternity, my limbs were trembling, we were still alive, and there were no more attacking monsters.

I slowly walked out  from behind my cover.  Blood dripped from my hammer.  I threw it and resummoned it to clean it.  Then I deactivated [Private Malone’s Last Stand].

Goblin bodies littered the parking lot.  The scene, and what I was feeling were surreal.  It was like a repeat of the night before.  Like I was living in a nightmare.

But a system notification popped up, interrupting the tableau and dragging me back to reality.

“Shit,” I whispered.