Chapter 5, On the Road

Kristy got out of the truck and put it in her space. "Just keep moving, don't let them surround you." she talked to herself to hype her up for a fight.

At this point she had only taken out three zombies but she had time magic and had checked the clock.

"Every zombie I kill now is one less zombie to be level four later, I can do this!" Growl the zombies were getting louder now that they spotted fresh meat.

Kristy tried to calm herself down. She had seen others fight these things but she had never done it herself till this morning.

This morning however she used a shotgun that would be a horrible idea with this many zombies nearby. Less would notice her if she was not too loud.

Kristy swung at the zombie that was getting close to her. She hit the brain great! she did it, but there are more coming and her machete is stuck.

"Movies with a clean strike lied to me" she complained as she yanked the machete out of the zombie's head and ran to the side to not get surrounded.

She swung at the zombie now to her left. It hit the head but didn't do much damage to the brain. The zombie's balance was affected however, allowing her to move out of the way.

The other two zombies have turned to continue following her and there are more coming up behind them. The zombies have a jerky turn radius so turning also seems to affect their speed a little.

Kristy backed up instinctively and was now leaning on a mangled car. A zombie broke the window of the car and was reaching for her.

She panicked and Jumped into her space. Problem is she had been leaning on the car so the whole car, including the zombie crawling out of the window, were now next to her in her space!

She aimed her machete to the eye of the zombie and stabbed. The zombie died. She looked in the mangled car. There was another zombie trapped in the driver seat and a child zombie smashed with its legs pinned in the back of the car both were growling.

"Shit I can't have zombies coming into my space." then Kristy remembered she was like a god in the space.

"Set to auto all infected zombie liquids flesh everything but the crystal core. Send every time to controlled separate unescapable space, burn to ash!"

Kristy watched as the trapped zombies disappeared and the blood from the head of the zombie she just killed disappeared from the ground. Even her clothes that had gotten blood on them from moving Bill and Karen earlier were now cleaner, no more zombie blood.

"Well, that's convenient." 'Should I set the space to remove dirt, sweat and grime too?' no probably not. at least not as an auto function.

Time stops out there when I come in here so I can pop in when surrounded by people without them noticing but if I was dirty and come out squeaky clean someone will notice.

Removing the zombie by products could already get me noticed but this is better than infecting my space.

Kristy looked at the car. That could help in clearing the road but I'm nervous about the things I put in here hurting the animals. I don't have a fence to block them from roaming now. Kristy was thinking of the knocked over box of crystal cores that happened when she threw food in here in a hurry without paying attention to where to put it.

"Set to auto do not break anything when moving things to space. Do not harm or scare animals or plants when moving things into space moving animals can be done to provide room for things in space. Stack nonliving things if they can be done without breaking to preserve space."

Kristy checked her auto tab to see how the instructions were imputed. If there were any adjustments needed.

Kristy sat on the ground to think of a strategy to clear the road. The mangled cars make it hard to move. The fact that zombies can still jump out of cars leads to problems too as she can't always see them when she is running.

While in the space she can rest but she cannot meditate. So, the fights she can do are limited.

Cars are big. If she keeps moving them to the space, she will have to meditate to bring her space magic up eventually and if she uses the space to kill and burn the zombies she would have to come in here every time she didn't want to use up all her fire cores. but this would pull on her own fire manna she would not have much to use for fighting.

Oh damn, meditation. Finally, Kristy made up her mind she would move the cars blocking the road into her space while killing zombies with her machete. Then her space manna and or fire manna gets low she will hop in her Toyoda and drive away to meditate before going back.

Either way she will need to move the cars off the road so the space will be used eventually burning zombies in here was the same as burning them out there but safer. She might need more trips but this will also give her more experience killing zombies without her fire which is what she needs most right now she does not want to have no skills when she runs out of manna.

Being in here with each car will also help her take frequent breaks while the zombies burn.

After absorbing the three level four fire crystal cores her fire core is now level four as well so there could be a while where she is burning zombies. Though Kristy is confused her fire is a combat skill, usually combat power people get physically stronger and faster than normal people but her level rose and she is not stronger?

"Is it because I cheated and used the cores without fighting?" Each of her cores she absorbed are as much manna as killing four hundred level one zombies. That's 1200 before they get to this level assuming the ones they killed all had fire cores.

"Is it the fighting that slowly increases the strength and speed? The other power users were many times stronger and faster than normal humans just like the zombies. Is there no shortcut?" Kristy was talking to herself again.

"Well since there is no shortcut and I don't need to adjust to the increase in strength and speed I should max my fire as high as I can go."

Kristy sat in the grass of her space and willed the fire cores she had placed in the pit to her lap. "This is too many, let's start with twelve" she mentally thought of moving the rest back to the pit.

It takes one hundred of each core to reach the next level because she was using level four cores when she started her level was rising fast but now that she is level four it will take one hundred level four cores to get to level five which is probably where she will be stuck at for a very long time.

You know because level one zombies barely even exist yet much less level five zombies.

Kristy kept absorbing the level four cores 12 at a time till she got close to breaking through to level five then she slowed down to three at a time. She reached level five in fire power in what felt like over 12 hours in the space.

Then she laid down on the grass and went to sleep. She was drenched in sweat and mentally exhausted. She still had 43 more fire type cores but now that she herself was level five they won't be too great in helping her upgrade so she left them for emergency fuel for her space.

It would take two level four cores to equal the strength of a level five core so her remaining would be similar to 21 and a half of the one hundred more cores needed for the next level. But the heating and lights in the space use her fire manna regularly. She needs all her strength while fighting. So, the space should not take it when she needs it most. The space needs cores. Maybe once I have some level one cores stashed here, I can absorb what is left of the level four cores.

Sleeping in the space won't help her refill her manna but she was exhausted and needed the rest. Time in the outside world would not have changed anyway. there were zombies that were coming after her. Resting to recharge her mind was on her to do list.

Especially when she remembered that she had meditated earlier but did not rest when she found she was not considered restful sleep hence she has been up for over 24 hours straight now.

Kristy woke up later to a baby rabbit jumping on her. She started laughing and reached to pet it. It reminded her of Lilly. Not sure if this is the same rabbit, their fur is so similar to each other and she had not closely inspected them since she was in a hurry.

Kristy pulled out a glass coffee pot the type you use to cook coffee on the stove and willed the water to boil to percolate her coffee. Then she poured herself a big bowl of cereal.

She had not eaten since dinner the previous night. That might have been around eight hours in the outside world but it was much longer without food if you count the time spent here. She was starving.

Kristy was still hungry when she finished her glass of coffee and cereal. But she didn't want to puke when she smelled the rotten fresh or get stomach cramps when fighting zombies.

"I'm going to get super strength and speed from fighting zombies!" she hyped herself up again. Stretched, grabbed her machete and hoped out of the space again ready to grind.

She heard the growl from behind her and turned around. There were the three zombies and the long line up of zombies around behind them.

Without the car that blocked her she could move a bit now the zombies also had to navigate the broken cars so it was ok. However, she was irritated that she was facing the zombies when she went in the space and her back was to them when she came out.

She would have to work on her orientation. It was not just a problem while fighting but if she is in a crowd this could be a problem then also and expose her space.

Getting control of the twist could be used in combination while fighting if only surrounded by people she trusts with her secret.

Trusting people other than her family after Jessica though will be hard. Bill and Karen were exceptions; they were still unaffected by the apocalypse and she had no choice but to show them if she wanted the animals before the change.

She watched the zombies get closer and mentally smacked herself for letting her thoughts wander while in a fight.

The resistance was smaller when she aimed for the eyes to stab with the machete than it was to try and chop into the brain. She does not have enough strength to chop cleanly.

Kristy contemplated crafting a spear to use but it would not be so good later when the zombies get smarter and faster there are more moves and maneuverability with a sword than a staff.

Practicing her moves with a machete is the best she can do for now. So, she lunged for the eyes and moved to the area with less zombies. The zombies would pause for a second when she zigzagged through them to change direction.

When she found herself getting blocked in, she would move a car to the space. If she felt her fire manna being drawn, she would take a break if not she would pop back out again.

Around four hours later she killed the last zombie coming towards her. There were around sixty dead bodies on the ground now and room to drive around what is left of the wreck from this area. 'She had done it and she cleared part of the road. But damn it took too long!'

She had been scratched three times before she finished when they got too close.

Kristy would have to go back in time and do it all again if her skin starts to turn black but being a power user she should have a very good resistance to such low-level zombies.

She had used such a low amount of fire manna dealing with the zombies in the cars that she was surprised. Since she was not in combat now; she tossed the zombies, she had just killed into the space to be incinerated.

"Aren't I environmentally friendly?" Kristy smirked. "No, I just don't want to get my tires covered in zombie flesh not that it won't come off when I place the car in my space."

Kristy pulled out the truck and hopped in. there was a feeling of relaxing when sitting in a closed vehicle rather than standing outside in the open in the zombie apocalypse.

"Eat, meditate, deal with the cars in my space then keep moving." Kristy gave herself a to-do list.

She willed herself to get a can of stew. Not wanting to do the dishes yet she used a can opener and held the can to use her fire magic to warm the stew.

"Shit!" Kristy screamed as the can burnt her hand, she dropped the hot can of stew in her lap it sloshed out and burnt her legs too. "Ahh Shit! shit! Shit!" she went into the space

"Move the can and spilt stew!" she took a breath to calm down and looked at her now blistering hand. "So, I'm immune to my fire but not too hot medal, good to know. Other things can burn me."

She looked around her space "heal me." there were healing crystals in her space. Nothing happened. She willed the crystal for healing to her hands and one showed up. These crystals are rare too so "I guess the space does not have this function so it didn't absorb it."

'There is no way I can't fight with these burn blisters' Kristy got out of the space. "Turn back time five minutes"

The next thing she knows she is squatted over to put the last couple of zombies to be incinerated.

"Dam the down side, I have to redo things." Kristy complained

This time she opened the can and placed it on the concrete before trickling her fire manna slowly till it boiled then stopped and carefully wrapped the can in a towel before hopping in the Toyoda.

"Work smarter." Kristy told herself now she had her stew she willed a cold soda to her. This was from Karen's fridge. "I wonder if the space has refrigerator abilities" she talked to herself as she used a spoon to dig into her meal.

Kristy meditated to refill the space, fire, and time manna cores. It was only 45 minutes this time. She hopped into the space.

"Show inventory list for wrecked vehicles." This made looting easy and she could keep what she wanted.

"Collect all gas place in frozen time storage." Kristy thought for a second about her directions. "Refill Toyoda commonly used by me with gas."

She then looked at the list of stuff from the cars and picked what to move to her regular storage area and what to freeze. Half way down the list she saw something that made her so happy to have this list function.

"Move all mice to stored animals!" Kristy ran her hands through her hair. Someone had a mouse infestation in their car and surprise they survived the apocalypse! She will sell the living mice to a base later. Someone will pay good crystals to eat fresh meat no matter what it comes from.

Since they survived the apocalypse, she does not have to worry about them turning into zombies as soon as she brings them out of her space.

There are twelve of them.

She continued down the inventory list, moving the food or things that could possibly be used when she got near the end of the list she cursed again!

"Bring me the Baby Girl!" Yes, a baby had survived the turn, survived the car wreck and survived being surrounded by zombies and not eating for twelve hours.

The car she was in must have crumpled around her safety seat in just the right way! The medal of one of the crumpled cars started twisting and reshaping to release the baby.

Metal power users were also rare. Thank God this space can do this or the poor baby would die before I can get her out of that.

The metal kept moving and then a little red faced screaming baby girl floated out of the wreck into Kristy's arms.

"Bring me a diaper bag." this baby must have had a diaper bag in the car with her. She was covered in piss that had seeped through the diaper and needed clean clothes and food. Kristy guessed she was less than two months old and her small size is what kept her from being harmed in the accident.

"I will name you Lucky or maybe not. I'll ask Brenda to help come up with a good name for you but lucky has a lot of meaning for you." Kristy said to her as the baby kept screaming while she was being cleaned up.

"I know your starving baby but you won't fall asleep after eating if you're uncomfortable when I feed you just a second." 'I'm not a mom cleaning this little wiggly worm is hard. There is yellow creamy shit everywhere.'

"What am I doing? Space clean and change the baby." Kristy used the space to clean the baby and put her in fresh clothes. Then she pulled the bottle and formula from the diaper bag and followed the instructions on the back of the formula can to make a bottle.

The baby latched onto the bottle so quick it was heartbreaking how hungry she was. The little girl watched Kristy as she sucked down her drink.

"Are you warning me you will scream if I take the bottle away?" Kristy laughed at the thought. "don't worry, I think the back room of the grocery store also had formula and diapers in it. We just need to find you more clothes. I won't starve you, promise."

'Even in the apocalypse I can feed a baby no problem with my space.' "Bring me a blanket" the baby was starting to fall asleep now that her bottle was almost empty. 'How long was she screaming for in that crumpled car?' A torn-up, feces covered baby blanket popped into Kristy's hand. "Bring me a non-destroyed blanket." nothing happened "do I not have any blankets in my space? Wow! I haven't looted much, have I? I guess I was focused on food and weapons."

"Wash and dry the baby blanket." something is better than nothing. The little girl was nodding off sucking on her bottle. Her small stomach must be filling up. 'I hope she doesn't get a stomach ache from it being empty for too long.'

Kristy looked at the sleeping baby in the grass.

"Space keep animals away from baby.'' Kristy remembered the hopping rabbit from earlier than imagined a cow. She didn't want the baby getting squished by a cow. actually, maybe I should make sure the piglets and chicks and rabbits aren't hurt too.

"Move all animals that might get harmed by another to a different area." I guess that will work for temporary instructions.

'A baby is not an animal. She needs love and affection and connection to others to grow. I can't have the space take care of her. I have to keep an eye on her.'

'It's even more important now to get to my family as fast as possible. I can't take care of a baby by myself when I'm fighting zombies. What if she gets hungry or needs changed and I'm not in the space to notice?'

Kristy finished going through the inventory from the cars no longer happy with what she was finding. After realizing how much she was missing that she would need.

She popped out of the space and went to the side of the road to drop the things she didn't want in her space to include the zombie ashes and broken-down cars.

As she got in the Toyoda and told herself to not forget to hop back into the space to check on the baby in two hours. Little humans have small stomachs and small bladders she needs checked on regularly.

Kristy set a timer to go off on her phone and continued to the private air strip that was her flight school.

This time she was in a hurry; she only stopped long enough to throw blocking cars into her space and hopped back into the truck before the zombies could catch up to her.

Half an hour later her phone was ringing. It was Jacob. She let it continue to ring and ignored the call. "Not this time." Kristy said to herself. Last time she woke up and the world went to shit she called Jacob first thing "It has been almost 13 hours since everyone passed out, he had to have been awake for at least 9 hours, and he just now thought of me? That bastard never cared."

The phone stopped ringing and didn't ring again for over ten minutes. He never called her twice when the phone was ringing next it was Brenda.

"Great news Brenda started with. Dad has wind magic. He made it through the awakening!"

"That is great news this day would have sucked so much more if I had to do it all over again." Kristy was happy her hard work was with it.

"You sound exhausted, what all you do today?" Brenda asked.

"Well, I buried my new friends, set up the auto functions in my space to care for the animals. Collected a weapons stash from some dead gangsters, burned down a house, cleared zombies from the road for four hours, looted a bunch of cars and rescued a baby girl." Kristy listed off her accomplishments for the day.

"Wow! Baby and Gangsters who have you been talking with?" Richard demanded in his concerned uncle's voice.

"Bill's friend Jim was related to gangsters but he was supposed to go with us when I finished burying them. The other traveling companions hadn't shown up yet so I went to their house. It was a 20-minute drive to get there even if I went back in time I couldn't save him. He was bitten three times there was no chance of survival. He gave me the pin to the weapons stash and requested I burn his house down." Kristy explained for her worried uncle it's not like she knew the gangsters she just took their stash.

"When I started clearing the road I tossed the cars into my space. I could instantly kill any zombies in my space. When I finished clearing the road I went to loot the cars and found a baby girl trapped in a crumpled car. The accident saved her from being eaten by zombies but she was filthy and starving. She has been asleep for half an hour now. I need help picking a name for her." Kristy explained how she now has a baby girl.

"I think she is around two months old if she wasn't in the safety seat and so small she would not have survived." Kristy told them about the little angel in her space.

She hopped out of the truck again to move more cars.

"Did you just get out of your car" Brenda asked

Kristy speeds up to move the cars. "Yes, I need to move more cars," Growl.

"Don't worry I'm faster than the zombies I'm trying to get to my school it would take three weeks to clear the roads all the way to Portland. I miscalculated how bad the roads are. I don't have that much time with phone access and now I'm raising a baby. I need your help fast! I know nothing of babysitting other than the dolls I played with when we were little."

Kristy hopped into the truck and kept going. "I'm going to fly most of the way there tonight. We can clear zombies later when I'm not worried about reaching you." Kristy explained her thought process.

She did not think clearing zombies or the road would take so long for such a small area and originally wanted to store the planes so she had them for later and clear her way there even if it took a few more days but not now.

Now she needed them badly. Brenda had babysitting experience and Richerd was a dad surly they know how to take care of a baby better than Kristy who had most of the information from movies and never held a baby till today.

"How long till you reach the flight school?" Matty asked.

"Considering I have to stop every five minutes, probably another two hours." Kristy guessed.

She stopped the truck and got out again to move a car, this time she had to kill a zombie that got too close.

She hopped back into the truck and moved forward. "I'm beginning to wonder if I could move faster if I ran there." Kristy commented "but, that would leave me tired."

"If you get surrounded, hop in your space." uncle Richard commented

"My space has an auto function with my time magic. I come out at the same time I go in. I could spend hours in the space and no time will have passed here. I even took a nap in there."

"My way out of being surrounded is the magic of time, not the space." Kristy shared some info with her family; it's not like she wouldn't tell them eventually.

"I set up my space to pull all infected flesh and zombie everything to a confined spot and use my fire magic to burn them to ashes. No zombie can survive in my space!" Kristy bragged about her accomplishment to her family "isn't that cool!"

"Very cool." Matty humored her. "So how long did that actually take you if time was the same when you came out?"

"For me the last twelve hours have been almost a day and a half. My sense of time is so messed up I'm having trouble remembering to eat. It doesn't help that I don't have a kitchen in my space." Kristy guessed the amount of time she actually spent.

"No wonder you accomplished so much!" Brenda felt better now with the movies and music she had been downloading.

"How big is your space?" Richard asked

"Five acres of grassland. We have rabbits, chickens, pigs and cows in the space." Kristy told them. "We have land to grow crops but I need to read some books first as the space follows my instructions but it can't do things, I don't ask it to. In other words, your niece is too stupid to grow crops but you can help me pick a permanent place for things when I get there."

"The space can milk the cows and feed the animals on its own. I just give it commands to follow like setting up an excel sheet. Of course, I only know how to milk and treat the milk from Karen. She was nervous about taking apart the machines that milk the cows and store the milk." Kristy quickly told them in less they worried she would make them take care of the animals.

"I won't do that to the baby. She is human and deserves better." Kristy clarified she had not treated the baby like livestock.

"Ok.'' Matty said "we called you with good news about dad. We're going to eat dinner now then clear the apartments around us so we're calling you to let you know our plans."

"Well, that would defeat the point. Why do you want me to go back two hours when I could go back ten minutes at a time. Call me before you leave and after clearing each apartment. I can give you a fresh two-hour window after each spot we will have a better idea of the dangerous area and hopefully I don't have to re-clear this dam road over and over again." Kristy explained 'thinking of the zombies she had to pick up and burn again when she went back five minutes, she didn't want to jump two hours back in time if it could be stopped. But maybe calling every ten minutes was over kill too.'

She thought about it. "Wait, better plan we can spend as long as we want on the phone. you can keep me on the phone with you just mute my end. Then I will know exactly when you need my help. I will turn back time, hang up the phone and call you if the phone vibrates. You know that you had just barely made it and go back to your apartment to un mute me and make a plan. You just need to remember to mute me so the noises I make here won't draw zombies to you."

"How do you fight zombies and walk around with your phone on where you can still hear us?" Brenda asked

"I have the phone on speaker and shoved it in my bra." Kristy told her.

"Oh, ok that makes sense I was thinking the phone was in your back pocket or you were using Bluetooth with a very clear signal. But the noise from the zombies is coming in clear too, so I asked." Brenda said.

"When I came back in time, I was in the grocery store. It has been over five years since I last used my Bluetooth. It was not in my purse so I can't remember where it is, sorry."

"I lost my Bluetooth but there is no point getting another now the phones won't work after two weeks. The phones are just cameras, calculators, and flashlights at that point. But we can get walkie talkies the coverage range will be shorter than the label on the package but they will work for around three years the signals picked up differently than the phones." Kristy explained the apocalypse cell phone.

"The engine to the truck is making noise and I'm moving quickly so it does not make a difference if I am loud right now" Kristy explained why she didn't care to be sneaky at the moment she can always go back in time if she needed.

The sun was starting to go down. Kristy did not like the limitations on her vision but the headlights from the truck helped.

Her cousins kept her on the phone; they just were not talking as much because they were eating dinner.

Brenda suggested she eat when they did so she can at least know she wasn't starving.

Kristy agreed to pop in the space for some food since there were zombies trying to follow her car so wasting time to eat in the real world was not a good idea. She didn't know what would happen to the signal when she popped into her space so she set the phone on the driver's seat and hopped in the space without the truck or her phone.

The first thing she did was check the baby she was still sleeping, then she made herself a bowl of cereal and checked the loot for the new cars as she ate. Thank God no weird things this time but she finally had a blanket someone had in their car.

She had it washed and dried and wrapped the sleeping baby in it. Puffed it up to make a comfortable little bed for her. She had been sleeping on the ground, not good for her tiny back.

"It's good I came in, there are too many cars in here." Kristy thought out loud. Before jumping back out of her space.

"I'm back, did you miss me?" Kristy asked, picking up her phone again and putting the truck in the space this time.