Grant - 8 May 2021 - Day 1

  The second house to the left of mine was an abandoned house. Nobody had lived there for over five years and saying that it was rundown would be me being nice. The overgrown yard had accepted various intrusions, weeds, vines, and young trees as if it were actual forest. Two rusty cars sat in the driveway and there was a suspiciously large pile of dirt and rocks in their backyard. Giant stones that must have been dug up for the foundation for the house or their broken down shed were scattered around but it was hidden from the casual observer due their seven foot fence. I’m not a peeping tom. My neighbor is.

  “What do you think is coming?” Sandra asked quietly. She quickly reached for my hand, grasping it tight.

  “Hell if I know babe . . .” I said, knocking on the door even though I was pretty sure no one was there.

  “I know you don’t know and you’ll keep saying that but . . .”

  “Cause I don’t, and I think anyone who says that they do is an idiot.” My answer didn’t comfort her the way she wanted but I knew that I was right. “Honestly, we don’t really have anything to go on.” I peeked through the dirty windows, dragging my wife along with me as I vomited a string of consciousness. “The messages mentioned twenty millenia and the oldest religions we have are of bloody sacrifices and callous deities. I mean, even the old school Christian God was harsh, plagues, Sodom and Gomorrah, all the dead firstborn children of Egypt. Fire and Brimstone. And let’s not get started on Islam, they’ve got a division between a super peaceful segment and a very jihad minded one. The Hindu have Shiva, goddess of destruction, the Aztecs have bloodthirsty gods with names nobody can pronounce demanding ritualistic sacrifice. Most religions back then had some element of blood sacrifice. Tribal sacrifice and vindictive deities, so nobody is safe if we look back far enough. But if there’s magic and superpowers and humanity just got a serious upgrade in the ability department, it’s reasonable to guess that animals might be getting their own.”

  We moved on to the next house down the street. This pretty regular lookin’ guy moved in a couple months ago with his kids but we hadn’t seen a mother around. We never talked much but he waved and I waved as we went about our business and it was pretty kosher. He was basically the perfect neighbor. I knocked on the door and kept talking.

  “And if that Great Seal kept us separated and we were warned of a war, then there’s some souped up enemy or monsters on the way too. This might be me being paranoid, but I think everything, and I mean everything, should be on the table. I’m talking vampires, were-creatures, leprechauns, fairies, dragons, everything any fantasy book has talked about, don’t discount it until we know for fucking sure. It would be just our luck to get some crazy ass monster that we’ve never heard of invading.”

  Sandra froze for a second. “Do you think dinosaurs will come back? And massively big bugs?”

  I shook off that horrible notion real quick and knocked again. Nobody came to the door even though I gave a few good, hard knocks. “Hello!” I yelled. Turning around, I pointed at his driveway. “Weird, his car and his work truck are here. Shit, wish I could remember his name.”

  “What if he didn’t survive?” Sandra asked. “Is it locked?”

  I gave the knob a test turn. It opened easily with a slight click. “Hello? Anyone home?” I called out. The large windows of the suburban house let in plenty of light, more than enough to see the small piles of dust scattered around the living room with shoes and clothes sticking out of them. Sandra poked the piles with the oak staff. “I think that’s them,” she gagged. “Is that them? They didn’t survive?”

  The biggest pile of dust clearly had a large man’s shoe sticking out and the smaller piles of dust had small clothes covered with little dinosaur pictures. Sandra gasped. “What about hospitals? They’re full of children that aren’t near their parents? And planes, cars, ships? Did they all cut out? What about young children?”

  “I guess, probably?” Pulling her out of that house, Sandra sank to her knees in the yard. “I can’t, I just can’t.”

  “I hear you,” I said, reluctantly pulling her back to her feet and forcing her to look at me. “But we have to know. We have to know if our neighbors are dead. We also have to see if anybody needs help or first aid?” I watched as her face paled and her lips quivered. “Babe, you need to stop?”

  She nodded. I gave her a quick hug and pointed back the way we came.

  “Ok, that’s fine, go back to the house,” I said, stepping back and getting a good look at her. She had the cyclone knife strapped to her leg and in one hand she had the oak staff and in the other she had the spear. “Go ahead and gather up anything in the house that’s useful and consolidate it. Anything that can be used to stab or smash something that wants to eat your face. Grab all knives, kitchen ones too, anything that can be a weapon, and put it in the basement on that big table down there. Take all the food and put it down there too. Don’t forget medical supplies, the camping gear, get it all out and start going through it so we know what we have.” I started walking her back to our house.

  “What are you going to do?” She asked, her lips trembling.

  “Going to check every house on this street and see if people are alive,” I growled, thinking about what a pain this is. “I’m not going into that apartment building at the end though, some shady ass people and messed up college students live there.”

  “Well, you might want to avoid the university too. The college is three streets away and it’s not vacation time. There are probably a couple thousand college students there.” Sandra walked into our front door and just before she shut it, she called out, “Be careful! Don’t do anything stupid!”

  “Yes honey.” Normally that phrase is for when I’m done listening but I meant it this time. Turning around, I crossed the street and started walking towards the little cluster of houses that formed an odd circle, almost like a little commune. Taking a quick look at myself, I understood that I would probably come across as crazy. Circumstances might force people to actually assume the wrong thing or it might make them freak out but the important fact is that I was well armed. I had a K-bar strapped to my leg, a pouch of throwing knives on my right hip, a tomahawk in the right hand and my bearded axe all choked up in the other. That way, if I had to, I could hurl the tomahawk at a target and then engage with the bearded axe with both hands while they’re distracted with the incoming axe.

  “I look like an asylum’s version of a cracked out Viking,” I muttered, shaking my head and picking up my pace. The next couple houses didn’t answer my call or the knocks that grew in intensity at their silence, but I did see a couple doors back on my side of the street slam shut. “I don’t think people are going to answer with me looking like this.”

  Deciding to head home to change as I hadn’t seen anything weird yet, I turned around on the concrete porch of a relatively newer house as something solid and sharp hit me low taking my legs out from under me. Vicious growling accompanied a spike of pain in my right calf. As I fell, I twisted and landed on my back with a curse so I could see what hit me.

  A buffed up weiner dog that looked like it just ate a pitbull for breakfast was tearing at my leg, the shin guard barely keeping the top set of teeth from doing the kind of damage that the lower jaw was actively doing. Red eyes and slavering teeth along with the freaky canine doing its best to chew my leg off clearly showed me that Fido here thought I was dinner. Pulling my knee towards me, I punched the dog in the face, screaming every obscenity as it doggedly hung on. A few more hits didn’t do much of anything as I couldn’t get the leverage for a good swing. That pain made it hard to think.

  “AAAAHHHH! OUCH! Fuck you!” I screamed, putting my brain to work and using a weapon so I could get a good lateral swing in. The blade of the tomahawk slammed into the skull just above the snout line, skipping up off the bone and taking the top part of its skull off. Blood sprayed up and out as the gristle flew behind the dog. Somehow, that only made the crazed beast bite down harder. Dropping the bearded axe, I reached forward and grabbed its nose and pulled upward as I turned the smaller axe around and shoved the handle down its throat, levering the mouth open.

  Finally registering the fact that it was seconds away from dying due to its exposed brain and the axe it was deepthroating, the mutated animal spat my leg out. Not letting go of its mouth, I shoved the axe handle further in until only the blade was sticking out. Not giving it a chance to get back in the fight, I hammer punched down with my other hand pulverizing its brain.

  “Shit!” I yelled, raw pain and anger mixing together to make my voice shrill. Forcing myself to stand up with most of my weight on one leg, I yanked the axe out of its throat and wiped its handle on the dog’s fur coat, the matted hairs parting enough for me to see a dog tag.

  I wiped blood off the tag and turned it into the sun so I could make out the words. “Jodie, seriously? The neighbor whose-name-I-don’t-know’s dog? The old, fat, dachshund that growls at anything that moves?”

  I couldn’t believe it. That dog has been at death’s door for like three years now, stubbornly hanging on for the sheer joy of growling at people taking the usual evening walks. Both of her eyes had cataracts and Sandra and I always commented on how old and fat it was when we went on our evening stroll. This mutated version of it had put on at least fifty pounds of muscle and de-aged to the prime of its life. AND THEN, it even looked like it had reverted back to a more primal form. With my ax, I rolled it over. The stubby toenails were now long and yellow, those teeth were more akin to a wolf’s and that barrel shaped body was packing some strength in those shoulders. This dog looked like it worked out and then injected more steroids to top it off.

  Reaching forward, I took the collar off and stuffed it into my pocket. Thinking better of it, I put the collar back on. Grabbing the carcass by a leg, I started dragging it home. “Without this, nobody’s going to believe me,” I growled to myself, feeling the stab of oozing blood from my calf. I limped slowly as my leg screamed at me with every step. The pain made me grateful that my house wasn’t far away.

  As soon as I got to my yard, I started hollering as loud as I could for Sandra. She and the neighbors came out at the same time, all of them running to catch me as I dropped Jodie’s leg. The back end of the body hit the sidewalk with a dull thump. “Bandages, I need alcohol, a suture kit and bandages,” I grunted, my pain grating on me as all of them looked at me in horror. “What? I got attacked!” I answered before their questions got specific. Both my wife and neighbors gave me accusing looks, like I was the problem. “You know that fat dog a few doors down? The old ass dachshund? What’s her name?”

  “Jodie,” Mike answered quickly. “What does that have to do with-”

  “Look at the freaking tag.” I ordered, pointing at the dead dog with my axe.

  “I’m not touching that-”

  I reached down and yanked the collar off, holding it up in front of Sandra. “What’s it say, babe?” I asked pointedly, giving it a little shake.

  “Jodie, beloved of the Garcia family, if found, please call the number on the back,” Sandra read aloud. Her face turned pale as I tossed the collar over to Mike and flipped the dog so that she could see its profile. “I mean, it looks like Jodie, if Jodie was part husky, part pitbull and maybe worked out for the last two years while de-aging.”

  “Exactly.” Leaving the neighbors to their thoughts and letting them draw their own conclusions, I grabbed my weapons and limped inside my house. “Come on Sandra!” I barked. As she came inside, I set my stuff down. “Lock the door please, and go around the house and make sure every door is locked.”

  My mood took a dark turn as my imagination filled in all the nasty things a dog bite can transmit. Taking my right boot off and pulling my gear and sock off, I exposed the nasty looking bite area on my calf. Thankfully, the mutt hadn’t gotten a good purchase on the top, my shin, which would have allowed the bottom part of his jaw to get set in there and tear out big chunks of flesh.

  It wasn't as bad as it could have been but that doesn't mean it was good. There were two holes, probably from the lower canines, and some abrasions from the other teeth, and they were bleeding as well. Hopping over to the towel closet near the bathroom, I grabbed a towel, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a first aid kit. It didn’t take me long to patch myself up, the worst part being the burn of the alcohol and then the burn of the peroxide. I doubled up because dog slobber is some nasty shit.

  Sandra started shrieking, her screams coming from the basement. I threw my boot on, not even having time to tie it, and half-sprinted/half-limped down there. The pain was the last thing on my mind as my wife was freaking out, the noise sporadic as I heard loud bangs and thuds punctuating each shriek. I didn’t really believe what I was seeing, again. A fat spider the size of a cat had my cyclone knife sticking out of it and Sandra was hammering away at the wreckage of the body with a wooden chair. The organ pulp was smeared across the floor as she kept screaming and pancaking the overgrown arachnid.

  “I think you got it!” I yelled, snapping her out of her monster induced rampage. The floating chair itself was glowing, her hands around it but not actually touching it. It took me a second to notice that crucial detail. “Are there any more?”

  Two eight-legged bodies jumped out of the shadows, slamming into a bright blue shield that materialized around Sandra. Her shrieking started up again as the levitating chair made quick work of them, pulverizing them against the floor. My wife became a veritable hurricane of panicked rage, the chair eventually breaking up into pieces from the impact but forcefully held together through her telekinetic force. At some point, she must have realized that she was using her new powers as she stopped screaming and pointed at the last three unrecognizable bugs in the corner. The chair pieces broke apart into a cloud of sharp splinters that flew like a barrage of spears that absolutely splattered the final arachnids.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Where did they come from? Are you ok?” I rebounded off of her shield as I tried to check her for injuries. “Let me in dammit!”

  “Did I get’em all?” She asked, her mind not letting go of anything as she pivoted, surveying the ruins of the basement. The couch was smashed to pieces, the dart board was a mess and all the darts were everywhere else embedded in various insects. Chairs and bookshelves were scattered around in pieces from the telekinetic hurricane.

  “Uh, uhm, I don’t know!” I yelled. “You have mind powers, you tell me? Do you feel anything?”

  “Like what?” She yelled back.

  “Think spidery thoughts! Negative emotions . . . animalistic hunger . . . anything not me?”

  A pulse that I barely felt shot out of her in all directions. “There!” she roared, spinning around and slashing with her hand. A cricket with dripping fangs was flung out from under the stairs and pinned up against the wall. Not wasting time, I grabbed a broken leg of a chair and skewered the monstrosity over and over. The blue energy holding it up dissipated as I stepped back.

  “Good fucking shit!” I praised, turning back to her. “You’re a friggin’ beast babe!” The adrenaline made me forget my pain for a moment. My beautiful wife’s hair was floating around her like some wind goddess, her toes barely floating above the ground.

  “I did good?” She asked right as her eyes rolled in the back of her head and she passed out. I barely caught her in my arms.

  I moved the hair out of her face as I kissed her cheek. “You did great babe, you did great.”

  I carried my wife back upstairs and laid her on the couch. Deciding to trust her assessment that there was nothing else in the house, I took the time to inspect, re-clean and re-wrap my leg, actually putting a much more solid bandage on it that I secured with medical tape. It’ll be a bitch later to take it off when it yanks out all my leg hairs but better than a bleeding leg.

  I cleaned up what I could of the basement, gathering the insect bodies in a big bucket and tossing them in the front yard. As I did that, I pondered my own abilities, thinking about what I could have done differently. The only problem was, I had never actually used powers before. Sandra’s powers seemed to kick in in a state of fear, and damn she was scary when she went full on Hulk Smash.

  I made a personal note to not tease her too much in the future.

  To be fair, the last time she saw a spider she chucked a damn plate at it. When I finally got all the goopy carcasses outside next to Jodie’s out in the yard, I pulled up my basic status again.

  “Grounded, well didn’t do shit when I was on that porch.” I grumbled. What I really needed was my ‘Terrastria’, my earth magic. This bullshit shoulda come with a damn user manual. My adrenaline was still up from the two fights and that combat induced anger was just looking for an outlet. The pile of insect and arachnid bodies were placed around and on top of the mutated dog and I stood at the edge of my yard so the stench wouldn’t finish me off.

  “How does this work!” I snarled, shoving my hands in the dirt, glaring at the bodies. Something shook loose in my head near the place that the Grand Collective opened. A seal popped and another muscle, a spiritual muscle, limbered up. That feeling resonated deep within me. Knowing that now was the time, I followed the new instincts and cast my focus down my arms and into the dirt. To an ant, the soil is an ocean, and that’s how it felt to me for an endless moment.

  An ocean of dirt, pebbles, organic matter, and stones came alive to my awareness. Their wavelength synergized with my own and in that moment, the world below me came alive! Energy spiraled out of my chest from next to my heart and down my arms. The lawn rumbled, the dirt swirling and moving to my will like a well trained dog. My power reached out, parting the soil and swallowing the bodies whole. The rough circle of blood splashes that formed the outline of the corpses had entirely vanished, a bare spot of dirt being the only evidence that something happened here. It did look weird to have a lawn full of grass with a circle of dirt smack dab in the middle.

  Figuring I’d test it out a bit more and elated at my success, I focused on the clumps of grass that had sunk down with the bodies and pulled them back up, fixing them in place where they used to be like a kid’s puzzle. “Easy day!” I crowed, happy at my first success. “Now what else can I do with it?”

  I closed my eyes, hunting around with my newfound senses, and pulled a rock the size of a basketball up to the surface, taking it inside. I barely registered that the rock didn’t actually feel heavy to me at all. I looked around and saw that Sandra still lay on the couch completely out of it. Setting the big rock down, I relocked the door and put a blanket over her, making sure to check that there were no injuries or bug guts that I’d missed the first time. My curiosity kept tugging at me, begging me to figure out my own abilities. Growling at my inner nerd, I forced myself to go through the entire house and double check everything. Every door was locked, every window shut, and for a few moments, it was completely quiet.

  And then it hit me, water. Without electricity, we may not have any water! There’s actually plenty of food in the basement as I had personally budgeted a little extra money into the food budget so we could buy extra dry and canned goods just in case we had a bad hurricane or something. That practice was put into play a couple years ago and it’s paying off right now. But water, that’s a key issue. I had one rain barrel installed outside and it was full from the rain we had a week ago but the other two aren’t hooked up at all to the gutters.

  I remember buying this thing a while ago called a ‘WaterBob’. It’s basically a giant bag made out of thick plastic that fits into a tub. It was initially marketed for hurricane use, allowing people to shelter in place with plenty of clean water. During a disaster, you can put it in the tub and fix the opening beneath the water spout and fill up the hundred gallon bag.

  Rushing downstairs with my eyes wide open, I rummaged through the pile of camping gear until I found it. Bringing it upstairs to the bathroom on the main floor, I tore open the box and got it set up. After following the directions on the back of the box, I affixed the spout to the bathtub faucet and turned on the water.

  “Whew, ok, that’s a relief.” A torrent of clean, cold water started filling up the WaterBob. Whoever invented this thing for disasters is a genius. It even has a little hand pump and hose attached to the top so you can just pour out as much water as you need. What gave me the most comfort is that this proved that this old city and the surrounding neighborhood’s water system runs off of pressure. If it were based on electrical systems then we’d be dead in the water, hahaha.

  Puns.

  [Shit! The neighbors!] I cursed, my inner diatribe keeping a sailor’s narrative on things. [They don’t strike me as the type to binge all of the episodes of Doomsday Preppers and have anything prepared.]

  One of the biggest advantages to growing up in a military family is that they do stress the idea of being prepared although I might have taken it a bit far. My dad was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for a few years and the East Coast would sometimes get hit with some pretty nasty hurricanes. Since that point in time, my dad never went below a certain amount of food, water, toilet paper, ammo, and camping supplies. That way of growing up stuck with me at least a little bit.

  If only there was a bootcamp for a magic apocalypse.

  The WaterBob filled up and I turned off the faucet. Thinking it over for a second, I went to the kitchen and grabbed every pot and tupperware container and filled them all up with water. Checking on Sandra one more time, I stared sullenly at the clock above the fireplace. Dead, it’s all dead. Even that battery powered cheapo clock is dead with a cracked screen. Can’t even count on the time anymore.

  Taking a deep breath and checking that I had as much weaponry as I could feasibly carry, I opened the front door a crack and peeped outside. From this sliver of vision you wouldn’t know that the world had ended yet, fuck, it had been less than two hours since the Advent and I was kind of at a loss of what to do. Sandra’s family was an hour south and my family was an hour north and without a working car there’s not much we can do to get to them. Fredericksburg is about forty-ish miles from Lake Ridge and about fifty-ish miles to Ashland. An hour’s worth of driving but on foot, both of those are three day hikes! And that’s if nothing goes wrong.

  “Just gotta breathe,” I mumbled, walking outside with one axe at the ready as I shut the door behind me. “Mike is only like ten feet away.” And yet that ten feet to my imagination was full of danger. Walking thirty feet away less than an hour ago had me getting attacked by a freaking neighborhood canine on magical steroids and my own fucking basement was spider-topia.

  I whispered to myself, “I need real armor.”

  A pack of beefy looking dogs tore down the street chasing a feral tabby the size of a puma. “Cat! Shit!” I cursed, limp-running back inside. In the craziness, I hadn’t even thought about my two cats. Putting two and two together and expecting the worst, I grabbed Sandra and threw her over my shoulder, hauling her to the bedroom. After checking under the bed and making sure the curtains were closed and nothing was in the closet, I sat down next to her.

  “You can wake up anytime now!” Complaining wasn’t going to help me but being the only one conscious right now wasn’t great either. “Wait,” I said, chatting with my clearly knocked out wife. “You did say in the basement that there was nothing else in the house . . . so . . . did the cats escape?”

  The last time I saw them both, they had freaked out and ran upstairs. “Ok, let’s try this again.” I took slow steps out of the bedroom and walked upstairs, my eyes roving as if the walls themselves were going to come alive and eat me. My boot crunched a bit of broken glass about halfway up the stairs.

  Lo and behold, the nice, mainly decorative, window way up there in the stairwell was broken. Now actually getting to the window itself is a pain as the stairwell curves away from that particular spot way up on the wall. Looking out the window is only done by standing ten feet away on the top floor itself and to actually get to the window to fix or replace it is to stand on a six inch ledge with one foot or put a small ladder in a precarious spot.

  “Fuck old houses!” I complained. “Stupid ass construction styles, stupid lack of open floor plan, just love small, twisty stairwells and rooms.”

  “Honey? Honey?” Sandra’s voice croaked louder and louder.

  “Comin!” I yelled back, running down the stairs and hurling open the door. “Are you ok? Are you hurt?” My barrage of questions was halted by her holding her hand out.

  “I’m fine, just a little wiped. I think I used too much power.”

  “I’ll say! You kicked some serious spider butt!” I said. She blushed at my praise. “Let me get you some water.” Grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, I handed it to her and then leaned on the door frame. “Drink it all babe.” As she did, I filled her in. “So, our cats are gone and I think it’s gone full on National Geographic out there. I saw feral dogs the size of a dirt bike chasing a wild cat the size of a mountain lion. If money were still a thing I’d put it all everyone’s pets going primal.”

  “Slow down, you’re talking too fast.”

  I grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, you’re right, I’m just a bit frantic here. Anyways, you made a joke last week about chickens being little T-rex’s and I’m actually afraid to go out there and check. If animals are reverting to a more primal form and then getting souped up from the extra energy coming in, we are not in for a good time.”

  “That’s a bit more than I want to think about,” Sandra whispered as I took a breath. Looking down at her empty water bottle, she placed it on the nightstand. “What are we going to do? What are our families going to do?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say,” I grimaced.

  “Do NOT suggest doing nothing! We can’t just leave them!” She argued, springing to her feet.

  I held my hands up, trying to get her to sit back down. “I’m not suggesting that, what I’m suggesting is that we work with what we got. Cars don’t work, we have one broken down bike, and our families are over a three day hike in opposite directions. That’s hundreds of miles of walking when it’s all said and done. Your parents are old, in their seventies right? And mine are in their late sixties, so what are their chances of living through that first wave? We need to figure out our powers first, that’s where the real answers are.”

  My argument only partially fell on deaf ears.

  “Yes, but I can fly!” Her body glowed with an inner blue light, picking her up off the ground a few inches.

  “First, that’s new. And awesome! But Sandra, think bigger. Pull up your status again,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her back down a bit. “Didn’t you have something else related to travel?”

  “It says . . . Planeswalker . . . and it says I have the Wayfinder ability,” she read aloud. “Do you think that means I can use portals and stuff? Uh, show status!”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Agreeing with her seemed to mollify her a bit even though I was basically reading her own status back to her. “I bet it’s actually way more than that. You have a bloodline called ‘Planeswalker’, and the word ‘Plane’ used to be, well before it meant ‘airplane’, it meant planes of reality. People used to believe that the Fae lived on a different plane and you could get there by walking through a magical forest. I bet portals are part of it too.”

  “What’s a ‘Yggdrasil’?” She asked, pointing at one of her traits.

  “The Norse believed that there were nine realms or planes, and that they were all interconnected and held together by the World Tree also known as Yggdrasil. If you had the right kind of power, you could travel to the other realms through it. But if you can use Yggdrasil to travel to a different realm, it does stand to reason that you can use it to travel around a singular realm.” I answered, shrugging at the same time because everything I know is hearsay and the production of ancient beliefs and fiction writers.

  My wife, too gorgeous to actually be married to me, just shook her head for a moment. “Does your nerdiness know no end?”

  I glared at her. “Of course. I draw the line at Pokemon and Warhammer 40k. I just don’t have enough time to dive that deep. Nobody really does. Remember, you married me, so you’ll have to indulge me.”

  Sandra waved her hand to get my attention. “Back to what matters, so if I learn how to use my powers, we could get to my family and yours?”

  “Theoretically.”

  “I hate that answer!” Sandra complained, sighing as she unsteadily walked back into the living room.

  “Remember the first freaking message!” I yelled. “Natural laws in turmoil!? ‘Theoretically’ is the only answer any of us will be getting for a long ass time!”