Beaumont TX. Tuesday December 21, 2049

"You saved my life!" says the voice on the other end of the phone.

"I'm always glad to help, Anat." Anat is from marketing. She's scary in a hot sort of way. Of course, fear is relative. My dad beat me, and murdered my mom. I almost died from an IED explosion during the occupation of Venezuela. But Anat is scary. I have no doubt that she would destroy me if I let her. Sometimes I wish I had. At least, life was never boring when I was with her.

"You always do. You're so patient. It's too bad… Never mind. I'll get back to work. Good night!"

I try extra hard to help her with her computer issues. Even though we tried and failed at dating in college. I even helped her get the job here. I'm still human. And a man. I shake my head at myself. The problem when we dated was that I always accepted her, no matter what she did. If I didn't accept that kind of stuff, I'd lose it, and I can't do that. I don't have that gray area most people have. But she wanted someone who would push her to be better. She thought she needed that. At least, what she saw as better. I'm not so sure there's anything wrong with her though. It isn't like "good" people actually get better outcomes in this world. And while she has some issues, she's hardly the worst.

"Later," I say. Of course there will be a next time. Anat has computer issues. Frequently. And they aren't the kind of issues that could be caused by user error either. Most of them you'd need admin rights for, or are hardware glitches that nobody else ever gets. I swapped her computer and it didn't help. It doesn't matter if she's at home, or in the office like she was today. It's enough to make me believe in gremlins. Her body even rejected the neural augmentation implants that almost everyone gets these days. It was part of what brought us together in college, when I was retraining for a civilian job. A girl I dated in the army said she had problems with electronics because she needed to learn to control her "mystic power," and the "psychic static" made her electronics malfunction. I thought she was nuts at the time. Now, I wonder if her body rejected its implants too. Anat has been practicing various forms of wicca and other neo-pagan spiritualism since she was a kid, and has the 8-pointed Chaos Magic symbol tattooed on her left shoulder, if that has anything to do with it.

It's 6:03. I sigh. I was supposed to be done an hour ago. I won't log the overtime though. I don't want to deal with it, and it makes me feel less bad chilling out at other times when there's no immediate work to do. I sit at my desk, in the dimly-lit building that houses the company's IT department. Gray walls are half-blocked by racks of computers and mostly obsolete hardware nobody wants to pay to dispose of, but which we can’t just throw in the garbage. The air smells faintly of old used coffee grounds, and the only color is a shelf of books. They are from various publishers and their common themes are some connection to technology whether or not it is tech we work with, and that the colors on the covers are close to the color of our corporation’s logo. As if someone had decided what our office needed more than anything was a tangible demonstration of our dedication to style over substance. Across from the bookshelf is an expensive glass and steel case holding plaques for the employees of the month. The last award was dated almost a year ago. I need to get out of here before I lose my mind. At least we'll get Friday off since Christmas falls on Saturday. And New Years eve too.

Not all who are lost wander. Instead, I just push forward, head down shouldering my burdens like humping my old ruck, "pig" light machinegun, and the linkless feed ammo backpack that went with it over every fucking mountain and goddam jungle Uncle Sam sent us to back in the day. I wish for something different. I got my degree in archaeology, with a specialization in Atlantean and Edenic runes. But the lack of implants was a handicap hard work wasn't enough to overcome, and my grades suffered. After I graduated, I couldn't even get an internship, but needed a job so I took what I could get. I started out in dispatch for Texas Components, impressed my boss with my knack for fixing things, and got into IT. I think they like that there's no way I can get something better with my education, so they've got me until they decide to fire me.

It isn't like I haven't tried to find another path. I even spent a couple years of weekends learning to do SCA blacksmithing. I had the idea of inlaying weapons and armor with runes in authentic patterns to those used by the ancients to bless their weapons, armor, and other items. Of course, that was just superstition, but the traditional patterns resembled enchantments that the peoples of the old world though they were putting on stuff. Just the kind of thing people would buy. Puzzlingly some of those were very utilitarian and don't make much sense as superstitious invocations, like a crucible in the collection of the Houston Museum of Natural Science that has a runic formation that appears to have been meant to extract oxygen from the container. You'll get the same metal with or without some fancy runes on your crucible, right? Unfortunately, I'm too good at doing what I'm told, and not good enough at forging my own path, so I'm still here.

I disconnect my laptop from the dock and pack it in my backpack, then head out. As I walk to the bus stop, I listen to a video that seems to dovetail with the theory Anat has talked about for years suggesting that magic is returning. It seems strange to me that despite all the evidence, there are fewer people latching onto this theory than you'd see with any number of conspiracy theories. Far more people even believe that the BATF is making companies sell weak weakened powder, or powder that degrades quickly over time to confound gun owners than there are who believe that something is fundamentally changing in the world. I shake my head. One day we'll wake up and everything will change, and most will have no idea why.

The people in the video are researchers from some college in Massachusetts I've never heard of. They say that not only is magic growing, that the range of fluctuations is getting larger. That as a result it's likely that some fluctuation will result in a sudden change in the way things work in the world. Not only magic, but impacting other aspects of daily life.

The bus stop is under the curving cloverleaf on-ramp of an overpass on the other side of the street. It's dark enough that the street lights are on, but the bus stop is well-used enough that they put in a well-lighted shelter with bright LEDs. I see that Anat is waiting there. I remember her mentioning that her car was in the shop, so I guess she's taking the bus home.

Anat hasn't changed much, except that her aura of confidence is stronger than it was when she was in college. And she's developed a habit of dressing to back that up with a sense of power. Texas Components Manufacturing isn't the kind of company where people flaunt tattoos openly. But Anat is the kind of person to whom the rules only sporadically apply. It is probably the real reason computers hate her. Computers tend to like me, aside from the thing with the implants, because I'm totally governed by rules. The rules thing is part of the reason Anat scares me. It is too obvious how much of an advantage her way of thinking has over my more rigid mindset in any conflict.

I watch headlights coming both ways, looking for simultaneous breaks in the two lanes of traffic in both directions instead of going all the way to the stop light and doubling back after I get a walk signal. I see my chance and run across. Some idiot honks just because, even though they were nowhere near hitting me. Then I jog the rest of the way to the bus stop. Ok, maybe I don't always follow the rules. I guess it is complicated.

I walk up to the bus stop and Anat says "hi," and we exchange ritual greetings remarking on the coincidence of meeting on the way home. Being under the overpass is nice when it rains, and the sometimes torrential rain coming in off the Gulf of Mexico makes that a very good thing. But on a day like this I'd rather see the sky overhead. I see that Anat is at the bus stop, and remember that she said her car was in the shop when I was working on her computer.

Suddenly the lights go out. Both the street lights and the headlights of the cars. And so do the lights in the large buildings of downtown Beaumont in the distance. Cars roll to a stop. A few moments later one of the cars nearby becomes the scene of a struggle inside. Someone is trying to break their way out of the window. I look at Anat and she is staring at the car in concern. I hear increasingly frenzied pounding on other car windows. All of the electronics must have stopped working, including the door locks and windows. I look at my phone. It is dead. Some windows break, and people start crawling out through the broken windows.

A few people seem ok. Confused but no more so than I or Anat. The rest though. They stumble. Twitch. Jerk. Some fall to the ground, writhe spastically, and get back up. They stumble around like they are getting their bearings. Everything in my being screams that there's something wrong with them. Like they landed straight in the bottom of the uncanny valley. In the distance, a woman screams. A moment later there is another scream from further away.

Then a stumbling woman in white blouse and black pants bumps into a man that is standing, looking at his car and phone, and the crazy scene around him, and in the directions where the screams came from. The woman's hands paw at him, nothing human in her movements. It snaps the man out of his loop of confusion as he looks down at her for a moment. She looks up at him, her face turning feral. The next moment she's tackling him. He stumbles and falls to the ground pushing at her, just trying to get her off him. She bits his hand and he screams as blood spatters her blouse and face.

I feel like I should step forward, but something holds me back. The violence of the attack seems to have a chain reaction through the others. There is a moment then, when everyone on the road stops. The ones that were stumbling before, crouch threateningly, their faces looking animalistic. Two others that were stumbling fall on the downed man, then others start rushing anyone nearby who hasn't been affected by whatever happened. It is a savage scene as screams fill the air.

One of the one ones that seemed to be in a normal mental state pulls a pistol from his belt and tries to shoot at someone who is turning toward them but nothing happens. They smash their attacker in the head with the muzzle of the gun. The attacker goes down, but then they get mobbed by others. It seems like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie. But what could have caused it? Implants? I'm okay, and Anat seems ok too. No, the control hardware. Has to be. I remember how concerned the doctors were about malfunctions. Shit.

Anat pulls a telescoping baton out of her bag. I'd never thought I'd need to be armed. Hopefully punching zombies in the face works. But I know all too well that skulls are harder than hands are, and I don't really want to get close enough to those bitey bastards to slam elbows into their heads. Fuck.

At least unlike the typical zombie apocalypse scenario, there's no need to worry about the zombie thing being infectious. Not that it needs to be when we start with something like 90 percent of the urban population likely being infected, and even half of the rural population of the U.S. being said to be augmented these days. And surely the same thing is happening worldwide. What an utter shit show.

The car where someone was pounding the window turns frantic and suddenly there is a struggle and muffled screams. Another woman in a Jeep SUV right in front of us seems to be calling to Anat. Anat breaks her window with the baton, and the woman crawls out. The Jeep isn't a shiny overdone commuter car, but is a bit worse for wear especially around the fenders and rocker panels along the bottom, looking like it might actually get driven off paved roads fairly often.

"Thanks," the woman says.

"We should get out of here." I say.

"Yeah, don't want to get caught when they turn on us, whatever's going on." Anat replies.

"Can you break the back window real quick? I want to grab my first aid kit."

"Seems useful." Anat answers and smashes the back window of the Jeep. The woman pulls out a huge tackle box with crude medic crosses made of red duct tape. Then she rummages a moment and pulls out a small pry bar and a ball-peen hammer. She holds them up to me as if offering me a choice, and I choose the hammer. We turn away from the chaos and start climbing the hill behind the bus stop.

"Thanks for the weapon. And that first aid kit will be hella useful if this is as bad as it looks." I say.

"I'm a veterinarian and a former Army medic. Ellie," she replies. She is a bit shorter than Anat and has sandy-blonde hair. She's pretty in a soft, modest sort of way.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Wow, nice skill set. I'm Anat, by the way." She holds her hand out to the other woman and they shake. "This is Jayce. We work together. He's ex-Army too."

"Hi," I shake her hand. "Infantry grunt." Ellie nods, looking comforted. Probably thinking that one of the first rules every grunt learns is to protect the medic.

Kim turns and heads toward the hill behind the bus stop. "So you are heals then, Ellie," she says. "Jayce can tank, I'll DPS, as soon as I find something to make a sword, or probably better a spear." I think at first she's joking, but I guess not. I suppose it is the beginnings of a sensible plan. I look back at the woman who seems a bit confused.

"It's gamer slang," I say. "From fantasy games. With magic and stuff. Heals is a healer. The tank blocks enemies and takes damage for the team, but I'd kinda need to find armor and a shield for that. DPS is damage per second, damage-dealer."

"I never got into games, myself," says Ellie. "But actually, I do Reiki too. So kinda like healing magic." She smiles weakly.

"I do qigong, but it isn't magic though. Mostly just helps me stay calm and in control of my emotions when shit gets hard."

"I do magic, but most folks don't notice a difference so who knows," Anat laughs. She snaps her fingers as her face gets intense "Fire!" she shouts in a commanding voice, and there is a flash of flame from her hand. Anat almost shrieks in surprise. "Holy shit! That's never happened before! Something has really changed."

"I wonder what my reiki does now." Ellie says.

"And my qigong."

"We'll all need to experiment when we get a chance."

As we climb high enough on the hill to see the onramp the bus stop was situated under, we see the scene below is being played out similarly. We pass a car on the hill that missed a turn when the steering failed, and drove off the edge of the road they were on. It is balanced on the front end, and the driver is struggling frantically as they hang in their seatbelt. They don't seem human, we work our way around the retaining wall they went over and keep climbing until we reach the parking lot of a mall. There is a Home Depot big-box hardware store on the other side of the lot, and some other stores open next to it. Most of the rest of the mall is shut down. Beyond the mall, a column of smoke rises into the darkening sky. Should I be glad to know that fire still works? Could the entire city burn without emergency crews to contain it? That kind of thing happened in the past but I don't know if it is really possible today.

As we approach the stores, we hear screams from inside several of the buildings. Ellie looks ill when she hears the screams.

"We can't save everyone," Anat whispers. Ellie nods, setting her face into what I imagine reflects her professional mindset. I suppose that's one of the first rules that medics and vets alike learn.

We move past the corner of a building and see, a police car is stopped next to a woman's body, the police officer's arm is being gnawed at by one of the zombies. The cop isn't moving. Anat sneaks up on the zombie and smashes it in the head with her baton. The zombie falls down, but is still moving, so Anat hits it half a dozen more times until it stops. Ellie looks at her with mingled horror and admiration. She's probably a decade older, but Anat really pulls off the alpha bitch thing well.

It looks like the cop went for his gun but it didn't work and he got overwhelmed. His head was cracked against the pavement and a stream of blood flows across the parking lot toward a storm drain.

I pick up the officer's gun and pull the slide back. A shell casing pops out, trailing a wisp of smoke. There's no light in the barrel, so the bullet doesn't seem to have made it out of the barrel which is odd. I let the slide snap forward and it seems to return to battery, so no obvious obstructions preventing a round from being chambered. Urban legends say that an obstruction will make a gun explode, but real-life testing shows that guns are very good at pushing things out of their barrels. Go figure. I point the gun at the dirt next to the building and pull the trigger. There is a click, and then a hissing noise from the cartridge, and smoke slowly seeps from the weapon's receiver and ejection port.

"Not working?" Anat asks.

"Nope. Something must have screwed up the way some aspects of physics or chemistry works. Like the powder is burning too slow."

"So, no electronics, cars, or guns? Shit," says Ellie.

"The end of the world as we know it." Anat observes.

"And I'd be willing to bet everyone with implants has run amok. You two have the same scars." Ellie shows us her wrists, with the incisions where her control hardware was removed.

"Yeah."

We ransack the officer's SUV and find a riot shield and set of riot armor. There are padded pieces reinforced with hard plastic covering shins, knees, front and sides of thighs, groin, chest, shoulders, neck, arms, and forearms, and with a military-style helmet that has a polycarbonate face-shield with an outer wire cage over it. The officer was a bit short so it is way too small for me, but fits Anat okay. Ellie gets the cop's bulletproof vest. I take the shield and baton. The cop has a survival knife with a blade modeled after the M9 bayonet. Fortunately the serrations on the back edge are more hacksaw-like than some so it hopefully won't get caught on ribs. Ellie takes it, fitting it to her belt beside a pouch for a pocket knife.

"There's a sporting goods store," says Anat.

"Good idea," Ellie replies. I lead the way in through the front door with the new riot shield at the ready. Almost immediately a zombie that was a sandy-haired young man before the apocalypse and wearing a brown polo shirt and black pants turns and snarls at us. I face him, and he tries to tackle me. I brace my feet, and put the shield between my body and his face as he tries to grab at me with his hands. I bring the hammer around the shield and slam it into his skull, hearing the bone crack and the weapon thud wetly into his flesh. It makes me want to vomit as he goes limp. At the same time there's a rush that I've never felt before. It makes me feel guilty. Like I could get used to that feeling, and enjoy it. But last thing I ever want to enjoy is the feeling of killing someone.

"Fuck. It's different with a rifle. Never did it like that before."

"I'll bet," Anat answers. "It's getting dark, and this place has sleeping bags. Let's hole up here for the night. Unless you two would rather try to find food?" I turn to Ellie.

"I'm hungry, but it's going to be risky going out now."

"I agree," I say. "But let's drag this guy outside. Giving me the creeps."

Anat nods and after we dispose of the unfortunate former proprietor, we find sleeping bags. It is hard to read descriptions, but we decide we're probably best off looking at the most expensive and then going from there. I find an extra large mummy bag that good to well below freezing with a waterproof shell, and Anat finds light and compact folding cots which will be good to keep us off the ground. Ellie finds fleece liners that we can use if it gets even colder, or sleep in if the weather gets too warm for sleeping bags. With those minimum preparations done, we block the front and back doors with shopping carts for security. I can't think of a time I've tried to get to sleep this early. Instead we sit around in the dark, experimenting with how our respective arts work in the new world.

The ever larger and more frequent flashes of fire from Anat are distracting but eventually I manage to tune it out. Breathing in and drawing in qi, it feel like it almost burns, kinda like inhaling the air on a frigid morning, but with that cold burn spreading through my whole body and concentrating in my belly. I've always had to imagine my dantian before, but now I feel it spinning in the flow of qi that pulses through me. And there's something circulating in my qi that is strange. It isn't the qi I'm drawing in with my breath. And it isn't my own qi. It takes a moment to realize that it's a fragment of the life-force of the person I killed. No, the zombie I killed. Fuck, is it better to dehumanize them, or get used to the idea of taking energy through killing people?

The moral dilemma pulls me out of my meditation for a moment. But really, they aren't people anymore. They don't try to talk when they meet you, they attack and try to eat you. Maybe it's an overly simplistic division of good and evil, but it works. And maybe in a way it's actually pretty profound. Of course, it implies a gray scale in between, where people who talk because they are looking for a chance to stab you in the back, literally or metaphorically are somewhere in the middle. Do I overthink much? I get myself back into the relaxed meditative headspace, and decide to try to dissolve the foreign energy into my qui, and it disappears, but my qi immediately feels more highly charged than it did before.

I practice the microcosmic orbit, first using the building cycle. As I inhale, I feel qi flow into my head through my nose, flowing up and over my skull and down my spine. Then it flows into my dantian, spinning it like a waterwheel in its flow, speeding and empowering it. I hold the spinning energy in my dantian for a few seconds, then exhale. I feel the energy flowing up the front of my body and out my mouth with my tongue pressed to the top of my mouth to complete the circuit between the Conception and Governor bodies. Then I hold my breath out, letting my dantian spin the energy it holds, before doing the cycle again.

After a while, I feel the tension generated by the building cycle growing and shift over to the cleansing cycle. This flows the qi in the opposite direction, coming in through my nose and spilling down the front of my body to my dantian, spinning it the opposite direction from the building cycle. It isn't so much unbuilding, but cleaning up the impurities brought in by building. Then I exhale, my dantian pushing the qi up my spine and through my head, carrying the impurities out through my mouth.

I don't know how long I meditate, alternating between the two cycles. When I'm done, I hear Anat and Ellie sleeping in the darkness. We'll need to see if the grocery store has candles too.

In the morning we change into more appropriate outdoor attire from the store's merchandise. There are waterproof GoreTex parkas for when it rains, hiking boots, and extra pairs of boots for good measure. GoreTex is nice, but there are other ways to make waterproof or at least water-resistant clothing. Making boots is hard. Then we help ourselves to the store's selection of hiking backpacks with frames and pack away our cots, bags, and liners, and the extra clothes and boots.

Outside, the sky is clear. The direction I noticed smoke last night seems to have grown overnight but then burned out, as there is a much larger area of more diffuse smoke. Half a dozen more plumes climb into the sky however. I guess with a situation like yesterday, there's bound to be some dropped cigarettes, knocked over candles, and the like. We find a grocery store pretty quickly, in a neighborhood of apartment buildings and townhouses near the mall. On the way there, I decide to ask Anat something.

"Um, I don't know how to ask this, so I'll just say it. Did you feel a kind of rush of energy when you killed the zombie?"

"Oh, that." She sounds guilty. I can understand her concern.

"It isn't you becoming a psychopath, I felt it too. That's another thing that's changed about the world."

"Oh, I never killed anyone before, so I assumed. I suppose you have, huh, in the Army?"

"I thought at first it was just doing it up close and personal, but it was more than that. When I meditated, I felt that energy circulating in me. Did you feel the energy from the one you killed when you were meditating?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, I was just working on drawing in power and making fire out of it."

"Huh, I'm not sure how stuff works for you. I felt it circulating and dissolved it into my qi which made my own energy stronger. Maybe it was there and you weren't aware since your path is more external."

"Sounds like we'll all need to compare notes and learn some of each others' techniques," Ellie says.

"Yeah," I say, as Anat nods in agreement.

When we get to the store, I'm confronted by two zombies as we enter, but I fend them off with the shield and Anat helps me dispatch them. I feel a bit of energy when I hit the first one, but Anat kills it with her spear. Then she wounds the second and I smash it in the head, feeling a bigger rush. It seems like whoever does the killing blow gets more energy.

"Did you feel anything?" I ask Ellie.

"Anything like what, the energy you two were talking about earlier? Not at all."

"We'll have to figure out a way to share," Anat says. "Otherwise, Ellie or anyone else playing a support role will fall behind."

I ponder that as we look for the canned food section, fighting zombies in ones and twos. We grab some plastic spoons on the way. Once there, we fan out to check nearby isles, then return and eagerly tear into cans of chili and soup. Canned chili in a pop top can and fruit cocktail was never such a satisfying meal. I guess just about anything is a feast when hungry enough.

We grab bottled water to hydrate, putting extra bottles in our backpacks, then load up a shopping cart with canned food. Ellie insists that we take a balanced selection of foods including some fruits and vegetables, and Anat says sure, but then Ellie has to push it. Ellie accepts and puts her first aid kit on the bottom rack of the cart. At least the food will get us by for a while.

A few other survivors straggle in by ones and two, but none of them seem to want to engage. All of us get personal hygiene stuff. I don't know about the others, but my mouth tastes like how one of the nearby swamps probably would. We find the restroom and are gratified that the water still works for now. Then it is time to head back to the mall and resume our quest to the hardware store.

Before we get to Home Depot, we come to a liquidator store. The front window is stacked with boxes of knife sets and the knives are on display, wired to a board. The set seems to have been made for men who feel their masculinity threatened by cooking and want to overcompensate. The brand is called "Man Knives," and the box has a pic of a muscular dude with short hair and a long full beard holding the set's chef knife like a sword. That's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. The carving knife is quite impressive though, being almost long enough to qualify as a short sword, with a heavily built blade and a rather acutely pointed symmetrical tip that extends into a gently curving belly. It would be ridiculous as a carving knife. But the box advertises 440C stainless, and it has a robust full tang, secured to wood handle scales by brass rivets.

"Use that for a spear-tip?" I ask Anat.

"I think we have a winner. Maybe make one for each of us?" Anat answers. Ellie nods, though she doesn't seem all that comfortable with the idea of stabbing people, or zombies that she's all too aware were once people.

"Having more is even better, if we have time to make them. If we have weapons, we'll have something to negotiate with other survivors," Ellie points out. Anat nods. I can't fault her reasoning either. We load up a shopping cart with boxes of knives, and a bunch of bandages and other stuff that seems useful, like leatherworking starter sets. Unfortunately, not even the flashlights work.

"Grab some of those wire coat hangers," says Anat. "I bet they'll be useful for attaching stuff." I load several into the cart. When we have grabbed everything that seems useful, we head over to Home Depot next door.