Callum walked into the store through the open hole in the front that he guessed must have held an automatic door. He glanced around to see if he had missed the worker on his first pass, but there was still noone other than him or the teenagers.

The teenagers were what he needed to deal with next. “Hey, what are you doing?”

The three of them nearly jumped out of their skin as they spun to see him standing there at the front of the store.

“Oh shit! Someones here.” One of them said before scrambling to get out the door.

Callum didn’t really want to panic them, just get them out of the store. He didn’t care about the beer, but it was barely a few hours into the apocalypse and people were already looting.

A moment after they ran out of where the door used to be, Eliza came slinking in.

“They bolted quick.” she said before turning to the shelves.

Callum started to look through the shelves when he heard another noise from the back of the store. It sounded like someone was talking, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“Hey, is anyone back there?” he called out.

“Please don’t kill me. I promise my brains don’t taste good,” came the response.

What the hell? “I’m not gonna eat your brains, I just want to buy some food.”

Callum waited a moment before someone came out of the back, brandishing a broom. Callum took a step back, not wanting to provoke the guy. When he looked closer, he saw the worker’s eyes were completely bloodshot.

Oh, he’s high as a kite.

Once the guy saw that Callum was not, in fact, a zombie, he lowered the broom.

“I don’t care, man. Just take it. It’s the fucking apocalypse and you’re worried about paying for some food.”

Callum held up his hands in a placating manner.“Okay, okay. Point taken.”

The worker slipped into the back a moment later. Callum glanced at Eliza and saw her crouched with a white knuckle grip on the knife.

“Whoa, easy with the knife. He’s harmless. I think he smoked something and the whole apocalypse warning freaked him out.” He kept his voice down this time, not wanting to draw out the worker again. Under his breath, he added, “Can I just have one normal interaction with someone.”

Turning to the shelves, he looked for anything that would keep for a long time. Or at least long enough that he could teach himself how to hunt. With that thought, he realized he knew almost nothing about how to survive without modern conveniences.

I don’t know how to start a fire, cook, make shelter, find water. This is gonna be really bad.

He realized he was starting to spiral, and took a few deep breaths to calm himself. There was a library further into the city. There were probably some books there on survival.

Focusing on the task in front of him, he put as much into his backpack as he felt he could carry. Every so often, he would put it on to see if it was getting too heavy. Each time he thought it would be too much to carry, it still felt light. After several weighings, he found that he could practically fill the pack with food before it got too heavy.

When he was done, he checked on Eliza and found that she had just stuffed food into her cargo pants rather haphazardly.

“You didn’t bring a backpack?” Callum asked.

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“Uhh, no. Didn’t think this through did I?” She laughed nervously.

Callum was curious why she would come all this way for food but decided not to question it. He hadn’t thought about her lack of a backpack when she first mentioned she was headed to the store, but he was still ingrained in the thinking of you could put it in the car.

Their shopping trip, if you could call it that, was over and Callum looked around once more to see if the worker had come back out on the off chance he would ring them up.

If all the electronics are gone, then I don’t think he could ring us up even if he wanted to.

Callum shrugged and pulled twenty dollars out of his wallet to leave on the counter. Paper money might not have any meaning in the coming days, but he still felt bad just taking the food.

With a silent nod, Callum and Eliza began the journey back the way they came. Callum tried once more to engage Eliza in conversation but quickly grew tired of the arduous process of getting any more information out of her.

As they walked, Callum watched Eliza slink from shadow to shadow, trying her best to stay hidden. As he watched, it seemed like she was getting better and better at staying hidden. She never really went out of sight, but nearing the four mile point back to his apartment, he turned a corner and it took him a few seconds before he noticed her.

Is her hair getting darker? I remember it being bright red when I first spotted her, but now it seems to be fading. Probably just the shadows.

About a mile past where he had first encountered her, he went to turn one way back to his apartment when she stopped.

“This is where we split. I’m goin’ the other way. Nice meeting you.”

She started to walk away before Callum stopped her.

“Wait. That’s it? I know we just met, but there is the whole apocalypse thing hanging over our heads.”

“Uhh, yeah. Places to be and all that.” Callum noticed the same nervousness from earlier creep back into her face.

“Well you’re the only other person I have found that unlocked a class. It could be beneficial for us to stick together. The warning this morning said we have twenty-four hours before the true apocalypse. How about we meet back here tomorrow morning before the time that the warning showed up this morning. That’s a little before nine o’clock if you manage to find a clock that works.”

“Sure. That works.”

“Okay. Tomorrow morning. See you then.”

She didn’t say anything else, just nodded and walked off. Callum was a bit confused by her behavior and watched for a moment until she turned down a block and was out of sight.

Callum was ready to get back to his apartment. He had tested the weight before he left the store but realized that being able to lift the weight and being able to carry it six miles back to his apartment were two entirely different things.

As he walked, Callum’s thoughts came back to Ryan. He felt bad for slipping out on him like that but had no interest in sitting through a rant of Ryan’s. He held no ill will for the guy, but he had a tendency to go way into detail on things and it made talking to him for any length of time a bit of a chore.

That small knot of guilt from just leaving was starting to weigh on him. In an attempt to alleviate that, he decided that he would help Ryan unlock a class. At least that would help set him up for success.

The other line of thought that Callum went down was what if he had to use the sword. He had brought it with him partially on a whim, and also because it had unlocked a class for him. It wasn’t that he was completely averse to violence, it was just that a sword was something that had the potential to kill if he used it to defend himself.

Other than the few fights he had been in growing up, Callum was very unaccustomed to being in a life-or-death scenario. He felt good about how he had handled Eliza and the worker in the shop, but if either had chosen to attack him, he wondered if he could have drawn the sword.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Callum focused back on the walk. He was nearly back to his apartment complex anyway.

As he made his way through the apartment building, he listened to see if he could hear anyone else talking or making noise. It was normally a quiet building, but now the silence seemed anticipatory.

He passed by Ryan’s apartment and it was the only one that he heard anything from. He seemed to still be rambling, but surely he had taken a breath at some point. Callum only caught a few words, but it seemed now he had moved on to worrying about food.

Callum put down his backpack and set about stocking his pantry. He hadn’t been able to get a whole lot, but it would probably last him a few weeks. Knowing that most cooked goods were probably out until he could build a fire, dry foods were what made up the bulk of his haul.

With the food put away, Callum once again was searching through his apartment. This time he was looking for anything that could be a weapon. He had some kitchen knives that might work, but just to be sure he kept looking.

Unsurprisingly, there was nothing else that stood out as an actual weapon. Having a real, forged weapon was a stroke of luck. The only other thing he could find that might qualify was a hammer that his landlord had forgotten in the apartment the last time he was fixing something.

Figuring that would have to do, he grabbed a kitchen knife and the hammer and went to knock on Ryan’s door.

Again, Ryan opened it just a crack, the chain latch still in place, until he saw Callum and quickly pulled him inside.

“Where’d you go?” Ryan nervously hissed.

“To get food. You got me thinking about preparing for the worst, so I slipped out to grab some food.” Callum sheepishly responded.

“Really? How was it out there? Is it the end of the world?” Ryan’s typical rapid-fire questions came back at Callum. He held up a hand to forestall any more.

Callum proceeded to give Ryan a brief overview of what had happened, including the run-in with Eliza and the teenagers looting the store. Once that was done, Callum proceeded to explain the class choice he was given.

“Classes, and stats? Like and RPG?”

“Yeah, it seems that way.” Ryan was taking this fairly well. “I know it sounds hard to believe, but I think I can prove it. Here, take my sword and see if that opens anything up.”

Callum pulled the sword from his belt and handed it over to Ryan.

"No, nothing is happening. You're sure that's all you did? Just pick it up?"

"That's it. Maybe it can't be used multiple times. I'm not sure." Callum took his sword back from Ryan and grabbed the hammer next. "It's not exactly a weapon, but a hammer can be used as a weapon, so it could work."

Callum handed Ryan the hammer. Once his hand closed around the hilt, Callum saw Ryan’s eyes unfocus, as if he was reading something Callum couldn’t see.

Wow, I’m surprised that worked.

Callum watched Ryan for a few moments as he could see the gears of Ryan’s mind turning. Ryan’s eyes shot open when it looked like he got to the end.

Ah, he must have gotten to the end. I wonder what it unlocked.

“Seriously? You get something cool like duellist, and I get crafter?”