Do not let yourself reflect your Numbers. Rather, let your Numbers reflect you.

The instant you think your Numbers define who you are is the same instant your Numbers stop growing. The you of today is different from the you of yesterday. The you of yesterday earned the Numbers you have. The you of today will earn the Numbers you will have tomorrow. You are the you of today. The you of yesterday is gone.

Today, YOU define your Numbers.

- Excerpt from Low No More, by Peterson

“Stop!” A voice rings out, and we immediately freeze about thirty yards from the wall. I can make out a head sticking over the top of the wall with a long gun pointed in our direction. “Drop your weapons!” The same voice yells.

There’s a clatter as we drop our weapons to the ground as one. I raise my empty hands above my head, my friends following suit a second later.

I hear faint words from the other side of the wall, but nothing directed at us. After half a minute of waiting, I open my mouth to ask a question. “Can we…”

“Just wait right there!” The man yells. “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot!” I freeze in place, raising my arms a little higher. It looks like we’ll be waiting then.

Five minutes pass in silence. My arms ache but I don’t allow them to relax.

Finally, a new voice calls out from the wall. “And what do we have here?”

A man climbs on top of the truck, standing tall. The first thing I notice is his muscles. Even larger and taller than Pallas, I can’t help but be intimidated just by looking at him. He looks like he’s in his thirties, younger than my parents but significantly older than us. His face is clean-shaven, and hard eyes stare out at us underneath bushy eyebrows. An unreasonably large revolver sits in a holster at his side.

After a few seconds, I realize he’s talking to us and respond. “Uh, we’re just looking for safety and information.” I say. “Can we enter?”

A beat passes in silence before the man starts talking. “Refugees, huh? Young ones too. We haven’t seen anyone new from the east for a week now, figured Aliston was overrun. That where you come from?”

“Yeah, we were there two days ago,” I reply. “We didn’t see anyone else there, aside from the monsters.”

“It’s impressive you’re still alive.” He replies. There’s another pause, then he suddenly seems to realize we’re still standing there with our hands in the air. “What are you waiting for?” He says. “Grab your things and come over here.”

Slowly we lower our hands and bend over to pick up our weapons. When no one else yells out, we grab them and make our way to the wall.

As we get closer, I notice how clean the man and those behind the wall look, and I feel self-conscious about our own grubby state. Despite showering two days ago and wearing relatively clean clothes, we’re still filthy. I know I smell terrible and I have what feels like permanently encrusted dirt under my fingernails -- and I’m the cleanest of our group. Melete’s eye is a gross dark brown from our battle with trolls, and Pallas’ arms are wrapped tightly in bloody bandages despite having changed them this morning. Styx is the dirtiest of us all from her time huddled against the ground under the wheelbarrow. Unfortunately, our water is too precious of a resource for us to waste.

As we climb on top of the truck and lower ourselves on the other side, gingerly stepping over some makeshift metal spikes affixed to the roof of the truck, I feel the eyes of the men on us. The man in charge seems to analyze us especially closely, his gaze traveling up and down each of our bodies.

“Welcome to Fort Carscott.” He says. “I’m Jeremy, what should I call you four?”

“Atlas.”

“Melete.”

“Styx.”

“Pallas.” We each reply.

Jeremy looks at us strangely. “Interesting names you have there…” He says, clearly fishing. I shrug and look to Melete.

“It’s what we go by now. Everyone knows you have to have aliases in the apocalypse!” She fills in helpfully.

The man still looks confused. He turns to Styx, who simply gives him a shrug, and he decides to accept it. The others have directed their attention back outward, but I can feel their scrutiny still focused on us out of the corners of their eyes. Each of them holds a gun pointed at the ground and has a knife sheathed at their waste.

“Good call.” Jeremy says. “Let me show you around.”

Beyond the line of boarded-up buildings and cars that make up the wall, there’s an open space of about ten yards where nothing stands. Past that there is a line of camping tents that fill the open area until the walls of some other buildings. As we walk, Jeremy is talking.

“Fort Carscott, formerly the town of Carscott.” He says. “I know, I know, not as creative as you four’s names, but it’s what we call ourselves.” I bristle at the tone of condescension in his voice but force myself to ignore it. “At last count, we have just over four hundred people here in half a square mile. We’ve walled off the edges and have men patrolling with guns, twenty-four seven. You won’t have to worry about monsters while you’re here.

“Over there is the chicken coop -- luckily we were able to salvage a good number of chickens. For some reason the monsters left them completely alone for three days out on some farms, but it’s good fortune for us. Over there the non-combatants are taking care of some other important tasks.” He points to the right where a line of women are washing clothes with what looks to be old fashioned washboards. Beyond them there’s a group of men and women digging into the soil with hoes.

“We’ve got two large gardens already,” Jeremy says, “and that’s going to be our third. We should be self-sustaining within a month. Right now we rely a lot on raids for non-perishables from the nearby houses.”

I marvel at my surroundings. This was all set up in the last two weeks? “How did this all happen so fast?” I ask.

Jeremy smiles. “Hard work, son. Lots of hard work. We’ve seen a lot of trouble in the last few weeks -- good way to motivate people.”

“How did you survive at first? What happened when the in-...when it all started?” Styx almost uses the word inclusion but catches herself.

Jeremy smiles at her. “I’m glad you asked. At first it was just chaos. Everyone’s Numbers disappearing, snake creatures popping out and attacking people, strange dogs roaming around. Most people just hid in their houses, hoping to stay safe or that the government would come.” His smile disappears. “I’ll admit it, that first day was rough. Took until the second day for me to realize no one was coming to save us, and if we wanted to survive we would have to save ourselves. I rounded up some of my friends and guns,” he pats the giant revolver on his hip, “and went hunting. Saved a bunch of people and gathered everyone up at the old high school. Took some time, but working together we cleared out any monsters that had made it inside and made it nice and defensible. We’ve expanded a bit since then, but most of our people and stuff are still in the high school. Those who can fight guard, while those who can’t help out in other ways.”

“That’s amazing.” Styx says, and I can’t help but agree. Maybe our earlier pessimism in humanity was unfounded.

“I’m glad you think so.” Jeremy says, smile widening as he looks at Styx. “You hungry? Injured? Mess hall and medical are this way, in the high school.”

“We’re good for now.” I say.

“What food do you have?” Melete asks at the same time.

Jeremy laughs. “Nothing gourmet, but I’m sure it’s better than what you’ve been surviving on. You’ll be able to shower in the school’s locker rooms, although no hot water -- the water supply for the school is hooked up to the water tower.”

Part of me wants to refuse on principle, but I realize I’m being foolish. Taking a shower is probably as much for Jeremy’s sake as it is for ours -- I can’t imagine we smell any better than we look. I open my mouth to accept but find I’m already too late. Styx is already talking.

“We’d love that, thanks! Where should we go?”

A small prideful part of me is hurt, but I push it away. They can make our own decisions, they don’t need me to make every little choice for the group. And since when did I actually enjoy being the leader?

I shake my head and follow my friends.

As we approach the school Melete gasps. “Lights! You have power?” She asks.

“Yeah,” Jeremy replies. “The school has an emergency power system, we’ve been using the generators. We’ve been trying to conserve as much as we can. It obviously won’t last forever, but you’d be surprised by how much fuel storage the school had. Plus we can siphon from the gas station and cars.”

Opening the front doors, a man waits for us, also armed. “This is Scott,” Jeremy introduces each of us. “He’s in charge of most personnel assignments around here, so you’ll be seeing him quite a bit.” He directs his next words to Scott. “Don’t worry about this group, I’ll show them around.” Scott looks confusedly at Jeremy, but when Jeremy doesn’t say anything more he simply turns around and walks away. He hadn’t said a single word.

Walking into the school is a surreal experience. For the last two weeks, we’ve risen with sunrise and camped with sunset. Darkness has represented danger. One of the main reasons exploring houses is so dangerous is that any room without windows naturally gives monsters the advantage. Darkness is our enemy.

But as we enter the school walking into the cinderblock windowless hallway, lights guide the way. As they shine overhead, I feel secure in a way I haven’t in weeks.

Technology, I realize. The answer to Sam’s question, the way humans conquered the world. Our technology and ingenuity. Without it, we are weak, weaker than many other animals already on earth. I look over to Pallas, who is still holding onto the shovel. But with technology, even technology as simple as a hunk of metal at the end of a long piece of wood, we triumph. And seeing technology still function despite all of the chaos of the last weeks gives me hope humanity will prevail.

We decide we would like to shower first, and getting clean once again is heavenly. They have new clothes waiting for us, all with the mascot of the school smiling on the front. For some reason, the city of Carscott decided a koala would make for a fearsome representation of their only high school. Looking at the goofy koala, part of me wants to keep wearing my old clothes, but a single sniff dissuades me from that.

We meet back up with Jeremy outside the locker rooms and he leads us to the cafeteria.

As we walk, there’s a squawk as the school intercom turns on. “Dire bear sighted outside of the fourth street wall. Squad C to reinforce.”

I look around in alarm, only for Jeremy to move his hands in a calming motion. “Don’t worry about it, this happens a few times a day. Single monster sightings are fairly common, but we’ve got plenty of guns so there’s nothing you need to worry about.”

From his relaxed posture, he clearly isn’t concerned with the announcement. Despite his serenity, I can’t help but be slightly apprehensive knowing there’s a monster within a mile of where I stand.

“Sounds like you have quite a system set up.” Styx says.

“Yeah, we’ve got radios at regular points along the wall, ready to communicate if they need anything. Most guards, if they aren’t on duty, will be relaxing in the school, so they’ll radio anything into the main office where they can announce it. We have enough squads to always have people on standby.” He shrugs. “Honestly for a dire bear I doubt the reinforcements will even be needed, but it’s best to play it safe.”

“Dire bear?” Pallas asks.

“Looks like a normal bear, but huge. Tough to take down, but they aren’t the quickest. Easy to kill with guns before it even gets close. The only danger is when getting the killing blow.”

There’s a moment of silence as we wait for him to elaborate. Finally, I ask. “What do you mean by killing blow? Why would that be more dangerous?”

“They can take a lot of punishment, and it’s hard to tell how close to death they are. We had one guy almost lose a leg trying to finish it off when it still had more life left than expected. No matter how slow it seems, when you’re only a foot away it can still be dangerous.”

We keep staring at him in confusion until Styx asks, “Why would he need to get so close?”

“For the Numbers.” Jeremy responds. At our continued looks of confusion, he continues. “Do you not know? I guess that isn’t too surprising if you haven’t had guns.” He takes a deep breath and explains for us. “You know that killing monsters gives Numbers, right?” We all nod. “Well, killing from far away gives a lot less Numbers. And I mean a LOT. Even when really close, killing with a gun gives less than killing with melee weapons. We try to only wound with guns, and finish the monsters off close up.”

“Do you know why at all?” Styx asks.

“No idea, but we’ll take advantage of it either way.” He smiles at Styx.

Inwardly, I fume at Sam. This would have been pretty important information to know, and there’s no way he wouldn’t have known about the issue with killing from range. Right?

I resolve to have a more thorough questioning of Sam later and push away my anger. I don’t know why, but despite the light, despite the safety, despite the first new human contact I’ve had for weeks, I feel agitated. My nerves are strung tight for no reason at all. But before I have a chance to analyze my frustrations we’ve arrived at the cafeteria.

“Now, before I can get you your food,” Jeremy begins, his face frozen into a serious mask. “I’ll need to see your Numbers.”

S: 100

D:100

W: 321

I: 100

C: 70

0

Skills: Adjust:Self