Mike stood there, holding the doorknob in his hand, and took a deep breath. He was acting on impulse not logic. Sure he’d grabbed a bat to defend himself but what if there were ten more zombies right outside his door?

Caution winning over bravado, Mike put his eye up to the peephole. The view wasn’t great. It only showed a few feet of the hallway directly in front of his door.

It was enough.

There were already three zombies just in the little he could make out.

Three on one seemed risky.

Jeff hadn’t actually been that dangerous once Mike finally started to fight for real. He had however been strong. Scary strong.

Stepping away from the door, Mike started thinking in overdrive. His eyes wandered the room. In no time he had a simple plan.

Heading into the kitchenette he grabbed the big carving knife from the drawer. Admittedly it wasn’t a great anti-zombie weapon. If zombie movie logic held true, destroying the brain was the only way to stop them.

Putting a knife through a skull is easier said than done. A bad angle and he’d get no penetration.

The thought of losing his bat in a struggle and having to fight the zombies bare handed wouldn’t leave him alone. Mike’s paranoia was insistent, any weapon was better than none.

It wasn’t like he was a survivalist or doomsday prepper. He couldn’t walk into his gun closet and load up on semi automatic rifles and machetes. He had to work with what he could find.

Honestly speaking he was lucky Jeff had been his room mate. Both the bat, and the knife he slipped into his belt. were Jeff’s. Without them his next best options were a pair of rubber hulk fists or throwing his heavier textbooks.

He did own a sword. It was an actual battle-ready katana he’d bought online.

There were two problems with using it.

The first was he’d never actually learned kendo or any other sword art. The sword was just a display piece.

It had been an impulse buy. A “that’s so cool I have to have it,” feeling one afternoon when his bank account had been particularly flush. After a couple of days, spent cutting watermelons and water bottles, it had turned into a fancy dresser decoration. A constant reminder to think before spending eight hundred bucks.

The bigger problem with using it wasn’t his lack of know how, but its location. The sword was sitting in his room back at his mother’s house nearly forty miles away.

As soon as he knew what was going on he would worry about getting home. His mom was tough. She could take care of herself. Although Zombies were an unexpected curve ball.

His little sister was another story. At twelve, Emma, was his physical opposite. She was short, less than five feet, and petite on top of it. She would not survive getting cornered by a zombie. Knowing that made him desperate to be here for her, to protect her.

The more he thought about it the less need he felt for elaborate plans and caution. He wasn’t normally reckless and he’d never once thought of himself as any sort of hero. But if there was one thing praiseworthy about Mike Tanner, it was his love of family.

He was the man of the house. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t living at home, at the moment. His dad was dead and Emma’s had left them years ago. He was used to stepping up and taking on that role. Now that they might need someone to protect them he could feel his blood beginning to boil. He had to figure out a way to get home.

Pushing the couch up against the door frame so the door could still swing inward, Mike took another deep calming breath. He did nobody any good dead.

Whatever was going on might turn out to be extremely localized, and not a big deal. Not that he believed that for a second. He made himself consider it anyway. He couldn’t just go and get himself killed. Wouldn’t that just be bringing his family more problems?

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts Mike slapped himself in the face.

“Get your head in the game.” He mumbled to himself with a derisive smirk.

Mike moved around the couch, placing it between him and the door. He brought up his bat, holding it loosely ready in is off hand. Leaning forward he grabbed the doorknob. With a brief fearful prayer, he swung the door open.

It would be hard to call the zombies in the hall surprised. Their faces barely twitched. But the half second pause they gave before acknowledging Mike’s presence made him think they hadn’t known how to react to the sudden change.

Their hesitation gave him plenty of time to bring the bat up into a firm two handed grip before the first zombie stumbled into the room.

*Smack*

Mike was surprised at how heavily the blow landed. It practically disintegrated the poor zombie’s head. It was so violent, so visceral, it felt like a joke. Like he was filming a scene for a movie, not fighting for his life.

The sudden lack of resistance caused him to overbalance and fall forward into the couch.

Luckily he’d kept the cushions turned inward towards the room. He was able to catch himself without toppling over. The new position however was not an easy one from which to bring strength into his swings.

As the two new zombies bumped into the improvised couch barrier from their side, Mike found himself in a terrifying shoving match against them. He struggled to get his bat room to work again. Without holding back he threw elbows and fought dirty.

It wasn’t like his honor was at stake.

Just his life.

Finally one of the two remaining zombies stepped awkwardly on the first one’s corpse, and fell over.

Taking the opportunity presented, Mike whipped his bat around and crushed the standing zombie’s temple.

Unfortunately his strength was still greater than anticipated.

Mike stumbled to catch himself.

The zombie he’d smacked fell limply against the couch. Its weight landing badly, caused the couch to tip over toward the door, and the last remaining zombie.

Mike found himself falling forward with the couch.

His bat slipped from his hand, bouncing out into the hallway.

Panicking again Mike fell directly on top of the zombie pinning it. Lacking a weapon he struggled to protect himself from it’s clamping jaws and grasping hands as he pummeled it with his elbows and fists, even jamming his thumb into a pulpy eyeball. The damage he inflicted was largely superficial.

Struggling mightily he worked his knee into its chest. Leveraging his weight against it, he wrenched the zombie’s head to the side. He held it there applying pressure until its neck snapped with an audible sound.

Gasping for breath Mike crawled forward off the limp zombie and collapsed. He was exhausted.

Watching the door he remembered the knife in his belt and laughed.

So much for a backup, he thought to himself as he pulled it out, into his hand. He didn’t have the strength to stand but he refused to let the next zombie just kill him if one wandered by before he could move again.

Laying there within reach of the three bodies Mike had a thought. Grunting with effort he checked the zombie’s brains for crystals. Sure enough all three brains had one.

Half disgusted, half excited, he took them in hand and absorbed the off white crystals, feeling the same warm sensation. A new exclamation mark appeared in his vision.

Noticing the new red exclamation mark, Mike focused on it. Another congratulatory message claiming he’d leveled up, popped up. He quickly closed it.

He was now a level two.

Mike only vaguely understood what that meant. The information in his head claimed he was stronger now and richer. The proof could be observed from his status screen under the menu – the larger box with the plus sign in it.

Curious and having nothing better to do anyway, until the stitch in his side and the numbness of his legs worked themselves out, Mike focused on opening the menu.

It brought up three rectangular option boxes – [Status] [Store] [Missions]. Both the store and the mission buttons were greyed out – unselectable. He knew why after a moment’s thought. The store and mission board could only be opened in safe zones – specific marked areas where monsters would not intrude.

The concept of an area monsters wouldn’t go was strange to Mike. What would keep them out? An energy barrier? Could he make one himself? Or did they require special circumstances to come into being?

He didn’t have the answers to those particular questions. Since the answers he had been given seemed right so far, Mike decided not to worry about it too hard.

Further focusing on the [Status] button opened a large transparent screen with a small graphical representaton of him as he looked now with pointy ears, bigger hands and feet, and slightly green skin. His personal information was laid out, to the right of his avatar, in a simple table.

Aside from his name and current stat distribution, there was a section listed as credits. Above the credits section was a box detailing he had 0.4 AP – attribute points – left to place.

Name: Mike Tanner – Race: Human (Orc)

Occupation: None – Level: 2

STR: 1.3 / QUI: 0.8 / BOD: 1.3 / MIN: 1.1 / SPI: 1.0 [AP: 0.4]

Purse: 1040 Credits

Skills: [Brute Strength] [Sturdy] [Dark Vision] [Slow Witted]

Mike’s mysterious information instantly began filling him in on the details.

Human average was considered to be one point zero, in any given statistic. Be it strength, quickness, body, mind or spirit. Further the average human at level one had a rough distribution of five point zero. This could vary higher or lower, but true human average was five flat.

Further, as a human with the bloodline of an orc, his automated growth from the system amounted to 0.2 AP per level, split evenly between STR and BOD. Meaning he had already grown 0.4 AP. He’d begun with a distribution of five point one. Just barely a scratch above true average.

His quickness had skewed low due to his weight and sedentary life style. But he’d never been that fast or well balanced before anyway so he likely only lost point one to his health.

Thinking it over for a moment Mike decided fixing his quickness was the most important thing. Since it included not just movement speed but balance it might keep him from falling every time he swung his bat.

Everything suddenly seemed like a game, but it was still real life. There wouldn’t be any “ideal builds”. That would leave people vulnerable. The level of trust it would take to for a person to willingly grow their power in a direction that left an obvious weakness – even in favor of an obvious strength – was astronomical. At the very least Mike didn’t know anyone well enough to risk it for himself.

Specking pure body as a tank was all well and good until the rest of the party was dead and the tank’s attack was too weak to kill a retreat path. Same with aiming for quickness and being unable to hurt strong enemies.

In real life balance was best.

Putting zero point three into quickness he hesitated then spent the last point one on spirit.

He could immediately feel the difference in quickness. His body felt lighter and he knew he could stand.

He considered his spirit as he got up. He felt less fatigued than he had, but he wasn’t sure that had anything to do with spirit or not.

Carrying the bloodline of an orc had given him racial skills.

[Brute Strength] and [Sturdy] were straightforward. They simply ensured his growth every level included point one attribute points into strength and body respectively.

The skills were a leg up on players without bloodlines. They would get point three attribute points per level to distribute at their whim. He received point four – with half of it spent on a fixed direction every level.

His skill [Slow Witted] was actually a negative bonus. It required point two attribute points to raise his mind point one. It was clear his bloodline was made to excel at vanguard positions. That was fine with Mike. Hitting problems was more his style than thinking through them anyway.

That left [Dark Vision] which exactly like it sounded let him see in the dark with his new golden irised eyes.

Dismissing the screen Mike ducked into the hall to retrieve his bat. Looking around cautiously, he spotted another clump of zombies gathered at an apartment across the atrium from his own.

It was a bit disappointing really. After distributing his stats, and feeling a noticable physical difference, he was a bit eager to keep raising levels. To do that he needed zombies to dispatch.

There weren’t nearly as many of them around as he’d expected. Whatever had happened might not be as bad as he originally feared.

Even if it wasn’t, there were only two more zombies across the way. He could easily kill them and bring himself that much closer to level three.

The zombies seemed attracted to noises – like his earlier screams. They had a reason to be gathered around that particular door. Rescuing whoever was stuck in that apartment might help answer some of his questions.

Decision made Mike hefted his bat and started toward the zombies. He was within a few feet of the zombies before they seemed to notice him. By then it was much too late. Taking a big swing he sent the first zombie stumbling back over the railing – down four floors to the west lobby.

Cursing the lost crystal, Mike reset his swing. He hit the next zombie in the knee so it crumpled to the floor instead of staggering around and potentially falling over like the first one. Then delivered a third and fourth strike to the skull before picking out the crystal and straightening his back.

Absorbing the crystal Mike shook the sand out of his hand then knocked on the door, calling out.

“Hello? Anybody in there?” Pausing he waited a moment before adding, “I took care of your zombie problem out here.”

Mike could hear muffled surprise behind the door. A hand fumbled with the lock chain. An audible click sounded. The door cracked open.