A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 6

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 6

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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With the peace and quiet of the apocalypse about to get fucked by ideological wars just a few years after the bombs fell, I made the executive decision to start shoring up, gaining a few contingency plans, and acquiring important information.

Shoring up meant taking stock of my bunker and making sure that it was concealed and safe, while planning for additions to its defenses later, but both the other two plans involved me visiting a few locations.

Given the position I put myself in before the apocalypse, I expected to fight just about everyone for my livelihood. Being neutral meant having the ability to fuck over anyone who wanted you to not be neutral, while having to friends to back you up, so I made sure that I was threatening enough to handle most issues. My retirement into my bunker had me sell off a few choice pieces of gear that I acquired from a few mad scientists, since I was sure that most of the threats to my livelihood didn’t care about me or died, but I regretted doing that now.

Between Kaede Walker and Lorraine Anderson, I was lacking in any way of fighting back against both. I had a few bits and bobs laying around that I could use to theoretically handle one of them, but not both. If I handled one right now, I’ll probably be attacked by the other to secure their situation, and they’ll attack me while I used up all of my more special munitions.

So, after learning about the Paradists, and letting the current situation get handled by Walker, and after securing my Bunker, I decided to pay a visit to India.

Shortly after powers started popping up, the most populated countries in the world found themselves breaking apart at the seams. In America, since it was relatively well off, there were more heroes looking out to keep things the same, rather than villains who wanted to tip the scales and throw the entire society into the table. In countries that had immense portions of their population living in poverty, while the richest were part of the one percent of the entire world, things didn’t go so well.

India broke apart into several territories held by their different peoples. I wasn’t an expert on the situation, but I worked there enough in my mercenary years to know that a lot of different groups of people had a lot of beef with other groups of people, and they came to blows. Whole leagues of superhumans formed there, taking whole regions, and ruling over their fellows. Most of them did so without anything practical knowledge how to do so, but a handful here and there did well enough that they actually secured territory, got the populace under control and stable, and started producing what they could for money to fund further conquests.

Handheld plasma cannons, laser emitters the size of houses, and bombs that levelled entire buildings by increasing gravity a hundredfold. Tanks that didn’t need fuel or ammo to roll over small towns flew out of India by the dozen, while more than one country had me bring Gen 6 Stealth Aircraft over there so that they could be modified to be apex killing machines by entire teams of superhuman scientists.

Hell, a billionaire asked me to transport power armor for him straight out of some old comic books, and the guy actually tried to use it to fight crime, until he got into a close call and quit.

If he kept it maintained after that, that armor probably saved his life when the bombs fell.

Anyway, whatever the case was, I was going over to India since it had a lot of superhuman scientists and those scientists were encouraged to be plentiful and multiply by their overlords. Chances are that more than a dozen survived the apocalypse, given the tens of thousands that worked and toiled in the ravaged country, so it was likely I could find one to offer something for in exchange for something to keep myself safe in the future.

So, I popped over to India to start looking… and found myself popping into an ongoing battle.

Just like I did the last time I went to India.

Damn, did the apocalypse even do anything to this country?

Did the apocalypse just interrupt cash flow for a few years for some warlords, or something?

Because it really looked like nothing changed since I last arrived.

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If you visited India before the bombs wiped most of Earth out, you’d have gotten a good look at what war looked like between superhuman nation-states in the future. More than a few of my fellow preppers either didn’t care about what happened on the other side of the world, or were racists who believed in all sorts of crap and diluted the forums with useless shit, but I was a globetrotter and I made sure to see as much as I could before I sealed myself in.

So, I made sure to take in what was the most likely future the world was going to take and decide what to do with myself thereafter.

Yeah.

I stayed in a bunker, until my dog died and I ran out of canned, frozen, and dried beef.

I only left when I was sure everyone else was dead.

Most of the boots on the ground doing the dying were human beings. But they weren’t normal. No, sir. All of them were bridging the gap between human and superhuman through some modifications courtesy of the local mad scientists. Giant robots were hard to make, especially if their factories could be surgically struck by a flying brick with heat vision, but there were a lot of humans everywhere who could be improved by some chemical slurry, some gnarly cybernetics, and big guns.

They fought on ruins battlefields that were once small villages or dirt roads. The weapons and people looked different, but they died just the same. Bullets from assault rifles and old grenades were just swapped out for esoteric bullshit to overcome new defenses, so they all lived and died just like most soldiers did. Maybe if one side had augmented soldiers with giant guns and the others didn’t one side’ll have the advantage, but that hadn’t been the case in India before the apocalypse and it sure as hell wasn’t now.

Anyway, back to the fight.

The Superhumans involved replaced vehicles.

Once upon a time, before the advent of ATGs and appropriate weapons, the only counter to a tank was another tank. In the current battlefield, with lasers, gravity bombs, and plasma flying around, most superhumans were going to die, if they were swarmed by infantry. However, modern tactics had vehicles supported by infantry, and if you were a rich enough country, you supported your vehicles with more vehicles and those vehicles with vehicles stuffed with soldiers who could dismount if needed.

The superhumans on the battlefield operated off that principle, but without the massive supply lines or national infrastructure needed to support them. Dozens of fliers fought and danced in skies filling with smoke from raging flames. Bruisers collaborated in teams to tear their equals on the other side apart. Long-range superhumans relocated quickly and took potshots from vast distances to kill their peers.

If one side’s superhumans overcame the other, then the infantry battle was going to drastically change with one side getting the definitive advantage of human-sized versions of modern killing machines supporting them while the others didn’t. The fliers could zip down and tear through the enemy lines without a care. The bruisers will wade into entire squads and leave mulched meat and machinery in their wake. The long-ranged support would turn into field artillery with unlimited ammunition and could change and fire on targets nigh-instantly.

Yeah, shit was fucked before the apocalypse and shit was fucked now.

At least, I knew that India had what I was looking for: mad scientists willing to make weapons that I could use to kill superhumans with.

Woo.

Hooray.

The nukes did nothing to stop the future that I didn’t want to see happen.

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I had a contact in India that I expected dead, because he made a lot of enemies and was an asshole. He went by the name Diya, swaggered into just about every room he entered, and had a tendency to reek of alcohol, cocaine, and syrup from on dessert or another. I was also sure that he financed all of the local brothels on his own, and that if someone didn’t kill him, and his body didn’t fail, that his rampant inability to control his lower brain would lead to his untimely demise.

Why did I have him as my contact in India?

Because all that bulk, swagger, and ineptitude at staying alive hid his ability to keep secrets and schmooze very well. In a land filled with superhumans plotting to backstab one another, or get into the graces of the local warlord, showing up a powerful superhuman from abroad raised a lot of red flags that could result in messy situations. Messy situations that would have me gain the attention of people that I didn’t want to deal with.

Diya handled the situations well for a modest cut of the profits, allowing me to get a lot of jobs done in India, while making sure none of the locals had problems with me. Before I retired, he’d even started asking me about taking jobs for the local warlord, with the guarantee that I wouldn’t catch the gazes of one of the man’s lieutenants.

Most of the time, I’d call that offer a trap, but with Diya’s track record I’d honestly considered it before refusing and giving him a handsome tip.

So, with all of that in mind, I was sad to find his smoky, dusty office cleaned up, air-conditioned, and lacking in any white dust on the table, as his son levelled a glare at me with his father’s portrait looking down upon me.

Diya Jr. wore a white suit, had slicked back hair, and tanned skin. He also had six bodyguards carrying plasma cannons in power armor protecting him. His half of the room was separate from my half the room by a field of shimmering energy and I could tell that it surrounded him portion completely, so there was no getting in there.

“Father told me that you’d come scurrying along eventually, Mr. Egress, and that I should treat you with the utmost respect… even though his past business deals nearly got my entire family killed.” Diya Jr. obviously had more than a few problems with me. In fact, he had so much problems with me that the guards looked like they were wondering why they weren’t shooting me. “I normally hold all my father’s past clients in contempt. I think that it’s a service to see them shot… but his notes of you are different. He says that you are professional, generous, and beholden to no nation.”

Diya Jr. Pulled out some contraption from his desk. A slick piece of metal that gave off a light hum, which he levelled at me.

“This will tell me if you are lying, so answer with care: Mr. Egress were you involved in my father’s murder?”

Normally, I would take offense to being treated to a lie detector test, but since this time it was going to clear me of a crime I didn’t commit… I decided to tell the truth.

“No, I wasn’t, you damn paranoid shitstain. I came here to ask talk to him and pay him to get in contact with other people. Why the hell would I do that if I knew he was dead!?” My words had one of the guards rankled and nearly raise his gun at me, but the one closest to him stopped him, while I glared at the kid behind the desk. The suit, glasses, and slicked-back hair did him a lot of favors, but he wasn’t even closet to sixteen. “Now, I decided to drop by, set up an appointment, and wait nicely since it looked like things picked up here while I was gone… but I’m pretty damn sure you don’t want anything I have on offer!”

Given Diya Jr.’s absurd reaction to one of his dad’s former agents, I thought that little spiel would get him to pop a valve, so that I could make a sweet exit out of the safehouse/hidden office complex… especially since the lie detector didn’t tell him anything was false after I called him a shitstain.

Unfortunately, the kid had a better temper than most sixteen-year-olds and he just gritted his teeth and forced a smile on his face.

“I see. Well, then I am in the wrong for my overreaction, despite all my previous encounters with my father’s former associates.” Diya Jr. plastered a business man’s smile on his face and gestured to his six guards. They turned off their weapons, but didn’t walk out of the room. The energy field was still active too, so the kid was still not taking chances. “If you still feel like working with me, I am more than happy to offer you a steep discount on our services.”

I had many things to say to the kid, but I put them aside when I heard the word “steep.”

Emotions? Entrapment? Forced interrogation?

All that can get kicked to the curb for a “steep” discount, but only if it was steep enough.

So, I let the question fly.

“How steep? And, just so it’s clear, I’m checking your rates after this.”

“Normally, your inquiry would be reported to the local warlord, your identity shared, and your body delivered for a hefty reward… but if your power is as father described, then in exchange for a single job, I will trawl through all of India for the things that you seek and put you in contact with their makers.”

“Yeah, that’s not sounding like a very good discount, kid. Care to elaborate a bit more?”

Diya Jr. leaned forward in his chair to answer with a vicious snarl on his lips that didn’t belong on a kid.

“I want you to transport an object that will be brought along shortly, inside a cargo container, to a specific location at a specific time.”

Huh.

Given his looks, the container was filled with something terrible meant for someone else he hated.

I could be teleporting a nuke lined with cobalt into the middle of a city for all that I knew.

Still, there were degrees of separation between me and the action… since I was just the delivery system… and I was getting what I wanted…

Hmmm.

Nah.

I’d lose too much sleep over it.

“Yeah, no. I ain’t doing that. Too many risks. See ya.”

With that, I stood up while Diya Jr.’s eyes widened and some statement or another was about to leave his mouth, but I was already gone.

Goodbye, you paranoid edgelord who doesn’t know how to treat customers right, I hope we never meet again!

Man, being able to just leave is the best!