Once I’d calmed down, I complimented all parties involved for a job well done, with actual words, this time.

“Mick-Chicken, you were killer, well done!” I received a proud nod in return.

“Fry, you literally saved my life! Thank you.” He gave me a thumbs up.

I knelt down and offered each one a hand. They hopped onto my palms, and I raised them up to my shoulders where they assumed position.

I needed to deal with the now unbarred front entrance. I didn’t want any more uninvited guests in the building.

I took the stairs two at a time, and reached the bottom in the span of a minute. The chair that had been blocking the door was now toppled over inside the stairwell, but I left it where it was and peered into the lobby. There was nothing there, thankfully. I wasn’t sure I could handle another encounter so soon.

I needed to re-block the front entrance. I jogged over to the broom that I’d left laying on the floor, and shoved it back between the handles. For good measure I shoved in one of the broken halves of the standing lamp I had too, wrapping the power cord around the whole mess to make a knot.

I realized I should probably put a note on the door as well, so that no one made my mistake and opened the building up to invading undead like a dumbass.

I raided the front office for some paper and a pen. I found those, wrote in big lettering not to open the front door, and put my cellphone number on it in case anyone needed details. I still didn’t have cell service, but maybe that would change later. I traipsed over to the front door, and then noticed I forgot to look for tape.

I walked back to the office, and started rummaging for scotch tape. I couldn’t find any, so I ended up using post-it notes to attach the larger piece of printer paper to the door. The end result was a single piece of white paper with some sharpie on it, surrounded by neon pink post-its.

At least it was attention grabbing.

Allright, time to get to 215.

I made my way back to the stairs, checking my display while I was at it. I noticed that my CR had gone up by a point. So that confirmed that the undead menace were in fact the ‘hostile forces’ that I’d been told about.

As I made my way up the stairs, I checked the time on my phone. For some reason my new magical display didn’t come with a clock.

It was 12:45. Man, it felt like it should have been later. It had been an eventful hour and change.

I put away my cell and refocused. It was possible that more nasties were in the building than the few I had met. There was about an hour timeframe in which the front door had been unblocked and the door to the stairs had been propped open. Any number of things could have made their way into the building in that time.

I made it up the stairs without running into anything, and was extra careful when I exited the stairwell. I was now on the second floor. It looked clear, from where I was standing, and I didn’t hear anything.

Though that was still a bit odd, come to think of it. I couldn’t be the only one out and about and getting into trouble. I mean people might just be holing up in their apartments, but it was way too quiet for even that.

Where had everyone gone? Maybe there really was an evacuation and I just missed it somehow?

I didn’t know, so I just moved on. 215 was close after all. I walked down the hall, and made a left turn. I was looking for the last door on the right.

It was exactly where I’d expected it to be, thankfully.

I knocked on the door, following a specific rhythm.

Shave and a haircut, two bits.

I did so mostly out of habit.

I heard the slight noise of wheels on linoleum, and a voice called out.

“Is that you Leo?”

“Yeah.” I responded.

“Are you sure?”

“I mean. . . I’m pretty sure?”

“Well, that response doesn't inspire confidence, man.”

“I didn’t. . . realize I was supposed to be inspiring confidence?”

“I mean, how do I know you're actually Leo, and not some sort of terrible monster that wants to consume my tender flesh?” she asked.

“Ok, first of all, I’ve seen your biceps, tender is not the adjective that we’re working with here. In fact, I’m pretty sure tenderness is the last thing anybody would accuse you of.”

“Fuck you too!”

The door opened. And in the entrance was just the person I’d been hoping to see.

“Hello Miss Madeline,” I said.

“Hi. Do you have any Idea as to what in the actual hell is going on?”

“Nope, but given that you had to confirm I wasn’t a flesh eating monster, I take it you met something nasty too?”

“Yeah, a giant lizard screamed at me.”

“Wait what.”

“Just come inside before I change my mind and shut the door on you.”

I did so.

I stood in the kitchenette next to the entrance for a second, and looked around Madeline’s unit. I didn’t actually get to see the place very often, despite having known Miss Madeline for about half a year at that point.

Part of the reason for this, I suspected, was that the place was almost perpetually a mess. I saw laundry strewn around the furniture in the living room, and the lid to the standing garbage can next to me was offset in the way that happened when the garbage can was overfull. And, unlike me, Miss Madeline had her unit completely to herself, so no one else could be blamed for the state of the place.

Madeline noticed my staring.

“Look man, given our present circumstances I think I can be forgiven for not being up on the housekeeping.”

I turned to stare at her in turn.

Miss Madeline had wavy platinum hair that went to her jawline, and blue eyes. She also had enough upper body strength to crush my head like a grape with but a single arm. She was, in fact, jacked as all hell, and had a tight fitting athletics shirt on that hid not a bit of her muscle. This was matched by a pair of gym shorts, and she had some expensive looking sneakers on her feet. She was sitting in her murderball wheelchair, as opposed to her normal type 4.

“Did you kill the lizard with that chair?”

“No, I just shot it with my gun.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I just switched to this chair after the lizard incident.”

“Then, are you planning to kill something with that chair?” In fairness, I had my reasons for asking. I’d seen her play quad rugby in that chair, and I knew just what sort of damage it could do.

“Ideally not, but I will if it comes down to it. The main reason I switched, though, was because my type 4 broke.”

“Did the lizard break it?”

“No, I did, I think. Hey, do you have one of these?”

She showed me the back of her hand. On it was a familiarly shaped tattoo. Though the emblem in the center of it was different from mine. Hers was a quad rugby ball.

“I do actually, here.” I showed the back of my hand to her.

“Huh. Is that one of your robots in the center there? And hold on, what do you have on your shoulders?”

“Oh these guys? I’m pretty sure I’ve sent you pictures of them both before.”

“You may have, but you send me pics of your robots all the time and frankly I can’t tell any of them apart.”

She shook her head, “But that’s not the important thing here, are they. . . moving?

“Yep. Wave hello guys.” Both of them dutifully waved their arms, though Mick-chicken did so with more enthusiasm than Fry.

“Huh. And this is normal to you?”

“No, but so much has happened in the last hour that it’s superseded my ability to really process anything.”

“That’s not good.”

“Yeah I’m pretty sure I’m in shock. Give me another hour or so and I’ll probably have another breakdown.”

“Another breakdown?” she questioned, arching a brow. She probably would have arched both, but she kind of had a Stallone thing going on with her facial expressions, partial facial paralysis, I think she told me.

“Yeah I got stabbed, and that led to my first meltdown of the day,” I said.

“Stabbed!? Are you ok!?” she expressed with genuine panic.

“Emotionally no, but physically I’m fine.”

“Oh, wait, shit, did you use one of those first aid kit thingies?”

“You mean the healing potions?”

“No I mean- just look at this.” She opened her display and pointed at an icon in her inventory. It was a box with a cross on it. There was a x2 symbol in the bottom right of it, indicating that she only had two.

I showed my display to her and pointed to the icon representing the single healing potion I had.

“See, I have potions.”

“And I have first aid kits. I wonder if they work differently?”

“Have you tested yours yet?” I asked, somewhat rhetorically.

She winced. “Unfortunately, yes. Honestly it's been a hell of a morning on my end. You might want to take a seat though, it's a bit of a story.”

“That sounds great,” I said, “But I’m not sure we have the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I think it’s fair to say that we’re in the middle of some sort of disaster, because I don’t have internet, or cell service.”

“That certainly does sound like a disaster.” She said with her usual lopsided smirk.

“No I mean-” I interrupted myself, “Look, I saw a car that was on fire! And a building was smashed! And there are monsters!”

“I know,” she said. “I was just messing with you.”

“Oh.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Yep.”

“But still, something is going on and we should be prepared, is my point.”

“Ok, what sort of preparation are we talking about, here?” She asked.

“Uhh. . .” I struggled to come up with an answer for a minute. What did people normally do in the middle of disasters like this?

“Water!” I shouted. “We should be bottling water and filling up bathtubs!”

“Well, I have a two-liter,” she pointed to a metal bottle on the counter. “But it's already full and I don’t have a bathtub.”

“Neither do I.” I said. In fact, I didn’t think there were any bathtubs in the building, just showers.

“We could still fill the kitchen sink, but. . .” She glanced at the sink. It was full of dirty dishes.

“Gosh darnit Madeline!”

“Look man, I don’t go to your apartment and judge you for your sink full of dirty dishes!”

“Except I live with other people! You have your unit for yourself!”

“And yet somehow, whenever I’m over to your place, it's always someone else’s turn to do the dishes!”

“I told you, Jacob will put that shit off for weeks! And the other two won’t keep their hands off of each other long enough to do anything!”

We glared at each other for a second, both of us knowing the argument was unproductive, but neither of us mature enough to concede.

“If you do the dishes, I’ll clean off my couch so you have somewhere to sleep,” Miss Madeline offered, as a form of amnesty.

“Fine. Where do you keep your sponges and dish soap?”

Madeline directed me to a cabinet just to the right of the sink. The kitchen sink itself didn’t have a cabinet under it, as that way her wheelchair and her legs could fit under the sink. Upshot of that was that the sink didn’t have anywhere to put a garbage disposal. That was fine, my place didn’t come with a disposal either.

I set my mechas on the counter and got to excavating one half of the double bay sink, and after it was empty I donned some rubber gloves and started removing food debris from the basin. Thankfully it hadn’t actually been that long since Miss Madeline had done the dishes, so nothing had rotted into mush yet. There were just some dried bits of pasta and a few bits of gunk adhered to the stainless steel. Once that side of the sink was clean I started filling it with hot water and soap.

While I did that Madeline rolled to her room and came back with a laundry basket that she started filling with the clothes that had been carpeting every part of her upholstery. Well, all except her Lazy boy recliner, which I noticed had remained clear of any mess.

“Anyway, while we’re both cleaning, I figure we can talk,” she said.

“Allright,” I said as I scraped dried spaghetti from some plates, “you said you had a story.”

“Right. I Woke up pretty late this morning, around 10:30 or so, and I was feeling a bit hungover so I decided to head to the rooftop to get some fresh air. Of course I then found out that the elevators were both out of order. I called the office and got nothing, but you know that’s nothing new here.”

“I figured then that if I was going to have to take the stairs anyway, I might as well just go to the roof and wait until I felt a little less like death before I bitched at the poor assholes on shift at the front desk.”

“How did going up nine flights of stairs seem like an equal amount of effort compared to just going down one?” I asked.

“I was very hungover. Also only working on about 5 hours sleep.”

“That’d do it.”

“So anyway, I went up nine flights of stairs like the fucking tetra-palegic champion I am.”

“Speaking of champs, how was the game the other day?” I asked.

I couldn't get time off of work yesterday to see the game myself, which was a bit of a disappointment. Enjoying a frito pie and a cheap canned soda while watching Madeline and her team play usually made for a great time.

“Really good, actually, we creamed the other guys. That, however, led to a fair amount of drinking.”

“Thus the hangover.” I was no stranger to Madeline’s post victory celebrations. Her getting absolutely blasted was almost a foregone conclusion after a good game.

“Yep.” I saw her lips curl one sidedly as she thought back to the previous evening.

“The roof was nice though,” she continued, “sun was out and the smog gave everything that pretty sort of haze. Though it was unusually quiet.”

“I hung out there for a bit, until I heard a sort of low buzzing noise. It sounded kind of like a subwoofer going bad, you know, when it starts to crackle?” She raised her left hand and gestured vaguely in order to get her point across. I didn’t really get what she was trying to say with the hand wavy thing she was doing, but I nodded my head to get her to continue nonetheless.

“Anyway, I turned to my left and saw a big reddish orange reptile climbing up the fencing on the side of the rooftop. After it crested the top it swiveled its head to look at me.”

“We both just sort of stared at each other for a second. I wasn’t sure if it was maybe someone's pet or something, so I rolled over just a bit to get a closer look. And then its neck bulged like a frog’s, and it started screaming at me. It was so bad that I think it may have actually ruptured one of my eardrums, because I got really dizzy, and it hurt like hell.”

“I wasn’t really in the best of moods to begin with, so when I got sick of its shit, I grabbed my gun out of my purse and shot it. I missed the first couple shots, but when I did hit it just sort of dissolved.”

“You know ordinarily I would ask why you decided that shooting someone else's pet reptile was a good Idea, but given that it didn’t leave a body I’ll give you a pass.” After all, I’d done much the same. The only thing that had spared me from having to explain to the cops why I’d murdered a dog and two men was that the bodies had dissolved. That and they were also probably zombies.

At least one of them definitely was.

I think.

“Do you have any Idea what’s up with that?” She asked.

“No,” I said, “I’d like to know but I don’t. How did you break your chair though?” I asked, shaking my head free of the thought that I might actually just be some sort of murderous psycho with delusions of grandeur.

“Oh yeah, so you know this thing?” She waved her smartphone-esque display at me. “I’m pretty sure this doo-dad is what broke my chair.”

“Huh. You know I actually had something similar happen to me. ”

I began explaining what had happened to me over the course of the last couple hours as I continued doing the dishes. Though, once I got to the part with the dog biting me I started crying again. I naively had thought I was out of tears, but apparently my reservoirs had refilled.

What prompted this particular fit was probably a combination of things: shock, exhaustion, finally feeling safe, etc. Primarily though, I was crying because I felt bad about killing the dog. Sure it was a zombie dog, but old yeller-ing the thing had still made me feel pretty bad, as it turned out. I just hadn’t had the time to really process it until that point. That and once I realized I felt bad about killing the dog, I realized I felt bad about murdering the first zombie guy too.

Turns out I felt fine about killing the skeleton, though. Either I’d gotten a taste for blood by then, or the skelly dude just didn’t look enough like a living creature for me to really feel guilt.

Regardless, Madeline coaxed me to sit on the newly cleared couch and kindly waited as I got through it. The shame I felt for breaking down in front of another person made the tears worse, of course, so it took a while.

My mechas had latched themselves to my ankles, offering me what comfort they could. I set them on the couch and got back to my retelling of events.

***

Once I finished, we discussed what our stories had in common.

We both got the display after killing a monster. We both got a relief package. We both had to go through a tutorial of sorts, and a finalization phase. That in turn had both left us with injuries, though how and what differed in that respect.

Madeline saw the same patterns and symbols, but she hadn’t experienced any flashes of light or loud noises. Instead she found herself catapulted into the weight rack in her room. This destroyed her chair, broke several of her bones, and left a hole in her drywall. She used a ‘first-aid thingy’ that she’d gotten from the relief package. That fixed her up, but did not mend her wheelchair or the massive hole in her bedroom’s plaster.

So she switched to her rugby chair, which was in her apartment instead of in the back of her van because she’d forgotten to get out of it in all the excitement from yesterday's victory. That was unusual for her actually, I can only assume that it had really been one heck of a game.

We also cross compared our abilities and roles. Madeline was an ‘Attacker’, apparently, and had access to three abilities, though she hadn’t tested them yet.

First was Accelerate. This seemed pretty self explanatory.

Second was Reinforce. We weren’t sure about that one.

Third was Strike. It probably helped you hit things, but how was a mystery.

Looking at her abilities, and comparing mine, it seemed that the cause for our finalization based injuries was our abilities going haywire when we first got them.

In my case, I’d been shot, and all my mechas had destroyed each other. In Madeline’s case, her Accelerate ability had probably been what flung her bodily into the weight rack.

Speaking of such things, I wonder which of my mechs got me in the shoulder? I wasn’t burned, so that ruled out any plasma or energy weapons. That only left the few models I had that used ballistic projectiles.

I looked at Fry. He pointedly avoided my gaze.

Madeline had so far avoided testing her abilities because of the aforementioned injuries she’d suffered due to them. That differed from my approach. I had instead started testing them right away and blinded myself in the process.

When I told Madeline about that little anecdote, she’d laughed.

“Well at least we know we can heal what would normally be permanent eye damage.” She said.

“Yeah, I guess. Hey, do you think my healing potions and your medkits work the same?”

“About that, what else did you get in your relief package?”

I showed her.

“What looks like houses and some tuna cans.”

“I have bubbles and MRE pouches”

“Huh.”

“What I think,” she explained, “is that both of our item sets here can fit into three different categories.”

She raised a fist, and unfurled her index finger. “First is Healing. We’ve both seen how effective those can be, with me instantly healing several broken bones, a ruptured eardrum, and a hangover. You healed stab wounds, bites, and eye damage. I’m sorry to hear all that by the way, it really sounds like you had a rough time.”

“I’m fine now mostly. Sorry about breaking down over it earlier.”

“Don’t be, it seems to me like you had every right to. And being there for you is literally the least I can do.”

“Thank you, uh, that's really nice to hear.” I said, trying not to tear up again.

“Anyway,” she changed the subject and held up a middle finger alongside her pointer. “The second category of stuff here is food. You have cans, I got MRE pouches. I’m thinking we should test those now, before we really need them.”

“Shouldn’t we save them?”

“See, I understand the impulse, but what if we’re both starving, and when we go to use them it turns out to give us barely enough food to get by? Or worse, it just suppresses our appetite and we starve to death thinking we aren’t even hungry?”

“That seems a little paranoid. Plus, given how effective our heals have been, I find it hard to believe that the other items we’ve been given would be any less useful.”

“I still think it would be best to check. Plus, I haven’t eaten yet today, and all I’ve got in the house is ramen and half a pack of old mushrooms.”

I hadn’t eaten yet either, come to think of it. I’d skipped breakfast because I’d also woken up late, at just past ten. I’d been working the closing shift last night, and hadn’t gotten home until fairly late. I felt a slight pain in my stomach, and a rumble accompanied it.

“You make a compelling argument. Let’s each try out one.”

“On three?”

“Sure,” I said.

“One. Two. Three!”

We each tapped on our displays in sync. We were of course met with a use prompt, and that threw off our count.

“So should we count down again or-”

“Too late!” Suddenly her display expanded and ejected a plate onto the nearby countertop. I hurriedly tapped on my display again and it expanded to deposit a similarly sized plate on the side table next to the couch I was on.

The contents of our plates differed greatly.

Mine was a chicken katsu set, with rice, shredded cabbage, and the aforementioned katsu all arranged neatly on the plate. The pile of shredded cabbage was striped with mayo and katsu sauce, and garnished with a single halved cherry tomato. There were two lemon wedges on the side. The rice was in a neat, round pile, and was unadorned. The katsu had a healthy amount of sauce on it.

Madeline’s plate had two paninis, and an assortment of baby carrots and celery sticks with ranch.

I observed that my plate of food didn’t come with any utensils. Thankfully I’d just done the dishes, so I knew where to get some. Madeline didn’t appear to have any chopsticks, so I settled with a fork and a knife.

I sat myself at the counter across from Madeline and noticed that she had already started in on one of her paninis.

“Is it good?”

“Yawp,” she paused to swallow, “it's got pastrami and swiss with whole mustard seed.”

She took a bite of carrot with a hearty amount of ranch dressing on it. “So good.”

I squeezed a lemon wedge on my cabbage, and forked a bite of it with just a bit of sauce and mayo on it. It was Japanese style mayonnaise, being just a bit sweeter and tart than most western mayo brands. This was boosted by the sharp flavor of the katsu sauce and the acidity of the lemon. I was soon digging into it with gusto. I then got a big big bite of sticky, short grain rice.

Too big, as it turned out. I needed some water to help wash it down. I grabbed a freshly cleaned mug from the drying rack next to the sink and filled it with tap water. I chugged it.

“Could you grab me a glass too?” Madeline asked.

I obliged. She took a couple sips and started in on some celery sticks. She had already demolished one of her sandwiches.

The katsu was piping hot, and was made of chicken, rather than pork. The meat was moist and tender. I had gotten a bite with a decent amount of sauce on it too, and the sauce was exquisite. It had a fruity tartness, and a number of spices and flavorings worked together to balance the heavy, greasy flavors of the fried chicken meat perfectly.

“So what have you got there?” Miss Madeline asked me.

I swallowed the rice I’d just stuffed in my face and responded. “Chicken Katsu. It’s a bit like schnitzel if you've ever had that. Basically a tenderized and deep fried chicken thigh with a special type of sauce.”

“Sounds good. Can I try a bite?”

“If you give me a piece of your sandwich, sure.”

“Hand me a knife, then.”

I got up and nabbed a serrated knife from the drying rack and shuffled back over to the counter where we were eating.

Madeline sliced a piece off her remaining panini and handed it to me. I cut a piece of my katsu with just the right amount of sauce, and used my knife to deposit it onto her plate.

Exchange complete, we each tried the other’s dish.

The panini was quite good. The thick cut pastrami was tender, but still had some chew to it. The bread was ciabatta with herbs and spinach. The melted cheese was deliciously mild.

“It's less mustard-y than I expected.” I said.

“Yeah, the mustard seeds don’t have a strong flavor, they’re just these little sweet and sour pearls.”

As she spoke, I felt a little orb in my mouth burst, and I tasted that sweet and sour flavor she mentioned. That was yummy.

“The sauce on this chicken is really good!”

“Right? It's like a whole thing on its own.”

We both polished off our meals. When we were done, the plates disappeared, crumbing away into familiar black particulates. Thankfully I had already put my dirty silverware in the sink.