Brad had seen female zombies. Some of them looked like they had the bodies of supermodels or social media stars that never needed a camera filter to build a million-person following before they died, but as he stared down at this girl, who was probably the most attractive woman he had ever met even in the middle of an apocalypse that didn’t give anyone the time to put on makeup or even wash their hair properly, he couldn’t help but feel pure rage. This was a woman that should have been his. If things had stayed as smoothly as they had been going before the attack, she’d have been shaking her ass on top of him in his bed by the end of the week. Instead, she was dead. Her perfect face was mutilated by the claws of some worthless hell-cursed beast, her insides ripped out and partially eaten, and her left calf torn clean off.

Such a colossal waste, was all he could think as he angrily gritted his teeth and nearly cried at the loss of such a perfect woman for his harem.

“How did this happen?” he asked, staring up from the body. “Tell me how she died no more than a few hundred feet from our camp? Where was her support? Where was the backup that was supposed to keep her safe? Why is there only one body here and not five others who died valiantly trying to save her?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said one of her teammates, an obnoxious goody-two-shoes type with a chin that looked like a punching bag covered in putty. The guy bowed as soon as he began speaking.

As if your docile obedience will make up for your failure, Brad wanted to say, but before he could speak and voice his anger and frustration, the man piled on the drama.

“It was my fault. I was weak . . . The bodybuilder zombie was going to kill me . . . but she took the blow for me. She died for my sake, and I cannot ever atone for that with this life.”

“What about the others? Squads are supposed to be ten men at the very least before they leave the compound. Where are the other eight?”

“We . . . We snuck out, sir,” he continued, shocking Brad, who would never have pegged this guy for the type to break a rule, much less two at once. “It was after our normal shift hours, and she wanted to check to see if her parents were still alive because—”

“Don’t bother,” Brad interrupted. “If her parents were possibly still breathing, you should have taken that information to the scout team. That’s why we have them. They could have been rescued without incident, but instead, here I am, holding the dead body of one of the precious few people still alive in this apocalypse. Do you know how infuriating that is? Do you know what potential she had? The years she could have lived, the children she could have had, the moments of joy she could have shared? Your haste and incompetence, your inability to think and follow basic, freaking protocol has taken all that away from her. Your failures have not robbed humanity of one life, but the infinite possibilities that one life held.”

“I’m . . . I’m so sorry, sir.” The man stayed bowed, but as Brad berated him, he could see the tears in the man’s eyes, and for a moment, he felt empathy. This man wasn’t crying because he was in trouble. He was crying because, like Brad, he had probably wanted to tap that ass too. He wasn’t just berating some idiot whose mistake had cost Brad one of the best looking women in his faction, but a man who, like Brad, had risked everything, betrayed his rule-abiding nature, broken his regulations, and faced mortal peril just to try and secure a single night with the woman. He was a comrade. A true comrade in purpose. His tears were ones that Brad could understand all too well. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“You understand why I’m upset, don’t you?” Brad asked. “I can tell you do. You’re like me. You know the gravity of your error, don’t you?”

“I . . . Yes. Yes, sir. I’m so sorry!” The man continued to weep. “I would do anything to bring her back.”

How hard you must have worked to get in bed with her, how much work you must have lost. My brother, though you did not deserve her, I can commend you for trying, Brad thought as he patted the man’s back. “Then no words I say or punishments I can assign will be worse than what you are already suffering, brother. I am sorry for your loss, but now, you must work twice as hard so that no loss like this one is ever endured again.”

“Yes, sir!” the man replied as he straightened his back and stood at attention, his eyes bloodshot and red from crying, the tears still trickling down his face.

What a glorious lay we lost, he thought as he turned. “Also, make sure she receives a proper burial and see about finding a set of scouts to locate her parents. Their daughter was truly one of the great ones. We should do our best to preserve their legacy.”

“It still astounds me how you can still break down and grieve every single death when so many have fallen,” Clare said as she walked up to Brad. “The capacity and depth for empathy and emotion is unparalleled. You truly are Humanity’s Steward.”

“There is no true man that wouldn’t weep for every loss like this one,” Brad replied, not having to lie at all. Who could possibly experience the loss of such an attractive woman without feeling pained?

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“Well, I apologize for bringing this to your attention, but the communication is active, and there is an urgent request for you,” Clare explained, slightly bowing her head. “Please forgive me for not interrupting your grieving earlier. I have this if you wish to . . .” She produced a handkerchief. “If you wish to clean yourself up a little.”

“Thank you,” Brad said, wiping off his face first and then his hands before giving the handkerchief back to her while the two of them walked toward the communications hub in the base. There, in the middle, looking like a Star Trek command room, was a large view screen as well as many chairs positioned around it, the middle one of which Brad sat down in.

“Would you like any of your council here for the call?” Clare asked.

“No, and lock the door on your way out,” Brad answered. “I do not want to be disturbed while taking this call.”

“Are you . . . Are you sure? I would be happy to assist you by taking the minutes or just being here for you. I know how shaken you can be after these meetings sometimes,” Clare offered.

“Please. These calls often contain bad news, and I do not wish to burden anyone else with the grim and dire situation of our world. We must always stay focused on tomorrow, for humanity’s sake. We will never achieve victory if we accept our defeat,” Brad said, shooing her off with the best excuse he could think of at the time.

The moment she left, Brad hit the button on the chair to activate the image. There, in front of him, was the large portrait of the alien he had been dealing with for quite some time: Ikats.

“Greetings, representative. It is I, the glorious and magnificent alien suzerain that is leading you primitive people out of your hopeless situation. Genuflect before my generosity,” the alien Ikats said with as much haughtiness as Brad had ever seen from any CEO.

Brad considered, just for a moment, telling the ridiculous-looking creature to shove his genuflecting up his ass. But then he thought better of it, considering all of the benefits the relationship had thus provided him: advanced weapons, advice on base development, and cheaply sold resources and cards.

“I greet our world’s benefactor, Supreme Scientist Ikats. To what do I owe such a rare communication? Have you perhaps reconsidered sending a spaceship to help me destroy the Demonic Faction and prepare our world for your rule?” Brad asked, but he knew that if the aliens did send him a spaceship, he’d use it to take over the whole damn planet for himself.

“No, we . . . I am limited in the aid that I can procure for your species. Not only would it take much too long to reach you with our ships, but the act would provoke too many other factions to do likewise. You would not like it if they came to your world,” Ikats said, a clear warning about asking for a ship again in his tone. The figure blinked and continued, “No, I have come with a warning about a threat that may mean the destruction of everything you have built. Our sources tell us a highly evolved Ego Conscriptor has come through the portal we helped you create.”

“Yes. Some filthy and disgusting traitors to humanity hijacked the portal to rescue a worthless miscreant, and the creature came through after him. According to the few people that survived the encounter, it was extremely hurt when the portal cut out and fled.”

“It fled? Or made a tactical retreat? If this is the creature I think it is, you have little time to overcome it. For every moment that you leave it alone, it will recoup power, and at full strength, there is nothing in your primitive and low-leveled world that would be capable of stopping it.”

“If it's as powerful as what you are describing, what can we do about it?”

“Haven’t you reached your sixth level yet? Surely with all of the advantages we have given you, even someone from a species as underdeveloped technologically as yours could have managed that much, right?”

“Yes . . . I have used your generous gifts to reach level 6.” Brad had to do everything in his power to control his facial expression as he took the verbal abuse on the chin. It was just like the times he was working with his dad, when he would mess up by letting some other bastard get the winning touchdown or score a point higher than him on the exams, and he’d have to deal with his father’s yelling and throwing large glass ashtrays at him, calling him nothing more than the unwanted spawn of some gold-digging whore. As long as he kept his head bowed and didn’t show how much he hated the treatment and the insults, when the next day came, the money would flow again.

“Then you have already unlocked the quest system. It is a mercenary system that allows you to assign awards for completing certain tasks, and in return, the players who accept the bounties of your system must complete those tasks with the system verifying that the job was done. If it is as hurt as you say it is, then it will be seeking a way to heal itself. Use that to gather information and support to deal with the problem before the problem deals with you. I will be sending you some specialty cards through the usual channels that we’ve developed to deal with the hell-cursed, but you will have to level them up on your own. I advise you to take advantage of this generosity—and do not let that monster recover!”

“It will be done as you say,” Brad responded. The call ended, and the large screen powered down and returned to a completely black surface as the lights of the room came on.

Brad didn’t move. As he stared at that dark screen, thinking about the words that the alien had said and how dangerous the threat was, the only thing he could think about was that woman that had died, the boy that had been crying over his lost chance, and all the other people that had perished. Ikats’s order had just been another one in a long list of “Do this or your species will die” warnings, but the more Brad thought about it, the more seriously he took it. If he was ever to enjoy the fruits of his labor, if he was ever to live like the king he deserved to be, then he would have to grit his teeth and do everything he could to stop these invaders now before they killed even more of his people.

A king is not a king without his subjects, he thought, standing up and straightening his back as he prepared to once more embody the persona of the “Steward of Humanity.”