Five minutes later, they were all sitting around the Hoopers' dining room table. Doug and Chenelle had managed to kill some giant spiders in the house and protect their five year old son Daniel, but Doug had nearly died doing that, and again when he tried to leave the house to look around, so they had hunkered down to wait the marsh folk out.

Everyone explaining what they knew took a while. Chenelle was especially interested in Safe Zones. She did not have a class but Doug did; he was a first level warrior. Doug also had a System token and Chenelle didn't, so that argued for it being a reward for taking a class.

“So, how do I get that Healer class?” Chenelle asked.

Karl looked over at Terry, who scowled back. Karl raised his eyebrow and waited. She blew air out her nose and almost looked like she was going to pout, then said, “Fine. Here.” She held out her hand, and the staff appeared out of her inventory. The Hoopers all flinched back.

“AWESOME!” Little Daniel shouted. “Do it again!”

“In a minute,” Karl placated him.

Terry held the staff out to Chenelle. “Be careful with it, they break easy. This is a healer staff. We've gotten a couple of them off of shaman monsters.” Chenelle took it carefully.

“What do I do with it?” she asked.

Terry turned to Karl. “Are you still hurt?”

He checked. “No, I'm full up again.”

“Then let's not use it yet, it probably only has like three charges in it or something.” She turned back to Chenelle. “Basically, if someone gets hurt bad, you shake this at them, and think at it to turn it on. Hopefully you'll get offered the Healer class after that.”

“Thank you.”

Daniel got loud demanding to see the magic, so Karl and Terry demonstrated pulling things in and out of inventory. The Hoopers all practiced it. Daniel got very excited when he learned that he could do it too, and didn't even mind when he found out that he only got five inventory slots while Terry and the adults had ten.

“I can see we're going to have to play 'what have you got in your inventory' from now on,” Chenelle commented wryly, looking at her son making random things disappear. “I didn't think he would be able to do that, based on what I read.”

Doug asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes!” Terry replied instantly.

“With the power out, the stuff in the fridge won't last much longer. We haven't been opening it so it should still be cold. We'll have to throw all the food out by tomorrow at the latest, though, so you're welcome to some. I can't really heat anything up. The stove...” He paused.

Chenelle picked up for her husband, confiding, “We've got our own propane tank, and managed to make sparks to light it, but the flames are green now so we're a little scared to use it.”

Terry ended up demolishing two very large cold cut sandwiches, and Karl surprised himself by finishing off one as well.

Doug insisted on trying to start the car, so Karl kept watch for him, but to no one's surprise it didn't turn over.

“Not really sure where we'd go anyway,” he admitted once they were safely inside again.

“We've got to make the house a Safe Zone,” Chenelle insisted.

They called up the menu and compared resources. Like Karl's house, the Hooper residence had plenty of wood and stone, but barely a hundred metal, nowhere near the thousand required. Doug only had a dozen copper coins, and Karl and Terry between them only had coins worth a couple of silvers.

“It looks like we have to go out and kill things,” Terry sighed.

“What?” Chenelle looked alarmed.

Terry shrugged, held up her hand and raised a finger. “Either we go kill things for money, or we barricade ourselves in one room and keep watch all night. Or, you figure out how to bring nine hundred metal here. Or we find a different place, one that has metal.” She looked at her hand. “Okay that's four things.”

They started throwing out ideas.

“How about a big box hardware store?”

“That would be perfect, but how far away is the closest one on foot?”

“How about a parking lot full of cars?”

“Not enough trees.”

“Downtown?”

“Too far.”

“Train tracks?”

“That would help, but probably not enough.”

“What about a whole train?” Daniel piped up.

“We'd have to find one, sweetie,” he mother pointed out.

“Water pipes? Electric power lines?”

“Too spread out.”

“What about the transmission towers, though?”

There was a pause as everyone considered it. “That might work,” Karl conceded. “But we need a building near them. Where are the closest ones?”

Chenelle picked up her phone and then dropped it back onto the table in disappointment. “Right, it's bricked. Old habits. Honey, do we have a map of the town anywhere? A paper map?”

Doug looked vaguely guilty. “I think we recycled them all. I know there's towers about...three miles north of here, along the highway.”

“All right,” Karl put in, trying to steer the conversation. “A permanent Safe Zone is obviously the best goal, but we have to figure out what we're doing today, tonight. We've only got another hour or two of daylight at the most. We need to rescue more people so that they don't die in ones and twos when the monsters get bigger.”

“Bigger?” Doug yelped.

“Remember the message that said common spawns were starting? I think worse is on the way.”

Terry pushed back from the table. “I vote we keep going down Walnut Street and try to find more people. If we don't find a better option, we break into a house and barricade ourselves wherever we end up at nightfall.”

“I concur,” Karl added.

Doug and Chenelle looked at each other, then at their son. “Our house...” Doug murmured.

“It's the end of the world,” Chenelle replied softly. “We'll find another home. What matters right now is survival, for us and for Danny. We need their help. We need more help.” They stared at each other for a few more moments, then turned to the rest of them. “We'll come with you. If you hadn't come by, we'd still be trapped here under siege. And if we could rescue Toby, or Ella, or Timmy?” The couple nodded at each other. “We're in.”

“Good. Let's load up. I need improvised weapons. A tire iron, kitchen knives, a piece of pipe, anything that could work as a shield. I'm pretty sure that anything you can pick up, you can put into inventory, but only ten things.”

“Right. Danny, go put on your magic coat.”

“YAY!” Daniel tore out of the room with thundering little feet.

Pretty soon Karl had two kitchen knives, a pair of gardening shears, and a long iron pipe added to his inventory. Terry also gave him a marsh warrior club, which she could barely lift. It turned out her strength was only three. Karl wasn't about to admit his had started out as two that morning.

“Have you got any sidewalk chalk?” Terry asked.

“Danny has some.”

Karl really wanted to hurry them up, but it was a half an hour before they finally left the house and cautiously made their way up the driveway to Walnut Street. Terry wrote a note on the street with chalk.

“Do you want to add arrows?” Chenelle suggested.

Terry shook her head. “I figure the monsters can't read English but some of them look clever enough to follow an arrow,” she explained.

“Smart,” Karl praised her.

Karl and Doug took the lead, while Terry and Chenelle followed, doing their best to keep Daniel in the middle. When they reached another mailbox, Terry excused herself and vanished, prompting more squealing from Daniel which his parents hushed as quickly as possible. It was only a few minutes before she returned. Without a word, she bent over and drew an X in chalk.

She looked a little green around the gills. “Let's go.” Karl just nodded and gestured for everyone to get moving.

The next house was the same. And the next. And the next. The local population density was low even before this; how many miles will we have to walk to find more survivors? Traveling with Daniel meant they were making one mile per hour at best.

The following house was up on a hill instead of down below road level. Terry was gone a long while before she returned. “Okay. We've got eight or so of these boar things milling around the back. I don't think they can climb trees. I figure we get Danny set up on a big branch, then go kill them.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Any idea how tough they are?” Karl asked.

Terry shrugged. “They're not going to chant or throw fireballs, at least. Plus there's four of us now.”

Chenelle frown. “I don't want to leave Danny by himself. What if something attacks him?”

“Think of it this way: if we take him with us, something's definitely going to attack him. You can't sit this out with him. You've got to level up if you're going to protect him. And we need you.”

“But what if—?”

“Tell you what, I'll scout a tree first. Gimme a second.” Terry wandered around, and found an old maple with a solid looking branch. With a running start, she jumped up onto the trunk, kicked off and grabbed a thin branch. She then used the branch like a gymnast's bar and was soon standing on it and walking as if it were a balance beam. Another jump bouncing off the trunk and she was on the branch she had pointed out. She searched the branches above her carefully.

“Looks okay!” she hissed down to the others.

“How is Danny supposed to get up there?” Doug demanded, his eyes wide.

“You got a rope?”

“No!”

“Karl?”

He checked his backpack and his inventory. “Damn it.” It was in another one of his backpacks, at home. He looked up and shook his head.

Terry scowled and paced back and forth on the branch for a minute, then turned and jumped off. Karl knew she could survive a fall from that height, but the Hoopers were aghast. She caught herself on a branch, then proceeded to work her way around the tree, investigating handholds and footholds. Eventually she came back to the ground and landed lightly. “I think I can carry him up a different way.”

Doug let out a startled, almost hysterical laugh. “Yeah, that's not happening.” Terry frowned at him but his expression didn't change. Karl looked around for another solution.

“What about that shed?”

Everyone looked at it; it was one of those prefab small outdoor storage containers. “Can we clear it, then put Danny inside without alerting the boars?”

“That could work. I'll check it out.” Terry vanished. Several minutes passed. Karl watched the shadows lengthening with concern, and kept an eye out.

“What's taking her so long?” Doug fretted.

“She'll yell if she needs us.”

“That's not comforting.”

“Just wait. She's getting pretty good at this.” Karl silently debated giving up on clearing this place and moving on to the next house hoping for better.

More minutes passed. Karl was wondering whether he should try to sneak over to the shed himself when Terry finally appeared, looking bloody. “Heal me, please?”

Karl took a step forward, then remembered. “Chenelle? Do you want to try the staff?” The mother took a deep breath, then summoned the staff to her hand. “How do I do this?”

“Shake and pray,” Terry snapped. “Hurry up.” Whatever she had fought clearly had her rattled.

Karl leaned towards Chenelle and added, “remember, the System seems to work on intention. It's like a computer, you have to know exactly what you want. Then think it forcefully. You can do it.”

Chenelle took a deep breath, furrowed her brow, and shook the staff at Terry. Green glow surrounded the teenager. Then Chenelle stared off into space for a minute. “Um, yes?” Her eyes squeezed shut and she suddenly leaned hard on her husband.

“Honey? Chen! Are you okay?”

After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and slowly straightened up. “I think...I think I know...” She gestured at Terry, and a yellow glow encased the teenager for a second. Terry sighed.

“Oh yeah, that's the good stuff. Sorry, Karl, I've got a new BFF. Thanks, Chenelle. And you didn't even have to touch me to heal me! Whatever you've got is bigger and better than Karl's mojo.”

“I think I can do it from...not sure how far, but if I can see you well enough.” She took a deep breath. “That's...amazing.” She stared at her own hand.

“Mommy, you did magic!”

“I sure did,” she answered distractedly, still looking stunned.

Karl fidgeted. “Okay, there aren't any boars stampeding our way, so what happened?”

Terry swallowed and shuddered. “The shed is good to go. There was something inside...I killed it and looted it, there aren't any more of them, and I don't want to talk about it any more.” She crouched down to be on Daniel's level.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, wide eyed. “Is the monster gone?”

Terry nodded firmly. “It's gone. Ready for a little adventure with me?”

“Yeah!”

Doug leaned closer. “Danny, you stay in that shed until one of us comes to get you, okay? That's important. Because if we're fighting and you come out, we'll get worried about you and distracted and we might get hurt. So promise me you'll stay in there.”

“I double secret promise.”

“Good boy.”

Terry nodded. “And even if you see one of us fall down, your Mom can heal us now! And if your Mom falls down, Karl can heal her.”

“But what if they both fall down?”

Terry grinned and gestured, and the healing staff appeared in her hand. “Then I'll heal her! Ta da!” She vanished it back into her inventory, took Daniel's hand, stood up and started walking towards the shed. Karl listened as they walked away.

“Can you do magic?”

“Kind of! I can turn invisible. But we have to be really quiet and sneak now, okay? Shh! It's a surprise...”

Terry didn't vanish this time. Or rather, she did, but reappeared. They watched the two crouch and walk slowly. Then Terry stopped abruptly, scooped Daniel up, and they both vanished. Both parents gasped.

“I didn't know she could do that,” Doug commented quietly. I'm not sure she knew it either, Karl added to himself.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait. Terry's going to try to kill one of the boars before they know she's there, and then she's going to run back to us really quickly, so we have to be ready for them. Remember, Chenelle, stay behind us, next to the tree, and cast healing. Be ready with it, be quick. Fights are crazy fast. Don't hesitate. But don't attack anything, because we don't want them attacking you.”

“Got it.”

Karl restrained the impulse to grab his chopper early. With his low endurance, he had to be smart about unnecessary exertion. Or was that stamina? Whichever. He thought he was slowly getting the hang of this. He looked around.

I should have made some sharp sticks and put them in the ground around us, he realized belatedly. That would be good against things like this. I need to read some books on warfare. I should have done that this weekend. Didn't occur to me to pack Sun Tzu this morning. Or a map.

Just five hours in the System. There's no time! How are we ever going to make it through the night?

Everyone heard a dull rumble before the boars swept into view. Terry had lured them around the house on the far side from the shed, sensibly enough. She came into view running impossibly fast, yet it didn't look fast enough to beat the boars. She made some weird gesture that looked as if she was panicking, flapping her arms out to the side, and sped down the hill like an oncoming train.

Behind her a couple of boars squealed loudly and stumbled out of the pack. They didn't fall down but they stopped running. The rest kept coming.

She's not going to make it, Karl realized. Apparently Terry did too, as she suddenly veered to one side and vaulted into the nearest tree. The closest boars made as if to follow, slamming their fore hooves against the trunk, while a couple rammed it, making the whole tree vibrate.

Karl vanished his chopper and willed his rock into his hand. With all his strength, he hurled it at the closest boar. He missed, but the boars were packed so tightly together around the tree that he hit a different one instead. There was a squeal of pain and outrage, and then four boars charged towards the fighters. Karl remembered something dimly from a book he read once, and dug the back end of his chopper into the dirt against a large rock, crouching down to aim the sharp end. To his left, Doug held a baseball bat and posed as if he were the cleanup hitter at the World Series. Karl switched sides, holding the chopper in his left hand and willed one of the knives into his right.

This is going to hurt.

The boars hit like a tsunami. There was an almighty crack as Doug connected, and Karl managed to shift the chopper just enough to impale a boar fully. By sheer dumb luck, the maneuver worked perfectly.

Critical strike. Damage X5

Karl followed up with the knife, stabbing it deep into the neck of the immobilized boar, killing it. One down. To his left, Doug yelled, “Not now! Not now!” and Chenelle was screaming. Doug went down, a boar trampling over him even as a golden glow encased him. And then again.

Karl jumped up, held his arms straight over his head, and willed the marsh warrior club into his hands. With a heave, he slammed it downward, aiming for the head of another boar. The boar got him first however, spoiling his aim and mauling his legs out from under him. Karl managed to pitch forward onto the boar, and the club smashed hard into the monster's rump instead of its head. The boar reared, dumping Karl onto the ground, one place that he was sure he did not want to be. His legs were in agony and he couldn't get up. He cast healing hands on himself, rolled away from the boar that was immediately trying to trample him, and almost ended up trapped under the corpse of the one he had slain.

Karl then discovered exactly what it felt like to be gored by the tusks of an angry animal, an experience he gladly would have done without. He cast healing hands on himself a second time, then willed the garden shears into his hands to discourage his opponent, which failed miserably.

Dire boar—enraged

Karl flicked the notification to the side with an angry thought, and realized what must have happened to Doug. He hadn't set his notifications not to fill his vision at bad moments. He'd been blinded just after his first good hit.

Karl heard more screaming behind him and prayed that Chenelle wasn't getting mauled to death while he fumbled— Karl blinked. Fumbled... Inspiration struck. Still lying on the ground, he twisted, reached out and willed the long steel pipe into his hands—positioned to weave between legs and trip up two of the boars. It was yanked out of his hands immediately, but that was because several boar legs were hitting it hard from both sides, hopefully tangling them up, doing them damage and spoiling their aim.

Then he and the boar attacking him engaged in mutual destruction; Karl stabbed it in the face and the neck with the shears, at the same time as the boar attempted to remove his entrails. As he cast healing hands on himself desperately, the boar staggered away from him. Karl blinked and looked up; he thought for an instant that he saw Terry flying through the air off in the distance. And then he saw an arrow sticking out of the boar he'd been fighting.

He stood up, and saw Terry crouched over the body of one boar, while an arrow flew past her and landed a solid hit on the other one facing her. Tracing the shot back, Karl saw a tall, lanky man with gray in his beard and a large bow in his hand. He was standing on what was presumably his porch, turning and firing at another boar. Then he heard Chenelle cry out.

Protect the healer! he urged himself. He spun around to see Chenelle somehow holding onto the tusks of a boar that was trying to kill her. She was covered in blood. He staggered the two steps over to her and threw himself across the boar to distract it. He reached out, grabbed one of Chenelle's hands over her grip on the tusk and willed healing hands at her.

I only have one heal left. Should I use it on Chenelle right now? The choice was taken away from him as the boar yanked itself free of her grip. In desperation Karl lunged sideways, and barely reaching, he put his fingers in the boar's right eye.

He got the oddest feeling that the boar felt affronted and exasperated by the sheer ridiculousness of his attack. As if it were thinking, there are only a few things that can happen here, and this isn't one of them! He wasn't doing any damage, but he was driving the already enraged boar crazy. It couldn't not pay attention to him, with him almost riding it and with his fingers in its eye.

Tough shit, pig. I may not know how to fight but I can damned well screw up whatever you were trying to do! He tried to remember if he had any weapons left in his inventory without actually calling it up and blocking his view. He thought he was all out, but the count felt wrong.

Crunch.

Karl gasped as his lower body was crushed against the tree trunk by the boar shoving sideways. His vision started going black. One last desperate twist of his head showed that Chenelle was still standing, and not under attack. Seeing that, he felt free to cast his last healing hands on himself, but he didn't manage it in time.

Fade to black.