赤裸裸的滑稽故事

"It's good to see you, Clara," Ashleigh smiled, helping to stand Clara upright.

"You're back!" Clara shouted, jumping at Ashleigh with a tight squeeze. "I was so worried about you!"

Ashleigh laughed and hugged the excitable girl back.

"When I heard you were hurt in Spring, I was so scared. I thought you were infected or dying, or I don't know, maybe growing a third arm. A lot of weird stuff has been popping up the past few months."

"Clara," Ashleigh called, grabbing her shoulders. "I'm fine, are you?"

Clara smiled.

"Me? Oh ya, I'm great," she said. "Actually, I haven't had a chance to tell you, but Nessa and I are doing good… really, good."

Clara waggled her brows and emphasized the word 'really' in her sentence.

"So, I'm pretty good."

She nodded happily to herself, then suddenly her expression fell, and her eyes widened.

"Wait, no, not good, not good at all! The feral wolves are attacking our towers, communications first, and now our power! And those bear things just keep charging at the gates. We're holding but barely!" Clara said quickly, adding, "Pardon the pun."

Clara moved over and started picking up the papers she had been carrying when she tripped.

"These are schematics," she said. "I was trying to see if there is any way to get to the towers from underneath, see if we could make repairs without exposing ourselves to the monsters and, ya know, dying."

"What did you find?" Fiona asked, stepping up beside them.

"I didn't," Clara sighed. "But we need to do something and fast. Nessa and the others are struggling to keep pulling power from other systems to maintain the gates."

Clara suddenly turned to Ashleigh.

"You didn't happen to bring Alice with you? Or an army?"

Ashleigh shook her head.

"Dang, another computer-savvy tech would have been nice…." Clara sighed.

"How long until the gates can no longer hold?" Fiona asked.

"An hour tops," Clara replied. "The electrical field is a lot of power to maintain, but without it, even more of those creatures will just start ramming it until it falls."

"What would it take to be able to repair the towers?" Ashleigh asked.

Clara grabbed one of the rolled-up documents she had carried in, bringing it to the table in the center of the room. She rolled it out to reveal a map with specific areas marked.

"This is the communications tower that the feral wolves took out first," she moved her hand around the map as she spoke. "Over here is the tower they went for next. This is the one that concerns us the most. We have several towers over the territories to maintain the power flow through all the packs. But this one belongs to us and us alone."

Clara took a deep breath.

"We have other towers, but each one that goes down puts pressure on those remaining. We know there is a group attacking another one over here. If we lose them both, we won't be able to hold out with the ones we have left. The entire system will overload."

"Then we need to repair that first tower and keep the second from falling," Ashleigh replied.

"Ideally, yes," Clara replied. "But it's not that simple. For example, the first tower is outside of our gates. To get there, we would first need to power down a section of the gate to let a team out,

which could allow the monsters in, and then that team would need to be able to make it through to the tower, fix it, and return.

"We would also need another team to head to the second tower and do the same. But that one is a little easier to get to. We have underground access from inside the border, allowing the team to avoid dropping the gate. However, they would still need to face off against the monsters currently attacking the tower."

"Do we know what we would be facing at the second tower? Which monsters? How many? Anything?" Ashleigh asked.

"Joseph," Fiona called to one of the men looking at various monitors.

He looked up with surprise and then scrambled to one of his monitors.

"Tower Two currently has three feral wolves and one of the bears attacking it."

"Thank you," Fiona nodded, turning back to Ashleigh and Clara.

Ashleigh looked back at Clara.

"How long would each repair take?"

Clara thought for a moment.

"Tower Two is still operational, but they have damaged some of the connections. Assuming the monsters didn't interfere, it would be a patch and just a couple replacements, so…with two techs, one focusing on software, the other on hardware, a few minutes?" Clara said with a shrug of her shoulders. "Tower One, we know they did decent damage, but we have replacement parts ready. So there would be a quick removal, replacement, and patching of the system connections, with two techs at least ten minutes. If you got three out there, maybe five?"

"Okay," Ashleigh said. "So, if we sent a team with two techs, and three soldiers, Tower Two should be secured without issue. Is there a way to keep more monsters from attacking it once we have done that?"

"Yes!" Clara said with excitement. "After the communications tower in Winter was attacked, we started building mini sentries to defend the towers. We just finished them last week. They were installed in both of the towers we're talking about a few days ago, but we still had a few tests to run, so they haven't been turned on. Once the tower is secure, it's just flipping a switch inside."

"Great, Fiona, can you lead a team to Tower Two?" Ashleigh asked.

"Of course," Fiona replied hesitantly, "but what about Tower One?"

"I will lead that team," Ashleigh replied. "But I'm going to need at least four soldiers."

"You'll need more than that!" Clara shouted. "Ashleigh, this tower is outside our border at the front gates! Where are all the monsters hanging out, dreaming of devouring our flesh and bone? Oh yea, the front gates!"

Ashleigh sighed.

"I know, Clara, but if I'm not mistaken, we don't have a lot of soldiers to spare."

"That's true," Fiona replied. "But that doesn't mean you can take a risk like this. I know how strong you are, but even you cannot handle all those monsters alone."

"I'm not alone," Ashleigh replied. Feeling Lily listening from inside her mind. "I don't need to kill all the monsters. I just need to distract them long enough for the team to get by and fix the tower."