Free AZU-1: Lifehack by Joseph Picard

figure out. It wasn’t safe to dawdle here if she couldn’t
keep her guard up.
    She threw some more P90 ammo into the
box just because she was here again, and closed it up to drag it
back to her little locker room fort. To ‘home’. Before she left she
tried an experiment with a spare visor laying around. She turned it
on and got it to access the network she had created before. With a
little toying around, she was able to see though the second pair of
goggles using her first set. She left the second pair on the floor,
positioned to watch the entrances to the airlimb, and packed some
extra goggles into the metal case.

    ~~~~~
    Chapter 11: Rally
    ~~~~~

    The sound of the case’s wheels going
down the middle of the street attracted some attention here and
there but thankfully no mobs. The stragglers that took a liking to
her were spotted soon enough that she dispatched them at a safe
distance.
    She made it ‘home’ to the locker room
and checked to make sure she didn’t have any unwanted pests settle
in while she was gone. She dumped her cargo on the floor near her
little ‘laundry bed’ and took out one of the spare visors and some
duct tape she had found, then went to the concession stand
outside.
    She set up the goggles to her little
network, and taped them to the wall inside the concession before
picking out a ‘meal’, and returning to the locker room and
barricading herself in.
    Well, the experiment worked. With her
main visors, she could view the other two she set up. The interior
of the crashed airlimb, (which currently had about five zombies
roaming around it), and the concession. Ah, she could now keep a
close eye on her precious treasure hoard of junk food. If she
didn’t get out of Autar soon, she’d have to raid a grocery store or
something. Artificially cheeze flavored food stuffs just aren’t a
balanced diet.
    But then again, the infectious bite on
the back of her head was probably a bigger worry. That thought
slowed her down for a moment, and self pity wrapped itself snugly
around her again.
    She curled up on her haphazard bed and
closed her eyes. She didn’t feel like she was turning into a
zombie. She looked okay in the mirror and the wound didn’t seem
especially bad from what she could see through her hair, but she
didn’t know anything about how these zombies worked. For all she
knew, some mysterious growth was developing around her vital organs
at that very moment, preparing to choke her from within or hijack
her brain.
    What about Harold? She had no idea
where he was, and her best hunch was vague at best, behind an army
of corpses. Why did this have to happen?
    Things weren’t all peaches and sunshine
before the zombies, but needing a job sure seemed like a small
problem now. Things were great! She was with the one person in the
world she could trust, and things... things were great.
    Then this mess. Even that bitch Kris
would be welcome company now. What’s worse? Being alone in a city
full of people who don’t care about you, or being alone in a city
where they just want your body? And which was which?
    She realized she was crying and sat up,
mentally scolding herself. There was work to do. She violently
flipped open the lid to her new ‘AP mass impact-‘ thingy, and tried
to focus on the puzzle of making it work.
    One component was clearly a battery of
some sort and it conveniently came with a charger, so she plugged
it in. The indicator on it showed it as dead, and she may as well
start charging it now.
    One part looked vaguely like a muzzle,
another featured what looked like a brace for on the shoulder, and
one had an assembly for a trigger. She laid those out in logical
positions on the floor, and then looked over to the five other
chunks and the mass of other little pieces.
    Hey. No problem.
    Regan awoke with an imprint on her face
from the part she fell asleep on. She sat up, and looked at her
progress. Most of the big chunks were together, kinda. Some still
needed little