I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

”You said another person can join in, right?”

The channel went quiet on the heels of it, because all of them had heard me explain Rule Five myself, and every single one of them understood exactly what Leo had just done.

Leo was formally entering Parliament, and he was doing it by the book I’d handed him not even an hour ago.

Tikki held his loaf on the railing beside me, listening with breaths that could almost be considered bated.

”Yeah...” I let the breath out of me slow while leaning both forearms onto the railing. ”Shoot your shot... though I’d very much rather you didn’t.”

And when Leo’s voice came back, it came back steady, with no heat anywhere in it, sounding like a man who’d been quietly building this exact speech in his head the entire time the rest of us were talking.

”I say we scrap that whole trip... Everything we need is already in the city. You want food? Go to a supermarket... You want seeds and farming equipment? There’s an entire section for things like that in the supermarket. You want RV-converted semis? You might find some at the loading docks behind the supermarket. But you will sure as shit find temp-controlled trailers. There’s a produce section there too for vegetables. Then canned food, beverages, flour, meds... anything you’d need. If you really want RV-converted semis? We may find some in the industrial zone. You want silos full of grain? There’s a mill in the industrial zone too. As for fish? There’s a fish farm on the west side of the city. It’d have more fish per square foot than Lake Adler. There’s a large gas station with a convenience store on the western highway too. There is nothing that little trip of yours can get you that the city can’t.”

A long silence fell over the group after that one, while my long sigh went out over the channel loud enough for every one of them to hear it.

[...Well, shit. He actually did his homework.]

”It’s a good plan,” I gave him that first, because his plan earned that much. ”But everything in there is scattered and not in the quantity I want. The truck stop would net us dozens of converted semis, dozens of temperature-controlled trailers, and tankers. Basically... an entire fleet, with enough stuff already in there to last us a whole year, even if we’re frivolous. We can trade the excess semis and trailers with other groups too. Besides, how’d we plan to ensure that the building we’re targeting has the shit we need? There are a lot of ’mays’ and ’mights’ in your plan...”

Leo came back before I’d even finished drawing my next breath.

”Nora can use drones... You can get her a long-range one, and she can scout the entire city for you. You tell her what you need, and she can find it for you. And most importantly, you will not be hundreds of kilometers away. If you get injured, you can return here... Big sister Kara can fix you... Miss Nia’s father is also a doctor.”

”Here’s another aspect you didn’t consider...” Nia slid into the gap, even and unhurried, in full teacher mode. ”Infected retain some aspects of their past lives... things like clothes, sex, seeking shelter in buildings, and whatnot. The entire supermarket would be flooded by now. They eat packed stuff the same way a hungry dog does... they rip out the packaging with their teeth, and it’s chow time for them. Nikki’s goal of finding food for both the short and long term is correct and imperative to our survival. Yes, things like canned food and beverages would still be safe... but they’re not worth fighting an entire horde.”

”There’s another thing,” I picked it up off her, ”Even if we go with your plan, we’d have an endless number of Infected to deal with while we’re actively scavenging large amounts of stuff. Imagine looting an entire supermarket while handling an endless tide... not to mention, even if I find a silo of grain in the industrial zone, filling a tanker up with grain will take time and draw the Infected... The entire reason for the trip was that those places have low population density... the Truck Stop should have pretty much no Infected... and Brackenfield is probably already half-clear thanks to the surviving armed locals.”

”Correct,” Nia kept it rolling, ”Point is we get everything we need and then some more in a single consolidated place in a relatively Infected free environment. The trailers would have a lot of miscellaneous stuff in there too... things like electronics, furniture for whatever place we set up base in... we can even use that furniture as firewood. After all, winter proper is only a few weeks away. And I doubt the industrial zone would have as much grain as Brackenfield in one place... same goes for vegetables. We’d even find cattle to slaughter and store in the trailers for long-term.”

”Yeah,” I rolled right along with her, ”I plan to use the Crafting Menu to turn a few trailers into drying and smoking rooms... we can even set up vertical farming inside the trailers. Point is, your plan can’t give us the amount of loot and straight access to it the way mine can...”

”But-”

”Not to mention the Cruise Ship,” Nia rolled straight over him, ”If we can deck it out, we’d have a literal military vessel we can actually live on if things turn out that way.”

”We’d also have a surplus of firearms...” I stacked on top, ”Not the kind of stuff you and I are gonna run... but they’d still be high-value trade items.”

”But they’re people!”

Leo’s roar ripped across the channel before I could add anything else.

And nobody had a retort for him.

For the first time that whole morning, the line sat completely dead, without a single voice, a single shuffle, or so much as a crackle of static anywhere in it.

”They’re people who worked hard for every bit they have! It is theirs by right! I’m a farmer too! I know what it takes to grow a harvest! I know what kind of blood and sweat a single harvest takes... waking up before the sun every single day for months, praying the hail passes over your fields! I know what one failed harvest does to a family!” His voice cracked straight through the middle of that last one, but he kept right on going anyway. ”That grain isn’t loot! It’s somebody’s whole year! Those truckers too are just people! Just people trying to survive! You can’t just-”

”I can and I will, Leo.”

”Then ask yourself, is your life... is our life genuinely worth more than so many people?” Leo pushed straight past it. ”By taking the harder path, and gaining a little less for it, we won’t have to murder so many innocent people! Isn’t it worth it? Are we really that much more important than everyone else?”

I let that one sit in the air for a couple of seconds, because a question like that deserved at least that much and my unfiltered honesty.

”Yes, we are.” I replied, cold and unfeeling, ”Every single one of us is more important than a thousand lives and then a whole lot more... and I’m not gonna sit here and pretend they’ll deserve what’s coming, Leo, ’cause they won’t. But I’ll be doing it anyway because we come first... every single time.”

”...Nothing before the fold... right?” I heard a broken chuckle reply to me. The words that came out of him next were low and bitter, spoken in a voice that trembled at each word, ”You’re full of shit, Nikki... You’re so full of shit that you can’t even see what’s two feet in front of you...”

”Leo,” I kept my voice level and stuck to procedure, ”... do you have counters to the arguments we’ve made about your plan?”

”Go fuck yourself!”

-Bang-!

A door slammed on their end hard enough to be heard through the comms, and what followed was complete silence.

And all I had for any of it was a long sigh into the cold morning air.

”Nikki.” Nia’s voice came back first, level and stripped all the way down to business. ”Is he going to be a problem?”

And before I could even get my mouth open, Nora’s thundering voice ran her clean over.

”The hell you mean, problem? Leo’s worth more than a hundred of you!”

”Whatever you say, kid...” Nia scoffed it off without a beat of hesitation.

”Y-you-!”

”Enough!”

The word went out of me with way more teeth than I’d planned on giving it, and the penthouse side of the line went instantly quiet while I dragged a hand down my face and reached for the mug on the railing, which turned out to be exactly as empty as my ideas of how to deal with Leo.

[...Of course.]

Back in the old days, the four of us used to go at each other exactly like this... over dinner splits, over watch rotations, over absolutely nothing at all, and Angelica handled every single round of it like it was nothing, while I was barely a few minutes into my very first session as chairman and already this close to chucking the radio off the balcony.

[How’d she ever do it...]

”Nora.” I dragged Parliament back into session. ”Who’d you vote for?”

”Leo.”

She gave me the one word and absolutely nothing else with it.

[Two. Two... and two.]

”And that’s a fuckin tie,” Nia called it flat, ”Yay...”

”What’re you on about?” I couldn’t stop that chuckle while I gave Tikki’s ear a scratch. ”Tikki hasn’t voted yet.”