He didn't go back inside using his legs.
He crawled inside using all fours.
Crawling because for the time being, standing on legs was a stretch goal. Crawling made sense because in his view, the floor was an acceptable compromise.
He crawled on his hands and knees through the front door and left some blood on the hallway floor as he did, but he made it down to the basement stairs before he realized that to go down the basement stairs on all fours like this would most likely lead to someone dying from what I assumed were 'normal circumstances.'
He was on the first step for about a minute.
His body was his primary concern right now. He had three deep gashes starting from his shoulder and ending on his lower back, and they were only getting worse with movement, as well as creating pain and discomfort that had no other word than 'discomfort' when he breathed. He also had his left hand bleeding--which was beginning to slow down--but the clots had gotten stuck on his sleeve, therefore moving his arm was like trying to pull tape off of an open wound.
He began going down the stairs one step at a time, sitting and sliding down the steps using his good upper arm to help push him down.
Going down the stairs like this took a little bit of time.
Once he got to the bottom of the stairs there was a first-aid kit in the basement. .
when he was organizing supplies earlier , he had seen the first-aid kit that was kept on a shelf above his mother's candles and spare batteries. It was a standard green first-aid box that contained normal items such as bandages and antiseptics; it didn't contain much else either.
With the box in front of him, he decided to take a look inside.
Inside the box, he found that the antiseptics were in bottles, the bandages were packaged in plastic sleeves, and the painkillers had expired in 2021. He looked at the expired painkillers for a few seconds before he decided that he didn't really care.
He took two of them.
In order to treat the gashes on the back of his hand, he sprayed a little antiseptic where he could; he couldn't reach the area, so he just guessed at how to use the spray. While he was still on his knees, he was thankful that nobody had heard him make that sound. He was able to tape some gauze over the wounds on his hands; that worked out okay. However, since he could not properly bandage any of the wounds on the back of his body, he just pressed the gauze against both sides of his back with his shirt and left it there.
Then he laid back down on the concrete floor.
Now, it was a matter of dealing with his arm; not just because of the cuts, but because, in addition to having cuts, the muscles in the arm appeared to have been pulled or bruised as a result of the impact.
The moment he shifted just a little bit, the pain shot from bearable to unbearable extremely quickly so he did not move anymore and remained flat on his back and looking up at the ceiling.
He had just killed a creature; although he almost died in doing so. He was flat on a basement concrete floor in Chevreuse because the world ended three days after a girl with purple eyes touched his forehead with two fingers in an alleyway in Paris. So, this was how his life was going to be.
While lying there, a new system notification appeared. This time instead of the previous multitude of failed update notifications, there was one distinct message and very much more serious-looking than previous notifications. The font was white like before, however, it appeared to be heavier and thicker, suggesting that this notification contained important information which had to be taken seriously.
CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR DETECTED.
He was interested and read further.
MORTEM SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION FAILURE - UNABLE TO ESTABLISH USER PROFILE; CORE DATA CORRUPT OR NONEXISTANT; THIS UNIT OPERATING OUTSIDE OF NORMAL PARAMETERS.
He continued reading.
Due to an extremely bad synchronization failure, a standard protocol will be activated to provide compensation. Compensation Status: Pending Estimated Time Delay: Variable.
That was the entire message. No further clarification or detail on what compensation was or what the estimated variables meant in terms of timing.
Macon had read the message twice.
His system was so badly broken that it was now deploying an esome kind of emergency backup protocol that would give him something to make up for all the things that weren't working for all the things that were currently not operational. He had no statistics, no title, no visible profile, a unique ability that technically worked but came with no instructions, and a percentage above himself that shouldn't exist , not including himself.
And as a response to all of these conditions, the system had provided him with the following comment: Pending; Variable Delivery.
Great.
He dismissed the notice and returned to observing the ceiling tile.
Macon's right arm hurt a lot.
About an hour later, he began to hear large vehicles moving near him.
He could hear heavy military vehicles that appeared to be diesel-powered and in company formation. There must have been at least two of them, and they had come to a halt within very close proximity of where Macon lay.
Macon was alerted by the sounds of doors opening and closing, boots walking on the pavement, and people talking with clipped, short sentences.
Next, he heard boots on the front porch of his house.
Followed by three heavy knocks on his front door.
"This is the military - if there are any survivors remaining, please respond."
He realized he was going to need to get upstairs, which would take some time. He made an attempt anyway.
It took longer than he expected.
He was not able to get up the first time; his arm complained loudly. He was able to get up the second time; he took advantage of the side wall for support as he went upstairs and took the stairs slowly with one hand on the railing.
There was the hallway; he still had to get to the front door, which was blocked with a chair and the china cabinet was shoved aside.
He knocked and waited.
"Survivors respond. We are here to assist."
From Macon's voice, it was obvious that he was surprised at how gravelly his voice was.
There was a slight pause on the other side of the door.
"Can you open the door."
He moved the chair and unlocked the door.
He opened the door, and standing there were two soldiers fully equipped with rifles slung on their backs and one had a medical kit.
In the street, behind the two soldiers, a military truck and another soldier circled to protect the perimeter. The houses along the way still had smoke coming from them. An overturned vehicle was still there.
One of the soldiers with a medical bag examined Macon's hand, the blood-soaked part of his shirt, and how he was generally doing.
"You are hurt," said the soldier.
Macon confirmed.
"Are you the only person in the structure?"
Macon thought about the neighbor with grey hair, he thought about the 99 percent, then the 100 percent, and then the void.
"No; not that I am aware of," said Macon.
The soldier nodded and made mention over the radio. The other soldier was already at Macon's side and is examining the wound on his hand with a tiny flashlight.
"We have a Mobile Field Medical Center located at the Chevreuse Community Center. You need to come with us for medical evaluation. Can you walk?"
Macon stared out of his house and saw the street. He saw the smoke. He saw the overturned car. He thought about the thing he killed on the front porch of his house and what that one soldier was thinking as he looked at the body with a blank expression that Macon couldn't read.
"Yes, I can walk," said Macon.
He went back inside the house, and he took his phone from inside the hallway; he took his jacket that was ripped from being hung on the door, and he followed the soldiers out of the house.
He turned to look at his house for a minute while he walked out. He thought about how the basement had all of his mother's canned food; he thought about how the garage had the generator; he thought about how the backyard had the fruit trees his dad pruned every other year.
He would come back.
For now, he would let the soldiers take him wherever they were going. He would concentrate on just taking each step without causing more harm to himself than he already had.