After a few hours driving cross-country the fields were starting to disappear, the trees were getting more common but we could still drive around. The wolves had stopped following us after a while and we were still trying to come around what had happened in the camp. Well, at least they were, I was trying to sleep because I was incredibly tired.

But, of course, I wouldn’t have that luck and just when I managed to get to sleep the Zombinator shocked and jumped slightly driving over something. It started thumping and doing strange noises.

“Shit, shit, shit,” said Sam from the driving seat trying to stop the Zombinator.

I got up just at the moment the Zombinator stopped completely still with a little shock. I guess I was at that moment when you just woke up that everything seems incredibly clear and confusing at the same time and didn’t even bother to say anything before I walked outside equipping the crossbow. It was still dark outside and I couldn’t see any enemies, not that I could have seen the dark wolves that camouflaged with the shadows even if I tried but not seeing anything made me feel slightly better.

I walked to the front of the RV with my weapon prepared and I tried to inspect for damages. And failed because it was dark and I had forgotten to bring a light. Someone else walked out from the Zombinator.

“Need help?” said Knight smiling and turning on a flashlight.

I mumbled something that might had been thanks and inspected the front of Zombinator. Everything seemed fine, the tires were okay, the engine too, and there was no sign of having run over something. It was strange and I was too sleepy to think straight. I kept looking around until an idea popped in my mind and I bent down to look below the Zombinator.

That didn’t seem to be the brightest the brightest idea I ever had when the wolf that we crushed jumped at me trying to eat my face.

“Shit,” I yelled jumping back and letting the crossbow that I was carrying fall to the ground.

The wolf howled and gnashed at me. It was trapped by the weight of the Zombinator and couldn’t move far enough to kill me but that didn’t stop it for trying. It kept trying to reach me moving his head up and down biting the air wildly. My mind woke up very quickly after that, just in time to see how my brother crushed its head with the steel bat breaking his head with a loud crack.

I moved back slightly, still scared. I could see the wolf was already dead, it had stopped moving after that but my brother didn’t and kept hitting it with the bat continuously. The sound of bones snapping was getting worst and in one of the hits he managed to break off the little dark horn that grew over its head.

John and Sam managed to get out then and stared at my brother still hitting the animal. I got up and walked to him.

“Knight,” I said slowly putting a hand on his shoulder and trying to get his attention. “It’s dead, you can stop.”

He didn’t seem to hear for a moment and kept doing it, but then reacted and stopped. Knight looked at me his eyes blood shot and scared, he seemed almost at the verge of crying.

“I thought…” he started saying.

I didn’t need empathy to know that one.

“I’m fine, I’m alive,” I said to him. “We’ve had a few rough days but it’s going to be fine, okay? We are going to survive.”

He embraced me and whimpered. Shit. That was too much for me and I started crying too. Yes, yes, I know. Men don’t cry, whatever. My brother specially didn’t cry but I guess the end of the world was enough of a reason to make him cry. Too many things had happened that if we didn’t let it go now we would probably explode.

It took us a moment to go back to normal. John was keeping an eye around for more wolves and Sam was inspecting the corpse.

“It’s stuck,” he said after a while. “I don’t think I can get it out without help.”

I sighed and went to help when suddenly I realized.

“Use your inventory,” I said smiling.

“What?” he asked and then remembering what I told him. “I don’t know how to…”

The wolf body he was touching disappeared suddenly, there was no flash or a sign of what had happened, it just disappeared. Sam stared at were the wolf had been. Then he bent down looking below the Zombinator and stared at me openmouthed.

“Cool, right?” I said.

He nodded absently a bit put off by the discovery.

Knight laughed wiping his tears quickly. “I need to try that.”

“I’ll show you later,” I nodded and went down to help Sam. “Is everything okay down there?”

“It seems so, apparently I took it all from where it was stuck,” he said.

“We should move now then,” said John still watching around for possible enemies.

I nodded and got up when I saw something on the floor. Was it loot? That would be a first given that the actual first time I think I got something I died shortly after. I took it trying to inspect it.

Chaos horn

Crafting material.The horn of a chaos wolf. Born from the Void the horn of these wolves is a direct gateway to the Void that absorbs all energies around it to strengthen the body of the wolf

Okay, I was hoping for a ring with strength or something but I guess a horn is cool too. It wasn’t exactly loot, it was just something that dropped from the body of the wolf, and that was useful in its own way because now I knew something more about how the inventory worked. I moved it around in my hands for a second wondering what could be useful for and made it disappear in my inventory.

Everyone entered the Zombinator and we drove again towards the east still cross-country. I was going from sleeping to awaken all the time and the trees were starting to make driving complicated, but Sam continued pushing. There was already daylight when we managed to find a road and Sam stopped the Zombinator in the middle of it.

“Do we have a map or something?” asked Sam.

“The cabinet above the weapons,” I mumbled getting up. It seemed it was impossible to sleep.

Sam opened the cabinet and got a big very detailed map of the country, one of those things I bought thinking of the possibilities. He put the map on a table and started reading it with John. Knight on the other hand was more interested in something inside the cabinet.

“What’s this?” asked my brother.

I looked at him. He was carrying the laptops I bought.

“It’s a laptop” I answered simply.

Knight rolled his eyes. “I mean, why do we have this? Everything else you have here is very basic needs but this…”

“It’s the preserved knowledge of humanity,” I sighed and walked to the kitchen.

I opened a cabinet where the preserved food was and looked around. We didn’t have much variety, it was mostly three different types of cans that could last more than everything else I found. I took the first one I found and opened it carefully going back for something to eat it with.

“That’s what you were doing when we were about to go that night?” asked Sam suddenly interested. “Thanks in the name of humanity, it could be useful.”

“I’m not so sure, most of it was porn and cat videos, but I managed to find some heavy engineering and physics books.” I said.

Knight put the laptops back in their place and I started to eat the ‘food’ directly from the can. With the first bite I grimaced. It wasn’t the taste that was bad, but it was meat. My brother saw me and went to take another can for himself.

“So…” he said opening the can and looking at me. “Did you not manage to find some vegetarian shit? Or were you thinking in the rest of us?”

I glared at him with hatred and kept eating. “I was in a bit of a hurry and this was the best I could find. But don’t worry, if we find an open mall between now and the rest of the apocalypse I will make you eat some of that vegetarian shit.”

“I think you are going to stop being a vegetarian from the time being,” said Knight smiling. “And if you feel bad for sacrificing animals we could always eat that wolf, right? I mean, you can’t feel too bad eating something that tried to kill you.”

“I don’t…” I started to say and then stopped.

I thought about that and he was sort of right. The reason why I didn’t like meat was mostly because I didn’t feel right from where it came from. The simple reason of growing animals just for the sake of killing them later always seemed wrong to me, but with these monsters…

No, that line of reasoning was off. I will eat meat because I have to if I want to survive given the circumstances I’m in, but that wasn’t going to change how I felt about the whole deal. I nodded absently and kept eating.

“I guess, although seeing how everything we find around is lethal that wolf it’s probably poisonous” I lied trying to drop the theme.

Knight smiled and went back to eating. Meanwhile Sam and John where still looking at the map trying to find something. Empathy told me they were confused for some reason.

“So, what do you think?” asked Sam to my neighbor.

John nodded still looking intently to the map. “I think you are right, there is something wrong.”

“Something interesting?” I asked.

Sam looked back at me and made a gesture to make me go closer.

“According to the map in our way here we should have passed through a river,” he said pointing at a river in the map. “But I don’t remember it.”

“That doesn’t seem…” I started to say studying the map more closely. “The earthquake?”

John nodded. “That’s what we think. It opened a crevice in the camp. It might have changed the course of a river easily.”

“Which makes me a lot more comfortable that we are not moving towards the ocean,” said Sam. “Do you really think there could be a Tsunami?”

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I sighed and sat on the bed finishing my food.

“I don’t,” I answered. “But I don’t really want to find out if I’m right anyway. Do you?”

“No, I don’t” said Sam with a worried expression.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be fine.” I said.

Merge of the Water element in progress.

I groaned and started to bang my head against the wall. I had to go and say that, didn’t I? Great, at least I know the apocalypse has a sense of humor. I’m sure I will appreciate it in a few years if I manage to survive today.

Everyone was staring at me weirdly.

“What are you doing?” asked Knight.

I stared at him confused. “Didn’t you see it?”

“See what?” asked back.

Huh. They didn’t see the message? I looked at the rest and saw they were equally confused. I was the only one who saw the message, but why? It didn’t make much sense. Unfortunately the apocalypse took priority over my curiosity when it started to rain.

This was a normal rain. Well, it wasn’t black at least, but it wasn’t normal. It had started fast, without notice and it was massive.

“We have to run,” I said when they were staring outside the windows. “Now.”

“What? Where? We are starting to run out of energy, we can’t…” started to say Sam.

“I don’t care! We have to move now!” I yelled back looking outside the windows.

He was confused but for some reason took my yelling to heart and started the Zombinator.

“Where to?” asked from the driving seat.

“High ground, I don’t care, just somewhere high,” I sighed and massaged my head.

Shit, my head was starting to hurt. That wasn’t weird considering I had barely slept the last few days and I’d just been who knows how many hours working after running for my life for a lot more time. I moved back to the kitchen leaving the empty can of food I just eaten and dropped on the bed, tired.

“Hey,” said Knight moving close to me. “What is happening?”

I sighed and covered my head with a pillow. “I’m thinking something along the lines of a biblical flood in the best of cases. Something worse maybe. I don’t care anymore, just let me sleep unless we are all about to die.”

Knight looked back at the rain outside and swallowed.

“I hate apocalypses,” I mumbled before drifting to sleep.

***

The next day was more or less the same, I woke up having slept for enough hours to be able to hear my own thoughts. The headache had stopped, but looking around everything was dark. For a moment I freaked out thinking I was dead.

Wait, no, been there, done that. There hadn’t been an announcement so the more possible explanation was that I was in a very dark place. I decided to do what every character in a horror movie does when they are in situation like this one.

“Hello? Anybody there?” I asked. “If you are serial killer with an ironic mask please kill me without the boring explanation of why you do what you do.”

I heard the door to the Zombinator opening but I didn’t see anything, we were inside some dark place.

“You know, if you keep blacking out during the apocalypses you are going to miss all the fun,” teased Knight.

I sighed with relief and smiled. “Don’t worry there are about nine apocalypses.”

He stared at me. “Nine? Are you sure? How do you know that?”

I stopped to think. Where did that number come from? Stupid question. I knew it was from all that information I had somehow downloaded into my brain. I tried to look for more information. I remembered there were six mayor affinities. The ones I got, death and life were part of those and below them there were nine minor affinities or elements. Beyond that the information wasn’t very clear anymore. It was fuzzy and difficult to… remember I guess.

No, there was something more. The major affinities somehow give birth to the minor ones. It was like the light dividing in minor colors, minor parts of the whole. That was interesting and it meant something more. If the minor affinities were merging now, the major had to be already merged.

For obtaining a deeper understanding of reality you have gained 1 INT point.

Huh. Well, I guess that’s a way of knowing if you are right or wrong. The universe outright telling you. That was useful. Of course, it still leaved us with the problem of remaining seven elements that still had to merge.

“Never mind,” I sighed and got up walking outside the Zombinator. “Where are we? And why are the lights off?”

 “We are in a cave, and the Zombinator was out of energy,” said Sam’s voice coming from somewhere.

I tried to find where he was when a flashlight was turned on and I could glance around. We were in a cave, glimmering walls of minerals adorned everything around us, I tried to find a way out and saw nothing. I stared at Sam trying to find an answer.

“Okay, where exactly are we and what the hell happened?” I asked a bit annoyed.

He smiled and pointed at me to follow. We moved through the cave, it was a big place, big enough to move the Zombinator in and out without to many problems. I admit I haven’t been into many caves but it seemed… I don’t know, too regular, like if something or someone had excavated the cave. It didn’t appear to be entirely natural.

It took us a few moments to see the light outside and saw where we were. It was a mountain.

“Welcome to the mountain that doesn’t appear in any map we have,” said Sam smiling. “Which I think means that earthquake was worse than what we were expecting.”

I stared at the bottom of the mountain. Okay, it wasn’t a very big mountain nor was it too steep or I doubt the Zombinator would have managed to get up and inside the cave, but it was still something big enough that no one would have missed it or forgot to put it on a map. The change the merge of these elements was causing to the world was bigger that what I was imagining.

I looked better and noticed something more, it was not raining but there were clear marks of what had happened the day before. Not much water, at least not enough to drown us all to death but dangerous still.

“Huh. I was expecting more water,” I muttered.

“There was more before,” said John from outside the cave, “but the water level has been getting lower since the day started.”

“So I’ve been all day sleeping,” I sighed and then noticed what was close to John. “Wait, what are you doing with solar panels?”

John got up and moved letting me see better, both the solar panels and the three batteries of the Zombinator were there in a bundle charging up. That explained why we didn’t have light.

“We were low on energy and I didn’t want to bring the Zombinator outside so… I dismounted the batteries and the panels and we’ve been trying to charge them up. I know it seems a bit rough but…” said Sam almost apologizing.

He was apologizing, for what? I nodded absently, it was a good idea to have the batteries completely recharged and having the Zombinator outside when all of that was happening wasn’t. I didn’t understand why he was like that. Sam seemed to relax.

“And I have been trying to find some radio emission,” said John showing me a radio.

It was giving a static signal.

I smiled looking at both of them. “I see you have everything in place. I’m glad you are both with me. I’m not sure I could have done half of this.”

Empathy told me they were more relieved that what they actually looked like. Were they scared of me? For what reason?

“I’m sure you could have survived on your own,” said John. “And the only reason we are here is because you…”

Merge of the Lightning element in progress.

Shit. That one started sooner than I was expecting. Suddenly seven bright flashes flared in the sky. I didn’t even have the time to warn them before the thunder came bringing a sound almost equal to the earthquake of the other day. The radio went haywire making weird and sharp noises.

“Get inside!” I yelled running back to the cave.

“Wait, no, the batteries!” screamed Sam.

I cursed and looked back. Okay, we needed that.

“Okay, we have to get them fast!” I yelled and ran towards them followed by Sam and John.

In a surprising effort of astounding coordination directed by my repetitive yells of ‘Shit, Shit, Shit’ we managed to get everything safely inside the cave in minutes. Just in time to see the brief flash fall over the entrance of the cave followed immediately by the booming sound that reverberated in the caves and made us drop to the ground.

I checked my ears, I wasn’t bleeding but almost. Trying to get up I looked at my friends. They were dazed but didn’t appear hurt. I sighed with relief.

More and more lightning flashed over the horizon and for a moment the flashes looked like a coordinated effort, like if someone was launching lightning strikes in a perfect sync, almost like a symphony of flashes. It was almost beautiful.

If you forgot the part about or impending doom.

“Fuck,” muttered Sam speaking for everyone.