145. Idol
During the following hours, the base buzzed with celebration as the Civilian Base downhill and the surrounding area were cleared of Neander and Bigfoot mutants; historically, it was the first territory humans had retrieved from the invaders to settle and reclaim as their home.
While most of the cluster slum fortress was still under the effect of the freeze, Adam sent down two squads of Men-at-Arms, armed with newly designed firearms, still in their prototype phase. They were supported from the base uphill by a small Firebase Bombard, newly constructed on the far fringes of the base.
There was no sighting of any Bigfoot mutant, since any that appeared would charge at the base uphill, facing heavy defenses or running first into Captain Creed if they proved too troublesome. As for the Neanders downhill, they were dispatched so effectively and methodically by the freshly summoned squads.
By the next day, Adam finished assembling three Script Monks and was halfway through painting them along with Kave and Megan, assisted by the trusty and loyal Benchy. Their supplies were abysmally low at this point, forcing them to rely heavily on various techniques to make their supplies last.
A sprue would be especially useful when cut into small pieces to create rods and gun barrels, but sometimes it would be stacked together to make bulky armor or stretched with heat to create cables and wires. This last trick was one the trio would use to make external cybernetics for the Script Monks they were building.
They also used scrap collected from outside their building sets, such as plastic packaging, old wires, or even children's toy parts that would miraculously fit the shape or size they had in mind.
For some time now, Adam had even been using a few green army men toys, taking their limbs, torsos, and heads to create his own Men-at-Arms, which turned out pretty well.
Color paints were the most difficult to obtain, but Adam would usually resort to Private Buzz, who could acquire all manner of colorful substances for some reason, considering he was the shadow leader of the base's smuggling cartel.
With their three pieces finished and Adam making his finishing touches, he and Kave still had time to converse with Megan about her mental state, which seemed to have recovered quickly.
Almost everyone was a hardened survivor by this time, able to withstand trauma and stress, but they were human at the end of the day, and their capacity wasn't infinite. Megan's breaking point was her mother's fate, something she hadn't dared imagine in the previous months since that phone call they had.
She recounted how she had been meeting Tommy outside BIT campus when she got a call from their mother, checking on them that late afternoon. The call turned into a horror show when the invasion hit Washington D.C., almost half an hour before Brighthaven, and then how it all went down. Her mother seemed to have been with her on the phone for over ten minutes, describing her experience in detail; then the call ended with her screaming in horror.
The somber conversation continued, with Kave recounting his experience that day. He was rather smiling about it, exaggerating his father's actions, with Adam giving him brotherly cheers every now and then, until the story turned into a last stand tale of a valiant father and grieving husband, saving his son from the demonic dragon that killed his wife.
These two tragedies happened on D-Day, the day Adam miraculously slept through and somehow still survived. However, Kave and Megan wanted to hear his side of the story.
"You told me that you found some members of your family, right?" Kave asked before following up with, "What happened to them?"
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to." Megan continued before grinning, "But if you don't, you'll be considered an emotional freeloader."
Adam smiled before shrugging.
"It's not a pretty story," he said.
"No shit, Sherlock. We're telling how our parents died," Kave interjected, before reining in his reaction, "Never mind, sorry!"
"It's okay." Adam didn't react much before letting out a sigh. "Not much of a story either. It happened two months after D-Day."
"Damn!" Megan exclaimed, "How did they…"
Kave raised his hand for her to stop talking, giving Adam room to speak.
"I convinced a group I was a part of to patrol deep into residential areas, made up a story about survivors trading scrap still stuck in the city. They bought it and went to my neighborhood; turns out there were really survivors there."
"No way!" Megan exclaimed.
"Were, though. We arrived too late. Almost everyone was zombified by Dark Hosts, so we blasted them like crazy. I thought I saw my brother-in-law among the zombies, and when the blasting stopped, it turned out it was him. My sister was there too… their kids…"
"Holy fuck…" Megan immediately jumped and hugged him, tears flowing from her eyes. Adam didn't stop, though.
"We also found some sort of a mural with the names of those who died among that group. Mom's name was on it. It seemed they had been fighting a lot of host zombies alongside many survivors of the area, but something overpowered them in the end," Adam said, rubbing his left palm with his right thumb, stressed but trying to keep himself in check. "They were all fresh, though, less than a week old zombies. Still, their color hadn't all withered, and…"
He forced himself to shut up, dejection clear in his voice, only to shake his head and push the negativity back.
"I don't like ifs and maybes, so let's focus on the present," Adam said, prompting the other two to glance at each other.
It was clear to them that he, too, had a wound. The fact that he didn't talk about it wouldn't make it any less tragic; in fact, it would lead them to question his well-being. After all, he was the core pillar that must remain standing for everything not to fall apart.
Who knows what would happen if he were to die? His summons most likely wouldn't survive, but their tech, their weapons, and their buildings, all made from his summoning, wouldn't they all stop working too?
There, the two friends arrived at the same conclusion at the same time.
"You'll be okay, Adamant!" Kave said, hitting Adam's shoulder.
"We'll have your back." Megan added, sticking closer to him, "Always."
"I know you will." Adam smiled and looked at the two monks and the nun they had finished, seeing the traces of his friends' work in them. "Just you being here is everything. The true miracle is how we three found each other once again."
The three felt it more this time: it wasn't just Adam that needed protecting; it was their bond that supported the pillar, which in turn was building something greater than themselves. An equation that hardly made sense, but there was one promising result: hope.
"Alright." Kave tightened his fists and stood before the two. "We have a situation to resolve, don't we? Let's get those monks praying and do something about this damn Freeze or whatever. After this, we'll never allow them to walk all over us ever again."
"Fuck yeah!"
Megan hit the table as she stood facing him, then the two looked at Adam, who was watching them with a smile. Adam then followed their enthusiasm, breaking the somber mood:
"Let's do that."
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The man walked in the snow, a heavy backpack on his shoulders, one that seemed to contain more than enough supplies for him to survive the dreadful winter.
He had crossed half this continent on foot, faced many tragedies, and fought both invaders and survivors just to reach where he was guided.
He still held a shotgun in his freezing hands; he seemed to have outfitted it with an axe head, doubling as a close-range shooter and melee bruiser weapon. With every breath, he was praying that this weapon would hold through the next fight and not force him to resort to the power of the rune any more than that.
So far, the pain, suffering, and mental feedback from the last usage were still giving him phantom pain.
Who said Tristan Warwick was a good idea? He agonized inwardly, his emotions still unstable from the memory of that day.
A couple of months ago, he escaped Hollywood, stole a private jet along with a coworker, and crossed half the continent on low elevation before getting hunted by a dragon. His coworker perished as the plane crashed, while he survived by running into a broken Runic Item that was about to shatter.
Combined with the power of a Wartopia miniature, something miraculous happened, and to this day, he owes his life to every miniature he kept with him. He hardly salvaged anything worthy on the way, but he was told by his most precious one to come all the way here, and where is here?
…ome to Brighthav…
The broken sign on the highway, or what was once a highway, gave him an inkling of what he was getting into.
"This is it… the East Coast… there is no more east after this," he spoke, holding out a Wartopia miniature of fantastical quality.
Its details indicated the work of a master, a true Wartopia fanboy… or fanman in his case, judging by the size and masculinity he exuded just with his manly… everything.
If a story was in need of a main character, of a good guy, of a professional damsel-in-distress saver, or of a masculine and muscular gentleman, this man was the man.
His name is… No, names are more trouble in this world than one can afford. Many people recognized him once in the American Midwest, and it wasn't a hospitable stay despite all the slogans about "Midwest Nice" and all.
The apocalypse would make monsters of people sometimes, but ever since he headed this far east, things really worsened.
Now Brighthaven should be the last thing between him and the Ocean, something he desperately wished to cross since his entire family was abroad when the disaster hit the world.
He prayed many times for their safety, knowing that no boat in this apocalypse was seaworthy enough to get him back home, but what answered his prayers, or rather who, was something that shocked him.
East, it said. East, he went. East, he reached.
With a nagging feeling, he was hoping that this light that would fulfill his wish would be somewhere near this place. Brighthaven, hence the name. So where was the light, and why was the gloom thickest in this place?
But as he dragged his steps in the snow, he found himself face to face with enemies. The first ones were easy to fight off: just some freezing Gobzkins too scared to leave their fire and chase after him.
But then things got weird, and he found himself fighting shrimp-like monsters that came out of the frozen river. He escaped that swarm and hid for a day in an abandoned building, tall enough for the smoke of his campfire to dissolve in the air before rising further.
Each night, he would take out his most precious miniature and face it with pride and respect, then he would speak to it, and it would speak back.
That night, he told it he was as far east as east goes.
"East!" it said, voice ethereal in his head. "The Sun is brighter than ever; it is beckoning you; you are closer now. The flame… You must protect the flame."
The words were more detailed this time. A mission, a purpose, a direction clearer than ever before.
But he grunted in a manly way:
"Still cryptic. Dammit!"
It was better for him to get an idea of what he was walking into, but he was thankful enough for the guidance he was having. It certainly drove him further than he could ever see himself achieving.
Plus, it would be ungentlemanly to demand more, and he was nothing if not a gentleman.
But as the hobo-looking gentleman with an overgrown beard was about to relax, his ears perked up, and something entered his range of passive sense. He looked up and saw a figure standing at the gate of the building he was in, clearly after him.
The figure looked humanoid, but after all this time surviving, he knew that the scariest ones were those who walked on two, the same as men, for they were the ones truly inheriting this world from his own kind.
He reached for his shotgun, but as he laid eyes on the creature, his hand halted, and he immediately stuffed the miniature back in his bag, before switching to another, one that wasn't as limited edition as the one from before.
This was his last bullet, so to speak, and he wasn't sure if he should use it, but hesitation had almost killed him before, so with determination, he immediately crushed the Solarium Paladin miniature to dust in his hands, his rune flaring from his heart.
While a far cry from the treatment he had given to the earlier miniature, the man stood up, no longer terrified of the werewolf that was on his trail.
He took the first step, and with a golden light, Power Armor appeared all over his body, his face shifting and no longer appearing as it had before.
In a second, he was but a hopeless survivor; in the next, he became a Paladin in Power Armor, Saw blade in hand, buzzing with an irritating noise as it was activated.
"Die, filthy xenos!" the man roared and stepped forward. "BERISH FOR THE SOLARIUM!"
That's how Brighthaven City welcomed the host of the Idol Rune.
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