Emily returns from her shower after a while, wearing yet another tracksuit. This one is green with golden accents. She looks around for the others, but she doesn't ask about them.

I tell her anyway, feeling the sudden urge to mouth off. I don't think as much when I talk. But she's a lousy conversation partner, so I give up after a while.

We take a long stroll through the safe zone as I take it all in. Over a thousand people back downtown. Another thousand or so here. And they somehow all look up to me for guidance.

How the hell did it come to this?

I spend a few hours helping around. Setting up new shifts and battle formations that include the fighters we brought over, devising strategies to conserve what little ammo we have left, telling Mike and the mages where to put another wall or two.

We throw a few teams together and leave the safe zone to collect the wood Mike needs to reinforce the walls. It’s a good chance for me to test my increase in strength, and I’m satisfied by what I see. I can’t throw cars around like the Hulk just yet, but I can fell trees in a few swings as long as they’re not the mana enhanced kind.

We collect a few tons of logs in no time at all, and Mike can just take them all in as if they’re nothing. That storage skill of his is a damn near bottomless pit.

As we work on that, I bring up the idea of building some kind of defensible location for the non combatants. It worked wonders for us in the downtown safe zone, but there, we had the apartment buildings to use as a base. All we have here are residential homes.

“I can’t make entire buildings just yet,” Mike says after a bit of thinking, “but I could try something. There’s that cul de sac in the middle of the safe zone, I could encircle it with thicker walls. It wouldn’t be as good as those apartment buildings Jessica told me about, but it’ll have to do.”

“Okay, we’ll use it as a last fallback point in case of a breach. Get some of our mages to help you as well.”

I leave him to his own job as we return to the safe zone, going back to my own responsibilities. Mike has runners ranging through the countryside to look for more people, and he has a team of scouts keeping an eye on the wave boss. One of them returns to report, and I pull him aside to get the details.

The man confirms that the minivan sized black bear is indeed the last wave boss. It's also a higher level than the skunk, sitting at level 7. A seemingly small difference, but I learned first hand how devastating these guys are.

Luckily for us, it doesn't seem to be making any moves. It sat down in a clearing about half an hour away and it's sleeping.

“It's the weirdest thing,” the man says. “There are about two thousand monsters, but most of them are out cold. Only about fifty of them are awake, but they keep leaving and returning with more monsters. Then those go to sleep around the boss as well.”

I think about it for a bit. None of the scouts have the analyze skill, so they can't get more details.

“Are the monsters nocturnal?”

“How should I know?”

“Were they nocturnal animals before they turned?”

The man falls silent for a moment, rubbing his chin. “Some of them were, but not all.”

“Okay. Keep an eye on them for now. Go get a pet from Jessica so you can get around faster. If they start moving towards us, you bolt right back and tell us.”

“Okay, boss.”

Jessica's and William's shenanigans are already rubbing off on everyone else, and I silently curse the two of them for starting it.

“And before you leave,” I stop the man, “go talk to William as well. See if we have anyone with the analyze skill to accompany you, they might be able to get more details. I want to know the results of that asap.”

“Got it, boss.”

The man takes his leave, and I keep walking around. A few minutes later, someone else approaches me. The tag over her head says Amalia, but I don't read further.

“Are you Jack? The guy in charge?” She asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, no longer bothering. “Report.”

“Oh, it’s…nothing like that, don’t worry. Mike sent me. He said you need a place to rest for a few hours, and I…well…I have some room in my house.”

She twirls a lock of golden blonde hair around a finger as she talks, the implications clear as day. I’m a bit taken aback by her directness. Then Emily steps out from behind me and shoots the woman a death glare. I put out a hand to stop her and whisper, “easy, tiger.” I return my attention to Amalia and thank her for the offer.

While my increased constitution means I don’t need to sleep as much, I did skip most of last night. It’s a good idea to get a power nap in right now, while I still can.

Amalia directs us to her house, her enthusiasm deflated.

“You can use the guest room,” she says and tosses me a key. “Go upstairs, it's the second door on the right.”

“Thank you. Can you do me a solid and wake me up about…I don’t know, four hours from now?”

“I could’ve done you another solid,” she mumbles.

“What was that?”

“I said sure!”

I give her a thumbs up and we're off, but I can’t take my mind off the incident. It reminds me of last night’s incident, and it makes me feel…dirty somehow. How could she think about something like that at a time like this? We’re waiting for a horde of literal monsters to come knocking at our doors.

“Some people,” Emily grumbles, the irony lost on her.

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I just smile and don’t point it out. We find the house, which is full of people sleeping all over the place, and we make our way upstairs. I use the key to unlock the guest room and we settle in.

“You can take the bed,” I say as I pull out my sleeping bag and lay it on the floor.

Emily looks between it and me a few times, then she shrugs and plops down. She snores before I’m even done setting up, but I don’t expect I’ll be drifting off as easily. Until I actually hit the sack, and my exhausted body shuts down like someone flips a switch in my brain.

----------------------------------------

I’m not sure how long I slept when I wake up, but the world outside is covered in red. I jump out of the sleeping bag and get to my feet, ignoring the hand that shook me awake in the first place. My heart pounds as I take out the sledgehammer.

Is that blood? Did the monsters attack while I was out cold? Did I sleep through all of it?

I get halfway to the window before I realize it’s just the color of the setting sun.

“Jack?” Pops asks, sounding worried.

I take a deep breath and put the sledgehammer away. The commotion wakes Emily up as well, and she scrambles to her feet, bow drawn.

“Sorry, I’m fine. Everything’s okay, false alarm.”

Emily and Pops share an uneasy look, but I wave them off. There’s a buzzing between my thoughts that makes it hard for me to focus, and I realize the stress is starting to get to me.

“Anything to report?” I ask.

William leans into the room to take a peek as Pops speaks.

“A few things,” Pops says, “but we have to talk about something first.”

“So talk,” I say.

“Outside.”

We gather our stuff — what little we have — and we walk out of the house together. Amalia waits there with a tray upon which sit four cups of steaming coffee and a sugar pot. I take one of the cups and nod in thanks as I sneak a sip.

It’s bitter as all hell, but I don’t complain. That’s just what I need to shake me awake.

“Slept well?” She asks, leaning in to run a finger down my chest.

I dodge and say, “like a baby.”

She rolls her eyes and gives up on whatever else she had in store for me. Pops and William take their cups, not adding any sugar either. Emily eyes hers but ultimately turns it down with a head shake.

Amalia downs the cup and stomps off, leaving the tray there.

“Talk,” I say to Pops.

He takes a sip from his own cup and frowns. Whether that’s from the bitterness or from what he’s about to say, I can’t figure out.

“In the future, you’ll have to let us know when you clock out like that, okay?” He says.

“What?”

“What Tom is trying to say,” William intervenes, “is that you need to keep us informed. Where you are, how long you’re planning on being out, what we should do while you’re away.”

“What?” I repeat.

“Whether you like it or not, you’re the leader now—” William starts, but I interrupt him.

“I’m not. I didn’t say yes as far as I can remember. This is just a temporary thing until the siege is over.”

William shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter if it’s temporary or permanent. You have about two hundred fighters and four times as many civilians counting on your orders right now, Jack. If you go dark like that without leaving behind clear instructions, everything can fall apart.”

I take a long, deep breath. “Okay. From now on, if you can’t find me, you’re the second in command. Pops is third, and Mike is fourth. That good?”

“Yeah,” William says.

“Onto the next thing, then. Pops, anything to report?”

“I went out with the scouts,” he says. “I have that analyze skill so I did like you said and took a closer look at the monsters. They’re in the old trailer park, about twenty five hundred of them by now. The majority of them are sleeping, but when I got closer to them to examine one, the text thingy over its head said it’s hibernating. There’s a timer ticking down, we have until about tomorrow evening until it runs out.”

“Shit,” I say, thinking a mile a minute.

That’s more than likely a skill from the wave boss, probably a buff of some sort. The trailer park should’ve been in use, but I can’t see anyone being left alive in there. Everyone either evacuated or was killed. Still, a lot of those trailers should have propane tanks for cooking since they operate off the grid.

“Did they show any signs of waking up when you approached them?”

“None,” Pops says. “They’re out cold. We didn’t attack any of them, that would’ve probably done the trick, but we snuck around looking for trapped survivors. We didn’t find any.”

A ton of monsters bunched up together, including the final wave boss. All of them deep in slumber, with propane tanks all around them. And we have plenty pound bombs from Kurt. How didn’t Pops think about that?

I ask him about it, and he explodes.

“I did think about it! I rushed back here to tell you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere! I had to go around asking for you for over an hour!”

“If you thought about it, why didn’t you just do it?!” I shoot back.

Pops pinches his eyebrows and turns around, mumbling something I don’t catch. William has to step in again.

“That’s not how this works, Jack. We can’t go off acting on every idea that pops into our heads.”

I take my hands to my face, rubbing them through my hair in desperation.

“Why not?! You two are smart, it’s a good idea! You could’ve pulled it off without me by now instead of wasting time looking for me! This is fucking stupid, you don’t even need me!”

“That’s not how this works,” William repeats. “It’s not about who is smarter or who comes up with an idea first. It’s about having a clear chain of command that people can rely on. If you’re in charge, and you are in charge, you call the shots. This is your show. Not mine, not Tom’s, not anyone else’s.”

“But it was a good idea,” I repeat, the wind in my sails gone.

“Maybe, but it wasn’t your idea. What if you were planning something else? What if someone was out with other orders? We’re just two cogs in the machine, but the leader is the engine. You’re the engine. If Tom went ahead with it, what if he fucked up your plan?”

I’m left speechless. Truly, utterly, completely speechless. My mind swims with why’s, how’s, and what the fuck’s. And to make things worse, William and Pops seem extremely serious and passionate about it. They really kicked away that golden chance to end the siege, all because of me. Because somehow, magically, I’m the leader now and my word is supposed to be law.

I watch them, dumbfounded for a long moment before it all clicks. Both of them are army veterans. Both of them have been part of the police force for years now. This structure, this chain of command, is all they know. They don’t embrace it just to spite me or because they’re not smart enough, but precisely because they’re smart. Because it’s been drilled into them, and because they’ve seen it work countless times.

I just happen to be the unfortunate fool that was picked as the engine for their cogs.

“I’m sorry,” I find myself saying. “I’ll do better from now on, for as long as it ends up lasting. But you two will have to keep helping me.”

“We will,” William says, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“No one said you have to do it alone,” Pops adds. “Even the best leaders have advisors. But that’s it, we only help. We don’t act out of line. Yours is the final word, and the final word is law.”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Let’s go blow up some monsters.”