Time until next Challenge: 10 days, 23 hours, 34 minutes

  I was still nervous about the next leg of our road trip: by the time we reached Gordonsville, most of our convoy would have been awake for more than 24 hours, and our increased speed meant more Titans to fight.

  Things went better than I expected, though, thanks in large part to the generosity of people living in the areas we traveled through. A flyer/communicator team sent out ahead of us, letting people know what was at stake and what they could do to help, and people had stepped up in a big way. We still had to fight through some stretches of rural road, where all the local inhabitants had died, or sometimes where no one had lived to begin with. Even so, more than half the road we traveled was cleared in advance of our arrival, letting some of my traveling guardians rest.

  Titans were still mostly our responsibility, but even there, people chipped in, fearlessly using high-energy abilities like Paralyze or boldly using Draw Attention to help give us a much-appreciated edge.

  By this time, we’d seen every Titan at least once, and we’d given the Arsenal numbers and descriptions for each. There’d been some talk of naming them, but I wasn’t sure we’d bother: for the convoy, at least, everyone knew that #20 was the yellow speedster and #19 was the enormous pile of fur and #8 was the one that shot lightning.

  Ariel had been tracking several legoliaths heading toward us, continually updating me on their positions. Our accelerated travel had caught Hamlet off-guard. Everything that had started chasing us in Huntsville was hours behind, but still gamely inching after us, joined by several Threats we’d had to detour around as we traveled, and others that had failed to intercept us after our pace suddenly increased.

  Most of the legoliaths following us wouldn’t reach Gordonsville before we planned to leave again, but there were several exceptions.

  All told, staying put for eight hours’ rest would require ten Threats to be taken out.

  That seemed impossible, but I was putting my trust in the Arsenal’s experts who seemed to think otherwise. Still, I was kind of glad that one of the legoliaths was on-track to arrive at the same time we were. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep well without seeing our defenses in action.

  “Almost there,” Jeff said. He’d taken over for Jim, who was sprawled in the passenger seat, fast asleep and drooling. Ahead of us was something like civilization, a loose collection of one and two-story buildings just barely visible behind a wall of trees. “Should be about one more mile to the hotel they’re putting us up in.”

  “Well… Ariel says we’ll have to fight a legoliath for it, but an actual bed sounds heavenly,” I said.

  “It’s just mattresses…” Marie said.

  “Same difference.” Who slept on an actual bedframe anymore? With the nightslugs still roaming, no one would want to sleep in a room all by themselves.

   Ariel said.

  I turned, but the hills blocked it from view.

  What wasn’t blocked was the huge, reverberating boom that followed. We all felt the tremor and saw a massive plume of smoke rose from behind the hill, and were briefly deafened by the blast.

  Vince started to get to his feet. “I’m going to go check up on that. There will be cleanup to do.”

  Just then, we rounded a corner.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The highway we were traveling on had just crossed beneath another major highway. The offramp on the far side had been the site of the explosion. A massive blackened triangle of char painted the road, continuing back until it reached the grass, now blazing merrily. Chunks of orange flesh and viscera littered the area but… nothing moved?

  Nothing?

  Micah had been asleep before the blast, but he came awake in a hurry, immediately riveting on the growing flames. “I gotta put those out!”

  I caught his shoulder. “Wait… Ariel. Did they really just one-shot that Threat?”

  

  “Huh.”

  “Did they?” Jeff asked.

  “Uh… yeah. It seems like they did. And according to Ariel, we’ve got 23 minutes before the next Threat arrives. Mind stopping? I want to talk to the people responsible.”

  “Yeah. Absolutely. I think that’s our stop right there anyway,” he said. Our driver pointed off to the northeast. The signpost had been knocked over, and the front door had been covered by an alien Blueprint replacement, but none of that obscured the building’s past as a hotel - the only one in Gordonsville, according to Marie. “Easy walking distance.”

  After a quick check to Ariel to affirm that there were no twotwos or other flying Titans in the area - and wasn’t it convenient that I could just ask? - we got out of the car.

  Despite the efforts of my guardians to stay in front of me, I was toward the head of the pack, focusing on my Life Sense.

  

  “Yeah, I know you said it was eliminated,” I said, glancing upward. “It just doesn’t make sense to me. In one explosion? It’s hard to believe that bits of it aren’t still squirming around out here, waiting to chomp. We had a ton of gunpowder at Fort Autumn, and we still had plenty of Threat left that we had to cut down manually.”

  “That’s the power of shaped charges, ma’am!” a cheerful voice said. It came from a man with a graying beard, an armored vest, and overalls. Like most people we’d seen recently, he didn’t have a gas mask; only our plethora of replicators had made such amenities easy to access for our crew. Still, he had a sturdy-looking hardhat that gave a clue to his identity.

  “You’re from the zinc mine?”

  “Yes’m. Wherever you blew up the last one, I’m guessing you didn’t have people with explosive experts on hand?”

  I thought back. We’d had several dozen soldiers on hand, but they’d been handpicked for their personal combat prowess, not their demolitions expertise. We’d known enough to put our explosives under pressure and to create some pipe-bomb-like constructions, but that had been mere common sense. “Uh, not so much.”

  “Well, I worked in the mines for over four decades. Retired this past spring, actually.”

  I looked out over his handiwork. “Thanks for coming out of retirement for us.”

  He laughed. “Aw, this isn’t work. This is fun! Don’t usually get to set off explosions this big, and I usually gotta file a bunch of paperwork before we blast anything. This is the best time I’ve had since the open bar at my youngest daughter’s wedding!”

  I raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t ask. “Well… great. And you’re sure you have enough explosives ready to take out another nine of these guys? They’ll be coming from different angles and-”

  He held up a hand. “Now miss, y’all just go snooze and don’t fret. We got all the details and got it all under control. Even got some fellas down from Elmwood to help out, so even the three that are set to arrive at the same time will each have an expert to shepherd them to their eternal rest.”

  Miss? I was pushing 40! Still, I had rarely been so happy to be condescended to. Shaking my head, I let him usher me up the hill with the rest of our group.

  Ariel, wake me if there’s a problem with any of the blasts, okay? Or if any Threats or Titans get within 3,000 feet. Or if a paraslug gets inside and goes unnoticed for more than sixty seconds.

  

  My mind was still wheeling as we stumbled through the doors, but I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  Don't know if any of my Royal Road followers are local to the Huntsville area, but I'll have a booth at the Rocket City Reading Festival this Sunday. :)

  (Up to Bk. 5, Ch. 19) * * * * * * *