“They won’t last much longer without rest,” said Theresa, the Chemist who’d so far kept everyone in Carmen’s group on their feet. “I don’t know how they’re still on their feet.”

“Constitution and Regeneration,” Carmen said, looking back at the ragged group of refugees who’d been banished from Easton alongside her. To say they looked dejected was an understatement, and she knew that they were on the verge of simply giving up. It was a glimpse into the sad reality forced upon all the people Roman had turned away from Easton. At the time, Carmen had seen those rejections as necessary, but though she hated what they represented, she’d never really put herself in their shoes.

To think salvation was at hand for it to be suddenly snatched away – it was cruel in a way Carmen had never considered. Not until she had experienced it. The school was supposed to be their shelter. A small pocket of peace amidst a dangerous and deadly world. But that peace had been shattered by the monstrous creature that lived in the lake.

The only saving grace was that it seemed incapable of traveling on land for more than a few hundred yards. So, they’d quickly left it behind. Even then, they hadn’t allowed themselves to rest until a day later when people started to collapse. Since then, they’d been forced to take shelter wherever it could be found.

Usually, that meant hiding in whatever abandoned building they passed, but more often than not, they weren’t safe. Monsters, it seemed, liked to have a roof over their heads as well, and so, it was a rare opportunity that saw them staying in one place for more than a day. Even then, they seldom did so unmolested.

That was where Carmen, Colt, and, to her horror, Miguel stepped up to protect everyone. He had no extra attributes, and he didn’t have skills or spells to help him, but what Miguel did have was his mother’s fighting spirit and penchant for heroism. Still, he didn’t throw himself into the middle of things. Instead, he limited his contributions to keeping watch and using the bow Carmen had made for him to fill any monsters full of arrows. Typically, he didn’t have much of an effect in battle, but he was a quick thinker, and he’d learned to do what he could with his limited capability.

When Carmen tried to get him to hold back, he agreed to do so. But the moment danger struck, he was right there trying to assist where he could. And he was effective. A few of the refugees owed their lives to his quick thinking.

Much to Carmen’s chagrin, he was as valuable a member of the group as anyone else besides Colt, Theresa the Chemist, or herself. Still, for all of their efforts, the end looked like it was on the horizon. Not because they would find safety, but rather because normal people could only maintain that constant state of readiness for so long before they started making mistakes.

Or forgot why they were trying so hard to survive.

Carmen had Miguel’s survival to spur her on. A few of the refugees were couples, so they leaned on one another. And Colt had his duty. But everyone else? There was only so much misery a person could endure before they stopped caring whether they continued living.

“We still have a long way to go,” Carmen said. “Do you have any more of that root? Can we brew some more tea?”

Theresa shook her head. “I think we were fortunate to find that much,” she admitted. “Unless we get lucky again, we don’t have anything else. Maybe if I were an Alchemist…”

Carmen wanted to comfort the woman, but realistically, she was right. Being a Chemist gave her a few of the same skills as an Alchemist, but the class was clearly geared more towards research. She had the knowledge, and she could see things no Alchemist could, but Theresa lacked the abilities necessary to bring it all together. As a result, she could barely eke more than the base effect of her ingredients out of any given concoction. In a perfect world, teams of Chemists and Alchemists would work together.

But as had been proven time and time again, theirs was no perfect world.

Still, without Theresa’s efforts, they would have already lost a few people. So, Carmen didn’t have it in her to denigrate the Chemist, even in her mind. She said, “You’ve saved us more times than I can count. I don’t know any Alchemists that could have done the same.”

It was a lie, and they both knew it. But it was one no one in the group would even consider refuting.

“We’ll just have to suck it up, then,” Carmen stated, glancing at the sky. There was a storm brewing on the horizon, which meant that finding shelter was of paramount importance. They could keep going in the rain, but doing so would likely sap whatever will the most vulnerable members of the group possessed.

For the next couple of hours, they continued on until Colt returned from his latest scouting expedition and told her that a potential shelter lay ahead. He’d checked it for monsters and found nothing. However, that was no guarantee that it was safe. More than once, they’d thought the same thing only to find themselves facing off against one nightmare or another.

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Still, they couldn’t afford to be picky, so after she let everyone know where they were going, she led them down the stretch of highway, passing a crumbling overpass before finally reaching the destination Colt had described.

It was an old Best Buy, complete with the large, yellow sign. It was also enormous. At one point, Carmen had just accepted big box stores as a matter of course. However, since the apocalypse, she’d begun to understand just how wasteful they were. She always knew, of course, but like most Americans, she’d swept those concerns under the proverbial rug. But now, when she looked at the giant monument to excess, all she could think about was how pointless it had all been.

Sure, she’d liked her electronics as much as the next gal. Throughout college, she’d been an avid gamer, and it was only after she’d had Miguel that she’d taken a step back from the hobby. However, like everyone else in the world, she’d remained addicted to her screens. Still, having hundreds of thousands of square feet dedicated to electronics was absurd.

More than anything, though, Carmen looked at that enormous building and wondered how they were going to defend such a space. Especially since one side had completely collapsed. Hopefully, the rest of the building would be usable.

Carmen and the others entered through the entrance, passing the long-shattered glass doors. The first thing Carmen noticed was the fact that they weren’t the first people to have taken shelter inside the building. Someone had shifted some things around, and there was even an old fire pit. However, there were no people about, and even after they went through the ruined store, they found no inhabitants.

After that, they engaged in the long-practiced process of making a camp deep in the back of the enormous store. Once everyone was settled in, Carmen scoured the area for usable materials, but there was a paucity of metal, suggesting that someone had already been through. What that meant, she wasn’t sure, but considering that she was still toting the metal she’d acquired back at the school, Carmen wasn’t even sure that she needed more.

Certainly, everyone could use some armor, but she had neither the time nor the equipment to make anything better than Crude-Grade. To do that, she needed a real forge, an anvil, and a variety of tools she couldn’t manifest via Summon Tool. Armor – whether it was plate or mail – was far more complex than making a few spearheads or a sword, and she saw no reason to invest her time in creating a new forge when they would be moving on within the next day or so.

Because the reality was that setting up camp on their own wasn’t really a viable option. Not if everyone was going to survive. They needed civilization to ensure that, and Carmen had vowed to keep going until they found somewhere to settle.

After Carmen completed her survey of the surrounding area, she returned to the campsite to find almost everyone huddled together, their eyes either fearful or lifeless, with little in between. The few who didn’t fall into those extremes were just exhausted.

Carmen counted herself among that number. Without Crafter’s Stamina, she would have long since given in to fatigue. So, she sat atop an old washing machine with a sigh. In a cleared area only a dozen or so feet away, Colt led Miguel through some sword drills. How either of them had found the energy, Carmen had no idea, and she was of mixed feelings concerning her son’s fascination with combat. But she only had to remember how dangerous the world was to understand what drove Miguel.

Because she felt it, too.

More than once, she had cursed herself for taking Tradesman as her archetype. If she’d taken Warrior or Sorceress, she would have been in a much better position to protect her son.

But she hadn’t.

And now she was paying for that. The only solution was to keep going, to grow strong enough – even as a crafter – to accomplish her goals.

After a couple of hours, Colt and Miguel finished their drills. While the samurai headed in her direction, Miguel kept practicing. When Colt reached Carmen, he leaned against the washing machine.

“How is he?” she asked. Her son spent more time with Colt than with anyone else.

“Terrified,” Colt answered. “Don’t blame him, neither. He’s weak. Almost defenseless. That’s a scary thing.”

“I hate it.”

“So does he,” Colt stated. “That’s why he trains like he does. He’s driven. Reminds me of his mother.”

“Alyssa –”

“No. His other mother,” Colt interrupted. “He’s more like you than you can see. Stubborn. Strong. Or he will be. He don’t let nobody tell him no when there’s somethin’ he wants. Same as you.”

“Hopefully, he’ll be more successful,” Carmen said.

“You’re doin’ your best. Couldn’t nobody do better,” Colt responded.

“My best might not be good enough,” she said. “They’re on the verge, Colt. You see it, right?”

“I do.”

“If we don’t find somewhere safe soon…”

“We will. You’ve noticed it, right?” Colt said. “People have been huntin’ this area. And somebody stripped this store of anything useful. If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say there was a settlement ‘round these parts. Maybe not a big one. We’re still too close to Easton for a city to be here that we didn’t know about.”

“How far do you think we’ve gone?” she asked. “A few hundred miles at least.”

“No more’n six-hundred. No less than five, though.”

“So far?”

“We been followin’ highways, mostly. Easy travel. Plus, everyone here’s at least level ten. Doesn’t seem like it, but we can cover some ground.”

“I hope you’re right,” Carmen said. “I want to be as far away from that lake monster as we can get before we settle in.”

After that, the two went silent. Eventually, even Miguel’s seemingly inexhaustible fervor gave way to fatigue, and he settled in to sleep. For her part, Carmen stayed on watch until late into the night, when she was relieved by Colt. Then, she lay next to her son so she could get a few hours of rest.

The next morning, everyone set about their various tasks. Colt went hunting, while everyone else converted the area to something a little more defensible. They piled appliances into a makeshift wall, and they cleared a living space. It wasn’t perfect, and if they were attacked, the defenses would do little good. However, it was the best they could do for now.

So it went for the next three days until, at last, Colt returned with the news he’d anticipated that very first night.

“It’s a village,” he said. “Maybe two-hundred people. The town’s surrounded by a palisade, and it looks sturdy enough.”

“You think they’ll take us in?”

“Don’t know,” Colt said. “They look peaceful, but who knows? The real question is whether we can afford not to try.”

“Yeah,” Carmen said. “We’ll try in the morning. For now, everyone could use a little more rest just in case we need to run again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”