Waking up to a murmur of voices, he turned over, looking up to see the top of a white tent, a small beam of light came out of a small hole on the top of the tent. Sitting there for a while and collecting his thoughts he realized where he was. He reached up and rubbed his forehead thinking for a while before sitting up.
Well rested: bonus %10 XP
He reached out and tapped the window shut. Rubbing his head again he paused as his hands crossed over 3 raised angry welts running alongside the right side of his face. He could see out of both eyes, despite feeling one of the lines running across his cheekbone and eyebrow, and wondered what his face looked like. Shaking his head, and disregarding the thought he looked around the tent and noticed his three pets from yesterday.
Despite the blood covering each of them, he noticed something, the dull blank stare from yesterday was somewhat gone, and they moving more independently than before. He watched as the rat bent over to scratch at its leg.
“You guys look like hell” he said to them, grinning slightly before wincing, raising a hand to the inflamed cuts on his face. The three of them responded to his words with questioning glances, the rat stopped scratching its leg as well. Each of them gave an expectant look towards him.
Frowning slightly, he leaned back against the cot again “I don’t have anything for you to do yet.” Then after looking around for a moment, found his backpack and zipped it open, pulling the leather bound book out again. Running his fingers over the embroidered letters on the front, he felt a slight pull of excitement again as he pulled it open.
Blank pages. He slapped the book shut, and shoved it roughly into the backpack again, zipping it up quickly and looping the straps onto his shoulders while sighing. Pausing at the entrance of the tent, he looked back at the empty space next to his bed as a thought occurred to him. He had leveled up!
Smiling again despite the pain, he reached out towards the floor “Summon small animal!”
A flash of light and a puff of smoke and then a second later, Alex was looking at a white and black broad shouldered weasel.
“HONEY BADGER! YEAH!!!” he shouted, pumping his arms slightly. The energy drain didn't seem as bad as the day before either, but he got the feeling he had hit his limit again.
Taking a moment to examine it, it looked exactly like he had seen it from the internet, except it had the same semi-vacant stare as his other pets. Uncharacteristically, his rat and raccoon each took an unconscious step backwards when they noticed it, and the sparrow on his shoulder shook its wings in agitation slightly.
Reaching over he gave it a quick, nervous pat on the head, noting the rough skin of it and breathing a sigh of relief when it didn't go berserk like the first rat. In hindsight, he thought to himself, it would not have gone well at all in the small enclosed tent if the badger had gone crazy. He frowned slightly, the scenarios running though his head. One of which was a repeat of when the gnoll had bit into him.
Sweating slightly at the memory of the crazed rate he looked at the animals. “Stay!” he commended, raising his hand with his palm raised out towards them, they looked back up to him dully. Satisfied, he turned, crawling out of the tight tent entrance, the sparrow still on his shoulder. After he was out and stood up he noticed Donnie from yesterday and a middle aged woman. They had stopped talking when they saw him crawl out from the tent and were both looking at him slightly. Alex could tell that their conversation hadn't been completely friendly from the looks they were giving each other however.
The woman turned fully face him. She looked to be middle aged with dark hair worn long. Her eyes had a tired red tint to them, and she had a sort of manic energy in the look she gave him. Taking a second to look over Alex, she scowled and walked away, leaving Donnie to turn to him and shrug.
He watched as she walked into an office and slammed the door shut, the walls shaking slightly from the impact. Alex looked at Donnie inquisitively “What’s her problem?” He asked.
Donnie kicked his feet out a bit, leaning against a railing dividing the office area from the entrance thinking for a moment before he replied.
“She knew James pretty well. Not really your fault” he said pointing to the tent Alex crawled out of “But that was James's tent.”
“He died?... Sorry” Alex asked frowning and thinking back.
Donnie looked back confused a moment before awareness dawned on his face. “I forgot. Remember when we stopped on the way back and you passed out against that car? We ended up burying him there...Well, as best we could anyway.”
He stretched then, raising his arms above his head groaning slightly in relief before he returned to his original posture.
“We might all heal a lot faster than normal,” he said, speaking softly now “but James was pretty much bleeding out the entire time we carried him. Most of the time he was with us, he was unconscious from the blood loss. We might have been able to do something for him, if we had supplies or even someone with medical training. Even then, we didn't even know his blood type."
"We all kind of knew what was going to happen to be honest, only thing we held out for was that maybe he would heal fast. Looks like bleeding wounds like that don't heal by themselves, even in these new game rules.”
Donnie looked down for a bit before chuckling, his gloom suddenly replaced by mirth as his face lit up “is that a fricken' honey badger standing next to you?”
Alex looked down quicklyat the tiny vicious creature that had padded close to him, disobeying his command to stay. He glad for the change of subject. He didn't really know James that well but Donnie must have.
“Yeah, I guess my class isn't as stupid as I originally thought.” He coughed out, then a thought occurred to him.
“Hey Donnie?”
“Call me Don.”
“Ok. So... Don. The big guy... uh... Henderson. Mentioned that you had passed out during that event two days ago. Soo… Do you have a class?”
Don quirked an eyebrow at him “Yup, Warrior. In fact most of the guys around here have it. Seems pretty helpful too, with every level up I start to hit a little harder, get a little stronger, and I can take a punch a little harder as well. See this scratch?” He asked, pointing to the large mark across the front of his armor “I got this from some big goblin... hobgoblin if I had to guess.... Anyway” he waved a hand in front of him “I took the same hit as the guy before me. Name was Ted. Ted hadn't gone through the same class process as you or me but he wore the same armor. When Ted took a hit, the thing's sword went right through his armor like paper. When I took damn near the same hit... I got this” He opened his palms, displaying the large scratch.
“I'm not totally sure what all the rules are but I'd say the people who passed out that day and woke up with classes are damn lucky. You included, although I think you might have been pissed off someone to have ended up with that class.”
Alex frowned, remembering EVA's response to him. Maybe he had pissed her off.
Don grinned at his own joke, before a realization struck him and he took in a breath “Anyway.” he said, swiping at the air again “I'm not here to talk about James or Ted or classes. I swung by because the boss wanted to see you.” He thumbed towards the stairwell.
“Follow me.” He stated before heading towards the stairwell, assured that Alex would be following behind.
Gritting his teeth slightly at the thought that he was acting like his own pets, Alex quickly caught up with Don and followed him up the stairwell. Donnie led him past a couple of hallways and turns, as he passed each room Alex caught glances of other soldiers, cops and families. It was rare for him to spot anyone in a good mood, each room depicting a tiny caricature of a scene, most involved arguments or dead eyed stares. The past few days had been hard on everyone.
Reaching down Alex pulled his phone from his pocket, flipping it open and frowning
“No Service” he mumbled.
Donnie hearing him, turned a bit as he walked, looking at the cell phone. “All the phones have been dead since day one.” He stopped for a moment, pointing at the phone. “You might actually want to turn that off, I'm not sure how long the electricity is going to last. What’s going on with the water and electricity and cell service... it’s all been getting worse over time. Stuff is starting to randomly fail on us for no apparent reason. The radios have been picking up intermittent static, and we've noticed that the water taps have been steadily losing pressure.”
“We're lucky that the local army reserve guys came down here. The chief was smart enough to call them in on day one to help out with the disaster. I doubt he knew what was going to happen next though... He didn't make it.”
“How is the power still on?” Alex asked, wondering at the lights “Is there anyone manning the power plants?”
Donnie frowned, “As far as I know, they were abandoned. We generally haven't been able to range too far away from the station without being attacked so no one has checked so far. You want my opinion, I think this might be part of the game.”
As they talked, Alex noticed a water fountain and rushed over to it, leaning over and slapping down the water handle. A disappointingly low flow of water gushed out of it, and he had to restrain himself from sucking on the spout. Donnie joined him on the other one, chuckling slightly.
After what seemed to him to be forever, he finally stood back up, signing in content despite his face burning in pain from where his cuts were, the steady throb lessened as he stood up. Pulling out his empty water bottle he stood there slowly filling it up as well. Donnie gave him an impatient look.
“What?” You got any better ideas? He looked back at Donnie, who shrugged in reply and watched the water bottle fill up gradually.
After a while he capped it off, at a disappointing three quarters full of lukewarm water, the angle of the fountain not letting him fill it further. Stuffing it back in his backpack he gave Donnie a thumbs up and they continued on towards the end of the hall where there were two soldiers slouched on either side of an open double doorway. Donnie gave a quick wave towards the two who nodded in return as he walked inside, Alex following behind.
The room smelled of stale smoke and sweat, and a single ceiling fan lazily rotated from the ceiling with a single light beaming down onto a large conference tabled filled with papers and maps. A large map of Appleton and the surrounding city had been taped up to the wall and a couple of men stood there discussing it. Alex recognized the big man, Henderson, standing there with a serious looking man in army fatigues. He had salt pepper hair and despite being smaller than Henderson he could tell that Henderson was deferring to him in their muted conversion as they looked over the map.
Looking at it, he noticed several red marks circled inside the city, with a larger one inside of the town where the reserve base was located at.
Like before, there was a mix of police officers and soldiers in the room, he even noticed a man wearing full swat gear in the corner of the room, leaned up against a side table. Alex noted a few men from yesterday's patrol, it seemed like they were wearing a lot more protective gear than then though.
Donnie cleared his throat, getting the attention of Henderson and the Soldier he was talking to. Turning towards him, his ice blue eyes studied Alex curiously. A chill ran down his back as he noticed two red scar lines crossing from the side of his neck all the way across his face, with a smaller line a third cutting across his chin.
The man grinned fiercely after looking at Alex. “Good to see I'm not the only one who has lost their good looks! What happened to you son? Goblin? Wolf? No wait, let me guess,” He spoke, closing his eyes and exhaling slowly, “Gnoll” he said with his finger in the air, a satisfied smile on his face.
“My name is Major Williams,” he continued, introducing himself, “and currently I am the ranking officer in this AO.” he said with a more serious look. He put his hand outright and Alex leaned over the table to grip it. The man had an iron grip, thankfully Alex was expecting it, what he wasn't expecting however, was him to hold the grip for a few seconds extra before releasing it, taking a second examination at Alex's face as if searching for something.
“Anyway,” he continued on as he released his grip, much to Alex's relief, “Henderson here, was telling me that you saved a lot of my boys yesterday. Thanks.” He finished with a sincere tone while looking him straight in the face.
Alex frowned in confusion, as he turned away slightly from his gaze, feeling embarrassed from the intensity of it “I didn't save anyone's life yesterday. It was mostly your guys saving me.” He managed to look back at the man “If I hadn't made it to your patrol I would have gotten torn apart. I'm lucky to be alive.”
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The man frowned slightly in thought for a moment before looking slightly above Alex, “I guess for someone like yourself who's never fought before it might be a bit confusing. But when I was a younger man on the front lines, I always found myself being saved by the rest of the men around me. I gave help freely to them, and they to me. The world we find ourselves in now,” He motioned to the window “reminds me of my old days. So I guess it would be confusing for you.”
“I heard the full story about yesterday's patrol. Saving your life was pretty cheap considering.” He shifted slightly, “When your little... pets from yesterday tipped the patrol off they were about to be attacked, you probably saved most of their lives. Sure! It was cheaply given by you, but that doesn't make it any less significant. Don't forget the only thing valuable out here anymore is human life. And even then...the way things are going, it’s getting pretty cheap as well out here.” He spoke the last part out softly, resting his palms on the conference table.
“Enough of that,” he started, raising up from the table and waving it away with his hands, “The reason I summoned you,” he said smirking lightly “We could use you, or rather those...animals” he leaned over to look at the Honey Badger that had wandered from Alex and was gnawing on a corner of the wooden conference table “of yours... I've got a upcoming assignment that we need to move on pretty soon, and I could use a first alert system to help us out. If you're up to it”
Alex hesitated a moment, opening his mouth
Henderson cut in, “I'd like to add to two points if I may.” Getting a slight nod from Williams he continued “We did a pretty good job collecting people so far. But a lot of the people in this station right now have friends, and family, outside of these walls. Without cell phone connections, we don't have a very good idea exactly what’s happening to all of them, but I can tell you this... I wouldn't blame you if you decided to go off looking for someone out there, but a lot of us here, he waved to the other men in the room, are making some sacrifices to keep things together. All of those people you noticed passing by here, if we each head off by ourselves we'll doom them.”
“That's pretty much the only thing keeping any of us here anyway. It doesn't help the fact that any of us wouldn't last an hour out there by ourselves. Some of the guys here left of the first day to check on their families, it's day three now, and I haven't heard from a single one of them. Not. One.”
“Second point” he continued after a pause, “Is that we could use your help. Yeah, we don't know how much you will help, yeah, you could be in danger, and yeah, and we haven't even told you the assignment yet. But, I'll say this, who knows how many second chances this group is going to get if we don't succeed.”
A long pause followed, as the two looked at him. Alex could tell without turning his head that the others were looking at him as well, evaluating him. He sighed.
“Alright sign me up.”
“That's the spirit,” the major rumbled out “I knew you'd come around. Could see it the moment you walked in here.”
He turned, pointing a finger back at the map. “We left a fairly sizable group of men and supplies back at base. Its only about ten miles out there. Our last contact last night had them doing pretty damn well. They had cleared everything hostile out about a mile or two out of their base in every direction and managed to rescue quite a large number of people. Our plan is to move most of the people here back to that base and use this as a forward base of operations in the town instead. We've got far too many people for the amount of supplies we have on hand, despite a few scavenging sessions we've had. Not only that, but it seems like there are more monsters out here for whatever reason.”
“We have a few problems however,” he said, flicking a finger up for each, “for whatever reason the interference has gotten worse and we can't get a hold of them using our station radio anymore. Another problem is you will have to go on foot. We have a couple of APCs and Humvees, but we need to save our vehicles for when we start transporting people. The last time we rolled out our tires got hit with arrows every time we stopped so I don't want to take the risk of running through a bad path. You are going to need to clear out any ambushes in the road, or anything...weird. Alternatively we need another path into the base if its been blocked.”
“I'm not expecting you to fight, but due to the nature of this mission, you’re... Summoned creatures tipping us off to ambushes could make the difference in whether or not we ultimately evacuate people out of here into base.”
“The men you see in here are all going out there, and they've already been briefed on what I expect. If you have any questions you can direct them to Johnson over there” he pointed to Swat man leaned up against a table.
“If you gentlemen will excuse us. I've got another team to fill in for their assignment.” He said, taking a quick glance at them and turning back towards Henderson and the wall map looking at the spots inside town.
“You heard him,” Johnson, barked, pushing himself off from the table and shifting his weapon slightly. “Let’s head out of here. You,” he pointed towards Donnie, “go get him set up with some supplies and get him ready for the march. We'll will be waiting on you outside.”
“Got it..uh Sir” answered Donnie, looking a little flustered at the title.
The tan faced swat guy shook his head at that and waved the rest of them forward, all of them walking out together.
Alex stepped aside as they all left the room, and Donnie tapped him on the shoulder “we better get going as well. It’s going to take time to get you some of the basic stuff without keeping them waiting too long.”
They both turned, and Alex quickly walked after the group, catching up to them. With their heavy armor and boots they all made a loud spectacle as the crossed the hallway. Alex had to admit that they felt pretty bad ass as they stomped along.
Caught up in his thoughts, he almost missed it, but his mouth flew open when he noticed her pass, it was kind of hard to miss her, and the smell.
“Fat blue haired girl?” He thought to himself, shocked. She and what appeared to be a group of five others passed him by him in the hall and he turned around while walking backwards to look at the group. Each and every one of them had some sort of scrap armor and weapons on. Most of them had cuts and gauges on their clothes and armor and one thing came to mind to describe them.
“Adventurers!” He heard Williams bark out, “Good to see you!”
Alex didn't know exactly how he knew, but he could tell that Williams wasn't being sincere in his greeting, a light inflection changed from before.
“Hey” Donnie grabbed his shoulder, turning him around. Alex looked straight at a white plaster wall, smiling sheepishly, he took a step back, realizing he was about a foot away from running into the wall. Donnie gave him a odd look before grunting when he saw the would be adventurers in the conference room.
“Come on, let’s go”
Alex and Donnie quickly picked up their steps as they caught up to the main group ahead of them. “What’s the deal with them?” Alex asked as they reached the stairwell, steps echoing off the cinder block walls and metal stairs.
Donnie frowned, “they call themselves adventurers. Let’s talk about them later” he said curtly as they exited the stairwell and entered the lobby. Alex took in all the tents and standing people. People must have been trickling in as it seemed a lot more crowded than he remembered. Donnie looked at the crowd for a moment as well.
“Yeah, this is part of the reason why we need to go out soon. We've got a packed amount of scared people in here and it’s starting to get reaaalllly crowded. There's no telling when people will get over their shock and become a problem here. There's simply not enough space in this small safe zone we're making, and things are only going to get worse if we can't move some of these people out of here.
Alex walked to his tent and heard murmurs from the crowd as they realized a badger was following him, poking his head in he saw his other two summons sitting there looking slightly excited at his appearance. “Follow me” he commanded and popped back out, the three from inside following.
Looking around he noticed Donnie making a waving motion from where he stood next to a door with another cop. This one dressed in full riot gear guarding a door.
Approaching, Donnie opened the door and walked inside, Alex followed, and stared for a moment, understanding why the guard was positioned at the door. There were tons of supplies in there!
“Yeah, we had a lot of the patrols pick this stuff up. It was a lot easier than you think since there were so many of those monsters out there wiping people out.”
Donnie directed him around, giving him an army backpack and throwing different things at him, a foldable map, water, food, a watch Alex strapped on his wrist, a different pistol with more clips and few ammo boxes for it. He tossed a Molle tactical vest at Alex and waited for him to pull it over his shirt, then showed him how to secure his holster and pistol in the front. Alex then transferred everything from his old backpack into the new army style one and threw it over his shoulders connecting the front straps as well, to his surprise, everything didn't feel too uncomfortable or heavy. He knew that might be different when he went outside for their ten mile hike.
Alex thought back to when the gnoll had attacked him, it would be nice to have something for when things got close... looking around he noticed an aluminum bat and baseball cap with a bears logo on it. He picked them both up, shoving the cap over his head and swinging the bat lightly as he took a stance, it felt nice and lightweight, and he liked the grip of the bat.
“Go Bears” He joked as he gave another test swing.
Donnie looked at him quizzically as he watched. “I think they more picked this up as a Joke.... but to be perfectly honest it might be good to have that now.” he shrugged “Whatever the hell is happening, I don't think we are going to have an unlimited supply of bullets. Here, turn around.”
He moved up to Alex and grabbed the bat, sliding it in the side of his backpack straps and pulling it tightly against the pack.
Patting it lightly against the pack to see if it or the pack moved, he grunted, satisfied.
“Let’s get going, we need to meet up with the rest of the guys.”
The two made their way out of the supply room and weaved between some people to make their way to the front of the lobby, Alex noticed the eyes on the supply door and wondered if they should have put more than one guard on the door. Donnie noticed where he was looking and shook his head, Alex kept quiet. With his four animals following him, he found that it was relatively easy to make it past the crowd, as they tended to take a few steps back as they eyed the badger, who hissed slightly at people as it strutting alongside. He looked like he was enjoying himself.
Pushing their way outside Alex had to shield his eyes for a moment, before checking his watch, 10 am. It was actually later in the morning than he thought it would be. He hurried up to the patrol group alongside with Donnie, the swat leader Johnson appraising him and the four animals thoughtfully.
“So you are supposed to be, what? A warning system?” He asked, slightly hostile. Somewhat taken aback, Donnie answered for him.
“I can tell you're skeptical, and yeah you can see stuff coming anyway. But when I was coming back, half of us pretty much watched where the animals looked. They picked up on a lot of ambushes before we did since we can't see through things. They are good at finding concealed enemies that we wouldn't have noticed.”
“Huh” he snorted, “We'll see about that.”
“I already spoke to everyone else here while we were waiting for you, but I'll go over it again briefly for your sake.” Johnson began.
“We've got ten miles that we need to cover in an area that is going to be crawling with hostiles, the Terran will impede us. Stick to silence until I say so or unless you...or your...creatures, spot something. Hopefully we can find a quick and easy path towards base, but I honestly doubt it as we are going to have to move slow and silent. If we run into anything that the convoy can't handle with a front plow, we are going to have to find a different path or take care of it ourselves. Make no mistake, we are going to be sitting ducks out there when we have to do this, so keep your eyes peeled out there.”
Looking up at the position of the sun he cursed silently then turned back to them.
“Let’s everyone get back safe alright?” He paused, “let's go guys, times wasting.”