Spearhead
"What matters most when you're soldering?"
"Your hands."
I looked down at Sarah holding the soldering iron, thinking back to the lightbulbs and speaker modules I'd put together at the academy as a kid.
"Always wear your protective gear. And if you can't see well—"
"Use the magnifier here. Don't lean in close with your eyes."
"That's right."
"That's right?"
"…Right."
She carefully worked the lead over the disassembled radio and walkie-talkie parts, and a toxic smell rose into the air. I took a step back and watched in silence.
Ssssss…
Whether it was because she liked me, or because she was simply hungry to learn something new, after a few practice runs following my demonstration Sarah was soldering fairly cleanly. Like assigning some zero-stat settler to a job in a game and still watching the progress bar climb.
"Once you connect it like this?"
"This… should become a transmitter now."
Nothing looked wrong to the naked eye. In the real world you would have touched each component with something like a metal probe and checked whether the current was flowing properly—but there was no procedure like that here. Only skill level decided whether something took longer or shorter to build, whether a gun and bullets you'd made would jam or not.
"But how can you be sure the people you're trying to trade with are good?"
"Not good people. A group that calculates profit and loss down to the bone."
"Hmm."
"If you pay the right price for the goods and the right price for lives, they'll fetch anything or trade on your behalf and bring it back. Expensive—but a mercenary company you can trust."
Spearhead.
An organization of former soldiers who, after the nukes fell, gave up on maintaining what was left of the government's discipline. They became mercenaries to survive, and then, to keep surviving, began offering a very particular kind of service. Not the usual hire-us-and-we'll-do-anything-for-money type—these people only moved people, goods, and information from one place to another.
Of course, once they started, any number of things could happen depending on what came next: wipeouts, swearing themselves to some giant power base, growing from a small elite unit into a full-blown warlord army. Even so, whenever you made contact with them, trade was consistently more likely than hostility.
"You met them once when you were with your old group?"
"Yeah."
"What did you trade for back then?"
"The community leader wanted to give his girlfriend a diamond ring."
"…He wanted to gift a diamond ring when the world's like this?"
"Hamsmill was always pulling stunts like that."
It had been a long time since I'd spoken the name of my old character—the one who'd bungee-jumped off a cliff. Hamsmill. Sorry. At least here you're the kind of guy who gifts his girlfriend a gold ring.
"What, interested in diamonds yourself?"
"Hmm… what do you think?"
Sarah set the iron on its stand, cut the power, and pushed her goggles up. She propped her chin in her hand and looked at me with a complicated expression.
"Would luxury even suit me? Hmm?"
She flexed the muscle showing above her tank top and grinned playfully. And yet, after asking whether it would suit her—why was she angling for a reaction?
"Finding a diamond ring cost a fair amount of money, you know. Nukes fell, every intact jewelry shop got cleaned out…"
"No. I'm asking if you think it would suit me."
"Are you asking me to get you one?"
"I asked if it would suit me. Why are you talking nonsense?"
"…So you are asking me to get you one?"
"…Am I even talking to a human being right now?"
Women were hard. So hard.
"Ah, forget it. Mood's ruined. Just keep making the radio."
"No, we've got more than enough vaccines stocked, so if you want—"
"What good is a ring you can't even eat right now, you idiot."
"Ow."
She finally smacked me on the head. Tears prickled in my eyes.
"I'd rather you got more seeds for the garden."
"Seeds are more expensive than rings, actually."
"Exactly. I'm not some empty-headed girl still wanting gifts like that after the world's turned into this."
"There are people who still throw around luxury even with the world like this."
"…So you're saying I look like one of those people, you thickheaded oaf? You dense brick! Ugh."
"That hurts!"
Contract marriage really was easier. This game of reading between the lines was not my thing. Hand flowers to someone who'd never dated once in their life and expect them to raise them properly? Not happening.
"Anyway. Once we assemble all this, do we just install it somewhere and that's it?"
"We have to wait for them to come, keep the meeting place secure, and set up somewhere they can at least rest for a day…"
"…So doing it right now is out of the question? This still has to heal."
Every time she lightly tapped my shoulder my eyes flew open, but it wasn't bad enough that I couldn't move like before. Honestly, as long as you could recover from injuries, getting hurt a lot did raise your immunity and healing a little, however marginally.
"When I went out scouting with Curtis, there were practically no monsters around, and given that the cannibals tried eating a Land Bat—I figured it might be worth a shot."
"What does trying to eat a Land Bat have to do with it being worth a shot…?"
"Land Bats hunt in packs by default. And only one of them got taken by the cannibal group."
"Only one?"
"At least, the only corpse we found was one. Most of what was in the cafeteria was human remains."
Finding the bunker entrance was another problem entirely, but for now we could carefully assume the biggest threat was gone. With luck, even a single guard could be enough to receive them.
"Still, making this one thing doesn't finish the job, does it?"
"Securing the passage out there is just a matter of putting up barricades and lights."
"…Ugh, just thinking about it sounds like a mountain of work."
"I can only pray there aren't too many forks in the road. All right, enough chatter. Time to make the receiver."
The goggles came down again, and the solder wire and iron went up.
But the most important question of all—what had become of Spearhead in this particular scenario? Surely they hadn't been wiped out.
The moment the wound on my arm was nearly healed, I requested a search for the entrance.
James and Sarah combed every passage thoroughly. The stretch where radiation levels rose was about six minutes out. After going back out in gas masks and radiation suits I hadn't even known we had, they reported the entrance sat at roughly an eight-minute mark.
I should have guessed it would be close from our first meeting, when they'd said they hadn't been outside long. And now—
"Huuuh."
I was about to push open the hatch that looked like both entrance and exit.
Creeeak.
Beyond it was a barred metal gate. And a pure white floor. I took out a makeshift key, fitted it into the lock, and opened the gate without it snapping. That was how I first set foot on the surface.
Tick. Tick-tick. Tick.
The Geiger counter hanging on my chest gave a faint warning chirp. I'd had some idea ever since the sewers, but this was somewhere in a major city. Even the buildings visible in the distance weren't scorched, so the hypocenter was a good ways off. Of course, I'd heard that a nuclear blast in a space ringed by tall buildings didn't spread its force as widely.
Clack.
Shotgun in hand, I carefully stepped out past the structure surrounding the hatch. The roof was decent enough for mounting an antenna. The higher you put it, the easier it would be for Spearhead operatives to find us—but for now, this would do. We weren't in any state to establish a surface outpost yet.
"Huuuh."
Lingering wasn't wise. I set my pack down at once and pulled out the antenna we'd built. Extending it section by section like tent poles, I used the military combat knife James had found to dig a groove in the ground and plant it. Then I drove stakes and ran lines so the antenna would stay fixed.
"…"
Not especially tall, but not short either. Installing it would raise the odds of being spotted by forces expanding onto the surface later on—but this was still the early game. And by the time that mattered, I'd have a proper surface outpost of my own, so it was fine either way.
After one last check that it was secure, I abandoned the pack in a convenient patch of brush, opened the hatch, and went straight back down.
"He's back, he's back."
"Dietrich, get ready."
The decontamination setup right by the entrance. Calling it that was generous—it was basically a shower. While the water poured down I spread my arms and rinsed the radiation suit thoroughly.
"Good. Next, drop the gas mask filter in that bin."
Following James's instructions from the other side of the plastic sheeting, I detached the filter. I carefully wiped the remaining moisture off the suit with a scrap of useless cloth and discarded it. Only then could I finally step back into the bunker.
"Radiation levels… yes, nothing abnormal. And your hair… doesn't look like we need to shave it off."
Angela ran the Geiger counter over my body and nodded.
"Good work. I was so worried when you first said you were going out."
"Looks like the hypocenter is far away. No dirty bombs went off in this area either."
"A silver lining, then."
Though—why did she keep stroking my hair? Granted, if the contamination reading got too high or if you had to stay out for a long time, you did have to shave it all off…
"Ahem. Ahem."
James approached with a forced cough. At the same time Angela gave an awkward smile and immediately made room. The space was cramped enough with all the equipment as it was.
"Did the antenna go up all right?"
"We were already setting things up with Dad, actually. Over there."
Curtis had one earcup of a headset pressed to his ear, carefully turning the dial, with Sarah sitting beside him. The Newman family stood behind them, staring at the signal unit glowing orange.
"…I've tuned it to the frequency you gave me, but I don't know if this will actually work."
"Grandpa, I made that."
"That's exactly why I'm worried, you little rascal. The person who should be building it isn't even mak—"
He cut himself off mid-sentence, clamped the headset to his ear, and snatched up a pen. Then he began drawing dots and dashes on the paper in front of him.
"…Damn."
His expression was grim.