Now that they had enough dynamo fluid to get to Lon Halos, and in light of their experience in Heart's Glow, they deliberately avoided the bigger cities as they made their way west. They even skirted around Pretoria, which was controlled by the Pale Riders and which was generally regarded as one of the safer stops along Route 90.

  They did, however, stop in some of the smaller towns to search for supplies. They had enough food for the time being, and finding fresh water was easy enough, but they were short on weapons. Stu still had his Midnighter and a box of .45 ACP ammo, along with his trusty baseball bat, his machete, and a couple of small knives, but Lucky had lost his hatchet and his railgun, and the two old rifles they had acquired in Heart's Glow -- besides being in very poor condition -- only had a few rounds left between them. Luna still had her shotgun, fortunately, but it was short of ammunition as well. So, although it was risky, the four of them occasionally stole into small-town shops and stores, on the lookout for weapons and ammo.

  They encountered zombies in these small towns, once in a while -- mostly Level 1's and 2's -- but they were usually just strays, stumbling through the alleys; there were no huge hordes roaming the streets, as in Heart's Glow or in Meku City.

  Zombies were rare, but ordinary, uninfected human beings were even rarer. They sometimes stumbled across some sign of recent human habitation, but they never saw any of these small-town survivors. Millie suggested they might be nocturnal; Stu suspected they were merely hiding.

  Their scavenging, however, eventually paid off -- they found an "MH Stockton" machine gun at an abandoned army checkpoint, complete with a fifty-round drum magazine (Lucky quickly appropriated this one for himself), along with a broken Centurion rifle. It was in pretty bad shape, but Luna thought she might be able to repair its plasma generator. If she could get it working, and if she was willing to spare a little dynamo fluid to power it, it would make for a potent weapon indeed.

  They spent their nights camping out in the woods and fields adjacent to Route 90. The weather was agreeable, for the first few days, but the closer they got to the Sunny Mountains -- the large mountain range which divided the continent -- the colder it became. "We're going to have to find some warmer clothes," Stu remarked one evening, while they were gathered around a fire. The Sunny Mountains, which they could just see on the distant horizon, were obviously snowcapped.

  "I think you're right," Lucky said. "It's already getting cold." He glanced at Millie, who was still wearing the same skirt and jacket she had been wearing when they had met her in Heart's Glow. "Aren't you cold?"

  "Not really."

  He gave her a doubtful look. He was always giving her doubtful looks. The two of them seemed to get along okay, but they were very different people -- Lucky was enthusiastic, excitable, and wore his emotions on his sleeve, while Millie, in contrast, was calm, quiet, subdued. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, and Lucky seemed to have a hard time figuring her out.

  "We'll see what we can find in the next town," Luna said. She put down the Centurion rifle, which she had been tinkering with, and picked up the roadmap-booklet which they had been using to chart their progress. "There's a town called Rainer a few miles away, if I'm reading this right," she said, squinting at it. "And another town called Silent, up in the mountains. We might be able to find some supplies in one of those."

  "How are we getting over the mountains?" Stu asked.

  "We follow the road," she said simply. "Route 90 ends here, but Route 101 runs through a pass that cuts straight through the mountains." But then she frowned. "These mountain roads are probably in pretty bad shape, though. No one's around to maintain them anymore, you know? We may have to take the glider off-road, depending on what we find."

  "We might run into snow, too, this time of year," Millie added.

  "Have you traveled over the mountains before?" Luna asked.

  "Once, with my father," she said. "When I was little. I don't remember much, but I remember the snow."

  "We'll have to find some cold weather gear," Stu said uncertainly. After surviving any number of zombie attacks and gun battles over the last few weeks, the last thing he wanted was to freeze to death up in the mountains.

  "It shouldn't take more than a couple of days to cross the Sunnies," Luna pointed out. "And then we'll be nice and toasty warm again, in the desert."

  "The desert?"

  She handed him the booklet, which contained maps of all the little polities of the Astrian Union. The country bore a very vague resemblance to the United States, as if it had been drawn by someone who couldn't quite remember all the geographic details -- it took up most of the continent and stretched from one big ocean to another. The two halves of the continent were divided by the Sunny Mountains, which seemed to be sort of analogous to the Rocky Mountains. And on the other side of those mountains was a sparsely-populated desert, which covered a huge area.

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  Lon Halos sat on the other side of that desert. It was a coastal city, built around a bay -- a sort of combination of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Stu supposed. It was strange. Some aspects of this zombie-world seemed almost familiar to him, as though it was a sort of funhouse-mirror version of his own reality. But in other ways it was totally different. There was no Canada, for instance -- only the so-called Northwestern Authority -- and no Mexico or South America at all.

  Strange. But then, everything about this world was strange. Stu still found himself wondering, from time to time, whether any of it was real -- it was almost easier to believe that he was dead, or stuck inside some kind of virtual world. The ICON system seemed like it could be evidence of that.

  Reminded of the ICON system, he opened it up and had a look at his stats. He had had a mere 25 HP, total, when he had first arrived in this world; his current HP stood at 510.

  Stuart Brakely

  Level 30 "Bold Bulwark"

  HP: 510

  His strength, speed, defense, and stamina stats had gone up considerably as well, since he had come to this world; the only stat that hadn't risen appreciably was his intelligence stat, which had only gone up a couple of points. That made sense; he certainly didn't feel any smarter.

  He had acquired eight skills as well, and currently had six skill points to spend. He wasn't sure what to spend them on. He didn't really have his eye on anything at the moment.

  Maybe he should ask Luna? She was a sensible young woman and he respected her opinions. She didn't really believe any of this stuff he had been telling her about the ICON system, but she might go along with it, anyway, just to humor him.

  So, after Lucky and Millie had gone to sleep, he sought her out and asked her what skill she thought he ought to buy.

  "This again?" She rolled her eyes, but indulged him: "Well, what are some of the skills?"

  He opened up the ICON menu and gave her the names of several of them, including their descriptors: Silence, Boulder Smasher, Red Wave, Shadow King, Sniffer, Turtle, Taste of Victory. She listened to him skeptically. "Are you just making this stuff up off the top of your head?"

  "Of course not," he said. "I'm reading from the skills menu."

  "Which I can't see."

  "Which you can't see."

  She sighed. "What else?"

  "Well, there's Cannibal. It would give me the power to acquire a zombie's abilities, by eating their flesh."

  "That's disgusting."

  "I know." He scrolled a little further down the list. "Wild Kingdom would give me a rapport with animals."

  "A rapport?"

  "Like, being able to understand them, I guess."

  "It's not that hard to understand animals."

  "Lie Detector would give me the ability to tell when someone in lying."

  "That might come in handy." But then she stopped, reconsidering it. "No, I don't like that one. I wouldn't like you being able to see through me like that."

  "Do you plan on lying to me?"

  "You never know."

  He raised an eyebrow at that, but moved on: "Insomniac would allow me to go without sleep."

  "That could be useful," she mused. "You could keep watch all night, while the rest of us slept."

  "True. Unfortunately I can't afford it right now; I only have six skill points, and it costs twenty-eight."

  "What can you afford, then?"

  "Silence, Artful Dodge, Sniffer, Firewalker, the next levels of Strong Arm and Speed Freak--"

  "What are those?"

  "Strong Arm and Speed Freak? Those are the skills that gave me my strength and speed. They're both on level one right now, but they can be enhanced further, up to five times. Kicking it up to level two would only cost four skill points, but level three costs sixteen points, and level four costs sixty-four. I'd have to kill a lot of zombies to get that many points."

  "How many?"

  "I don't know for sure. I get skill points when I level up, or complete a quest, but killing ordinary zombies isn't really enough to raise my level anymore, and quests don't pop up very often."

  "All this sounds pretty ridiculous."

  "I know how it sounds," he sighed.

  She gave him a shrug, at last. "Well, I can't make this decision for you. You'll just have to go with your gut."

  She went to sleep, but he stayed up thinking about it. Six skill points. Up to now he had had a tendency to stockpile his points so that he could spend on them the flashier, more powerful skills, but maybe that was a mistake; maybe he ought to try out some of these cheaper skills. Dead Aim had been one of those cheap skills, after all, and it had saved his life several times.

  So he scrolled up to the top of the skill menu and splurged on four skills: Artful Dodge, Silence, Shadow King, and Sniffer. The first two skills cost a single point each; the latter two cost two points each. Artful Dodge would enable him to slip past a crowd of zombies -- he wasn't quite sure how that would work, in practice, but he figured it might come in handy. Silence would muffle his movements, allowing him to move quietly, and when paired with Shadow King, which gave him the ability to conceal himself in shadows...well, if he ever wanted to start a new career as a burglar, these skills would definitely help. And Sniffer, like Strong Arm and Speed Freak, was a permanent enhancement, heightening his sense of smell. He felt it working immediately -- drawing in a breath, through his nose, he suddenly found himself much more acutely aware of the various odors wafting along with the evening breeze. He could smell pine trees, flowers, stones and earth; he could even smell the glider's vinyl seats. He could smell his companions, too, especially Lucky, who hadn't changed clothes or taken a bath in days. Millie smelled like plastic. Luna smelled like a girl.

  None of these odors were overpowering, however; in fact he couldn't really even classify them as "good" or "bad" smells. It was all purely informational.

  Having made his decision, he sat back, looked up at the stars, and tried to find some of the familiar constellations his father had pointed out to him when he was a child. Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper...

  He looked for a long time, but he couldn't find them.