A crazy Mexican woke me up. I can only assume the man was crazy, since waking me up before I was ready, could be considered throwing his life away. I grumpily swatted at the hand that shook my shoulder. The slap echoed in a most satisfying way in the echo chamber of the locker room. The curse that followed it was equally satisfying.

“Toss this cup of water on him,” Carter said. “That will wake him up.”

My eyes snapped open, only to be met with peals of laughter from three of my companions. Chavez stood over me, his arm extended toward me. I could see Andy and Carter moving behind him, though my sleep-deprived brain couldn’t piece together what they were doing.

“Good morning, sleepy-head,” Chavez said to me, offering me a helping hand up.

“Says the guy who got a full night’s sleep,” I groused, even while I took his arm. “Fucking Sleeping Beauty can’t give me another five minutes.”

“We’re losing daylight,” Carter said from behind him. I looked over, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and saw that she was packing towels into gym bags, no doubt rescued from the same lifeguard station.

“Plus, you smell terrible,” Andy said. He was taking water bottles and filling them from the large Gatorade jug. He’d been at it for five minutes, judging by the bottles heaped into yet another gym bag at his feet.

“Jump into the pool and get yourself clean,” Carter said and threw me a towel.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a lazy salute. “Let me grab a clean change of clothes.” I dug into my bag and took out my only spare set of clothing. “We’ll probably have to hit another place to pick up more clothes.”

“Probably a big-and-tall store.” Andy told his joke with a straight face. He’d used it plenty of times before, after all. “Most places won’t have clothes in size ‘damn big’.”

“Not my fault, I got a set of ‘I’m-not-a-shrimp’ genes from my parents.” It was my usual response to his typical banter. I noted that it had been some time since he’d fondly made fun of me for my size.

“I don’t think you can call me the shrimp anymore,” Andy protested. “We have Chavez on our team now, you know.”

“Leave me out of this, thank you.” Chavez looked down at his feet.

“Don’t mind him,” Carter whisper shouted to Chavez. “If you have to, you can just cut off his other arm.”

“Oh, that’s cold,” Andy said.

I didn’t hear any more of the conversation as I left the locker room, carrying my spare set of clothes, my towel, and my sword. The rain lingered in the air, giving the Texas heat an oppressive humidity. I looked around the area, scanning for any potential threats before I fully revealed myself.

When I was satisfied the coast was clear, I picked my way across the damp grass, my boots squelching into the soft earth. Finally, I reached the concrete pad that surrounded the main pool. I picked a random deck chair to toss my clean clothes and towel onto. I then stripped out of my clothing, dropping the useless rags on the side of the pool. I lay the sword carefully near the edge of the pool deck, where it would be within easy reach for me, and I hopped into the pool. As the sign indicated, it was deep, probably Olympic depth for diving.

I ran my hands through my hair, the thick, black substance sloughing off in the water. I scrubbed every inch of my body, the cool water soothing against my skin. When my head finally broke the surface of the water, I had drifted into the middle of the pool, and the impurities floated around me in the water. I reached out with a hand to touch the substance, and my hand passed right through the inky substance, none of it clinging to my skin any longer.

When I pulled my arm out of the water, I noticed something peculiar about it. All the hair seemed to have fallen off. The same was true for my other arm, my legs, and my chest. I felt the smooth skin on the bare scalp of my head. There wasn’t even a trace of hair left on my entire body. And I do mean, my entire body. While I had been naked before, when I jumped into the pool, I somehow felt even more exposed now. Would my hair ever grow back? Or was I doomed to be a “hairless ape”, as Corey called me?

I had spent too much time in the pool. I pulled myself through the water. Just as I began pulling myself out of the pool, I froze. On the deck of the pool, laying on its belly in the early morning sun was the tiger from the zoo. I could see fresh blood on its muzzle from a deep gash. The large predator rose to its paws and padded away. I frowned as it favored its front paw, limping slightly each time it put weight on the leg.

I didn’t wait to haul myself out of the pool. If the overgrown cat wanted to kill me, it didn’t exactly need to wait for me to get out of the pool to do it. It probably weighed over five hundred pounds, and I had no doubts that naked and unarmed, I would be no match for the beast. Hell, even if it was wounded, and I had a weapon, I wasn’t sure I could kill the thing before it got me.

I shivered. Not that I was scared. I had just gotten out of the water, and I was wet in the early fall weather. And it was perfectly reasonable to be scared after coming face to face with a dangerous creature. And I was naked.

My eyes inadvertently flicked back over to where the tiger had been laying, not twenty feet from the edge of the pool. Even though my eyes didn’t make out the distinct patterns, my mana sight told me there was a shining core in the grass. It was mostly silver, just like my sword.

I quickly put the rest of my clean clothes back on and moved closer to the energy source. The grass had grown taller in the two days — no, it was three now — since the end of the world. The well-manicured lawn could better hide the shape I discovered in the long grass. The green carapace of the scorpion, with its irregular shape, kept itself hidden almost perfectly in the tall grass. It was certainly not as big as the first scorpion I’d encountered, since this one was only about as long as my forearm. Which still meant it was a big scorpion. It just wasn’t damn big.

The tail of the thing had been torn off, and a thick substance oozed out. Blood. Did scorpions have blood? I shook my head and focused back on the prize. The thing was dead since I could see there was no mana circulating in the rest of its body. The core, however, was tightly packed with silver and gray mana. I sank my fingers into the deepest gash in the scorpion’s body and pushed the carapace apart to reveal the glowing core. Tentatively, I touched it with the tip of my pointer finger.

Nothing happened.

I wiggled my hand further into the carapace of the thing until I could get a grip on the core, so I could pull it free. I let the core rest in the palm of my hand while I looked at it. I could see the mana swirling inside, but it didn’t do anything. Was this part of advancing to the next rank? Corey called it Citrine Rank?

But I had to use mana to heal my leg. After last night, I could almost feel the slight ache in them from over-using the mana channels. But what could stop me from storing the mana in my core, then using it to soothe my leg constantly?

I looked at the glowing rock in my hand with exasperation. I tried to use my Will to force the mana into my body. I reached out and pulled on the mana. Again, nothing happened. I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the core and pushing even more against the energy in the shining object. I imagined a hand reaching out and grabbing the energy to pull it back into my core. When that also failed, I mentally cursed at the object.

“What are you doing?” Andy’s question broke me out of my focus. I looked up at him, the sun fully over the horizon, giving him a halo effect.

“Uh, nothing,” I said and got to my feet.

“You’ve been squatting there for half an hour, looking at that thing.” Andy looked down at the core in my hand. I could see his desire for the energy flicker on his face, before it disappeared behind his ever-present mask of calm.

“Half an hour?” I said. “It only felt like a minute. Maybe two.”

“You went out before the sun was up.” Andy stuck his thumb out and pointed it over his shoulder to emphasize his point.

“Damn,” I said. “Is Bragg awake yet?”

“Yeah, just now. That’s why I came to get you. Figured we could talk about what the next steps are.”

“Yeah.” I followed him back to the locker room, the door now propped open to let more light in.

“Welcome back,” Chavez greeted me. “Is the water toxic or something?”

“What?” I wondered.

“Where’s all your hair?”

I ran my hands over my bald scalp. “Yeah, it all fell off, but I think it was that black stuff all over me that did it.”

“At least you smell better,” Carter said. “Even the smell of chlorine is better than that filth.”

“Yeah, but now he just looks like some kind of axe murderer,” Chavez said. “You, sir, do not have the head to be bald.”

“Thanks,” I grunted. “How’s Bragg?” I wasn’t changing the subject to deflect away from my new hair fashion. No, it was a natural transition in the conversation. Carter and Chavez exchanged significant looks at the mention of Bragg’s name, however, and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. “He’s okay, right?”

“I dunno. Whatever happened really messed him up.” He pointed behind him.

Bragg sat on the floor of the shower. His eyes were open, but they stared off at nothing. I squatted down, so I wasn’t towering over him.

“You okay, man?” I reached out and touched his shoulder.

His eyes flicked up to my face. He recognized me from that glance, I could tell. But his eyes soon drifted away from me, as if he couldn’t be bothered to respond.

“That ain’t normal,” Chavez muttered behind me.

“What do we do?” Carter asked quietly. It seemed like the two were speaking in hushed tones so as not to disturb the man seated on the ground next to me.

“We make a decision on what to do next.” I got to my feet and turned to the others.

“It’s not like he can travel like this,” Carter protested.

“I can’t stay here,” I said.

“Where would you go?” Chavez asked.

“Idaho.” It was Andy who broke in this time. “He’s got a wife and daughter in Idaho.”

“You want us to uproot from here and make a trip up to fuckin’ Idaho?” Chavez’s confusion was plain on his face.

“I didn’t say you had to come,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s not like we’re staying here, with Commander stab-you-in-the-back Hogan just around the corner.”

“I’m sure there are other people alive, and you can find someplace safe along the way,” I said.

“Yeah, but…” Chavez hesitated before he started up again. “You don’t even know if they’re alive.”

“You’re right,” I answered. I tried not to let the emotion show on my face, though I couldn’t have succeeded fully. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to find out.”

“You going too?” Carter turned to Andy.

“I don’t have any close family,” Andy said. “My first loyalty is to the security of the United States.”

“Yeah, that’s not a thing anymore, bro,” Chavez said. “The US of A is toast, if everywhere else is the same as here.”

“We don’t know that, though,” Andy said. “So I’ll stick with Ward if we’re heading the same direction. Eventually, though, I have to make my way to Washington.”

“Damn,” Carter said. “That’s even further than Idaho, right?”

“Don’t you know geography?” Chavez mocked. The man really couldn’t handle serious situations.

“I know where D.C. is, but Idaho? Who the hell knows about Idaho?”

“Yes, it’s further than Idaho,” Andy said. “But they’re both mostly North. We’ll at least head in the same general direction.”

“So, two of us are voting to go North,” Carter said.

“No,” I broke in. “This isn’t a vote. I’m going to Idaho. Andy is going to Washington. You’re both welcome to come along, but this is happening.”

“Well, I’m coming,” Chavez said, resolutely. “I’ll make my decision when it’s time to split up.” Then, he added with a smile, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll find a nice girl and settle down someplace safer than here.”

“Carter, you still got that map?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she pulled it from a pocket on her backpack. “Don’t think it got wet from the swim with the crocs.”

“Then let’s find the nearest full military base north of us. We’ll head there first.”

“Corpus Christi,” Carter said without even having to look at the map. “There’s a Navy base there.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s start there.”