Loch stood at the top of the concrete stairs, two guards standing on either side of the double doors. They had stood at attention when Loch walked outside. He looked from one to the other, recognizing them.

“Do we really need to do this every time?,” he asked.

“Sorry sir,” the one on the left said.

“Eddie,” Loch chided.

“Sorry,” Eddie Smith, the guard on the left, said, relaxing a little. “Habit.”

Loch sighed. All the guards in the Clan stood at attention when Loch walked by. He found it annoying, but could understand it. For some, it was pretty deeply ingrained from the time they had spent in the various service branches. Loch remembered that instinct to immediately snap to attention when a superior walked into the room.

‘You’re the boss so…,” the guard on the right, Dan Chase, said with a shrug.

“I get it,” Loch said, looking out over the yard. “Just don’t have to like it.

Both guards laughed. Loch had been trying to learn more names of the people in the Clan. It was hard with so many new people appearing, it seemed at least every other day a new group was arriving. Sometimes it was just two or three, other times almost a dozen. They were starting to come from as far away as Lee and Chicester. Loch wasn’t sure why the folks in Lee didn’t go to Dover, or the Chicester people head to Concord. They weren’t sure either.

Just something drew them toward Northwood.

Cerie had said it was the Holdstone, sending out pulses across the ambient Spirit of the world, attracting the Clanless. It would only do so for a relatively short amount of time, for a year or less after the Clan was established. And it only happened on newly Connected worlds. It was a way for the newly Adapted to gather forces quicker. The Connection was hard and dangerous, but it needed its Adapted to survive and to thrive. It knew not everyone would become an elite adventurer, constantly striving to push their own boundaries and consequently sending Spirit to the Connected System. Those elites needed lower Leveled people for a variety of purposes. Not everyone would be able to Level. There needed to be functionaries, crafters, workers. All the people needed to keep a society functioning. They needed protection and that was found in joining together under the banner of an elite.

Which in this case was Loch.

There had to be Clans or at least camps of survivors in the cities. But if people were being drawn to Northwood, did that mean Loch was the strongest in the wider area?

The school yard was busy like always. Aside from the Dungeon’s building, there was nothing in the yard between the school and the wall. The ground sloped down, the pavement all removed. Workers were evening the rough ground out, filling in holes and other gaps. Through the gaps in the wall, Loch could see the crops in the lower fields. More crops were being tilled on the upper athletic feeds, including the one furthest back where they had found the pond with the strange flowers.

He could barely see the construction of the watchtowers that would help protect that field from roving monsters. He wasn’t sure who would man those towers, as they were still far short of all the guards they needed. It would be awhile before there were enough people, but at least the towers would be there. Maybe eventually even a wall.

Tim DeWolfe, the Clan’s new Construction Supervisor, had worked with Penny Potter, the former Landscape Architect, to come up with a way of walling off the fields and supplying water to each level. It was still in the planning stages, from what Loch had been told, but it sounded impressive.

Something that Pre-Connection would have cost millions of dollars and probably taken at least a year to build, probably another year to get through the entire design process, but would now take weeks and only cost in materials and labor. The benefits of Adapted bodies, Skills and Abilities.

Penny had come up with a plan for the schoolyard, what was now being called the courtyard. She was going to terrace the slope, fill it all with grass except for some walking paths using salvaged pavers. She said it would be a good place for the Clan to gather and be addressed from the leadership standing at the steps.

The slopes would be reworked, with the walks increasing toward the planned larger and gated entrance in the wall to the west and through the earthen berm, and future wall, to the east. All the dirt being removed and reworked was being piled to form the berms. That wall was going good but would need a lot more dirt to really be a defense.

Loch walked down the concrete steps, turning right and walking around the corner of the building, passing between it and the Dungeon. Turning the corner he saw the large amount of work that was being done in the side parking lot. The barracks and bunkhouses weren’t fancy, functional and the minimum to make them that way. They would serve their purpose.

Two were done, a bunkhouse and barracks and Loch made his way toward the bunkhouse. It was long and wide with gable ends and a steeply sloping roof made of metal sheets. The building was logs, but had been insulated on the interior. Multiple windows lined the long side, most taken from nearby homes that had been knocked down for materials. They were different sizes and shapes, but thanks to the Abilities of the Carpenters, they fit in the walls with no leakage.

The buildings were off the ground, raised up on thick wood piles, leaving a couple feet open underneath. Wooden steps led up to a covered porch that spanned the whole front. The door was in the middle of the wall with windows on either side. Walking up the stairs, Loch opened the door and went inside.

A front quarter of the building was open with a long hallway leading off from the middle of the back wall all the way to the endwall, where Loch could see another door. In one corner of the room was the beginnings of a stone hearth. In the other were some reused cabinets. They didn’t match and were in rough shape from demolition and reinstallation. A roughly cut countertop was laid over them, more hanging from the wall above. One top of one was a low basin with a pump handle next to it.

There was no plumbing yet, but it was planned for the near future. Most likely after the winter. Lengths of copper piping were being stored in the basement of the school. Loch could remember when thieves would break into abandoned homes or those under construction just to steal copper piping. Unlike the rest of the bunkhouse that looked to be of decent construction, the cabinets and countertop looked like what they were, reused.

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The decision had been made to get the structure built. With so many cabinets and such taken from the surrounding buildings, the Clan had a surplus. It made no sense to waste new material on constructing them when they could just reuse what they had. In the future, they could redo it, but the hope was that the bunkhouses wouldn’t be needed for that long.

There was no furniture in what was meant to be a common area. Couches, chairs, dining tables and other furniture would be brought from nearby houses soon enough. It would be mismatched but at least it would exist.

Moving down the hallway, there were three doors on either side, evenly spaced. He opened the closest one revealing a small empty room. The beds either weren’t moved in yet or the frames hadn’t been built. Each room was meant to house a single family and would be fit with beds to match that families needs. Single beds or bunks. One window let light into the room.

There were no personal touches yet. Not that many of the families in the Clan had managed to bring anything beyond a few pictures. The wooden walls were bare and would probably remain so. Nails would be pounded into the wood to provide hooks to hang jackets and such from. Chests and wardrobes, which were rare, would be brought in to store anything the family had. There were plenty of dining room hutches, and those would be used as storage. If they could fit. Hutches tended to be large and there wasn’t that much space in the rooms.

Each room was meant to house a family for sleeping and not much else. The common room would be for cooking, once they reached that point, and hanging out. Even then, that room would be tight. With being able to move more families out of the school building, freeing up those rooms, the plan was to start more social functions in the classrooms. Game nights, reading groups. Someone had suggested Dungeons & Dragons but that had quickly been shot down. They were now living a real setting. There was no need to pretend. The scavengers had been finding, and grabbing, trading card game decks that they’d found. There was a small collection growing.

They were going to need as much social entertainment as they could find with the long winter months coming quickly. Food was going to be scarce, making everyone even hungrier than they were now. And with expected fierce weather, the worry was everyone in the Clan being trapped inside the school for days with little to do.

Loch closed the door behind him, heading back to the common room. There was no need to look at the other rooms. They were all the same, all the same size so there wouldn’t be any arguing over preferential treatment or jealousy over someone getting a bigger space. Except Loch knew there would be as not all families were the same size.

This bunkhouse was meant for families of three to four. The family of four would get a bunk bed with the family of three just a single bed. It would take up the same footprint in the room, but the family of three would appear to have more space just because there would be one less kid.

The other bunkhouse, not yet completed, was meant for families of five to six. Not that they had many families of that size yet, but the Council had felt it best to plan ahead. Currently, they only needed the two bunkhouses for families, but there were at least two more planned for future newcomers to the Clan. Probably more would be built as it gave people something to work on.

Exiting the bunkhouse, Loch moved down to the first of the barracks buildings. These were set further from the school, near the church with the watchtower. The dirt berm was laid off the corner of the building, heading across the road. It wasn’t that high yet, but there was a team working on it. They had left a gap in the wall for a future gate.

The barracks wasn’t designed much differently from the bunkhouse. It was longer, and a little wider, but had the gable ends and the porch on the front. The completed one was built tight up against the old school building. The half-completed one was ten feet to the side.

Walking inside, Loch saw a large common area. It was bigger than the one in the bunkhouse. Longer with two fireplaces, one in the front left corner and the other in the back right corner. There was more space for tables and chairs. The kitchen was larger with more cabinets. He could imagine some couches and chairs near the fireplaces with tables in the rest of the space. A long hallway led down the middle, a door at the far end. Each side of the hall only had two doors, one at the front and the other at the back of the hall.

Opening a door, Hall looked into a long and open room. There were two windows down the length. It was wide enough for beds down both the exterior and interior walls, with space for chests or cabinets between. He couldn’t remember how many people had been planned to stay in the room. A quick estimate Loch thought the room could sleep twenty, forty if they had bunk beds. Which was proving hard to find. There weren’t that many of them in the surrounding houses. They were on the planned list of projects for the carpenters and woodworkers, but far down the list as there weren’t the number of guards, yet, that would require them.

The other room across the hall was the same.

Walking down the hall, Loch opened the door at the end, stepping into the school building. The door had been the main entrance off the parking lot, opening into a waiting area or lobby. He’d never been in the building when it was part of the school so hadn’t known what it was used for. There was a staircase that went to the second floor. The rest of the first floor had been offices and a little kitchen area. That was now gone, the office walls removed to open the space up. The windows facing east, what would become outside the wall, had been mostly boarded up. They had been larger windows, now with a smaller visible glass space. Upstairs was the same, the office walls removed to make a single larger space. The plan was for more bunks when needed. That was the future, currently the building was serving as storage for large items. There were mattresses stacked up across the floor and leaning against the walls. A couch and a set of matching chairs were against the far wall. Folding chairs were stuffed everywhere there was space.

With the scavengers expanding their efforts further from the school, workers were dragging the larger pieces of furniture out of the nearby houses. Some had already been completely demolished for building materials. It was hard work, even with Adapted bodies, getting couches, mattresses and tables back. Loch didn’t envy the people tasked with that job.

He didn’t bother going upstairs, instead exiting the way he entered.

Stepping outside, Loch looked around, impressed by the progress he saw. It wasn’t where the Clan needed to be, but it was getting there. Ed Turner, with Kristin and the others, were doing an amazing job. They had the Clan heading in the right direction.

Loch was about to turn to the right, head through the gap in the berm and check out the cemetery spawn field when a group of people walking across the yard caught his attention.

Theodore was leading about a half dozen people. Loch recognized Mike Turner but wasn’t sure about the others. They had to be newer arrivals. Whoever they were, they seemed to be listening to everything Theodore said. The younger man was leading them down towards the water.

Loch wondered why. There was nothing down there. He was tempted to follow. Something about Theodore just felt off, but he didn’t. He had no reasons to distrust the man. From his actions, he was doing everything he could to help protect the Clan.

There was no reason to follow, Loch thought, as he headed toward the spawn field.