Monday - Day 2 - 9 May 2021

  Surprised.

  Yes, I was surprised that my wife wanted to stay home and meditate to tend the garden alongside our new freaky tree. I was even more surprised that she literally was not worried about my safety. I was, however, worried about hers.

  And even though according to her, ‘it didn’t go with the others’, I ignored my wife’s OCD rant and planted another cutting of the rose vine we couldn’t kill off on one side of the deck. I made a note to find and gather up any cool plant life while I’m out and about so we can see if she can do anything awesome with them. To go along with that, I made another Alchemy stone slab on the other side of the yard and left a big pile of shaped Killer Nails and bladed frisbees there just in case she needed some ammo. Leaving shit to chance is not a luxury we can afford anymore. With that in mind, I spent an hour adding a few more feet to the top of the stone wall fence just to make me feel better.

  With a kiss goodbye, a promise to be safe, and the classic husband shrug about what time I might get back, I headed out with my latest addition, a wagon. Made with my Alchemy from parts of an abandoned car, my newest ‘shit-hauler’ would allow me to keep my hands free while carrying a lot of loot home. The tires were made of solid rubber so I wouldn’t have to worry about them popping and the frame was set up to be five feet wide and ten feet long. I overbuilt the frame so it could handle some serious weight. Not to mention the hundred pounds of cables and chains I put in the wagon to strap everything down. East of my home about a half mile away were my first two targets, a Citgo gas station and about a half mile past that a 7-Eleven gas station. I loaded myself up with my armor and weapons and started a nice slow trek out.

  Plenty of old and new suburban brick and mortar houses lined the streets as I passed them, some of them boarded up and derelict while others just looked haunted. I noticed that the older wood houses looked like they were succumbing to the wave of decay that the Advent brought in. Mana and essence and all that other extra-reality energy, to me, seemed to invigorate life but have the opposite effect on structures or ‘dead’ things. Really old cars, the antiques that some old people around here still have, were rusted out with their newer tires still fearlessly holding up the decrepit bones. Newer cars still looked ok but some dead trees had fallen over as Nature had started to reclaim some of her lost territory.

  Everywhere I looked, modern life was just breaking down. The apartment complex I passed, I made sure to quicken my step as it looked darker, dingier, and far more ominous than I remember with all the windows blown out and scorch marks laced up and down the sides of the brick. I did see people as I walked but nobody waved back or said hello when I waved to them. I had to assume that being all armored up didn’t exactly encourage friendly interaction.

  Ten minutes of walking and two turns later, I reached the first gas station. I parked my wagon next to the building so I could take a look around. William Street, one of the main roads that bisects Old Town Fredericksburg and connects Route 3 to the smaller bridge west of the Route 1 bridge, was usually a pretty busy road. It felt wrong that no one was on it at the moment. Whispering winds sang their creepy tones as I hefted my axe and shield.

  “Shit gets weirder and weirder.” I muttered, moving around the corner of the building and walking in. “Freaking two steps away from being a haunted ghost town.” The double doors were hanging open, the shattered glass all over the ground and the frame of one of the doors barely attached to the doorframe.

  “Hello?” I called out softly, the rays of the sun barely illuminating the inside. I stepped in, my boots crunching on the glass. After not seeing signs of life or hearing anything for thirty seconds, I kept my shield up but sheathed my axe. I could draw it quickly or I could simply shape the stone attachments of my glove into spikes at a moment’s notice. The refrigerators on the right where all the drinks used to be were smashed open and looted. The snacks were pretty bare but I hadn’t come for those.

  With a careful eye, I started gathering things that had been overlooked by the looters, my guess most likely college students from the nearby university. I mean, they probably had bigger targets, like the Food Lion and two strip malls an easy walk away from the main campus.

  Pulling my wagon around to the front, I gathered up cartons of oil, WD-40, then all the leftover stuff from the medical section such as cold medicine, bandages, antiseptics, bleach and cleaning supplies. Moving to the next aisle, I grabbed overlooked bags of ramen and cans of tuna and soup that were underneath the shelves hiding in the dust.

  “Freaking score!” I hissed, gathering everything I could, moving at a frantic pace. As I moved through, I went further into the small store until I hit the back wall. The handle to the door was locked and I figured what the hell. I knocked on the door and said clearly, “If you’re in there, let me know because I’m about to kick the door in.”

  Meh, couldn’t hurt to give a warning just in case someone was hiding out in there. After hearing nothing again for five full seconds, I gave the door a solid kick right next to the doorknob, smashing the bolt through the door frame. “And score one for super strength!” I said, grinning as I stepped in. “Jackpot!” Back here was a little storage area with plenty of goodies that were still boxed up and ready to go. Prioritizing medical stuff and canned food, I still didn’t overlook the automotive supplies as well as the cases of beer. Oil, WD-40, phone wires and jumper cables, and window scrapers all went into the wagon.

  With an almost evil grin, I definitely swiped all of the small boxes of pre-packaged coffee. I did complain inside my head the entire time as I knew my wife would have been able to clear this place out in less than five minutes with her powers whereas it took me forty. I was being careful not to miss anything.

  Once I had gotten plenty of good stuff out of this scavenging trip, I took the time to shape a couple thin stone boxes for all the loose stuff and put it in my wagon. Grabbing the handle and bringing the wagon back to the side of the Citgo, I looked at the large, locked cage next to the main gas station building with all the Blue Rhino propane tanks and the large white filler tank next to it.

  “Can I do it? Is there room?” I wondered aloud to myself. I pondered for a few minutes. The propane tanks could be placed in the wagon and then I could shape dirt into stone to keep it all still and settled but I figured that the big tank is either a trip of its own or I can roll it in front of me. Twenty minutes of shaping thin stone walls and organizing tanks later, I had all of it, including the giant white tank on top of my wagon that I tied down with an abundance of bungee cords. The top of the tank had a handle cut into the extra steel lip where I tied rope to it so I could at least manage its balance. Taking it slow, I managed the half mile back home in twenty minutes with everything precariously perched.

  “Back already?” Sandra was sitting in midair on a platform of blue telekinetic energy next to the first cutting of the rose bush I planted in the front yard. The water bottle next to her was empty but there was another one I was eyeing.

  “Yup, well, trip one anyway.” I set the handle and the rope down, looking over my shoulder as the big tank wobbled. “Little help? You can unload this and put it all away with your mind powers before I can walk down the street.”

  She chuckled as she magnanimously waved her hand like a queen waving during a parade. “Sure honey.” Various items glowed blue as Sandra picked them up. The boxes and cartons floated inside the houses as she telekinetically opened the door.

  I laughed, watching everything put itself away. “It’s like the Sword in the Stone movie when Merlin makes his own house clean itself.”

  “I haven’t seen that movie,” Sandra said sadly.

  “Oh, wait, leave the oil and propane in the backyard please,” I said, watching everything magically float up and around. “They’ll be good for experiments, maybe we can run cars off the stuff if we infuse it alchemically with mana, worth a shot with a crappy car.” As I picked up the wagon handle, I turned back. “Oh, and all the medical stuff, can you put it all in one spot including all the med stuff in the house?”

  “Sure honey.” I know that tone. That’s the ‘duh’ tone a wife gives her husband when he’s essentially repeating things she’s already figured out. Knowing that she had everything well in hand, I grabbed that water bottle, the now empty wagon and pulled it back down the street. Everything was going fine until I crossed William Street to head towards the 7-Eleven that was still a mile further west.

  The degraded asphalt ten feet in front of me exploded as a ragtag group of people rushed out onto the street from all directions. None of them looked great. Streaks of bloody matted hair, bloodshot eyes, rough looking sports equipment with pieces of flesh hanging off, it just made me want to pity them.

  “Hey! Where ya going luggin’ that around?” A beefy kid with shock white hair and too much muscle stepped forward. He glared at me as he handled two aluminum baseball bats with ease, spinning them around in a display of casual intimidation. I hated how he easily towered over me even with my boots and helm giving me a few extra inches of height.

  “This is the guy!” A skinny dude with a jacked up nose wearing all the colors of the rainbow squealed. His voice was a lovely handful of nails on a chalkboard fucking a meat grinder and his appearance didn’t do him any favors either. “He was goin’ the other way though and that wagon was hella full!”

  The big guy nodded at a slender black guy to his left. Grinning with a smile that was missing a tooth, the black guy with big hands and a ratty sweatshirt stepped forward, his hands empty as his palms faced the sky. Bits of fire exploded into existence turning into fireballs the size of a human head.

  “Turn around bitch!” He cackled. “This is our territory now.” Hoots and hollers egged him on. I saw some tiny, skinny white chick with way too much mascara on licking a knife behind him. She had the most evil, catlike smile I’d ever seen a human have along with a Karen haircut combined with the most smackable face I’d ever seen. Eyes too close together, thin lips, and bad bangs. Just one step away from being a classic Salem witch. I had to fight the urge to laugh. She was ninety pounds dripping wet but I quickly squashed that urge.

  Now, anyone could be lethal.

  I stared at the crowd, counting them off mentally as I kept my peace. The creepiest part of the entire were the almost limp bodies that kept stumbling out of alleyways and between buildings to add to the crowd. The main players up front, the squealer, the pyro, the baseball tank, knife-licker, and then about ten more right behind them stumbled up in various states of insanity. I saw a few of them juggling grenade looking devices and more than a few glowing weapons.

  Yup, not a fight I wanted, nor one I should fight fairly if I had to.

  I nodded quickly. “Got it. Didn’t mean to overstep. What exactly is your territory?” I asked, taking precisely one step back.

  “Everything around you! Dumbass!” The black guy’s fireballs doubled in size as he screamed at me. Blue sparks mixed with the yellow and orange flames. “What are you going to do about it? Where can you go if I burn it all down?”

  The knife-licker slunk up behind him, barely dragging the sharp blade up his side. “Jackson, darlin, we’ve been over this. Only burn down what we tell you, otherwise you don’t get to wake up a human.” My eyes widened a hair as creepy moans audibly punctuated her words. Five of the ten people behind the front line had milky white eyes and obvious fatal wounds in their necks or heads.

  Oh Fuck, zombies.

  Jackson the pyro gulped, the flames visibly reducing in size. “Yes mam. Can I burn him though? He doesn’t like me, he doesn’t like any of us?” He cracked his neck, sickening pops audible even with the distance. His body randomly jittered and shook as if he were fighting mini-seizures as he spoke. “You would like it if he were ash, right? Just a puff to blow away in the wind?”

  “No.” Big boy stepped up, his guttural voice calmer than his pals’. “He hasn’t done anything to us and maybe he’ll join us.” He looked at me, his thick head rotating even though he didn’t really have a neck. “Got a name? And what can you do?”

  “Call me stranger.” I said, unwilling to give out info. My left hand gripped the handle of my shield a bit tighter as I flexed my shoulders, loosening them up a bit. “And I can do a lot but your friends are too uh, well, they’re too freaky for me to say. Just tell me what territory is yours and I’ll be on my way. No harm, no foul.”

  People like this are jackals, banding together and preying on the weak. Opportunistic cowards. They’re smart enough to leave a lion alone but they do make sure it’s a lion they’re messing with before giving him space. Not to toot my own horn but I’m at least a steroidal pitbull with my powerups. And I also know for a fact they don’t want to meet my wife. She’s a magical pack of furious tigers all on her own. If something were to happen to me, I know without a doubt that she would flatten the entire city block by block if she had to.

  “No manners! No manners!” Two fireballs screamed as the lunatic flung them at me. Holding my shield with my left hand, I braced it with my right and angled it up, dropping into a low squat. The earth sprang up beneath me under my control, grabbing my feet and legs, lending me extra support as the two fireballs hit. One bounced off and up while the other exploded on contact. Pushing the base of the shield further down into the ground, I called on the earth to brace it while I pulled out my tomahawk. More fireballs spanged off my shield, more of them exploding than ricocheting off to set the nearby lawns on fire.

  “Cut the shit! I’m not going to repeat myself!” I roared, peeking around my shield. I looked at the psycho chick giggling near the pyro while still playing with her knife. Another fireball answered my plea. The heat was beginning to be too much. More fireballs rained down all around me. I grimaced. Mr. Pyro clearly had gone off the deep end. I only spared a second to watch in horror as the flames burned away unnaturally at the dirt and in spattered bits all around me. I pushed a small wave of earthen power out, burying the fire to put it out. I really didn’t want to get any of that on me.

  That wasn’t normal fire. A hint of miasmic purple burned at the dead center of those flames.

  “Fuck you!” I cursed. Standing up, I pulled back on my tomahawk and stepped to the side so my shield wouldn’t get in the way. Even though I was unsteady, I hurled the handy weapon as hard as I could at the psycho pyro. My super strength combined with my good aim but bad judge of spin sent the tomahawk hurling towards the enemy like an ungainly missile. The back of the axe head hit the skinny dude in the chest completely caving it in as the handle kept the momentum of the spin, bashing in his face. Grabbing my long bearded axe, I pulled it from its sling on my way back and hefted it just as easily as the tomahawk.

  “You killed him!” Screamed the edgy chick from Hot Topic, her eyes flaring purple as she rubbed the handle of her dagger.

  “HE WAS SHOOTING FIRE AT ME!” I snarled back, tightening my grip on my ax.

  The momentary stalemate broke again. “Bring me his bones!” She pointed her dagger at me, the blade also glowing purple as the growing cluster of zombies started to stagger towards me.

  It almost made me laugh how ridiculous this situation was. I try to be nice, be polite ya know? Back off from a public street and mana-roided losers start attacking me?

  “I got more where that came-” I started, retreating behind the shield as the big guy landed in front of me swinging for the trees. Dropping my axe, I braced the shield with my whole body, the impacts slamming my own shield down, hammering me a bit further into the earth with each hit. Like a drum, the big guy kept swinging, his bats growing with each hit as they began to emit yellow light. It was as if I were a railroad spike and his mission was to drive every part of me deep into the ground.

  “I can smash better than you!” He roared, rearing back with both arms, about to bring down the twin meteors.

  Understanding that even giants have vulnerabilities, I quickly split my tower shield into two parts, one part molding into extra armor for my upper body and head while the other half into a wickedly sharp claymore. Stepping forward to undercut the entire objective of the powerful swing that was about to happen, I fought dirty.

  My left foot came up sharply and then smoothly slammed down on top of his, taking advantage of the fact that the brute was not wearing armor of any kind. My solid boot powered through the fragile bones at the top of his foot like a rotten orange as I leaned forward and shoulder checked him in the stomach. He folded over me like a cheap napkin. I pushed forward, punching him twice with my shield. He leered back and then stumbled forward. Not wasting time, I hauled him closer, bashing him in the face until his eyes rolled into the back of his head. With an ugly thump, I let him fall to the side. My reacquired sword tickled his Adam’s apple.

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  “Call it off or I’ll butcher him like a fucking cow.”

  Yeah. Sure. I may have looked like I was bluffing. But I wasn’t. I had to get back to my wife. I didn’t want to take a life. I’ve never gotten in anything worse than a fist fight a few times in college but like hell was I going to let some crazy mob ruin my day.

  Besides, I had my own set of fucking magical powers.

  Ms. Crazy Bitch glared at me, the glow of her dagger flaring causing the zombies to speed up as her former meat shield screamed and howled underneath my boot. I pushed down a bit on the sword and the glow cut out, the zombies crashing to a halt twenty feet away.

  I looked around, taking account of the gang. Two women, one fat and one really muscular were looking at me with fear even though they had longbows with glowing arrows trained on me. Several dudes in the back sort of faded in and out as if they were made of cirrus clouds.

  “I’m done! You win!” Mr. Pig looked up at me, a trickle of red down his neck as his face went red with agony. I looked down, he had completely pissed himself. And I bet his smashed foot wasn’t helping either.

  “Shut up!” I snarled, keeping the pressure on his neck. “You, crazy zombie ho!” I yelled, looking up at the woman who couldn’t believe I just sassed her. “What’s he worth to ya?”

  Madam Crazy let out a little scream to go with her giggling hissy fit, turning and smashing the nose of the dude next to her. The pommel of her dagger completely caved in his schnoz. I waited patiently as she vented her bile on him, hammering his legs and side with frantic kicks. After a few moments, she turned her crazy eyes to me. “What do you want?”

  I almost spat in her direction. It was more than just, ‘she’s giving me the creeps’. The longer I occupied the same air she was breathing, the slimier I felt.

  “Answers, that along with some peace and fucking quiet.” I pulled the claymore up a bit, letting my gargantuan prisoner get some air. I leaned over, locking my pitiless eyes with his own watery ones. “Try anything and I’ll feed you to my feral chickens. They’re freaking dinosaurs now.” I smirked. His eyes got even wider as I casually shrugged while explaining. “Think my cats have turned into jaguars and I’ve already killed a neighborhood beast that used to be a fat old dachshund, so I got options here.”

  “Whaddya wanna know? I’ll tell you anything!”

  “Not you dipshit, I want to hear it from her.” Pointing my sword straight out, I leveled it at the woman still glaring daggers at me. “What do you consider ‘your territory’? And I’ll only say this once, do NOT fuck with me. If you see me out and you mess with me, there will be no mercy, at all. I will go from zero to a hundred so fast that all you will feel is an avalanche before you die.”

  One death on my conscience was already enough. The pyromaniac asked for it, but this ball of muscular pudge beneath me was actively pissing his pants. The poor fatty was clearly in over his head. I could see it, the overabundance of strength but lack of neurons firing on all cylinders. His eyes had that slightly dull look as if he knew he was born in the wrong damn century. He would have not been out of place on a Viking raiding ship going up and down the coast for France and England but here he is, pushing the man who didn’t want to be holding someone’s life in his hands, me btw. Someone else was clearly holding the reins for actions.

  Dumb muscle, that’s all he was. The poor bastard’s shape looked like someone made a caricature of a human out of big and small whiskey barrels, stacking them together to resemble a human and then throwing paint on it as if it were skin. With two years of focused training, he’d fit right in with the World Strongmen crowd.

  Miss too-much-makeup looked at me and then at her dead friend. “What’s her name?” I softly asked, poking big boy with my foot. “And yours too.”

  “Cassie! Her name’s Cassie! I’m Elvis.” He sniffed, wiping blood and snot off his face. “Mama loved the king, said he’d probably return when the aliens did.” I saw that the blood pumping from his ruined foot had noticeably slowed.

  I took a deep breath. “Cassie! Bring me my axe!” I ordered. “Nice and slow, handle towards me, place it down on the ground ten feet in front of me and then back up.”

  Cassie sheathed her long knife, sullenly slamming it home with a click. Tossing her hair, she put her foot on the dead body grabbing the axe with both hands and heaved with one foot on its leg. A nasty sucking sound preceded the axe wrenching free. Doing exactly as I asked, she put on a sultry smile and sauntered towards me a bit too quickly. Giving a nice curtsy, she put it down and then glared at Elvis.

  “We’re going to have a talk when we get back fatty. I know you’ll heal up in a few minutes, which is fine cause I can beat you all over again.” The click of his bones resetting in his foot was loud enough for all of us to hear. I stifled the horrified shiver threatening to crawl up my spine as psycho licked her knife again.

  My temper flared. It definitely wasn’t smart but I could see the dynamics between the present members of the group and that Elvis was obviously being taken advantage of, most likely being manipulated by Madam Crazy in front of me. I watched her lick her knife yet again before putting it away and that right there told me she was the type to get off to violence. I bet she was cutting Elvis for fun too.

  Right now, this crazy bitch is excited, she’s loving this whole apocalypse kickoff so she can go buckwild without anyone holding her back. My screaming conscience warred with what my rational lizard brain was telling me, that I was ten feet away from a ball of deadly poison, one that would betray me the instant she found an advantage, be it an army or some very powerful she could control.

  A friend of mine served in the Middle East for a couple tours and he loved watching movies like the sniper movie with Kris Kyle. Over drinks, he’d tell me some of the darker parts of his service and would use movies to help provide analogies to get me to understand. I remember him idly running one hand over his beard while his other gripped a bottle of Yuengling a bit too tight. He said that the most realistic parts of those movies were the moral dilemmas, the ones where a brainwashed child was holding a gun or a grenade, ready to blow up himself and others just to kill the ‘american devils’. Those movies always portrayed a sniper, ready and able to kill that child to save his brothers, but struggling with the fact that the person holding the weapon was a child. On the one hand, how do you go home and tell the wives of your fellow soldiers that you let their husbands die? And then on the other hand, how do you go home to your wife and tell her you killed a child, even if it was to save another?

  How do you weigh the cost? How do you sleep at night?

  Right now, a similar moral quandary was giving me the freaky ‘come hither’ glare, promising all kinds of delights if I would just give into that violent depravity that she craved. In my mind, I had already rejected that path. At least it was this time. The reasoning is obvious.

  My wife is hot and this bitch is purely psychotic. The only real fork left in the road for me is should I let her live or kill her and not ever have to deal with her again?

  A staggered series of moans approached from the left, the shuffle of ungainly feet thumping as Cassie’s sultry grin shifted to evil anticipation.

  Decision made.

  Pulling at the earth beneath the degraded asphalt, I lifted my hand, pushing the dirt beneath her to grab her feet and envelop her up to her knees. Closing my hand into a fist, the dirt mirrored my action, solidifying into solid stone. Pivoting hard, I clocked Elvis in the face. “STAY DOWN!”

  I couldn’t take the chance of him thinking that he had a shot at me while I was distracted. Pivoting again, my extra steel and iron armor and claymore flowed around me, shaped by my earth magic turning me into a nigh unbreachable human shaped golem.

  Each step of mine was a deer-like bound, my super strength propelling me with all the grace of a wrecking ball as I honed in on the stationary target. My oversized armored fist covered in spikes, carrying at least fifty pounds of solid metal, pulverized Cassie as I swung from above like a hammer sent from God. I swung twice more, making sure to turn her chest and head into pulverized hamburger leaving nothing to chance. With a kick, I sent the chunked shell of her head fifteen yards to the side. The spray of blood splattered out to the sides as if a comet had taken her out. I stood up, glaring at the crowd before. The moans turned to shrieks and howls, the approaching horde of zombies picking up speed. Their hands sprouted claws as their arms lengthened and their legs thickened.

  Shit, shit, shit!” I looked down at the barely unconscious Elvis behind me and covered him up in a thick layer of dirt, turning it to stone. I hoped his healing would set him straight soon and that shell of stone would keep him alive in the meantime. In that moment, that split second where I looked up at the horde of undead screaming as they mutated from not that scary shamblers to the enraged, bioweapon monsters in front of me, I almost peed myself as well. Reaching deep inside my well of power, I formed an image in my mind and pushed my will into the earth just like when I was shaping and affixing stone to the inside of my house.

  The dirt beneath me lifted my body, placing me at the top of a large, one-sided ramp. The back and sides of the ramp molded into stone as smooth as glass, the incline in front of me also transmuted into stone but every square inch of space was covered in wicked blades and spikes facing at a downward angle. The energy expenditure brought me to a knee for a moment, forcing me to catch my breath at the sudden burst of power. I cursed, forgetting in the moment that molding earth is very mana-intensive, the faster I mold large quantities of earth, the cost increases exponentially. I can do a lot if I take my time, but quick shifts of power cause a huge drain.

  Another lesson learned. Wrong time to learn that lesson

  I glared at the shifting army of undead as Ms. Psycho’s posse split. Grinning at having to fight fewer assholes, my metal armor molded back into a long, sharp claymore as even more stone was pulled from beneath me to fill in as extra protection. “What I would give for a mirror.” I chuffed, hefting my oversized blade. “Bet I look fucking badass.”

  My reprieve only lasted for a moment. Using it wisely, I reached deep, pulling on even more earth to join that which was already within my control. The crumbly asphalt formed a loose top layer of my golemized armor with brown and black dirt forming the joints. Solid stone slabs coalesced in strategic places to protect my vitals.

  That was all I had time for even as I pulled myself to my feet, gripping a blade worthy of a giant in one hand with my bearded ax in the other. Feral, unholy screams preceded the swarm sprinting towards me and my caltrop ramp. Each swing of my blades combined with my super strength bisected the incoming slavering freaks, my magic actively churning the earthen blades on the ramp to cut, grab, and tear all to slow down the horde trying to get at me from the sides. The back of my mind knew that this gory fiasco was a simple numbers versus power game and even though they got a few upgrades they just couldn’t touch me, until they did.

  Either it was a smarter zombie or a lucky one, but one of the fuckers vaulted off his big-backed brethren launching himself at me like a bat out of hell. The tackle didn’t knock me off my ramp and my armor grew spikes to create traction but that unlucky stroke of Fate did hamper the Reaper’s scythe that was my claymore.

  Dodging what should have been a very painful death, at the last second, I flung my claymore forward one last time, its spin and momentum causing it to act like a chainsaw as it cleared the ramp. Descending as loudly as possible by screaming at the top of its formerly human lungs, the zombie’s claws barely penetrated the hastily shaped palm of compressed dirt the size of a garbage can lid that smacked it down, flattening it against the bladed ramp. My ramp tore the necrotic flesh apart.

  Several loud thunks and slams made me turn around real quick. Elvis was smashing the remainder of the still moving zombie bits with a tree he pulled out of the ground. “Got’em!” He crowed, breaking the tree in half and using both like hammers. Rivers of sweat rolled down his massive body as he looked at me with a tired smile. “ You saved my life . . . friends?”

  I didn’t say anything as I turned and walked down the ramp to my claymore, the blades of the ramp melting back into the ramp as the structure itself slowly sank back into the earth. Yanking up on my blade, I pulled up buckets of dirt and changed it to sand, scrubbing myself and my armor in it, pondering viable courses of action and fighting with the dying voice that was my conscience.

  “You attacked me asshole,” I grunted, still scrubbing. “Why would we be friends? You worked with a lady who used zombies and psycho pyromaniac who hurled exploding balls of fire at me? Doesn’t sound like a good start.”

  He glumly dropped his makeshift tree bats, letting out a deep sigh. I got a better look at him as I walked a bit closer, still keeping a damn good grip on my blade. Elvis’ face went through a bunch of emotions, cycling from despair to indecision or fear and then back again. Finally reaching the end of his train of thought, Elvis turned around to look at the other side of William Street where his buddies and a zombie or two had run off to.

  I watched him sigh before picking up a rock, hurling it sixty yards between two houses. Another zombie fell headless to the ground. “I’m sorry, ok?” He said, scratching his head. “I wasn’t going to kill you, just beat on you a little. You looked strong and you had to be cause I watched you haul all that stuff earlier. Nobody else will fight me because they’re weak or ‘not durable’, they say. And then they ran, they left me, they didn’t do nothin’.”

  A few sparks of pity welled up within me. I tried to squash them. The miserable fucker, err, Elvis looked like a big child. He could easily have passed for a professional linebacker, probably their centerline. The massive specimen whose very size put him in the category of ‘Ogre’ instead of ‘Human’ stood at well over seven feet tall. I’d bet all the potatoes on my land that he was over four hundred pounds. Few things could stand up to that daunting combination of muscle and fat.

  “Look,” I said, raising up two three-foot tall columns of stone from the street. I sat on one and gestured for him to sit in the other. “I can’t trust you because you attacked me.” He opened his mouth but I cut him off. “Nope, lemme finish. I can’t trust you because you attacked me, but you also don’t seem evil like Cassie. Now tell me why the fuck you were hanging out with that group, all of it.”

  Elvis hung his head, his massively wide hands massaging his temples. “My ma lives north of here and I ain’t go no pa. I got a scholarship to play football in West Virginia and was on my back from visiting the college out there. Me and my girlfriend . . .” he paused, “used to be girlfriend-”

  “Cassie?” I interrupted, whirling my finger around my ear to signify the elementary school code sign for ‘crazy’. It’s how we used to make fun of girls that we liked. “The psycho? How, why?”

  “She was tiny and hot before the world went to shit!” He moaned. “We were in the hotel and my brain split apart as my body felt like it was on fire and I got way bigger and stronger and she got purple and weird!” I stared at him blankly. “No, really! She was all nice and sweet and a real cutie but then she said something about being in control of life and death and her power would let us rule the world. I couldn’t really say no, she scared me and my mind kept going foggy. “

  “Show me your status screen,” I said, getting off the stone seat and walking up to him. I held out my hand. “Just say, ‘show full status’ and give me your hand.” I kept a tight grip on my ax in my other hand just in case the big beluga tried to pull a stunt.

  “Okay,” he grunted, his basketball sized hand enveloping mine. “Show full status.”

  “More evidence huh,” I muttered, mostly to myself. If we were to take the status screens as real or truthful, then this would be an indicator that the Greek deities aren’t figments of our imagination. The church up the road would probably crucify Elvis given half a chance. “Nothing.” I said when Elvis gave me a questioning look. “So you’re freaking strong and a distant descendant of Hercules?” I looked at him for that last part, raising an eyebrow as he shrugged. I didn’t mention that other keyword that caught my eye.

  ‘Ascension’.

  “I woulda’ thought Thor cause I’m so white. Don’t Greeks tan really well?”

  I searched his face for duplicity or some trace of ill intentions. Was he just a big, bumbling buffoon? Was it all an act? Community, that word ‘community’ kept bouncing around in my head. Humanity didn’t just survive because of our brains and our weaponry, we survived because we too are pack animals. It’s intrinsically woven into our DNA, so many studies have been done about the pack mentality of humans that it’s crazy to think that I wouldn’t think a community isn’t necessary at some point.

  Modern society, due to technology and pure resource abundance, puts us in a position to minimize community because that’s how innovations arise, but survival hinges on the primal. Why do we need our local farmer when everything I need can be brought to me via delivery, or why talk to people when I can just chat with them online? Who needs adventure with video games and books abounding with new worlds and scenarios? Modernity has elevated our brains but diminished our instincts, our very selves. Evolutionary scientists have long shown us that many of our problems, not all of them, stem from the fact that society evolves much faster than biology does. It’s all one big mismatch.

  But that’s all gone now. Modernity is gone. Magic is here. Whatever was ‘Primal’, that’s all back. And back then, humans hunted in packs. Lived in packs. Fought in packs. The most basic partnership capable of completing difficult tasks is a team, which is simply another word for ‘pack’.

  “Uhg, I could use him,” I thought with a grudging sigh. I could just picture Elvis in Alchemically shaped plate armor and watching my six or being the main tank tasked with keeping the neighborhood safe. This Goliath is freaking huge. His very presence commands attention by virtue of his titanic bulk.

  Elvis could be a simple beast of burden, I could get brownie points by pointing him towards the church, or I could set him up as a subordinate warlord. Of course, I’d have to claim territory of my own to do that but apparently it’s that easy right now. If anywhere from a quarter to half of humanity kicked the bucket and I have no way of actually determining that then the labor force got a serious downsizing and real estate just became a surplus! Wonder what the wife will say . . .