“Go on,” Bob said, hovering by the door to my shop, ready to dart back inside. “Roll him about.”

“You gonna help me?”

“No.”

I sighed. I had a flashlight with shock prongs on the end, but I was more worried about catching a virus or disease than getting attacked.

I cautiously prodded the man with my foot.

He was flat on his face, but I thought I almost recognized his side profile, though I couldn’t quite place it.

When he didn’t move, I looked at Bob, who shrugged.

“You know,” I said, “you should be the one doing this.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re old. If you catch something from him and die, it won’t be so unfair. I’m only twenty-two.”

“You’re not going to catch anything. Just, don’t get his, you know, fluids, on you.”

“Brilliant.”

I rolled him over. With my foot.

He flopped lifelessly to his back.

His eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but he didn’t look dead. So the message wasn’t lying about that, it seemed.

“Oh,” Bob said, squinting, “it’s Peter’s kid. What’s his name?”

“Luke.” I crouched down next to him, but still couldn’t see if he was breathing. “Isn’t he like your nephew or something?”

“Right,” Bob said, snapping his fingers. “Second cousin, I think. Or third.” He chuckled. “Crickey, he’s right parro, ain’t he?”

“Yeah that’s it, Bob, he’s had too much to drink. Nothing to do with the sudden downpour of magic playing cards.”

“My apologies highness. Didn’t realize you was on your period.” He snorted at his own quip, then grew serious. “You sure he ain’t dead?”

“It says corrupted, not dead. Besides, you can feel he’s alive with that message.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you use your thing to examine him?”

“My what now?”

“Earlier, you knew he was corrupted.”

Bob stared blankly at me.

I gestured at Luke. “Just focus on him, some information will appear.”

“Gah!” Bob stumbled back. “Bloody hell.” He rubbed leathery hands over his face. “I’ve lost the plot.”

“You didn’t notice it before?”

“Thought I was just seeing things. That’s really there?”

I shrugged. “I can see it too.”

“Aye, and you breathed in the smoke. Difference is, you might get better. Me brain’s already rotted.”

“You said I didn’t have to worry about that. And I thought it wasn’t smoke?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. You of all people should know that. Or are you just a sheep in wolf’s clothing?”

I shook my head. “We should get him inside. Grab his legs.”

“That a good idea? Says he’s corrupted.”

“Now you have caution when you have to touch him.”

“You should have too.”

“You’re the one who just said not to worry."

“And also not to believe everything you hear.”

“Oh, you remember—"

Luke jerked, then sat up, slamming his head into mine and knocking me over.

“Luke!” Bob shouted. “You ’right mate?”

I groaned and rubbed my head. “That hurt.” I looked at Luke, who was staring at Bob.

“You look a bit dodgy mate,” Bob said to Luke. “How you feelin?”

Luke raised a hand toward Bob, who reached out to take it to help him up.

Instead of taking Bob’s hand, a dark pulse of energy shot out from Luke’s palm and sent Bob flying through the open door and crashing back into the shop.

Then Luke looked at me, his hand moving in my direction.

Without thinking I thrust the flashlight forward and activated it, sending electricity snapping loudly out of the two metal prongs over its head. They connected with his flesh and he convulsed, then was slammed back to the ground, his head smacking audibly into the pavement.

I stared at him, then looked at the end of my flashlight.

That’d been so strong I’d even felt the shock in my body. I could still feel it now.

It was illegal in Australia, but it wasn’t supposed to be that powerful.

Of course, I’d later learn it had nothing at all to do with the flashlight, and everything to do with me.

I looked at Luke again, and I didn’t need any message to know he was dead.

But I got one anyway.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Corpse of [Luke (Corrupted Human)]

“Balls.”

Normally, corpses don’t sparkle. Or, they didn’t. And now, not all do, of course, but ones with a card, arcana, or the like on them do. Usually it’s a helpful marker. But that day, that first time, that happy sparkle was disturbing in a way I can’t describe.

As I stared at the body, stunned and frozen, another message appeared.

Corpse of [Luke (Corrupted Human)] has 1 lootable item. Give your assent to remove it.

I don’t remember giving my permission, but a moment later Luke’s body burst into ash, and a card—my first—floated out of him and toward me. At the time I of course couldn’t know how rare it was to loot a complete card, otherwise I definitely would have been suspicious.

You have activated complimentary ability, [Card Storage].

A grid appeared in front of me, and the card went into it.

It blocked my view of the blackened pile of ash that had once been Luke’s body, and this was enough to get me moving.

I am not ashamed to say I ran.

I burst into the shop, slammed and locked the door behind me, and then just stared out the glass at the ash.

“What the balls…”

Eventually I got my wits enough to check on Bob, who had been flung inside the shop by the blast. He looked a little scraped up, but nothing seemed broken.

“You okay?” I asked, kneeling down beside him.

“I’ll live. What got into that kid?”

“I… don’t know.”

“He get you too?”

“No, I…” I held up the hand holding the flashlight only to realize I wasn’t holding it anymore. “I shocked him and got away.”

Bob grunted. “Good. Little bugger. He say anything?”

I quickly got up. “I need to check the back door, make sure it’s locked.”

I headed toward the back without another word, feeling Bob’s confused gaze following me the whole way.

I hadn’t actually needed to check anything, but it turned out to be a good thing I did, because not only was the back door unlocked, it was propped open.

Outside, I saw another corrupted human in the distance going toward Finnegan the spy’s hotel.

I quietly shut and locked the door.

I stood there, staring at it for a while until I finally forced myself to focus on what needed to be done.

When I got back to the front of the shop, Bob was up and looking out the window, a bottle in his hand.

“The kid’s gone,” Bob said. “Wonder where he went.”

“Is that beer? You’re not supposed to drink the merchandise,” I said with forced levity.

He waved this off. “World’s changed mate, don’t think you’ll be running this shop anymore. Least you are out from under her now.”

“Funny you should mention that. The system gave me the profession of merchant. I have a license to sell.”

“Ah, that’s nice,” he said, not paying attention, sipping his beer. He smacked his lips. “Struth that’s good.”

“You don’t seem very concerned.”

He shrugged. “Roll with it, I do. As the kids say.”

“No one says that.”

“I do. That’s good enough for me.”

“Did it ask you if you wanted to be Fodder?”

“Huh? Who?”

“The system thing.”

“What’s that?” He took another swig of his beer. “Struth, that’s—”

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “It’s good. You roll with things.”

“You a mind reader?” He patted his flannel beanie to check it was still there. Its foil-lining crinkled audibly. “Thought you were against 5G?”

“I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re going to say. And I had nothing to do with that tower’s mysterious malfunction.”

“Uh-huh.” Bob gestured out the dirty window at the ocean, which, being so close to the beach, we had a decent view of from inside my store. “Reckon Wayne will be coming around today?”

Wayne was Bob’s twin brother. He lived on his boat, sailing around up and down the coast, but made a point of stopping by most weekends.

I looked at my phone. Saturday, a little after two.

“Maybe. He didn’t let that storm last year stop him from resupplying.”

Bob chuckled. “What a legend.”

“You’re just saying that cause you’re twins.”

I had to admit I wondered as well, and not just because a boat was a decent apocalypse vehicle, and one that might allow me to cross the ocean to my family. He had a daughter, Emma, a couple years older than I was, and who I was almost certain fancied me.

She occasionally hung around the shop and helped out in the off-season, but actually worked at the reserve giving scuba tours. It was common knowledge that her swimsuit selection was responsible for roping in many a tourist.

She once told me how she worked such long hours during the season that she’d go to sleep and have dreams where she was giving tours, only at some point in the dream to realize that she wasn’t wearing anything but flippers and scuba gear while bunches of guys swam behind her with their phones, recording her.

“Good advertising,” she’d said. “That’s what I tell myself in the dream.”

“You don’t wake up?”

“Not until I get out of the water. Then I’m standing there, bits and bobs on full display, being filmed by someone holding a script for me to read. I always notice that I’m not wearing my dive mask so people can clearly see my face, then I remember I can’t see underwater without the mask, and that I’m somehow talking with a mouthpiece in my mouth, and then I realize that doesn’t make sense since I don’t use a mouthpiece. That’s when I realize I’m spruiking for the reserve, filming a commercial for the place, standing there like an idiot, nuddy but for my fins and tank. Then I wake up.” She shook her head. “We don’t even do commercials.”

“Weird.”

“Freudian.” She’d shrugged, then told me I should come diving with her.

Despite this work ethic—or maybe because of it—she was always with her dad on the weekends, helping him resupply his boat with the necessities.

Mainly beer, but also food and coffee.

He drank a lot of beer and coffee.

In the offseason, he accounted for at least twenty-percent of my beer and coffee sales.

Not that my store was a booming center of commerce.

Despite this, and thanks to some legacy tax thing I didn’t understand, the shop was two floors and fairly large. The second floor was full of junk and used books I’d yet to sort through and didn’t see much use, but the ground floor was quite comfortable, with an area up front with a few bikes for sale, where Bob and I stood, looking out at the bit of ocean we could see. The majority of the bikes were outside as rentals, along with a few electric scooters.

The middle of the shop was the coffee and reading area with several small tables surrounded by bookcases full of mostly old, used books to create quiet nooks for people to have their coffee and read or work on their laptops. Just off of this was a short, L-shaped hallway leading to the bathroom, along with a storage closet with cleaning supplies and the breaker box.

The final third of the shop was devoted to a glass display case filled with fresh-from-frozen pastries on which the cash register sat, a small kitchen area where I made the drinks and stored said pastries, and a bike workshop in the back.

Finally regaining enough wits to wonder what was going on everywhere else, I opened the internet on my phone to check the news. Thanks to the letter I’d received a year before, I had the sinking feeling this would be worldwide, and not just limited to our quiet little beach town.

My phone worked just fine, but every site I visited had the same short message:

Busy. Sorry.

Sincerely, your favorite system, System 3121-111

There was a TV on the wall above the counter, but all the channels I flipped through showed that same message.

“They took out our communications,” Bob said, suddenly beside me, fresh beer in hand.

I jumped. “Don’t do that to me!”

“Not my fault you’re deaf.”

“And stop drinking all my beer.”

“This is only my second.” He popped the top on the counter, then took a swig. “You got another ten cases in the back.”

“Yeah, and eight are for your brother.”

“He does like his brew.”

I shook my head, still flipping channels. “They’re all like this. It’s definitely to do with the letter.”

“What letter?”

“The one I showed you a while back. The mysterious one that showed up mysteriously a year ago? Literally. A year to the day ago.”

Bob stared blankly at me. Then he belched.

I sighed and retrieved the letter from where I’d hidden it in the back of the store, behind the fridge. I figured it would be safer than keeping it at my apartment. Deniability. Lots of people came through the store.

“Oh yeah,” Bob said as he looked at the letter. “This is that election thing.”

“What? No. Are you reading it?”

“Me eyes are bit buggered, to be honest.”

“I thought you had good eyesight?”

“Usually. Whatever Frank’s boy did to me must have messed with it.”

“Or the beers.”

“Nah, this is only my first.” He downed the last of it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to strain the potatoes.”

“That was your second,” I called after him. “And put the seat up this time.”

He waved me off, headed to the restroom.

While Bob availed himself of my facilities, I tried and failed to get any news to load, wondering how the rest of the world was responding to this whole mess.