Eventually, a few at the front turned back toward me. I stood up and raised my voice. I’d have to be active or it’d just be piddling questions coming at me all day.

“It’s nice to meet y'all, my name is Tom and I don’t have much, but what I do have to trade is coffee, some chocolate, a couple of boxes of .45 ammunition, and information. I want 12-gauge shells and .38 if anyone has that.”

I placed the half-full bag of coffee on the table at the end, intending it to be a dramatic endpoint to my apocalypse trading announcement.

“How much for the shotgun?”

How much? It’s not like I was accepting dollars. Besides that, were they listening?

“Not for sale.”

I got another question about my pistol and then decided that this wasn’t going how I imagined it. Probably because I only had three types of things on my table and once they looked over those in about 3 seconds, they started wondering what else I had.

In the spirit of things said with clear disrespect, “Respectfully, I’m not trading a damn thing that isn’t on this table, or information.”

“What information you got?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that the commands for the system are incredibly difficult to get correct. I know a good amount of them.”

“What the hell is he talking about?”

I thought for a second, “Everyone remembers the announcement that happened when we all went blind, right?”

Everyone nodded to that except a few. I ignored the scattered idiots. “Did anyone bother studying that screen? Things that it said, looked for clues? Any of that?”

Less than half did at that, I was kind of impressed actually, but not really.

“Does anyone remember when it said the stuff at the end of the first message, ‘Status this Gained and Status that Lost?”

Fewer heads nodded this time but still, enough.

“Well, one of them talked about a ‘Penitent System’. From what I’ve figured out is that it takes the abilities you possessed before all of this and makes them stronger and more useful. You also might get some others you didn’t know how to do before. For example, I used to go to Renaissance Fairs,” I was losing them and saw even Lena giving me a bit of a judgy look from the corner of my eye, “It’s basically a place where you pretend to live in medieval times for a long weekend with a bunch of other people. ANYWAYS, I got a Skill,” Skill seemed easier to understand than having to explain ‘Qualities’, besides, I wasn’t giving away shit for free, “from the Penitent System that made me able to use any weapon or tool that would be used at one of those fairs. So any medieval type weapon, I would have some skill to use that.”

The quickest loudmouth spoke, “Sounds like bullshit.”

I shrugged in my most unconcerned manner, “Doesn’t matter what you think, it’s the truth.”

The second quickest loudmouth and the first one with a bit of brain, “I don’t see any of those weapons on you.”

“No shit, I didn’t say that it gave me a weapon, I said it gave me the skill to use one. Okay, I see some… that most of you don’t believe me,” I winced, Rule #1 of arguing with a crowd, don’t turn your opposition into a group.

“So how about this, you put a bunch of ammunition on the table, in the types I need and I’ll tell you how to activate the Penitent System.”

Grumbling started up, increasing quickly, “Hey hey! I won’t even touch it until you see what happens and you’ll see how fair it really is. This is valuable information.”

I looked to Lena for help, she seemed incredibly interested in the concept, she asked me a question and I asked her to repeat it so the crowd could hear.

“Lena just asked me if it was like a video game. It’s going to sound weird, but yeah, it is. I’m a lot stronger than I was a couple days ago.”

“Prove it brat.”

I glared at the old maid that had yelled and asked her back, “How exactly am I supposed to do that?”

Then, I had a bit of a good idea, “Okay, how about this. How many pushups do you think someone like me can do?” I raised my hands apart to let them get a good look at me. No one was biting.

“20? 30, maybe 50? I bet I can do 100 pushups right now.”

That didn’t look like it was convincing the women but some of the old men looked skeptical at least. Others looked insufficiently impressed. 100 pushups was downright superhuman nowadays, most people I’d known couldn’t do 20 and the most would probably have been 50.

“Maybe you could do 100 pushups before.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I sighed and rubbed the side of my face, hard.

“I couldn’t. Okay, well, then somebody come up with something or just trust the fact that I can’t steal ammo from right underneath your noses, you guys aren’t that stupid.”

Okay, hold back on the poorly veiled insults.

“Can you tell me?”

Lena was asking and the answer was the same, “Not a chance, if I tell you then you’ll tell everyone else and then I have nothing.”

“No, I wouldn’t, I’d wait until you finished the trade.”

“And then I’d have no real leverage, not a chance.”

“Can I have the chocolate then?”

“What? That’s my only other thing, besides the coffee. And the ammo.”

“They’re a bit old school, a gesture of goodwill will go a long way.”

I waved it off, “sure whatever.”

She grabbed the chocolate then went to the crowd, I watched her pass out MY chocolate and work the elderly crowd, calming some of them down. She kind of reminded me of Duck in that way, old people loved her too. Even though the earlier parts would have been much more difficult, if Duck was here, we would have already been wheeling and dealing.

Lena’s return broke me out of my morose mood, “That was a quick return to nihilistic post-apocalyptic depression.”

My eyes narrowed but there was a slight grin I couldn’t help, “You know they didn’t Rapture any psychiatrists, right? Your already poor job prospects are even worse now, I bet the market’s flooded.”

She scowled then placed two boxes of 10 shells of 12-gauge for a total of 20 and… 7 rounds of .38 on the table. How’d she even get 7 rounds?

“That’s it?”

“You want more? Go loot their houses, we only had 12 hours to check every resident’s house and get everyone here. We didn’t spend time looting the ones that weren’t… there.”

“Fine,” I reached to scoop them into my fanny pack but she stopped me, “System first.”

I sighed and stood, then raised my voice, “Alright everyone listen up! I’m going to say this once. The Penitent System is what I like to call, ‘broken bullshit’, and it is not user-friendly,” I raised my voice to cut through the starting outrage, “BUT that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It works, it just requires you to voice the words out loud and you have to be exact in your usage.”

“First, say ‘Thank you’ while thinking of God or the Penitent System itself. I’m not sure about the first part, you’ll know when it happens.”

A couple said ‘thank you’ and said they heard chimes, Lena shouted in surprise.

“Okay, you’re going to see something with the next words, but I’m not going to stop all day to let you figure it out while I wait here. Sooooo, you know what, Lena, get a pen and paper. In fact, grab two, I want a copy as well.”

She gave me a skeptical look then ran to grab one, when she returned I decided to change the order a bit from how I had discovered it, “Display List of Possessed Qualities.”

“These Qualities are you. Skills you’ve learned in life are reflected here. Ignore the sassy remarks.”

A few people seemed to understand that, but maybe older people have thicker skin. Not literally.

“Now say, ‘Display Status.”

More gasps and some early conjecture. I probably should be interested, but I wasn’t particularly invested. The chances of them figuring something out in the next few minutes that I hadn’t already were… slim.

“Your Status is you. Feats are memorable actions that you take and you can spend those points to make yourself stronger. I don’t know if you have Feats yet or Feat points…” I looked around and got some distracted nods, “But, if you want to know what you did to earn that feat, then you need to ask ‘What is the Earned Feat, and then say the name of the feat’. For Bonus Feats, say ‘What is the Bonus Feat, then the name of the Feat’.”

“If you have Feat Points you can say, ‘Display List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points.’ If you want to purchase a Skill with Feat Points then you say ‘Purchase Skill with Feat Points, and then the feat name’.”

“I don’t know if this next one helps at all but it’s proof that this system is not being actively monitored, say ‘Expanded Skill List’.”

I waited a bit before clapping my hands, “Listen up! Excuse me, everyone. What I’m about to say next is probably the most important since I don’t plan on sticking around forever. Study your ‘Displayed List of Possessed Qualities, Status, Feat information, EVERYTHING. I’m sure there are a bunch of other functions that I haven’t found yet, but what I have found so far has come down to luck and using my head. Guess the names of different systems and functions. Even adding or changing the order of words can be the difference between something working and not. I can’t give you all the answers, just what I’ve figured out myself by following the advice I just gave you.”

I sat back and gratefully accepted a bottle of water that Lena handed me. I could give them a bit of time before starting to pump for town information, or getting pumped for more information in turn. I was pretty sure I gave them everything though.

“How’d you figure this all out?” Lena pulled up another chair as she half focused on her stat screen.

“I was trapped in my car surrounded by angry wolves for a week, I didn’t have much else to do besides not die and figure it out.”

“How’d you get out of there?”

“I killed them.”

“How?”

I was a bit offended, I looked like someone who could go barbarian-mode on some wolves, “Wolves don’t handle heat so well and I was ready for it. They weren’t.”

She nodded, apparently I had gained a new level of respect in her eyes. Beyond the generic nice feeling that elicited from ‘being Human and liking praise,’ I didn’t particularly care. I wasn’t looking for any of that.

“Then, what happened?”

“Then I got a day of peace and got the fuck out of there.”

“You walked from there to here in a day?”

Great. Gramps was listening in.

“No. I made it to the cat-farm though.”

They both winced at that, I nodded at the memory, feeling myself back in the chair next to the wood stove, “Yeah, I’m not a fan of cats. Wasn’t much before, definitely not now.”

Shit. I had been there, was it two and half days ago? I had been there a few days, but that all wrapped up yesterday. This was going to be a long fucking apocalypse. From the moment I ran into the cat-farm… Wait a second, speaking of that… “Display… Tribulation Timer.”

I stared at the timer for a while before her words broke me out of it.

“I think it’s years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds.”

“What’d you say?”

She repeated herself. Yeah, she was right. So this was a seven-year Tribulation. What was at the end of those seven years? Do we get to live or do we all get squashed at the end regardless? Would I get to be back with Duck at the end of it? That was a dangerous thought. A deadly worm of a thing sparked somewhere deep inside and I tried to squash it.

Seven years was so long, too long. I was just one, exceedingly average guy. The odds of me living that long were… ‘shit’ and that was if I was being charitable. I also couldn’t imagine things becoming easier as time went on. I was surprised that it had not been wor- I brutally squashed that thought and threw it into the deepest, darkest dungeon of my mind. I did NOT need to test Fate or Murphy or God or one of His angels in particular. Whoever was making that choice, I would not actively test them. Well, unless it was THAT angel in particular. Fuck you Gabby.