DeSean had imagined the world ending with nuclear bombs exploding across Earth. It would be like the world’s biggest New Years’ celebration, but apocalyptic.

His best bet would be standing at the center of one explosion where his atoms would be scattered instantly. Then the bomb could end his life without him having to feel pain.

Suffering through the fallout would be torturous. Bleeding out your ass and mouth was not the type of death he wished for himself. There weren’t enough bunkers with fully stocked provisions in the world for him to get lucky, either. He’d knew a couple of veterans preparing for such, but he wasn’t close with any of them.

A bunker would be nice right now, DeSean thought.

Watching celestial light pillars fall to pieces felt like surviving the nuclear blasts and having to endure the fallout. It was heaven’s answer to his blasphemy of a life. The day of reckoning had arrived, and it wanted DeSean to fight for his right to breathe.

Your hour of preparation has ended. Now 15% of the Enlightened Chosen will be released from their transformation cells across your planet. In 96 hours, another 15% will be released. This will continue until all 3,667,734,391 humans who’ve chosen salvation are released as new servants of the Lord of Light and Order.

Chaos Zones have populated the planet. Chaos Zones will provide appropriate gear, Od-obtaining opportunities, and advantages against Enlightened Chosen. Chaos Zones will be removed from Earth after 575 hours. You have less than 671 hours to find a Chaos Portal before the Lord of Light and Order reaps the world of Chaos Marked.

Strive and thrive, sapients! For this is a game where your life is on the line. Only your own abilities can see you through this while embraced in the darkness of chaos.

DeSean could feel the age-old beat of fear in his chest⁠—like a hammer on steel. It was exhilarating, maddening, a surge of electricity up the spine. It got louder and more ferocious as he waited in the back of the speeding pickup.

The truck’s high beams pierced through the dark. The eyes in the sky emitted soft light like mini-moons. A few light pillars miles down the road cracked apart and fell in pieces. The shards fell like glowing confetti, emitting a sound like twinkling glass raining down in the distance.

DeSean was tempted to peek over the hood and see what these things truly looked like. He was curious. But he also had a job to do. Get to safety and survive.

He scanned the area. They were passing by a stretch of dark woods. A sign detailing Riley’s Farm was coming up gave DeSean an idea.

He jammed his face into the open panel. “Who here rather avoid the Enlightened Chosen?” He asked.

Quinton tapped the breaks and slowed to a stop. There weren’t any light pillars falling apart near them. He’d seen the precursor of what could be up ahead on the state highway just like DeSean.

“Why would people called the Enlightened Chosen attack us?” Allison asked, her grip on her pistol relaxed but raised. “Quinton, maybe your father and sister were the first released. We can go back for them and get through this ungodly situation together.”

“What’s the plan, D?” Quinton asked, ignoring his mom.

Mariah and Roberto looked up to DeSean.

“Riley’s Farm,” DeSean said.

“That’s eight miles into the dark woods,” Quinton said. “We won’t have a lick of moonlight with the forest canopy above us.”

“Maybe that’ll stop the eyes from looking at us, too,” DeSean said offhandedly.

“T-t-the eyes?” Roberto stuttered.

“Yeah, the eyes. You’ll see them once you get your Attunement up unless it’s only me.” DeSean pulled his head out of the open panel and peeked over the hood. Yup, the eyes were still watching. They looked… happy, now. As if they were looking forward to his destruction.

Nothing was running at them just yet, and they were a hundred feet from the dirt path leading to Riley’s. DeSean flipped the bird at the eyes in the sky again.

He lowered back down. “Do you remember if there’s a gas station around here?”

“If we end up at Riley’s, there’s another trail shooting west that’ll take us from the farm to McKellen’s gas stop,” Allison explained. “McKellen did more business in diesel than anything else, a good enterprise for him and an important stop for all the farms in the area.”

Oh, yeah, this truck was a diesel guzzler, wasn’t it?

That might be a good thing in an apocalyptic scenario. There would be a lot more diesel lying around at gas stations than gas. Diesel engines lasted longer, too. Once the electricity was to fully go out, anyone with an electric car might regret it.

“Still,” Allison added before they settled on things, “are we certain this isn’t a terribly huge overreaction? Maybe it’s one of those… um… simulation things you kids are all excited over.”

“Mom, I worked in a pretty high-tech squadron in the Air Force. If the Air Force doesn’t have this level of tech, then there’s no technology that’s widespread enough to affect us all like this. Especially without a glitch.”

“The lack of a glitch is way too sophisticated to be military,” DeSean said. Unless it’s something in the air from one of those black sites.

It could be a military screw-up of the same vein. Maybe military stupidity. Or military overstep. At least you can’t blame the Marines on this. We don’t do science-y shit unless we’re testing how effectively we can bash in a skull with a rock.

“We don’t have time for this!” Mariah snapped. “Let’s get to safety, please.”

“But, Mariah, what about grandma?” Roberto asked with a warbling voice. “She could be freed.”

Just like Quinton, Mariah ignored her brother. She glared at DeSean as if saying, let’s get going, mister!

“Quinton, roll toward Riley’s at a careful pace,” DeSean ordered.

“I hope Mr. Riley’s doing alright with all this madness happening,” Allison said.

We’re about to see, DeSean thought.

They drove the last hundreds of feet to the dirt trail without incident. Just when they got off the asphalt and turned down a dark-looking, unpaved lane, something new complicated the situation. A vehicle with the high beams on drove after them from behind.

DeSean raised his rifle and aimed at the new element entering the scene.

The vehicle⁠—a sedan upon closer inspection⁠—jerked to the side, clipped a standing light pillar, and screeched to a stop near the entrance to the dirt path. A man stuck his head out and waved his arm for peace.

“Please don’t shoot, we have children!” the man yelled.

A small pasty face pushed against the back passenger window.

DeSean lowered his rifle down a little. Quinton kept going, but the pace was slow enough for DeSean to respond.

“Do you have weapons?” he shouted.

“We don’t believe in them!” the man yelled back.

Idiots.

“Are you going somewhere safer?” the man continued. “Can we come with you?”

DeSean chewed on the questions for a second. A mistake. The man didn’t wait for an answer and hit the gas. He veered off the road and went down the same trail, catching up to the pickup until they were forced to slow down due to Quinton’s pace.

The situation wasn’t ideal, but DeSean could adapt to it.

Another vehicle⁠—a van this time⁠—turned down the same trail.

DeSean swore, hoping that would be the last⁠—

A third turned down the dirt road.

DeSean’s eye twitched. He waited to see if any more might show up all of a sudden. After a while, it seemed to DeSean that the third vehicle was the last to their impromptu caravan bumping up and down the dirt path bumper-to-bumper.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Hey, look, we got new friends to come with us,” Allison sang happily.

“I don’t know if that’ll make things better, Mom,” Quinton said neutrally.

Mariah poked her head out of the back panel. “DeSean, make them go away,” she said with a conspiratorial tone. “We can’t take all of these people with us. They’ll drag us down.”

“That depends,” DeSean grunted.

“Depends?” Mariah waited for an answer.

DeSean let her wait. He placed one foot on the cab door, took a breath, then launched himself forward. He impacted the front of the sedan. The driver nearly lost control. They were moving slow enough for DeSean to brace himself and wait out the jerks, his only grip on the back of the car’s hood.

Once the driver had his vehicle under control, DeSean crawled like a spider onto the roof. His rifle dinged across the surface as he crawled around. He hung his head upside down beside the driver.

A white, balding man with eyeglasses slipping down his nose gave DeSean worried looks, splitting his attention from the back of Quinton’s diesel monster.

“One, turn off your high beams. You’re blinding us,” DeSean ordered, and the driver did what he was told. “Two, what can you do to make yourselves useful?”

DeSean glowered at the family of five. A husband, a wife, and three boys.

“I’m an accountant,” the husband said.

“Probably useless,” DeSean replied, making the already deflated man deflate further.

“I’m a nurse,” the wife blurted out.

“Very useful. Welcome aboard.”

“Hey, wait!” cried out one of the boys. The father tried to hush him, but the kid seemed like the strong-minded type. He could be both a detriment and an asset. “I’m into computers!”

DeSean paused. There were still lights on despite the end of the world. Lots of things were made of computers.

“How much are you into computers?” DeSean asked.

“Victor’s a bit of a genius. We were already looking at ivy league schools for him.” The nurse’s eyes glimmered with pride and love. The other kids screwed up their faces slightly, jealous. Victor straightened in his seat proudly.

He’s a bit of a golden child brat but he could be useful.

DeSean got the parents’ names⁠—Thomas and Glenda⁠—and started scuttling away when Glenda tried to introduce her other boys. DeSean didn’t bother remembering. If things worked out well enough, he’d get to know them later.

DeSean worked his way to the back of the vehicle, sat on the trunk, and surveyed the van. There was close to half a dozen in the van, and he recognized them as peers from his college, but no more than that. They hadn’t been at the house party, however.

The girl behind the wheel looked at him fearfully, her eyes glued to his rifle. He gestured for her to come closer with his free hand. He kept gesturing, having her inch up to the point of nearly kissing the sedan’s ass with the front of the van. Then DeSean monkeyed his way to the driver’s door, the rifle slung on his back with the strap across his torso.

“Dude, you’re freaking insane,” someone said from inside the van.

“Is anyone here useful in an apocalyptic scenario?” DeSean asked.

“Um, how useful?” the driver asked.

“Survival training? Wilderness knowledge? Gun handling? Engineering? Good with directions and finding important stuff?”

He got a scatter of replies. Some people had hiked and stayed in the woods. Most of them understood how to shoot a gun without killing themselves, thankfully. One girl studied botany, but her interest was probably skewed toward a specific and more lucrative type of botany. It could still help in principle. There was a guy who was an engineering major⁠—mechanical, thankfully.

“I can talk to my followers and ask for their advice,” one girl said. “I got a million of them.”

DeSean was starting to brush that girl off when a thought occurred to him. “What’s happening on social media?”

He went off the grid years ago.

The girl flipped out her phone, the screen lighting her bubbly makeup. The air grew heavy and foreboding inside of the van. They listened to each other’s hard breathing, the creaky suspensions, the crackling branches scraping across the roof, and the muttering engine.

DeSean’s fears blazed like a bonfire as he fell under the spell of anticipation. His strange, currently useless aura of magic swirled like a maelstrom around him. His grip on the window edge started to hurt.

“Oh my gaawd!” said the social media girl. “I’m sorry for making y’all wait, but I kept on checking and checking. But I’m getting a bunch of original posts, or reposted ones, from people who came out of the transformation. They’re saying everything is fine and, um….”

The girl trailed.

“What?” DeSean asked forcefully. “What are they saying?”

“One person says all Chaos Marked should find their nearest Enlightened Chosen as soon as possible. It’s for a good reason, and running away is bad. The world is going to be made perfect. This is all part of a fight against chaos.”

“Any more?” DeSean asked, fully invested.

Damn, maybe he should’ve kept his social media.

“Yeah, tons more. There’s another person who admits to being an Enlightened Chosen, and they say it’s okay if you’re Chaos Marked. There’s a plan for us, too. Another Englithened Chosen⁠—whoa, it’s one of my favorite personalities! Oh my gawd, she’s saying everyone should meet up for a party. It’ll be for free. It’ll be the best party we’ll ever experience!”

The social media girl lifted her face from her phone. “Maybe we should’ve gotten saved. Damn. I feel like an idiot.”

“Don’t,” DeSean said. “It’s all propaganda. The situation is worse than I hoped.”

A chill passed through the van occupants.

“Dude, what do you mean by that?” asked a guy who’s into art history. If only he was a history major, he might’ve understood.

“We’re dealing with an enemy who can think like us while aiming for our destruction,” DeSean said. “We’ve all gotten Chaos Marked, right? We’ve all read what it said, right?”

More silence.

One of the guys burst into a crying fit.

“Oh fuck, it’s all a trap,” the botany girl said.

“Whose going to fall for that bull?” asked the mechanical engineer.

“Everyone searching for hope who didn’t have a cynical bastard like me around.” DeSean looked back at the last vehicle in their caravan.

It was another sedan, but they had the interior lights left on for some strange reason. He could see inside. There was only one person behind the wheel⁠—a dumpy woman⁠—but her face was still shadowed.

All of DeSean’s stomach-knotting, muscle tensing, electrifying fear condensed in his chest and became a nuclear reactor. It stopped being fear. It became pure heart-thumping adrenaline. It became targeted mania. Like having a flaming irradiated rock concert inside his body.

“Tap the breaks a little,” he told the driver⁠—Hailey was her name. It was a good idea to have the names of drivers at the very least.

Hailey did as she was told.

The face of the final driver lit up in red. She was just as dumpy on her face. Her features enhanced the uncannily big smile she wore like it was permanently fixed to her mouth. Her eyes were so wide open DeSean swore the woman stapled her eyelids to the top of her brow.

The smiling woman leaned forward, her spearing gaze touching on the horrific. Then the insane-looking woman submerged into shadow when Hailey lifted off the brakes, dropping the red brake lights.

Again, DeSean found it strange the car’s interior lights remained.

“Hey, Hailey,” DeSean said.

“Y-yes, sir?” she asked.

“I’m going to shoot the driver behind us. It’s going to be loud. Do not lose control and keep a steady pace.”

“Sir?”

DeSean unslung his rifle and casually held the handle by one hand. He aimed it at the ground, one hand on the window frame as the vehicle bounced up and down the uneven trail. He had to make the shots count within the first second regardless of shooting one-handed, ducking grasping branches, and being out on the side of an unstable platform.

No sweat.

“Sir?” Hailey repeated with more force.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you shooting the driver behind us?” she asked. Everyone in the van wanted to know the same.

DeSean paused. “Y’know what, Hailey, that’s a good question. I have no idea if a few bullets will put them down like a human. She might even ram into us as I try to kill her.”

The more he spoke, the more Hailey’s face stretched with horror. Some were a little slower on the upkeep, but they caught on to what was happening soon enough. Half of them cussed under their breaths. A few started sniveling.

“Are we seriously about to do this right now?” Hailey asked. “They… they haven’t attacked, yet.”

The key word was yet.

“Get ready, Hailey. It’s going to get loud.”

He gave her a second to brace herself, forcing him to endure a series of hard bumps along the dirt road, then he raised his arm. Instantly, he felt a twinge of a burn from holding his aim steady with one hand. All of his compounded fear blasting down his veins as one of the greatest deluges of adrenaline he’d ever experienced sharpened all the details around him.

The scent of forest and exhaust. Hailey’s shuddering breaths and the gasping cries inside the van. The darkened face of the dumpy woman with her interior lights on. She was sitting so far forward her chin was past the wheel, and her chest was hitting the horn⁠—the car blaring⁠—before DeSean cut through that noise with gunfire.

He walked every bullet down and to his right, pinging off the grill, the bumper, or the side of the car. He struck the driver’s side tire. It popped. The vehicle jerked slightly, but they weren’t moving fast enough for the driver to lose total control.

At this point, a regular human would stop in fear.

The driver hit the gas and accelerated. Her car thumped along with the flat, the edge of the bumper grinding across the dirt with every pothole. Yeah, she was hostile.

DeSean let it rip. He walked his shots across the hood, tearing away at the engine block. He drilled bullets through the windshield on the driver’s side.

DeSean saw flecks of blood and flesh splatter the interior of the sedan. The driver kept accelerating anyway.

“Brace for impact!” DeSean yelled.

“Seriously?” Hailey cried.

The hostile driver struck, and the van shuddered. DeSean nearly lost his grip, but a couple of hands inside grabbed hold of his arm and held tight like welded steel. He felt like a rag doll for a moment as the van veered side to side, Hailey fighting for control.

A reaching branch scraped over DeSean’s back. His leather jacket saved him from getting some bad scrapes. Only a few trickles of blood wet his back. It was still a tought hit to take, tho.

DeSean hissed, suffering through the pain, before refocusing on the objective. “Hailey, veer toward the right a little more.”

“There’s barely any space on the trail.”

“Do it!” DeSean ordered.

She veered to the right, revealing the hostile sedan and the driver fully to DeSean. He didn’t have too many shots left. He made them count, blasting into the driver’s side windshield with all he got now.

“Come on, come on, come on, and die!” he muttered until his rifle’s bolt locked back, the magazine dry.

At the same time, the vehicle veered off the side and fell off the trail, crashing into a tree.

You’ve obtained +2 Free Od.