"That's a lot of potatoes. But, better to have food and I presume that we can hunt for wild game on the way," Stella said. "It would be poetic if the gods brought us here to just watch us starve."

She paused, using her fingers to count.

"How many potatoes, exactly?" Stella said from the front of the cart.

"Let's put it this way. You will be sick of potatoes like you have been stranded on Mars for over 400 days and it's all you got," Sophie said.

Their caravan, the newest addition to the fleet, was in the middle one in the convoy. Ahead of them, Anthony and Finley were driving them ever southward. The belt way around the city of Plainsmount was a great place for them to get a good deal of cards. It wasn't close to the center of town and the packed gnomish and dwarven tenements. As a result, many of the undead had for one reason or another, not made it that far out.

It had taken ten minutes for them to gain a good amount of followers. Bob was behind them, using the uncovered wagon to direct Zan and Sonya's shots.

The ground shook briefly and their horse whinnied. The caravan continued onward.

"Keep going old boy, we are not out of the metaphorical woods yet," Sophie said, attempting to soothe it. Her animal handling was nothing to write home about, but she could feel it getting steadily better.

Cold sweat ran down her brow as Sophie gripped the reins. She forced her unease down. The now familiar scent of dead dwarves filled her nose as they finally turned away from the circular highway. Driving through a town packed with undead might have been someones idea of a good time, but it sure as hell wasn't hers. The only one that was in their element was Bob's summon.

"You think it would be poetic, if the gods shit on us? No, it would be fucked," Sophie said. "But yeah, I'm right there with you. If we could get rid of this damn smell, I would be happy."

"The smell is a problem. I thought that everyone liked the aftermath of the cleanse card."

"Stella. If I was trying to date a high school boy I would be overjoyed with that card. But I am a new woman out here in this world. I'm not back working at the hospital, where all of my male patients used to make eyes at me."

"Male psych patients? They used to hit on you?"

"When I was out socially, yeah. There's a strong hard ethical line between anyone working in there and the patients."

"When you were out? I didn't know that you were gay."

"When I started dressing like a woman?" Sophie said.

"Oooh. Yeah, It's easier to forget how you used to be. I never knew you before," Stella said, putting and arm around her shoulders

"I had this joke with the theater crew. When we were meeting new people, they would introduce me like, 'I've known her since-' and I would say to myself," Sophie said, "Please don't say since she was a man. And then they would say something like '-since she was into Creed.' And it was so much worse. It was always so much worse."

"That's just-you were into Creed?" Stella said. "Is it too late for me to switch to a different bestie?"

"Nah, you're in it now. Girl power!" she said, pumping her fist weakly.

They continued on for some time as the horses all around them moved with a purpose. Sophie noted that there were at least six people riding horses now. With their one horse pulling their caravan, as well as the other four pulling the lead caravan and the wagon, only about nine ran freely on the side. At least Sophie had counted nine several times.

The men and women were all now armed with spears and several had crossbows. Sophie had knives galore in all sizes of pockets.

"So how does it feel now then?" Stella said.

"It's just-you want something your entire life and then you get it in a way that you never expect. I never thought that I would have had to have the conversation about products with you, but I did and it was helpful. Everything just feels right. I can't really-" Sophie said, "There's so much else going on that it's hard to parse the girl parts from the rest of this."

"I hear that. With salvage operations and raiding the card store, this has been a uniquely one off experience that I wouldn't care to repeat. I did like seeing all those cards though. I especially liked working with you and Bob. That was something special."

"Aww, Stella, thanks!"

They rode on for a bit without saying anything.

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"Are you going to say that you liked working with me too? Or do I have to do open auditions for my next bestie?" Stella said.

"Did I tell you what I named my Spear?"

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

Anthony heard a hearty laugh from the caravan behind them.

"At least someone can find the humor in this dark place," he grumbled, pulling out his sketchbook. The tiny book was clearly made for dwarven specifications, but he didn't mind it. He brought it out and flipped to the page with his version of the map.

He looked for the point that he was trying to make and then put a finger over it, drawing a line from where he thought they were to where they were going to.

"So the next way station is about here?" Anthony said. He showed the map briefly to Finley, trying not to draw the elf's attention away from the road.

"The roads are correct. Since this one leads between the dwarven and human lands, both groups decided to spend their time fighting a war by proxy through it. What I mean to say is that these are some of the best made roads. You can always tell when you're entering dwarven lands, no matter which border it is you're crossing. They take great pride in a distinct and separate road."

Anthony didn't want to correct his tour guide. Every time that Finley talked about dwarves in the present tense, he felt a little twinge of regret. Neither of them had started this war.

Anthony only had the foggiest clue as to how it had happened so fast. His guesses were at the 'bad infomercial level' level of accuracy at best. Sure he knew that they were selling the slap chop, but did it actually solve all of his kitchen problems and his colon cancer? Anthony was skeptical. Whatever had caused the collapse had a far reach. Whoever had done it had done a thorough job.

"I'm just really glad that all of the undead seem to have stayed local to the cities. It would be much more difficult if they spread out. It would be more difficult still if they massed like a field army somewhere. We would not be able to take that down in any way. The best that we can do is take guerilla action."

Anthony put his papers away. Half the book was his campaign notes, with far too many question marks for his tastes. The death of actionable information felt like a feature, not a bug.

"Gorilla action? Is that a human thing?"

Anthony explained the difference from what he knew. There was no way that they could take all the zombies in a full frontal assaults. If they were fighting them, they would have to use, hit and run tactics. Potentially, turn the populace to their cause. Without an actual populace, their situation would became increasingly untenable. Either everyone was turned, or they were eaten. There had been no in between, thus far.

Anthony had expected to find a few roving adventuring bands, but aside from the people summoned around Dunnamore, none had turned up. He was beginning to wonder if there was anything to rebuild, or if this entire continent would be turned into a large walking mausoleum.

"That's why we need to figure out if this has affected people outside of this continent. If we can find that out then we can find a safe haven."

"That would mean giving up Noveria? This is my home."

"Finley, if we want to win, we have to survive. Whether that is through killing all the undead or through raising an army across the sea, we have to survive."

The sun threatened to drop off.

"We are getting very close. Perhaps another ten minutes?" Finley said. "We should check with Bob if that death knight has been on the move again."

Neither of them wanted to hear the news, though it would be necessary. Bob had about the only good intelligence that they could acquire. Mork made him uniquely suited to his current task.

"Hey Finley, do you think that this way station has a stream next to it? The last one was pretty great because of that." The near pleading tone in his voice struck a chord with Anthony. He hadn't had to beg for anything in quite some time. Though they had been winning as a group, he really wanted the win of some time in real cool water.

"I'm reasonably certain that it does, but I haven't been that way in years. I was spending a lot of time at elvish lands, up until recently. This way station is on the far side of the Northern Kingdom. I would not have had a reason to go there except for the current situation," Finley said, raising one arm to the sky. "The Goat Lord is not happy. None of the gods are, I'm certain."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that actually. The god that summoned me here-she also has something to do with my magic?" Anthony briefly showed Finley his class card.

"Yil is the one that your powers are linked to. The way that I've heard it before is that clerics have a flavor to the magic depending on their deity. Your associated magic is about building things up. It's more favored for healing because of that."

"That is good."

They drove on without talking for a while. One of the few things that they both didn't mind was some time for contemplation. Anthony remembered those long rides in the city getting to his appointments. They were always traffic problems that other people hated. Anthony liked the freedom of the open road. He would work out the flow rates for his saline solutions several times to just make sure that he had it. He did the same thing right now, thinking about the steps he would do to set up a saline lock for a delivery.

"The next major town-" Anthony began before the sound of horse grew louder next to them. Without cell phones, they had to rely on in person communication and signal flags. As they were the lead element of the convoy, messages would have to come up from the back if something had changed.

"Message from the back," Andrew said. From the back of one of the bay mares, the dwarf looked like he hadn't been sized right for the job. He assumed their speed, after he overshot them quite a bit.

"Bob says that the death knight has moved again. And it's much closer now. He expects that it took a gate to somewhere near Plainsmount."

Anthony waited to see if there was more. Bob's card powers were something else. Mork had really favored the ranger.

"This doesn't change anything for now. If they start moving towards us, then we can change course. He didn't get a new quest, did he?"

"No. I'm certain he would have said something."

"Then tell him to make a plan to fight an army of undead, I guess. Not much else to do while we are on the road. If we need to do another card inventory, then we'll do it, but I don't think we found any war winning card powers, right?"

Finley shook his head.

"Also," Andrew said, holding a cloth sack out, "Here is the latest haul. Ca'at is napping and we have dispatched all of our less desirable followers."

"Thanks," Anthony said, catching the smelly cloth sack. "Next time we need to cleanse it first."

"If you have nothing else, I'll head back to Bob."

"Thanks, Andrew. Stay alert out there."