There were so many things that bothered Anthony about his new world.

This included the amount of sea monsters, dragons and zombies. But most of all, the number one thing that bothered Anthony was that every other person that had come to the new world with him had chosen a combat type class card. Oh sure, there was some healing with some of the classes. But none of them had chosen to be a pure healer like he had.

He didn't know what that meant for a long-term survival, but it was pretty good for his job prospects.

The group could not afford to lose him.

So he mostly stayed back during missions. Because of this twisting his fate as well as his years of playing tactical JRPGs, but mostly due to his calm and assuring demeanor, the Caravan had once again voted to keep him as the commander. Truthfully, there was only one other person that this could have gone to initially, but when that person ran the first time, this time they reelected him unopposed.

It was a weird thing, being elected commander of a near militia. This had never been part of his idea of his time as a grown up, adult man in his early forties. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a nurse and help people. He wanted to work in the emergency room.

Then in nursing school, he realized that he loved working in the slightly lower stress labor and delivery department. He then became a midwife and then eventually started his own business. When his two sons were of age, they joined him in his business and he was just reaping the rewards of those decisions before he was called up and summoned to this world.

Of course he chose the cleric class when it was offered. What else would you choose when you spent your life trying to heal people and they offered you a healing card class?

The aperture of a portal opened up next to him as the away team shuffled through. A short canadian woman with brown mousy, hair and tattoos all up and down her legs was walking through. She was wearing the familiar scrubs that he had worn on so many rotations through various people's houses delivering babies. He didn't mind giving her his favorite scrubs.

She looked great in them.

"Welcome back, Sonya," he said, beaming. "What did you bring me?"

She smiled, seeing him.

"You're going to love this," she said.

The area around the gate was cleared so that no one would step in and accidentally get sliced up. It was only about a circle of five feet in diameter. Behind Sonya, three others shuffled through.

Each person had a large pack on their back, full of what Anthony hoped was good food. If not, it was going to have to be great cards because their variety was beginning to dip.

The second person out of the aperture, Stella was a rogue, head cook and the woman responsible for keeping their freezer running. She didn't do anything special except for urging the temperature to go down every so often. It was an aspect of her ice magic.

"Bob got something we are calling catfish jerky," Stella said. " I'm going to bet that Finley knows what it is and we're going to see if it's actually food or if this is just some cruel joke that the dwarves play on each other."

He stifled a laugh. Of course she would call something catfish jerky. Stella was funny and also in a relationship with Bob, the head scout and head chef of the caravan. Bob was about the same size and build as Anthony but bald and with a bit of a beard coming in. It had been threatening to fill in for months.

Bob, the only person in the Caravan with a ranger class, had been a D-list celebrity chef back on Earth. He was good enough to appear on several shows highlighting his cake designs. Unfortunately, he couldn't bake his way out of this mess.

"I call the catfish jerky because it looks like catfish that was smoked in a smokehouse."

Stella waved a bag of something in front of his face. It wasn't close enough for him to smell but all the same he wished that he was far further away. Stella had picked the rogue class because she wanted to steal things and be generally more charismatic than she had been on Earth.

Behind her, Bob high-fived the last of the four.

Sophie, a tall pale woman, was absolutely loaded down to bear. When she stepped through the portal, all of the goats noticed. Sophie, who had her own sordid history working through generational trauma, was a warlock as well as a rogue.

It just so happened that her warlock patron was the same Goat Lord that everyone believed was the cause of all of the goats. It had once given her a card, that had the effect of transforming about thirty zombies into goats. She had not since been able to use the power again, much to the chagrin of every person that had been summoned to this world.

Sophie had picked the rogue class initially because she wanted to be a trickster. When all of the potential people you could run tricks against were zombies though it wasn't much you could do. It just so happened that she had the exact same idea as Stella.

"Oh hi Anthony!" Sophie said. "They didn't accept my fairy jerky as a viable name. So you're going to have to deal with catfish jerky."

"I'm okay with that. I really would have put my vote in for fairy jerky guys all things considered."

"Naming rights go to the ones that find it. That's the law. You're not above the law just because you're the Caravan Commander," Stella said. "I have spoken."

Once all four of them had been through, Sonya stepped outside of the ring of rocks that she had left and slowly closed the gate. The view back to another place disappeared as the three rogues and Sonya all hooted.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Their little stints through Sonya's gates kept their Caravan going.

It kept Anthony worrying for them, although knowing that they were some of the most capable people in the Caravan did a lot to help.

"Can I take anything off of your hands?" he said, gesturing to the girls.

"Oh thanks Anthony, that would be lovely," Bob said, slinging his oversized rucksack into Anthony's hands.

The girls around him just kind of snickered a bit. When possible, he'd always offered to help. However, as of recently, they had been pranking him. He half expected Bob to have grabbed nothing but rocks on his trip.

It would have been about right if Stella had put him up to it as well. That Stella was always thinking of inoffensive ways to lighten the load of everyone here through laughter and levity.

"Geez Bob, what's in this thing? Rocks?"

"Something like that," Bob said, giggling. "The girls told me that you needed someone to do your ironing."

"Bob, is this whole pack full of just iron ore?" Anthony said, almost struggling underneath the weight.

"A special order for my special guy," Bob said fricking off.

"That man has so much audacity," Stella said. "I just love it so much. I'll save you some fairy jerky."

Stella and Bob laughed as they continued onwards. Anthony was left holding the increasingly heavy bag before he set it down.

"The only was we were able to move it was by packing it while it was on his back," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Standing up, she pulled him in for a kiss. He kissed her back, feeling a little thrill at her touch.

"How is Plainsmount?" He said, once she released him. She still held him close.

"It's about what it was before. I feel that there are less zombies but that's just me saying that because we've seen more here and in the places we've been since. It was so much less dense. And they've had some time to move around."

"Bob and Stella were good? I know they were going through something before-I just wanted to check."

"I think they're all good now. She was really mad about the whole stealing a boat thing without involving her but my boat's fine. He's fine and he promised he wouldn't do shit like that anymore."

Bob did try to steal steal a ship, attempting to brute force piracy, though he could have waited.

"I think we will be pretty close to haven't gotten anything worth anything within the week if this pace keeps up. And then I'm going to request a few days off."

"You're going to have to talk to the union shop steward if you want to do that," he said. "I got you on overtime all week."

They both laughed a little bit.

"Do you think that being the union organizer has gone to Sophie's head yet?" Sonya said. "Or do you think that's just her regular normal everyday?"

The pair of them looked over to see Sophie drawing something on a wall. It wasn't yet time for dinner. So all of the people that have just gotten back off of their salvage duties had some time to kill. Anthony was not thinking about a firm proponent of a good work life balance.

There were no real oppressing deadlines for them. There was a lot of undead that could potentially go after them, but he tried to put those things out of his mind. Dealing with the undead was just a part of his everyday life that he had somehow gotten used to. Just like the people on the subway that decided that they wanted to play loud music, he would make his living by the quiet sea their problem.

If was the end of the day by the time they had their haul sorted out. Rather than just raid their previous haunts for cards, they went with a shopping list. High on the list were metals for the caravan's artificer.

He knew what to ask for and they now had enough mass to make something out of. Anthony had no clue what he was working on at the moment, but it had begun to resemble a harness for an extra large dog. A ship sized dog too, making him think that they were going to catch an elephant or a sea monster.

To make matters worse, they did have a sea monster problem and he was sure that the beast wouldn't take kindly to being snatched up. That is if the thing worked the way that he imagined it would. He tried to think of it from any other angle. It was just something that Andrew the artificer was going to have to explain when he was ready. Because Anthony sure as heck didn't know.

"Hey before dinner do you want to go for a little walk?" He said, holding on to her hand.

She blushed.

"That sounds great! Did you have anything in mind?"

"We figured out a way to get some and makeshift jacuzzi and I figured that you would want to go and sit in it for a bit. I even have a way to heat it up."

"Card Powers?"

"Card Powers."

"Well shit, that's all you had to say," Sonya said. "I didn't know that they finished it. Lead on."

Before leaving, she refilled her water skin with one of their freshwater barrels. Then the two of them held hands walking along the promontory overlook.

The promontory itself rose at least two or three hundred yards above the quiet sea, meaning they could see for miles in every direction. He was always grateful for the serene view. In the middle of that day though, he was all the more grateful for the theme that had dug out and then reinforced a heated tub that could fit four more people.

Their next project was going to be getting a pool right by it and it was super excited for that as well. He didn't know what if they were going to do about keeping it clean, but they did have an excellent cleansing card.

To save time, and to allow people the ability to look out over the quiet sea and the city below, they put the hot tub at one of the higher points.

As they approached, Anthony was happy to see that no one was in it. It was the end of the working day and the team that had been all fired up to work on the airship project was now finally coming back in. Bob had worked half a day with his team on the airship and then went to Plainsmont with an updated shopping list. He was getting better and better at filling in the blanks. Anthony felt like he was trying to manage the Caravan, but a lot of times it was just managing the personalities that came along with it.

With so many people who had been chosen by the gods there, every one of them thought that their way was the best. Anthony had a certainty that his way was definitely not the best one and it was open suggestions. And that was probably the reason that he had gotten the majority of the votes.

When they finally got there, they stripped down and Anthony breathed a sigh of relief. It was really good to see her back but it was also a relief to get into the hot water. It started off lukewarm but using some of his cleric powers he heated it up. Being a red-blooded American man, he kept his eyes on his girlfriend as she approached the jacuzzi. He couldn't help but smile.

"I feel like I need to charge you for admission. That little look would have cost you back on Earth. But enough about me, tell me about what you guys were doing today?" She said, settling down next to him.

"I think we've been making some progress," He said. "Valerie seems very enthusiastic about this airship project and Andrew seems to think that we will be up in the air very very soon. I wanted to mention, Finley is teaching the goats to be air mages? Because that's what he's doing."

She moved even closer.

"You know what? This is almost as good as the cleanse card. To be fair I have to not get my hair too wet," she said.

"There is no such thing as a bad hair day in the middle of a zombie apocalypse."

"I feel like you know exactly what I mean. And you know my problem because we both have long hair," Sonya said. "I don't feel bad about taking your brush by the way."

This happened to an easy side-by-side, he had one arm interlocked with hers.

"Do you remember when I said that just surviving wouldn't be enough?" Anthony said

"I remember it."

She sunk into him and he sighed. It was a very good day to for them both indeed. Now they just need to get some of the edge off before dinner.