The howl felt familiar and foreign simultaneously. It sounded like any other wolf sound effect in a movie or tv show. Yet, it was foreign to me. I felt my balls shrivel up in raw fear. “Fuck me.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have more than a second to vent to no one in particular. I felt the briefest gust of air followed by a crunching of something piercing my arm. I looked down to see blood flowing freely from my left arm. What had caused this? My eyes darted around, and quickly found the cause of my pain: an arrow lodged through the chest of Karen. Blood splashed me initially, but didn’t flow much after that. I saw my vision spin as I fell and turned at the same time. I landed on my ass and suddenly appreciated protective body armor with lots of cushioning. “Archer,” was all I could shout out.

  I saw a short wolf headed person at the end of the parking lot, just in front of a tree. He was holding bow almost as tall as him in one hand, as his other started to smoothly pull another arrow. Then he started to glow a little bit with sparking outline. ‘that’s really cool’ went through my head. A moment later a gunshot from somewhere above me rang out and a bullet ripped through the wolf person’s neck, nearly severing his head.

  I stumbled to my feet, and found myself running to the barricade of cars. I was running towards the howling sound from several seconds earlier. Was I stupid? Yet, my feet continued to churn towards the cars. Chris met me before I got to the cars, and put my uninjured arm over his shoulder to steady my movement. We got to the barricade, and he set me down on the ground.

  Brittney arrived a moment later and started looking over my wound. “It isn’t too bad; it missed the bone and most of the muscle. You only got clipped, but that lady next to you took it full in her chest. I can tell from here that you were the lucky one.”

  “Please patch me up if you can. Damn that hurt.” I fell into silence for a moment, reminding myself that I was lucky this wasn’t so bad. “Chris, has the howling creature revealed itself yet?”

  “Nope, but I doubt that we will be able to avoid it. We need to get inside there. Nora suggested there is probably some sort of teleportation circle. Otherwise, they couldn’t keep getting reinforcements to randomly show up in the building.”

  “That makes sense. Magic is clearly at play here. Otherwise, we would see new reinforcements arriving:”

  I looked around and saw that 4 different highway patrolmen were eating cookies. “Brittney, did you get everyone healed?”

  “No. I got those four some cookies, and I used my healing ability on two of the cops over there.” She pointed towards the local police, and not the highway patrol guys. “I also helped with first aid, but the kit you had in the SUV is somewhat depleted. Four people were dead before I got here.”

  “That was fast. You did all that in just a few minutes?” I was confused how she helped everyone that fast.

  “Giving guys cookies, or using my ability didn’t take much time. I’ve spent most of my time tending to the few wounds that I didn’t use cookies or abilities on. I am down to 4 cookies, and it takes 2 cookies to have the magic work. So, they are for severe emergencies only.”

  She was smarter than her age would suggest. She knew to keep a few healing items in reserve in case this got worse. I wouldn’t have done so at her age. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have told anyone. I would’ve kept it secret even if it got someone killed.

  I looked around to see who else needed help, and I saw a civilian in cuffs down the line in between several cops. The cops were keeping an eye across the street, no longer worried about bound up person. As soon as Brittney was done with me I crouch walked from the highway patrol end to the street section. I stayed close to the vehicles. I really didn’t want to get hit by any more arrows. I glanced back towards the wolf person and still saw the body laying there. It is probably dead at this point. Once I made it all the way over to cuffed civilian I had to find out who he was. “So, who are you? And what did you do to get arrested during an apocalypse?”

  He slowly shifts his head to face me. He looks at me closely. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  I paused at his words. I looked up over the hood of the car protecting us: still no big wolf like creature. I sat down near the prisoner. “Try me.”

  “Dad said if anything real freakish like some supernatural shit happens I was to dig up his grave. He didn’t exactly say why. So that’s what I was doing really early this morning.”

  One of the cops snickered, “well at least he is a creative grave robber.”

  It took a moment to process those few sentences. Why would his dad tell him to dig up his own grave? This guy didn’t look old, maybe in his 30’s or so. So how old could his dad really be? Strangely enough, I believed this guy. “Let me start over. My Name is Neal Cassland. What’s your name and your class?”

  “Hello Neal. I’m Dennis. And I guess the class you are referrin’ to is from that system thingie it calls itself. It gave me the class grave robber, probably on account of me diggin’ up Dad’s grave, when the system did its thing.”

  “So as a grave robber, what ability did you get? You have had a lot of time to look at your set up, given you probably haven’t had much else to do once you got arrested and what not.”

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  “What’s it worth to ya?”

  “I’d be happy to put in a good word for you with the boys in blue here. I might have a teeny bit of pull.”

  He looked up to left and then his right. “Officers, does this college kid actually have pull with you, or is he just pullin’ my leg?”

  The officers looked at each other, then back towards the Stack Shack. The one our right spoke up finally, “The sergeant sorta acts like this kid has authority.”

  “Damn. This is great. I love it when people of means be on my side. So, I guess I could tell you, the ability is rob the dead. It lets me steal abilities and classes from dead bodies. I have several available ability slots, so I think it’s kind of a winner.”

  “Oh Fuck. That’s more than ‘kind of a winner.’ That is a game changer. You can be a person to help everyone. I promise that everyone here is going to do everything in their power to keep you safe. The promise of extra abilities is particularly important to every human still alive.”

  “Double Damn. My prospects keep looking up. How about you get me out of these handcuffs?”

  “I will talk to the sergeant. However, we are going to need to test your abilities on a dead body.”

  “Not taking my word for how my ability works?” Dennis made this face like he was genuinely offended. Nothing in his posture, told me he was serious. I wasn’t sure if Dennis was going to run away and hide the first opportunity he got. He was too important, especially with how badly people needed abilities. Please let this work.

  I spotted Frank not far away. “Frank, go grab that short wolf headed guy that Joe shot. Make sure its extra dead. Then bring it over here. We are going to do our first experiment of the apocalypse.”

  “I’ll go grab the wolf dude, but I don’t want to know what freaky experiment shit you go goin on.” Frank shook his head, but had this shit-eating grin plastered on his face. He was normally serious, but his jokes, when they happened, were of the locker room variety. I blame it on the military.

  I sat there near our new ‘friend’ Dennis. Frank would be back any minute. Chris came over with an interesting expression on his face. “What kind of experiment are you doing? Do you need privacy?”

  “Really?!”

  “Just kidding. Did I hear he can steal abilities from the dead?”

  “It sounds like it. I was going to have him take an ability from the dead wolf guy. I figured an archer sneaking around in the woods should have abilities with the hunter affinity. Maybe we can get Joe something to bump up his sniper capabilities.”

  “That’s a solid plan. How many times can he use it a day?” We both looked over to Dennis, expecting him to answer.

  “Oh, I can use it five times for free. I don’t have enough Mana to cast it without the free uses.” He shrugged, silent for a moment before continuing, “I can take 1 ability per effect level. I don’t know what an effect level is though.”

  Chris and I smiled at each other at the first statement, but frowned at words that came right after it. I had to ask, “how much mana do you have and how much does it cost to cast?”

  Dennis laughed, “I see whatcha did there. Why don’t you tell me about this effect level.”

  “Yeah, I sort of jumped past that. Effect level, at least as far as we can tell, is just your total character level. For just about all of humanity at this moment at least, that is only a one. Now if you could answer my questions, please.”

  “Well, it sorta looks like the ability is a tier three. I’m not so sure how high those tiers go, but it says it costs me thirteen mana. I don’t got 13 mana.”

  Chris sighed the most melodramatic sigh I’d ever seen. “Well, there goes fireball.”

  In my mind, I did a bit of a happy dance. I tried so hard to suppress the grin that threatened to expose my happiness at his inability to cast explosive spells. Wait, if Tier 1 cost 3 mana and Tier 3 cost 13 mana. Does Tier 2 cost 8 mana? That seems logical. Unfortunately, that means our stats have to rise to be able to handle 13 mana. That means I would need something like a 5 constitution, 6 Intelligence, and at least a 6 in charisma. If I didn’t have the bonus from charisma, then those other two stats needed to be at least a point higher each. I’m only getting 2 mana in these 5 levels: 1 from my charisma hitting 6, and another when my intelligence hits 5. I’ll only have 11 mana. The only one of us who can even hope to use that ability is Nora. There has to be something we are missing.

  I turned to watch Frank arrive and dump the short wolf creature on the ground. There was a slight crunching sound, like a rib or two was broken when he dropped it. It probably doesn’t matter; dead people don’t care if their bones are broken.

  Dennis got up to his knees and shuffled over. He took a deep breath and bent down and touched the body, “Steal a bitch.” The body started to glow a soft blue, and I felt a very subtle heat radiate from it. It never got brighter, or any warmer really, and after half a minute or so we finally saw the body fade. In Dennis’s hands was an oversized token. It looked smooth from my vantage a few feet away, but I was unsure of the material. Dennis looked at us and gave a half smile, “It’s one of them hunter abilities for sure. I know that much about it.” He held it up, and chris snatched it out of his hands.

  “I got in my hands. So does that mean I get to name it?” He grinned at it, his eyes sparkling brightly.

  I was flabbergasted, “you grabbed it, just to be able to be the one to name it? Sure, have at it, but it goes to Joe this time. It will strengthen him, then we can pass the next ones to you, Nora, and Billy in that order.”

  “Then I shall name it an ability token,” as he said that he held the newly minted ‘ability token’ up as if some sort of aha moment and theme music accompanied the gesture. When no music was forthcoming, he pulled his arm down slightly and extended it out to me. “Here you go. Take this ability token and give it to Joe.”

  “You wanted background music, didn’t you,” as I took the offered token. I was happy for that moment, that one single moment between Chris and me. He is the jokester, that always forgets the details. I just humor him, because he is far more fun than I am. Well, that, and he introduced me to every girl I have gone on a date with.

  The moment was ruined by a fresh howl followed by the two arrows bursting through Chris. Blood splashed out from his chest and across both our arms and my face. He still had a goofy looking grin on his face, like he was humming the theme song he created for the naming of those stupid ability tokens. I heard people shouting archer next to the convenience store and archer behind the western hedge. Gunfire rang out rapidly, but ceased after only a brief cadence of shots.

  The light dimmed in his eyes; Chris was gone. Another howl, and then the sound of movement from the other side of the cars. Frank shouted, “Unholy Fuck, that’s the biggest wolf I’ve ever seen.”

  Yet, I didn’t care. One of my oldest friends was dead.