4.

Santi calmed down after an hour or so. His gasping sobs stilled and he sat in the truck, limp with exhaustion. He felt better. Clean. A cathartic sobbing in the middle of the day on the side of a road was sometimes needed. Santi found some napkins in the center console and blew his nose and rested for a few minutes.

“You ok, dude?” a girl was standing a few feet away from him, standing on the edge of the sidewalk and peering at him with a concerned look. Santi just nodded and she walked away. He marveled at that. In eight years there would be little time for tears or sympathy, the pain of the world dying crushing everyone down. The war with the cultists, the betrayal of the Apostates, all of it. It left one just numb to the daily suffering. Also, the higher willpower stat made it easier to repress your emotions. Santi was missing that stat at the moment.

He drove to a hardware store and started his next round of shopping. In the first burst of the system's arrival, when guns failed, people would look for weapons. Anything that could be used to prolong their lives just a bit longer. Santi didn’t want to deal with that crowd, so he was shopping now.

Three axes, a handful of hammers, boxes of nails, long wooden poles, some saws, and a variety of tapes filled his cart. He also managed to find some wonderful plastic tubing and clean plastic buckets. Some shovels, trowels, two pitchforks, really anything that could be used to stab, jab, or crush. As he took it up to the register, he had to deal with another wave of suspicious looks from customers as well as employees.

His cashier was around his age, the biological one and not whatever age the memories suggested. Thick white makeup, violet eyeshadow, thick black lashes, black lipstick, and her black hair had streaks of venom green dyed into it. Santi thought about proposing. The world was ending after all. That stopped him. She was his age biologically, roughly anyway, but his memories? Did the memories make him older? Was he being a creep on a teenager? He shelved all the moral problems associated with time travel and living in a younger version of yourself.

“Fucking hate time travel. Stupid trope,” Santi muttered under his breath as he helped the cashier find everything to ring up. The number on the register was flying upwards at an astounding rate. Wood was expensive? He’d never had to buy it before, but those long poles were pricey.

“So, is this like a murder kit or something?” the goth girl asked, long fingers dancing around the hammers and axes.

“That’s exactly what this is actually,” Santi laughed. Monster murder was close enough for his definition.

She laughed, a full belly chuckle that suited her. Santi looked at her name tag, Chloe, and met her dark eyes. Oh, what the hell, the end of the world is coming.

“You go to school here? The university?” Sanit asked.

“Yeah, first year.”

“You live in the dorms?”

“Wexler Tower East.” Santi smiled at her answer for it was apparent the gods were smiling on the small goth girl.

“I’m in Wexler West. I’m having something going on the day after tomorrow night. Friends and whatnot in the common rooms. You should come by,” Santi invited her. One more person he could probably save. Maybe.

“Your R.A is cool with a party in the common room?”

“He’s chill, as long as we don’t go overboard he won’t say anything.” Santi was certain that Kyle Vanderbill was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a stick up his ass. He would not be cool with any type of party in the common room.

“Give me your number, and if I’m interested I’ll text you,” her white teeth flashing as she smiled behind her black painted lips. Santi gave her his number and a fast smile as he paid and walked out. It felt good to quasi-flirt. The sticky ethical and moral problems of age were forgotten as he felt the warm spring sun on his face. His mom’s call reminded him he needed to call Cameron and get him to save his family.

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Cam was his neighbor and they had grown up together playing every sport their parents could find. While Santi had gone to college, Cam had stayed at home to help his dad’s small business. The larger boy had waved off every concern about his future while standing shoulder to shoulder with his dad. Cameron was his best friend, thicker than thieves. Cam would die in a few weeks on the road with Bianca.

The phone only rang twice before Cameron picked up. Sounding sleepy even though it was close to the middle of the afternoon.

“What?”

“Morning, gorgeous,” Santi teased as a groan of annoyance echoed over the line. He found himself falling into the same patterns that had defined him for so many years. The gentle teasing, the filial son, even the awkward serial killer flirting.

“What do you want? You never call,” Cameron said through a yawn.

“Your dad’s out of town right?” Santi knew Mr. Murtaugh was out of town. He was up in the mountains and out of cell-phone range. In a few months he would come down out of the mountains a changed man.

“Yeah, some retreat or something with the guys from work. I think it’s just an excuse to go up into the mountains to fish and drink all week.” Cameron had been sold on that theory since they were kids.

“That sounds like Mr. Murtaugh. Hey, think you could do me a favor? I’m needing my bat. I’m going to swing by the day after tomorrow, think you can find it?”

“Why the hell would I have your bat?”

“You borrowed it. Last summer. Remember?” Santi waited as the silence deepened.

“I’ll go and dig it out of the shed. I think that’s where I threw all my gear. Tomorrow you said?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Ok, I can do that. How’s school? Find any mamacitas?”

“Please don’t say that. Your pronunciation of my mother tongue makes me violently ill.” Santi laughed as he mock scolded his oldest friend.

“Yeah yeah, just practicing so I can woo your mom.”

“Who the fuck says woo?”

“I do. It makes me classy.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Always a hater, Santi. But for real, any luck in love?”

“You could ask me about my grades, or if I’ve made any friends, or founded a cult, or anything other than romance.”

“I could.” Cam let the silence deepen as Santi waited in vain for other questions.

“I just talked to this girl at the hardware store. Gave her my number,” Santi conceded.

“My boy, that’s what I’m talking about!” Cameron hollered on the other side, forcing Santi to pull the phone away from his ear while he rolled his eyes.

“How bout you, anything with anyone? That’s not my mom,” Santi cut him off before Cameron could go to that tired old joke.

“Actually yeah! Great girl, smart, funny, and has an amazing smile. Just makes me float every time she looks at me,” Cameron said, his voice softening.

“Who is it? Do I know her?”

“Yeah, you know her.”

“Went to school with her?” Santi pulled out of the parking lot and started heading back toward the abandoned brick building. He would need to stash all the tools and improvised weapons before heading to the supercenter to grab the last of the basic supplies.

“Yeah, a grade below us actually.”

“She’s still in high school? Bro,” Santi let his disappointment seep through his voice. They were close to the same age, but still, high school girls while they were adults?

“Yeah, yeah I know. I’ve known her forever though.”

“It’s my sister isn’t it?” Santi said with a sigh as Cameron started to howl on the other side of the phone. A smile was tickling the corner of his mouth as Cameron was lost to the joy of his rather dumb joke. If it was anyone other than Cameron, who was a frequent guest in their house since the age of six, he would have been angry. Cameron just had a middle school sense of humor.

“Got 'em,” Cameron choked out on the phone between gales of laughter. Santi shook his head and hung up on his best friend, tossing the phone on the bench seat of the truck. The chucklefuck was irritating, but also reliable. He would call him on the night the system came active and have him check on his family. The monsters in the first wave were weak, Santi’s old bat would be more than enough to deal with them. If Cameron went and dug it out of their shed.

Santi pulled up to the old building, back by the crumbled corner of the brick wall, and started to unload. He’d come and get the weapons the night of the system's arrival. Santi was feeling good about his plan, now he just needed to gather the rest of the most basic supplies and wait.