Mike’s dark thoughts surprised him. It hadn’t even been twelve hours since zombies started walking the earth and he was already planning contingencies in case of betrayal – and conscious manipulations.

He wasn’t under any delusions. He knew he wasn’t a goody two shoes or a hero.

If he randomly came across some stranger bleeding out, he would call an ambulance. But the call would be anonymous. He wouldn’t wait around for it to show up either.

Why should his good deed mean wasting half the day talking to cops and making official statements?

It would be the same if he found a wallet full of cash. He would turn it in to the nearest lost and found.

Replacing credit cards and identifications was a pain in the ass. He could empathize completely.

But just because he would turn the wallet in didn’t mean it would still be full of cash when he did. A handling fee should be perfectly acceptable to the wallet’s owner given the time and effort he saved them.

Life was a series of bendable rules and uncrossable lines. At least that was how Mike saw it.

He might cheat on a test he forgot to study for but he’d never steal the answers for an upcoming test he knew about. Just what was different about the two scenarios was hard to articulate. He unconsciously knew the difference in his gut.

Just like his gut told him the only time it was okay to hit a woman was if she was trying to kill him. And that hate based on ethnicity was stupid. There were plenty of better reasons to hate a man besides his skin color.

Hearing Troy wrapping up his speech Mike yawned and began to stretch. There was no sense in being stiff when they encountered the next group of zombies.

The better condition he was in the more zombies he could kill. The more zombies he killed the stronger he became. And most importantly the stronger he became the better he could protect his loved ones in this dangerous new world.

He might have a warped personality, but he really believed in things like loyalty, love and family. Walking contradiction was a perfectly valid way to describe him most days.

***

“Hold up,” Mike held up his hand for emphasis as he came to the stairwell door. He cautiously peered through the vertical rectangular window.

The landing beyond the door was empty.

For the moment.

Unsatisfied Mike gently opened the door. Taking his ax – a weapon newly acquired from the fire emergency case near the elevator – he banged a half dozen times against the door frame. The sound echoed loudly in the stairwell.

Mike waited till he heard grumbles from the group at his back before motioning it was safe to continue. In case he was wrong he let the grumblers go first. If they didn’t have the patience to wait on him then he’d gladly let them check the danger for everyone else.

Eventually they’d learn patience or he’d get rid of the problem. Either way was fine in his opinion.

Pre-apoc Mike might have been uncomfortable with his attitude, but even he would have agreed with it. The sad truth was Mike had never been a people person. He had trouble putting up with things he considered stupid.

His patience was limitless and enduring… until suddenly it wasn’t and he was making his point with his fists.

It had been a long time since he’d last been sent to the principals office for fighting. But the various punishments he’d recieved over the years had never fixed the problem. They’d just made him limit his interactions to people he could get along with.

That had worked fine. But his temper had always been there ticking away underneath. His calm, gentlemanly exterior wasn’t exactly a lie but it did help to hide the fact he could be a real dick when he wanted.

Honestly speaking the stairwell was a disappointment. He’d built it up to be a major obstacle in his mind. It was all tight corners and loud echoing sounds. Zombies should have been in love with the place.

But he’d forgotten a major detail.

The stairwell doors were heavy – made entirely of metal. It took real effort to open. Zombies were stupid, brute strength monsters, incapable of problem solving. The doors were excellent counters to the standard level one zombie.

On the way up to the roof the group met exactly one zombie.

The student it had been, had fallen as he turned, breaking his legs quite seriously. It made him easy to dispatch as he sat there groping towards the group until Mike planted ax seeds in his skull.

For a zombie Apocalypse there were a lot less roving hordes of zombies and a lot more isolated loner zombies than the movies tended to show.

It did make a certain kind of sense.

The system seemed geared towards life being a big dangerous game. That logic meant the zombies were essentially tutorial monsters – the slimes and giant rats of a traditional role playing game.

Mike had no proof his theory was right. He preferred to take things seriously in the mean time. A tutorial monster could still kill a player who wasn’t careful. But he was already beginning to suspect something much worse was coming.

Why would they need such impressive strength to fight zombies? An ordinary person could kill them easily, if they fought smart and careful.

The zombies weren’t the threat. They were more of an opportunity.

The ease of the trip up the stairs hurt his credibility with the newbies. He could feel their judgement on his back. They thought he was paranoid and it annoyed him. How could they have forgotten so quickly how scared they were, hiding in their rooms, before he showed up to save them?

Yunah, walking beside the stretcher, holding a still comatose Sara, grabbed his elbow and smiled ever so slightly, as she shook her head. It was by far the most intimate gesture he’d ever seen her make towards anyone other than Sara.

He was touched by her concern and read her meaning loud and clear.

She didn’t think he was paranoid. The others were idiots. He just needed to ignore them. How she knew what he was thinking was an entirely different matter.

Taking a deep breath he actually managed to smile. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go out of his way to get Yunah on his team. She seemed to see right through Troy’s bull and had at least a little confidence in him.

Once again he thought, I can work with her.

Mike wasn’t the first one to step out onto the roof. The group discipline had taken a hit once they decided they were safe. He was however the first to realize what he was seeing once he got there.

Along the edge of the roof was a faint blue glow marking out the entirety of the roof’s rectangular shape. A quick check with the non players confirmed his hunch they couldn’t see the blue light because they didn’t have the system HUD.

The roof was a safe zone. The first one they’d managed to find. One big enough for everyone in their group to spread out.

Controlling his excitement Mike ignored the system for the moment. As long as the roof was safe he could check the store at his leisure. First he wanted to see the state of the city. That was what they came to the roof to do after all.

Although he could already hear Troy claiming he’d suspected the roof was a safe zone, implying that he had lead them there for that reason. It was a total work of fiction. It also didn’t matter.

The group needed a leader badly. Mike had already worked through it in his mind. He didn’t mind Troy as the one in charge. Troy would leave him basically unrestricted as long as he was protecting the group through his existence.

There were probably better options. His personally seizing control would be like a general taking out the president. It wouldn’t win him the love of the people and it would bring endless headaches later. It would also prejudice any other groups they met against him.

If Troy needed lies to establish a base that just made him a politician. It didn’t make him evil. Besides, nobody else was going out of their way to talk to people and keep then calm. Anyone with eyes could see Troy really cared. Not every one that might decide they wanted power would give a crap about those under them.

Mike made his way to the edge of the roof. Scanning the skyline he had to do a double take. Before he could spot things like abandoned cars and wandering zombies to judge the extent of the problem his eyes were drawn to a building that he’d never seen before, one that hadn’t been there when he’d gone to bed.

No. Not a building he decided as he looked at it longer. It was more of a rounded obelisk. A giant metal pillar. A monolith.

He’d never seen anything like it before in his life. And he wasn’t the only one to notice it. At some point Troy had made his way up next to him to stand equally stunned.

“What is it?” Troy asked.

Mike started to admit he had no idea when one of the newer rescued students cleared his throat.

“They’re every where,” he said quietly adjusting his glasses as he ran a hand through his first red hair. Mike took a minute to think of his name, it was something like S-stan? Seth? No. Shawn. His name was Shawn.

Realizing he was missing out on what Shawn was saying he shook his head and focused.

“No that’s the only one in town. But the internet was still working a while ago and they were saying these things just sort of showed up all over the world. Places like New York, and Tokyo got more than one.”

“Can you shown us?” Someone asked but Shawn was already shaking his head.

“No. At about nine this morning – our time – they all started to release colored smoke from vents in their sides. The news was talking possible biological attacks. Then the internet just sort of went wonky.”

“My phone stopped working about the same time.” Rajesh added from somewhere off to the side of the group.

“But electronics still work. There is still electricity,” Troy insisted, like one thing had something to do with the other.

Shawn smiled and shrugged. “So it wasn’t an EMP. But those things could be jamming our signals somehow. Making it hard to communicate.”

Mike’s next thought was, So it’s an invasion.

He didn’t say anything. There was no point in panicking anyone.

Out loud he asked, “You said those thing just appeared? Did you see how?”

Shawn smiled grimly but his eyes actually seemed to light up behind his glasses.

“Yeah they showed that a few hundred times early on. There were a couple people who filmed it with their phones.

Basically a large hole opened in the sky and they just sort of dropped out. It happened fast too, like less than thirty second for the whole process. There was no collision or earth quakes afterwords either. They settled on the ground, like they were under power or something.”

Mike didn’t know what to make of that. It made as much sense as anything else had since he woke up.

Thinking about the system just made him feel more confused. If it was an invasion why arm the natives?

The more he thought about it, the less he was sure of anything. After a few long moments staring at the giant metal cylinder he turned back to the rooftop.

Seeing Yunah still crouching over Sara he decided to check the store for something to help her. He was the only one with any credits in the group. Hopefully he could afford something to make her recover.