Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 12:50.
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After pondering about how to move the bodies, she decided to wrap the bodies in blankets and sheets, tie them with rope, string, bathrobe sashes, or anything she could tie up to make them easier and less disgusting to transport.
Sara raided her parents' closet for things she could use and found that stringing belts together was also an option. She then steeled herself and tried to move them. They were starting to bloat but weren't stiff like Mr. Taylor was yesterday.
Unwilling to see their naked bodies, she first wrapped her foster father's corpse with a blanket, then rolled as she wrapped the blanket around like she was making a roulade cake. She tied the feet with a belt, then around the shoulders with his own bathrobe sash. Next was her foster mother. She carefully wrapped hier with the stained duvet, then placed a hand on the corpse's head and offered an awkward prayer. Some foster families made a point to take her to Sunday service but she had never paid real attention to it.
Without the strength to lift them, she had to drag the bodies along the floor. Wrapping them proved to be a wise choice as the cloth made the job many times easier. But she couldn't go past the front door. She grumbled as she remembered the hallway was blocked by the child pornography trafficker's corpse. Eww.
After a minute to calm her heart, she felt ready to go back to work. She went to Mr. Taylor's apartment to get some throwaway blankets and stopped at the bedroom door. The joyriding cop impersonator was still there, on the bed, dead as a doornail as the saying went. He'd bled over the mattress and the alleged safe box where Mr. Taylor hid his ill-gotten child-tormenting profits. Her gut impulse was to set it all on fire.
What good were bars of gold now? Who would take payment for anything? Money wasn't a problem either. All anyone needed to do to get loads of cash was to break open an ATM. The bank stockholders were dead, the government was no more, and cash, no longer "legal tender", lost its value. Armageddon was the great social equalizer as everyone became equal in poverty. And soon in loneliness and starvation too, she reckoned.
Sara always considered herself a loner. She was okay by herself. But now, with this ominous and imposing isolation, she desperately wanted someone to talk to. Someone alive, if possible, preferentially one who wasn't trying to harm her or take over her body. Still, she hoped to not see anyone today, loneliness preferable to meeting the megaphone guy who laid claim to Jonesboro road outside. Sara felt trapped in the building and wouldn't dare go outside. Not with psychopaths like the Necropolis King keeping watch.
She wrapped the dead guy in Mr. Taylor's bloody bedsheets, then clean blankets to keep the body fluids from seeping out. She dreaded finding anything terrible among Mr. Taylor's possessions, like kinky or nasty stuff. All she found was all very ordinary. She remembered him saying he would never do anything near where he lived. That rational consideration made him appear more like a normal person and less than a mad psychopathic sex offender and she hated seeing him as anything but a monster. She wanted him to be an inscrutable fiend so she could fully hate him.
She decided to put Mr. Taylor at the bottom of the bodies. He deserved to be beneath the other residents.
*
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*
Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 15:34.
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Dragging dead people over the hallways and stairs was tedious and burdensome but somehow she was pulling it off. Was it the Skills the fairy granted her? Sara was too tired to ponder why. By the twentieth body, she believed the stench of the dead would linger on her skin forever. She hoped she would find a wheelbarrow or a hand cart she could move up and down the stairs but there was no such thing. What did help was a long and narrow carpet she found in one of the apartments. She could load a body on the carpet fluffy side down, then drag it around.
As she went around, picking the locks and trespassing on her neighbors' apartments, she pondered about the ghosts. The quest hinted three of them were in the building, which made four out of forty-seven bodies. Less than eight percent of all the deceased were ghosts if the proportion remained the same everywhere... Sara paused to think about what that represented. Atlanta housed millions of people, and she was certain to find more ghosts than survivors if the trend continued. She had tens of thousands of ghosts out there to meet and maybe gain something from them. Despite the terrible first experience, she was eager to meet them. She would need any advantage to survive in this world.
She briefly checked the apartments. Lakeview Apartments forbade pets but she knew a lot of dogs were there, outside the building. Aside from the wildlife that was smashed to a pulp by the falling debris from Heaven and Hell, the animals survived apparently unscathed. She wanted to have someone to talk to even if it was a dog. She decided unilaterally to abolish the "no pets" rule. She was the new landlady and her word was the rule. She would bring a lab to live with her if she could find one. A fluffy golden retriever!
She started to carry firewood stacked on the bodies. Sara imagined a Viking funeral with the bodies burning under a pyre. It wasn't conventional in America but it was still a form of funeral. She felt bad if she just left the bodies piled up in a corner of the parking lot.
After she moved several dead bodies down to the lobby, she felt like giving up. She snacked on whatever food she could find out in the open that would spoil in a few days. Mostly fruit. She checked the pantries to see who had a good stock of stuff and who didn't. Assessing everything available in the building was crucial to her survival but also a huge bother.
She feared she wouldn't have the energy to finish the job before midnight. Giving the task some thought, she decided to go from the top floor and then move down. That way, the second-floor bodies, the easier ones to move, would come last. Every removable carpet became a corpse gurney. The bodies were bloated and leaky, leaving a trail of body fluids and blood behind like a giant slug from hell. Each carpet could only be used for four or five bodies before it became so disgusting and sticky it couldn't be used anymore.
Her arms burned, and her legs felt like they were made of jello. Dazed, she suspected the "two points of Brawn" were just a hoax of her tired mind. She would surely be stronger after all this exercise, no need for some supernatural aid. Speaking of which, she checked her progress.
> > 1) Move all corpses (40 / 67).
>
> > 1) Run 10 miles (3 / 10).
>
> > 4) Eat at least 15,000 KCal worth of food (37,000 / 15,000).
Sara lamented. Running ten miles meant running ten miles, not walking, crawling, or dragging bodies for ten miles. She surely felt like she'd moved at least twenty by now. She had no idea how she would accomplish the last one. She also knew the System needed energy for something so she splurged on her binge eating. Yet her stomach felt flat when she pressed a hand against it. With a wry chuckle, she gave up on understanding that and attributed it to Celestial wizardry. So long she didn't get fat or run out of food, she wouldn't care.
*
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Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 17:41.
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The world ended at rush hour.
That meant most of Lakeview Apartments' denizens were out, working their nine-to-five day jobs, and probably ended up crushed in the miles-long highway pileup. The backyard parking lot was mostly empty and Sara thought it to be a waste to let it become a graveyard. She arranged the bodies in their makeshift mortuaries in a corner next to the exit and far from the building, in hopes the smoke wouldn't reach all the way back.
She had less than two hours of sunlight left. She could use the several lanterns she found but it would signal her location to every survivor out there. She had to pick up the pace and drag more bodies.
Sara found a treadmill on the fourth floor and ran the remaining miles required for her quest. Tired, she decided to rest a little more. Twelve bodies to go, she could make it.
Night fell and she had only four bodies left to move. Sara shrugged and stopped to think. Now that it was dark, it made no difference when she would finish the quests, so long she finished them before midnight. She could surely rest for a while.
With an alarm set for ten in the night, the girl crashed on a couch of an empty apartment in which nobody died on the third floor. Tired, she fell asleep almost immediately.
*
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
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*
Lake City PD HQ, Lake City, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 20:00
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Worldwide, survivors were slowly waking up from their ordeal. Getting one's body infused with mana for the first time was not only painful, but also put a heavy toll on both body and mind.
Detective Winston Keynes remained unconscious for two whole days. He still ached, like he'd been beaten by some MMA fighter using a meat tenderizer.
in the darkness, he sat alone at his desk, the last cop alive in all of the Atlanta metropolitan area if the radio was to be believed. Or lack thereof. For the last hour since waking up, he hadn't moved from his desk except to use the restroom and back. His mind refused to accept what happened. The cop looked at his dead computer, the emergency generator as dead as the people it should serve.
His coworkers remained where they were, burned by some unknown method. He too burned like them but somehow survived. The memory of his pain and paranoia never left him. It was an attack of some kind. He was sure of it. North Korea might have developed superweapons or China, Al Qaeda, heck, he would believe it if the Vietcongs had come back. Or maybe Hitler survived and became a cyborg.
Levity aside, the fact was that everyone was dead, even the radio frequencies.
"Buzz… Mayday, mayday. Anyone listening in?" The radio decided to come alive just to spite his musings.
The detective pounced on the device. "Ten-four, I read you. This is Lake City PD. ten-twenty? Over."
"Ten-four, this is Forest Park PD, Lake City. Officer Jones speaking. We got hit by some incendiary device two days ago and I just woke up this morning. What's your status? Over."
"Same here. Everyone's dead, burned. We didn't have a fire, though. I'm the only survivor. What's the status of the rest of the force? Over."
"We are alone here. Regrettably, I know nothing but there's not much hope, Keynes. All channels are dead. We have a situation here. Some psycho took over Fort Gillem and is shooting survivors on sight. Do you have any leads on that? Over."
"I heard some shots, yes. But I'm all alone here. How many survivors do you have? Over."
"I recruited five civilian volunteers, one of them a former military officer. We cannot let that psychopath have Fort Gillem and intend to assault his position. Do you want to join?"
"Count me in. Where are you now?"
*
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Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 20:17.
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At the intersection between the two arterial roads of Forest Park, one would find a mid-rise office building. It had windows facing all four directions and was perfect to control the neighborhood, including the nearby military base. While a girl suffered an existential crisis after meeting the last Celestial to die, one man decided to crown himself the King of the southeastern metropolitan area. His goal was to extend his control all the way to I-75 and eventually take over Hartsfield-Jackson airport and find a pilot so he could fly out of this shithole and find somewhere civilization still existed. He had access to military aircraft on Morris Airfield, but none of his drafted personnel knew how to fly them.
He could see that Atlanta was done for, the city was in ruins, but had no idea if this was a localized situation or not. The lack of radio contact from Washington or other military bases was concerning and hinted at something on a global scale. He fancied himself the king who would rebuild civilization. That was how he sold his views to his small but growing army.
That, and the promise of food, sex, and shelter. Until now, the women he drafted have been relegated to work on comforting his forces.
Some idiots attempted to take what was rightfully his. They died without exception. But right now, he couldn't leave his building. He didn't trust the new recruits. Thankfully, he had secured the military base supplies, including the precious ammunition. He was sure he could out-gun anyone who came at him. After he gathered few loyal lieutenants among the survivors, he would be ready to carve his own kingdom out of America's corpse.
This was none other than the "Necropolis King", as said girl a couple of blocks to the north started calling him.
His radio buzzed. "We got incoming," Martin, one of the promising lieutenants, said. "Two police vehicles approaching from the north on Jonesboro, over."
The Necropolis King replied, "Copy that. Wake up the boys, it's showtime. Those freaks need to learn who's in charge here."
*
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Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 20:18.
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Sara woke up with a startle. She could hear more gunfire outside along with a lot of shouting. This time, not two but several voices. She went to the corner of the window and looked out into the dark road. She could see the glare of gunfire breaking the pitch-black night like small jolts of lightning in a dark night. Then the light of lanterns moved to and fro. Cries of pain, angry cursing.
It was war outside. The survivors, instead of banding up to, well, survive, decided they should play live-action Battlegrounds Enemy Unknown, Call of Duty, or some other equally stupid shooting game. The tell-tale sound of the Necropolis King's automatic guns rang out then went silent. She heard panicked shouts from the attackers. Her quests hadn't progressed a bit and she only had a few hours to finish. She couldn't risk using the lanterns, only the faint light of the smartphone screens. Checking the sky, she couldn't see a single star behind the dark cloud cover.
Her body wanted to go back to sleep but she couldn't. Not only did she wince and startle with each shot fired outside, but she also had to clear the building, at least. That meant risking some light. She couldn't be out in the wild concrete jungle without somewhere to go back to. She would be killed by those bellicose survivors, or worse, captured. This building was all she had. It was her fortress, her castle.
Sara moved the remaining bodies to the parking lot and piled all of them on the stack of doused firewood. She still had several bottles of vodka, whiskey, and raw cleaning alcohol to use.
> > 1) Move all corpses out of the building (67 / 67).
The quest said nothing about burning the bodies but she felt obliged to do it. Her neighbors didn't deserve to be left without a proper burial and Mr. Taylor deserved to burn. Afraid the light would be seen from the main street, she left a flashlight on and walked around the back, seeing if the light would reach all the way. Satisfied, she poured all the booze on the bodies, then used a bathrobe sash drenched in Jack Daniels as the wick. She leaned against a jeep as the pyre was engulfed by the flames. Sara took the last swig from the bottle of Jack, immediately spitting the burning liquor and hacking like a cat spitting a furball. She decided she hated whiskey.
Witnessing the funeral was the least she could do. The smoke rose straight into the windless night. She hoped the warring survivors out there would be too busy to check or that they were too engrossed in the shooting games to bother. That's when she felt a presence.
Sara turned around and found a neighbor, an old lady she never had the chance to talk to. She seemed a century older than she actually was but she knew it was a reflex of her spiritual self. She had no other deformities that Sara could see except for her smile. It reminded her of the Cheshire Cat.
"Thank you, Sara," the old lady said. "For granting my old Hubert his final rest."
She looked familiar but Sara couldn't put a name to the face. "You're welcome, ma'am," she said as she stood up. "I don't recall your name."
"My name is inconsequential," she dismissed Sara's concern with a wry chuckle. "I was not long for this world anyway. Cancer."
"I see. I'm sorry, but who's Hubert?"
Her eyes brightened as she pointed at the pyre. "My next-door crush!" She giggled like a teenage girl in love as she blushed. "Can you believe it? I had twelve great-grandkids, dozens of grandsons, and yet I was infatuated with the cantankerous old goose living next door!" She sighed. "I never declared my love."
Sara's heart skipped a beat. She could literally feel the old woman's love for the man irradiating from the ghost. "Why didn't you—"
"Oh, don't be silly!" The giggling old ghost waved a hand. "How could I confess my love at this age? I was too old, I had to keep my image as a respectable lady!"
"I see. Sorry for your loss."
She snorted, "Pfft. All water under the table. I appreciate the sentiment, though. Thank you, Sara."
Sara felt ashamed. "You know my name?"
"Of course. There's very little to do at my age other than poking my nose at other people's lives. I knew your foster mother. You were a blessing to them. They couldn't have kids, did you know?"
Sara lowered her head, "I didn't."
"You honored them too. You honored the whole building and its inhabitants. We are very thankful."
The girl was tearing up, "I didn't do it from the goodness of my heart."
"Nonsense. You couldn't have rotting bodies next to your home. It's unsanitary. The dead care not for their belongings. What matters is that you did the right thing. Your motives are your own. If anything, I feel sorry for leaving you alone."
Right after she said that the ghost vanished. Sara felt bad she didn't press for a name but understood the old lady. She knew why the old woman didn't give her one. A name would be only a burden.
> > Assignment Completed. You successfully helped the ghost move on.
>
> > You gained 2 point in Flattery.
>
> > You gained 2 point in Presence.
"Give me the details on these new Skills," Sara ordered.
> > Flattery (Social skill): Making graceful compliments and answering them appropriately. Increases reactions during and after intimate interactions by 2% per rank. Current rank: 1.
>
> > Presence (Social skill): Motivating people with the power of your personality. Increases reactions during and after social interactions by 2% per rank. Current rank: 1.
Sara understood that "Intimate" included but wasn't limited to interactions of a sensual nature. She also felt those skill descriptions were oddly familiar to her.
*
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Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 9th, 2019. 22:59.
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After the fire died down, Sara got another floating window hallucination.
> > Daily Quests Completed.
>
> > Rewards:
>
> > 1) You gained 2 points in Adroitness.
>
> > 2) You gained 2 points of System Core Strength.
>
> > 1) You gained 2 points in Brawn.
>
> > 2) You gained 2 point in Prowess.
This time, the sentient System Core offered her the new Skills description without her request.
> > Prowess (Physical skill): Making the most of one physique during stressful situations. Lower reflex delay, increases combat damage and physical power by 2% per rank. Current rank: 2.
And as she swiped the message away, another window-like hallucination popped up.
> > Quest Completed.
>
> > 3) You gained 2 points in Brawn.
>
> > Hidden Objective Completed.
>
> > 1) Make sure the bodies aren't left to decay or become vermin food.
>
> > 2) Eat 10,000 calories or more over your Daily Quest Requirement.
>
> > Reward:
>
> > 1) ~ 75% less vermin in your building.
>
> > 2) 2 points of System Core Strength.
"What is System Core Strength?"
"What external energy requirements?"
She had to ask, "So at higher Core Strength you won't make me eat as much?"
She chuckled as the words vanished from her sight. "As if that would be a bad idea."
She went upstairs and crashed on an empty bed in a random apartment where nobody died.