Chapter 68: Never again

Somewhere in the middle of the town a ravid screeched in anger at the man standing a few feet in front of it. The man looked to be in his late thirties and had a head of ash gray hair in what appeared to be a buzz cut of some kind.

Mordecai looked into the dead white eyes of the ravid and was nearly overrun with the instinct to turn around and run. However biting onto his lower lip he managed to lowered those inhibitions to some degree.

The ravid ran after him its feet slapping against the cracked and out of shape tarmac of the near empty road and its hands with claws, at the tips of its fingers, at it sides. It was clear that the creature was intending to scratch him when it got close enough.

Mordecai felt his legs tremble. This would be the first ravid that he was going to attack without their young leader-Huey Coleman, injuring it. This was an encounter that would have left him frozen in slight fear had he been on his own.

Lucky for him that he wasn't then.

On the side on the road where a yellow Cadillac with a flattened roof and broken windows lay, a young man with brown short hair stood up from where he had been hiding behind it. He was holding a dagger in his right hand. This young man was Nale Stern.

Mordecai steeled his nerves. If he was going to freeze in fear in front of an enemy like this then how could he ever go far in the future. He bit his lips before squatting keeping his body low to the ground. He placed his hands on the ground and under his breath he muttered

"!"

At that moment the ravid had stepped on the ground to get even closer to Mordecai but a gray magic circle glowed to life on the ground beneath it, completely surrounding it. The moment the magic circle appeared the ravid's body paused, not moving as though it was a motion picture and someone had just pressed the pause button.

"Quickly now!" Mordacai shouted knowing that the trap would last three seconds only.

Nale bolted, running towards the frozen ravid as fast as his legs could carry him. At this point the young man was already two times faster than the average human having an agility of over 20 points and all.

The ravid wasn't that far from him, maybe less than two meters so he was actually able to catch up to the creature just as the third second was up. The ravid had just regained its motion when Nale pierced it in the side of the head with his dagger. The ravid stopped moving.

The feeling of the blade tearing through bone and flesh didn't feel pleasant in his hand but Nale sighed in relief. The creature was no more. It had to be.

Nale relaxed his tense body and was about to let go of the dagger.

The ravid twitched for a moment before it suddenly turned, spinning its body and swinging its claws at him. Nale caught off guard and slow to react felt the ravid's hard sharp claws pierce through his chest.

With a pained groan Nale hurriedly took a step back and then jumped even further back creating some distance, though it wasn't much, between himself and the creature. His chest was now riddled with deep claw marks and blood was leaking out from the wounds. Had the claws gone any deeper his heart and lungs would have been shredded apart. Despite having avoided the worst the blood loss was making him dizzy and light headed.

SKREE!

The ravid screeched rushed after him aiming to finish him off. Nale panicked and Mordecai's physical stats weren't nearly enough for him to run and intercept it on top of that he had expanded most of his mana and didn't have nearly enough to produce another trap to temporarily stall the ravid.

Dread…

That was all Nale felt in that moment. He had wanted to get strong so that he could be able to follow Huey more in the future but…

'I guess it wasn't meant to be huh?' he said to himself. Saddened by the thought in his vision he could see the ravid getting closer and closer. Its claws that were now dripping with his blood growing larger and larger in his view. Time seemed to have slowed as he could almost see everything in slow motion.

"It wasn't supposed to end like this…it shouldn't end like this" he whispered to no one in particular

"Nale!" he could hear Mordecai scream in the background but what was that going to do for him? He would still die no matter how much he screamed his name.

PCHU

The dagger that was still lodged in the side of the ravid's head suddenly dug deeper into its skull as if an invisible hand had pushed it further in. The dagger pierced through its brain in an instant.

The ravid stopped and shuddered and then it dropped to the ground half an inch from Nale's feet.

Nale stared wide eyed.

'What just happened?' he wondered before he turned his head in a certain direction.

There in the distance he saw a teenager with his hand donned in fingerless gloves outstretched in his direction. Nale didn't know how he had done it but the 'invisible hand' that had killed the ravid and directly saved his life belonged to Huey Coleman and the admiration that he had for someone who was 6 years younger than him only grew.

'I need to work harder' he thought his eyes burning with determination.

Nale wasn't the only one who was having this thought. Mordecai too made a silent vow to grow stronger. He had almost lost a comrade due to his powerlessness. He was never going to let that happen again.

Nale and Mordecai locked gazes and had seemingly come to a silent agreement.

Neither of them were ever going to be a burden

Never again

…

Three more hours and I had managed to escort Mordecai and Nale to the area around base and this time we had ventured further than where I reached with Clara and Dulton and as a result we had cleared the first leg in the Northern direction where the road led to the Town Hall and then beyond that the bridge leading to London City where my mom had been when the apocalypse first started.

I was getting closer to finding her. It was only a matter of time.

Mordecai and Nale managed to reach level 5 as well and just like how I did with the others I told them that they could form their mana cores back at base as well as take a look at whatever else they might have gotten on this trip.

We returned to base just as the sun began to set. The guards greeted us as we walked past the gates. The Two buses at the front had been moved and parked around the back of the building where they would be relatively safer than directly in front of the gates.

Time seemed to pass quickly and in no time it was already time for dinner. The large fires burned under similarly large cooking pots and the smell of rice and mutant beast meat permeated the air. I sat on the same spot I had during lunch, we all did-Jordan included. As we ate we talked about how each of our day was. I told them about Mordecai and Nale and about the accident that would have ended fatally had I not intervened.

It turns out that both buses were operational and that they could go at any time. There was just one problem.

Fuel

The buses had enough Diesel to get us to York Town High and back but beyond that would be a pipe dream.

"How about we siphon the fuel from the cars in the road?" Jordan suggested and I gave him a surprised look.

He noticed but merely smirked. As I said Jordan had his moments.

"That could actually work. It would need for us to make the appropriate preparations though" Rina said

"Well there's nothing else we can do about that anyway" I said with a heavy sigh. Time everything was taking time.

'How are you doing mom?' I wondered

Was she eating? Was she under a proper roof with warmth?

Thoughts that I had been trying to suppress suddenly surged like a broken dam. They were about to get chaotic when Rina said something that broke me out of my thoughts.

"So have we decided on who is going to school tomorrow?" Rina asked

"I'll go" Lydia was the first to volunteer

"Then I'm going too" I said

After a few more discussions it was decided that Candice, Rina and Jordan would hold down the fort while Lydia and I would be making a trip back to school.