“Grandpa, we just fought a group of the enemy. There aren’t supposed to be portals for close to 2 and a half hours. 3 of them scared the crap out of me. It took a lot of combined gunfire to bring them down.” I had to tell him this, and I was freaking out a bit at the implications of monster invaders before any portals.
“Slow down grandson. I will tell the chain of command about it. Is everyone safe? Anything else I should know?” He spoke in a measured way, a forced calmness. I didn’t hear him speak with this cadence often, and every time bad things were happening.
“We are all safe. Frank got hurt, but the orcs had a healing potion on them. We also picked up two teenagers. These two got some sort of system blessing for having their thirteenth birthday within the last 24 hours or so. You need to make a priority of gathering and protecting kids and young teens.”
“Thank God in heaven you are safe. My boy, I have to go. I will push the teenager info up the chain as well. Stay safe. Get here soon if you can.” And he cut the call off. It was more abrupt than I was used to. He had always been a bit on the long winded side. Did I say something upsetting? Was the pressure ratcheting up faster than he could manage? I didn’t really know.
I turned to look over my shoulder at Brittney and Brett in the backseat. Brittney was writing away in the notebook. Brett looking over what she was writing. They looked almost normal, like the death of their mom was forgotten. I’ll wait to tell them our thoughts on the mana related dopamine high. They deserve all the distraction they can handle. Brett’s head popped up to look at me. “Dean, why did your call go thru?”
“It could be we use different carriers. Maybe grandpa had me added to a priority list when I got hired yesterday to take care of his social media accounts. I don’t honestly know. I’m not an expert on cellular technology.” Normally, that would be a thought I would love to push around my head for an hour or so, but I didn’t have that luxury. I needed to see if I had any appreciable gains I looked into my status to see what my experience percentage was at.
Level: 1 15% to next level
“Crap, I only got 15% for that fight. Getting to level 2 is going to take a long damn time at this point.”
Nora smiled briefly, before reverting to a neutral expression, “I guess the system doesn’t love you as much as it does me. You will really need to work on that.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh. I figured everyone went up by 25% and the rifle skill at rank 1. Joe mentioned he got similar experience.”
Brittney smirked, “I didn’t do a damn thing and got 10% from it.”
Brett got a confused look on his face, “So, participation, using skills and abilities, and the kill are all factors?”
I nodded, “it would seem so. It means some of us will level faster. The good news is, all you two need is to be in proximity and you get some of the xp.” Everyone nodded at that. This was good news. The teenagers could pick up some xp, just for being nearby. They could grow into formidable fighters.
Gunshots screamed from ahead. I looked at Nora, and she immediately slowed down the SUV. My phone lit up with a call from Joe, “I can see the edge of a massive fight. There looks to be a fight over the intersection. We need to turn left at that intersection and still drive a few more miles to get onto the interstate. There is no way we are going to simply drive through this. There are several overturned and smashed cars filling part of the road.”
“Turn into the McDonalds parking lot ahead of us, before we get to the intersection. We will have to assess from there.”
I watched as Chris’s vehicle ahead of us slowed down. The golden arches were up ahead away from the trees to the right side of the road. There was no gunfire at the moment, but smoke was rising in front of us, presumably in the intersection. I saw the gas station on the other side of the road. The building was not in the best of shape. It looked like an explosion rocked the part farthest from us, with the roof partially gone. There were 4 highway patrol cars parked end to in a defensive semicircle. I could see several officers huddling down nursing injuries while a few more had rifles or shotguns aimed across the intersection at Stack Shack, a mom and pop diner that looked to have a few dead orcs out front. There were several dead bodies in between the two buildings.
Then he turned into the parking lot and I saw the rest of this conflict. More cars were end to end as a defensive barrier across all lanes. More of the same with lots of injured and dead police and civilians, with a slightly smaller number armed with weapons pointed over at the Stack Shack. This barricade of cars continued into the McDonalds parking lot. The big difference was the lack of injured people behind cars. We parked in the back of the parking lot, as there was no reason to expose us or our vehicles to more danger just yet. There was plenty of time for that.
As we got out my senses were assaulted with sounds and smells. Blood with a metallic scent, all the gunfire produces a few smells of its own; it could be the ignited gunpowder, or something else, but it is still very recognizable. I could smell sulfur as well, the rotten smell to it was unmistakable. I heard talking from all sorts of different direction, though mostly from next to the McDonalds as two men in uniform were arguing with three other adults, a man and two women. I slowed my walk to catch just a tiny bit of the argument before we got sucked into it.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“What are you doing to clear out these beasts? You’re taking too long,” an older woman was loudly stating for all to hear.
“Ma’am we are trying to clear them out, but more either come down the street, or appear out of the Stack Shack,” replied a man in local PD uniform. He was middle aged and not in near good of shape as this new world will need.
The younger man in the highway patrol outfit spoke up, “Ma’am we are doing the best we can under the circumstances. I have 4 injured officers; Pete has 6 more. We have lost 2 good officers each trying to keep everyone protected.”
At this point my slow walking towards the verbal match was noticed by all five of the people involved. The highway patrol officer spoke to me first, “Hello there. You wouldn’t happen to be a Neal Cassland, would you?”
I stopped. How the hell would they know my name? This had my father or grandfather written all over it. “I am, but why are you asking?”
“We were tasked by your father to come take you to Jefferson City and put you on an airplane. He must be some big shot in Washington.”
“Makes some sense. I am surprised he didn’t mobilize national guardsmen to my location.”
“They were quite a bit behind us, but they got waylaid on the interstate. This is going on in more than one place.”
Nora stepped in, “I imagine that it is happening all over the state on roads leading out of a decent sized city.”
Angry lady couldn’t help but interrupt, “Hey, don’t interrupt the adults. We were discussing how to escort everyone away from here.”
Both the officers looked at me and then Nora. Nora was seething, her anger etched across her face. I had to intervene, before Nora told this lady to die. “Lady, who are you exactly?”
“I’m Karen Wells, a very concerned citizen who just wants to flee to safety.” She spoke the last word with a bit of edge, like safety was actually attainable. I doubted that in the next day or two genuine safety, like it was a day earlier, was even remotely possible.
“Karen, I thank you for your concern. It sounds like the highway patrol officers are here for me and my friends. I don’t think you have any real authority in this instance. That reminds me, officer, you didn’t give me your name?” turning to the highway patrol officer as I finished my question.
“I’m officer Mills.” He looked in decent shape the more I saw, and he seemed to carry himself like he could survive the immediate future.
“Officer Mills, if you guys need some more fire power or ammo, we do have some of that in the back of the trailer.”
“Thanks, the buckshot in the shotguns is useless against any of these monsters that have charged.”
“Not a problem.” I paused before turning to address everybody else, “Who is everyone else?”
A woman older than my grandfather spoke up, “I’m the mayor of Stone Hill, this township your in. And I just want to make my town safe.”
Lastly a middle aged, portly man spoke, “I’m Fred, and this is my McDonalds. Quite frankly we don’t know what to do right now. No one does. It’s all kind of a mess, and I have 90 people in there who are scared.”
It was then that I noticed exactly how full the parking lot was. It was a massive lot, big enough for 2 fast food joints with drive-thrus, but instead it was just one, with the back parking lot reasonably filled up at the moment. Why had no one gone further down either road to safety? None of this made sense.
“Officers, why haven’t you let the people go further away from here towards safety?”
“There are a few of the monsters out there hunting folks that get too far down the road.”
“They didn’t hit us when we came up the road.” There can’t be enough of them to box us in. I wonder how many of these people have guns? We could just put together squads of folks, all armed and take out the few creatures attempting to contain us. But they are way to powerful individually at the moment. I needed more info if we were going to get out of this. I turned back to Joe, “Joe can you figure out if anything is boxing us in from behind. Don’t expose yourself, but can you get on the roof of the McDonalds and try to spot them. Take Brett with you. He said he could outline enemies in some sort of soft lightning glow. That would be super useful.”
Turning back to the ‘adults’, “officer Mills, take that girl behind me with you, her name is Brittney. She can heal the worst off, but with extremely limited uses. Let’s not exhaust all her abilities in case things get worse.” I turned and smiled to Brittney, “Go with the officers, but stay safe. Let’s keep our protectors alive to keep protecting us.” She didn’t say anything back, but quickly ran over towards the group of vehicles covering the road. She had a belt holster for a pistol on one side and the arrow quiver attached to the opposite hip. She was decked out for combat, and looked more serious than some of the adults. Officer Mills went to catch up for his escort duty.
The mayor perked up, “just who is your father?”
“U.S. Congressman Jeff Cassland. He wanted me to turn tail and run to the capital in the hopes of getting me to Colorado where the rest of federal government is relocating to. And before you ask, I am going to countermand that. My grandfather is mobilizing his own state level representative district. I want to get to him and help get people away from where these portals are going to open up.”
The mayor smiled really big. “James is a good man. You remind me of him when he was much younger.”
I motioned to Nora and Billy, both just behind me. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Madam Mayor, if you could head inside, my friends Nora and Billy will follow you. They need to figure out what classes and abilities everyone has, so that we can put it to the best effect. I want everyone to get out of this alive.”
Karen was fuming at this point. “WHAT GIVES YOU THE AUTHORITY?”
My smile never got tired of this kind of person, “I did. Clearly the situation needed direction. No one else was getting things moving in the right way. Next time you run into a situation where people are bickering, and if you think you can get everyone mobilized for the common good, then feel free to take charge. However, the problem will probably be sooner rather than later the Governor will have to issue a general call to arms for every able bodied adult citizen in the state. An invasion of every single state in under six hours calls for that.”
She just stood there in stunned silence. I really didn’t have any more time to waste on her, so I turned to Frank and Chris. Gentlemen go help the police for the moment. I imagine we don’t have long before we see more monsters.”
Besides me and Karen, only the local police officer remained. I finally addressed him, “Sir, I didn’t catch your name. The best help you can be in this situation is to relay any info from other departments, or governmental offices: communication matters.”
The older officer cocked his head at me with a slight smirk on his lips, “It’s Sergeant Stanton. The mayor is wrong, that last part was all your dad. I’ve spoken to him a handful of times given how close your cabin is. The effortless bravado, that was all him.”
Before I could respond a monstrous howl came from the Stack Shack.
