“I still can’t believe you did that,” Roy muttered as he shifted around the cartridges in his hand. Madelyn had passed him a selection of them to enchant, both as a precaution, and so he could test his ability.

“I regret nothing! It was a once in a lifetime opportunity Roy, don’t you see?” she responded with a shit eating grin as she nursed a bottle of something she shouldn’t have been drinking.

“Huh, wish I were there to see it,” Greyson and Madelyn had dragged him up to the roof after dinner. The three sat haphazardly around a makeshift campfire set up in an upright barbeque grill, “Still, whatever little prank Maes pulled, it’s got nothing on the shit storm you kicked up when you got back.”

Roy flinched as Greyson brought up the event that had transpired earlier in the day. He’d call it a spark of courage, or a burst of conviction, but then he’d have to say it sputtered out like a matchstick in the Arctic.

***FLASHBACK***

There was a short knee high concrete wall around the door when they returned from their trip. Roy could see their intent as he spotted several bulky pieces of machinery sitting out front on elevated trolleys. The foot or two of water in the supermarket was already growing murky with several days of trash and human activity.

At the same time it worried him, preparing for the long haul.

His agitation only grew when they’d pushed open the double doors after a few brief words with Greyson. He could smell the crowd of humanity in the air and see it in the crumpled cans and discarded wrappers that littered the ground.

The lights strung up on the ceiling and along the shelves flickered and Roy could feel his body tense. Water dripped off his clothes, pooled in his shoes. Little bits of mud clung to him and the smell of earth and humanity was a dense musk in the air.

He didn’t want to take another step into the room, he didn’t want to spend another night on the ply wood covered shelves, damp with moisture that never dried. No more food distribution, no more endless twilight, no more. He wanted to barf, but then it would only be a flowering pool of rotted greens and browns in the water, drifting and settling, and waiting there.

He was going to do something, he screamed in his mind, something was going to change because this wasn’t going to go on for another day more. He stood up, when had he been kneeling? And cleared his throat, like he’d seen on the news.

“Listen up!” his voice was loud in his ear and the beat of his heart was like a drum, “I have an announcement to make.”

Everything else was in the background now, the footsteps, the questioning sounds, it was just him and his speech.

***END FLASHBACK***

“I apologize okay? It just… needed to be said, I don’t know why Owen has to be such a…” he wanted to scream at the police chief, but another part of him recoiled from the thought, so he settled on focusing on the cartridges in his hand. He had been trying to push mana into them for a while and he had found that he could probably push around two or three mana into the aluminum cased ones and a little under two into the brass cased ones. Lead was also a bit better than steel when it came to the bullet.

Madelyn had drawn little shapes on the rounds with a permanent marker, the one he was working on had a little smiley face. He looked down the list Madelyn had given him and matched the symbol to the description of the cartridge, brass, lead bullet, twelve grams, and ten millimeters by thirty-two millimeters. Most of the rounds were the little squat things with rounded tips that she called ten millimeters and used in her gun. But one stood out from the rest.

She called it a, “fifty cal,” and it was almost as long as his hand with a colorful pointy tip. According to the sheet it was just under a hundred and twenty grams, or about ten times the weight of the small stubby rounds. It could store around twenty mana, but the real discovery came when he found that at around nine or ten it became significantly harder to push more mana in. He could still keep going through if he focused and slowed the process to a trickle.

“What’s to apologize for? Owen has got a stick up his ass for as long as I’ve known him, bet the things gotten all fermented up there too,” Greyson took a swig from his bottle and dumped the last of his canned beans into his mouth.

“Owen’s ass aside, I think you did well, or good, I suppose,” despite her devil-may-care attitude at times, Roy couldn’t deny that she was always reliable, like a cliff in the face of the ocean, “I counted about thirty-two who wanted to leave. Now we just have to figure out how to escort them to our little green friends without incident; I would hate to have to fill out any incident reports.”

“I think you meant, have your personal scribe fill out a report to Owen,” Greyson tossed the empty can aside, it clipped the edge of the trashcan they’d dragged up and plopped onto the ground to rest beside several other empty cans.

“Please, I reward him handsomely for his services.”

“I talk to Lestrat too you know, and I’ll take Mr. Bright-as-Sunshine’s words over yours any day of the week,” Greyson turned to Roy, “Whaddya think kid? You believe Ol’Maes over here?”

“Uhh, no?” he hadn’t expected the man to loop him into his jibes. Madelyn and Greyson seemed so familiar with each other that he felt acutely out of place.

“Tch, et tu, Roy?” two cold blue eyes turned in his direction and the look of utter hopelessness in them was enough to make him cringe.

“Fucking French, really?” Greyson stuck out his tongue like an eight year old who’d spotted a forest of broccoli on his plate, ”Pass the beer, you can go back to drinking your stupid grape juice or something.”

“It’s Latin.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know that, do I look like one of those bible guys to you?”

“It’s a quote from Julius Caesar, we watched the play. Oh god, explaining this is so lame,” she looked like she had bitten into an especially sour lemon.

“You mean that movie with the funny looking Greek guy with the toga and the leaf crown? Fucking hated the way they spoke in riddles, kinda like you.”

“He’s Roman, and the movie was based off a play by Shakespeare, so the language is dated, can we talk about something else now?” Roy couldn’t help the grin that slipped onto his face.

“Roman? Like from Rome, the place with the pope and the other old fogeys? You know I hate religion right, why’d we watch that movie anyways?” he looked so sincere, his rugged features the picture perfect example of displeased confusion.

“So, Roy. You planning any more daring escapades tomorrow?”

“Umm… right. I almost forgot about that,” Owen had pulled him off his task force after his little performance, the heated exchange was still fresh on his mind.

***FLASHBACK***

The voices of the crowd burst like a dam as his speech petered out, his courageous high tumbling into a timid trough.

The questions came like a hail of gunfire, his world was abuzz with sound and barely could he piece together one sentence before another blasted the ground out from under him. Right, left, center, an old man, a young woman, everything was blurring together and for once he could sympathize with the big wigs that pushed their way through a crowd of paparazzi.

“Enough!” Madelyn’s voice was like a blade against the static and he could feel himself refocus as the voices of the crowd cut away.

A brief shuffle of feet disturbed the calm and then Owen was in the clearing. There was the beginnings of a frown forming on his face and Roy flinched as the older man’s gaze flashed past Madenlyn and settled on him.

“Roy, I’m going to need you to explain yourself,” his voice was level but the weight of the command was crushing.

“Uhh, just.” he fumbled as his eyes grappled for purchase, ”I though everyone had like, a right to know? So they could make their own choice – I think it’s a good idea to go now with a larger group..”

With every word that came out of Roys mouth the police chief looked less and less pleased and by the time the last sentence had slipped off his tongue he had braced himself for the verbal lashing he would receive.

Then Madelyn voice cut in again and shame flooded Owen’s features, “Surely there’s a better time and place for this Owen?”

She gestured towards the assembled mob before continuing, “Now’s your chance, win the crowd with facts, logic and reason!”

Owen looked over the crowd before he turned his attention back to Roy, His anger was tightly lidded and his words biting, ”You’re off the task force Roy, out there’s no place for brash decisions. Take some time to reflect on your actions and then we can talk.”

With that the man turned around and began to address the crowd.

***END FLASHBACK***

”Well, maybe. I’m thinking of going out and practicing some of my magic, maybe take out a few monsters if it’s safe,” after some time to reflect on the past few days he had come to realize that while his life had always been in crisis before he joined the group at the supermarket, he had never the felt the sort of soul sucking dread he currently felt cooped up in the building, waiting almost aimlessly for something to happen.

“And you’re gonna go lone ranger style, one man up against the world?” Grreyson flashed him a grin that seemed to say he approved of the plan more than he let on.

“I mean, I haven’t thought about that yet, seemed like a good idea at the time, go out and get stronger instead of sitting here waiting for help to come. I mean this is more or less permanent I’m guessing,” he would probably be safer with a partner or a small group, but he wasn’t about to change his plans and few would want to go chasing monsters in the fog with him.

“I’d go with ya, it’s the fucking dumps here, but Owen's got me locked tight on guard duty. Maes’ll be busy most of the day, so you're gonna have to look elsewhere if you wanna buddy. Depends on how long too.”

“I’ll uh… Sleep on it I guess.”

“So, you two done with your heart to heart?” the girl had gone from sitting upright to facing them upside down, with her legs dangling from the backrest and her back pressing into the fabric of the seat,

“You and Lestrat have heart to hearts, this is serious business we’re talking about here.”

“Uh-huh, I suppose we can leave tonight’s attack to the others then, we won’t hear their screams from up here on the roof,” she shifted back upright and the aluminum frame of the chair let out a crooked creak.

“Fuck, what are we sitting around for then, lets go shoot up some mushrooms,” the man bent down and picked up the gun he’d set down near his chair much earlier in the night, it was a jagged metal thing with all the bits and pieces stuck onto it.

“First night up here so I’m going to give you the run down and then we go from there, sound good?” Greyson led him to the edge off the roof where a waist high barricade had been set up with bags of miscellaneous goods and bits of furniture. Several giant floodlights dominated the front, each several feet across and connected haphazardly to a winding mess of cables.

“First we turn these boys on, they should already be in place but if they’re off we give ‘em a lil’ nudge,” he kicked the floodlight closest to him and the thing rung out with a dull thud.

“Wow, I wonder why they’re sometimes out of position, can you guess why Grey?”

“The monsters usually come in slow and Maes here can hear ‘em form a mile away, but when they catch a wiff off us they start scrambling over like a pack of wild hyenas, by then they’re usually close enough to see in the mist if we hit ‘em with the light,” he said as he nudged the floodlight back into position, another push and his boot skid against the metal, wet with condensation.

Roy winced as Greyson toppled into the spotlight and clung to it for balance, with a loud screech the base scraped against the ground and the light swung further out of position.

Carefully this time, Greyson gently pushed the floodlight back to its starting position, “Anyways, you just hold tight and wait for the fuckers to really bunch up near the back and then toss a few of those fireballs of yours at ‘em.”

The man bent down and pulled at some of the wires crisscrossing the ground before shaking his head and deeming it a lost cause, “Once your MP’s dry you can try to take a few shots with your gun or something, Take it slow and try not to waste any bullets, if you can’t land every shot then just sit back and relax, we got a lot of ammo but there’s also a lot of stuff to shoot.”

He paused and after checking his gun over one more time finally asked, “We cool?”

“Uh yeah, cool.”

A few moments later Madelyn gave the signal and with the flick of a switch brilliant white light scattered into the mist. It was like seeing the world through frosted glass, the ground the sky, the rooftop, everything was pale white and glittered as if someone had coated the world in a layer of tiny glass shards,

It was beautiful but also blinding to his eyes that had adapted to the soft embers the coals had given off. He used his hands to shield his eyes as they adapted.

Slowly he peeled his hands away and bit by bit looked up to take in the sight around him. Greyson had taken a seat on a stool just behind the makeshift ledge, his rifle held easily in his arms. Madelyn on the other hand had pulled one of the collapsible chairs up to the front and lounged on it without a care in the world.

“Sound the horn!” the girl shouted and without missing a beat Greyson pulled out a dandy looking red whistle from under his shirt.

The sharp bleep of the whistle reminded Roy of gym class, his second least favorite class, just one behind math. Mr. Glower, his gym teacher had tried to encourage him once by pontificating on the benefits of team based sports and exercise. In Roy’s opinion he could get a healthy dose of the former from video games, and he didn’t need a dose of the later for his sedentary lifestyle. Of course, best laid plans never survive first contact with the apocalypse and it was in the quiet moments between fighting for his life that Roy regretted his attempt at precognition.

Now was not the time for reminiscence though. Roy squinted into the fog, a white flurry with the faintest hint of black, and tried to spot the approaching horde of fungi. He didn’t have to wait long before he caught sight of the vanguard.

They were a motley bunch of skittering waist high mushrooms, faintly orange and brown in the harsh light. The fog and the water’s surface melted together in the distance but the mushrooms broke that illusion as they crashed through the water.

Despite the flurry of their limbs, they were small things and their pace was close to a grown man’s jog. As they closed in more and more gunshots rang out in response. The mist distorted as bullets flew across the parking lot and sent sprays of fungal tissue into the air with every hit.

Roy took aim with his pistol, fired a few shots at the little mushroom creatures, missed on all counts, and decided he should probably wait this one out.

The smell crept into Roy’s nostrils and it was just as he had expected, rancid and earthen, not too unlike what the inside of the supermarket was beginning to resemble. He held in supper and turned his attention back to the scene below. Most of the mushrooms lay in pieces now, bits of them bobbing in and out of the water, the ones that had made it close had been hosed down with the lime green liquid from the fungal fryers and lay squirming in the water.

They continued to pop out of the mist of course, a small but steady stream of them that the defenders allowed to get close so they could spray them down and conserve bullets. A few leisurely moments passed and Madelyn had even begun to hum a jaunty tune before the sound of gunfire drowned her out.

Alongside the trickle of small mushrooms larger ones had begun to make their way past the smattering of water logged cars. These were much larger, at least as tall as a teenager and with a stem as thick as the trunk of a tree. Most of their caps were a light brown, but there was the occasional maroon cap mixed in.

“If you’re gonna shoot go for the fancy looking ones, they’ve got a nasty hit and can take a punch, the guys on the ground can spray down the brown ones with goop,” Greyson advised as he took a knee and braced his arms against the ledge.

Taking a closer look, the maroon mushroom were different from the brown ones not only in coloration. He tried to bring out the blue information screen, but like the announcement had said some time ago, those were no longer available for monsters.

Unlike the brown mushrooms and the orchid cap interceptors he’d seen earlier in the night and long ago at the library, the body of the maroon capped mushroom was creased with ridges and a slightly deeper coloration. When bullets struck they didn’t break apart like so much tissue paper but held their shape, if just barely. More alarming however were their legs. Long and double jointed, they pushed in and out of the water closing the distance far faster than their kin who struggled with their stubby legs.

“They’ve got some killer legs, nasty kick broke one of Nick’s ribs the other day, so watch out,” the man added another bit of commentary as he looked through the scope of his gun and pulled the trigger. A maroon cap further back and just barely out of the fog stumbled as if struck and crashed into its brown capped brethren, the two fell into the water with a splash. After a brief struggle the two got back up the maroon cap visibly missing a chunk of its leg.

“Playing cool,” Madelyn humphed as she pulled a comb through her hair and swept it to the side. She shot Roy a smile as slick as crude before pulling out her gun and taking a shot, her eyes still locked onto his. The maroon cap he was observing shuddered and fell to the ground in a heap.

“They’ve got some sort of control structure at the center of their stem, just below the cap. Unlike our garden variety mushrooms, they don’t seem to be visibly connected to the rest of their fungal tissue. Based on their co-ordination and single minded pursuit of our destruction, I’d place better than even odds on some sort of nefarious hive mind remotely guiding their every action and planning humanity’s demise.”

“Hypocrite,” Greyson accused, before muttering under his breath, “I wanted to say that line.”

“So then, should I throw a fireball at the maroon mushrooms?” Roy asked as he shifted into a more comfortable position, his legs had grown tired after almost a half hour.

“Don’t bother, wait for things to ramp up a bit more, it usually peaks in another half hour and then slowly dies down afterwards,” Greyson took another shot, this time at a closer target, the maroon cap went down and didn’t climb back up, “Red’s come in a little while, they’re these real big motherfuckers, built like a bodybuilder, we take those out at range, don’t wait for them to close in. Finally come the big brown ones, at least two stories tall and surrounded by browns and oranges, fireball those or the red ones if they clump up.”

“Oh, and since you’ve only got a handful of shots, call ‘em out beforehand so you and Maes don’t aim for the same target,” Greyson took a sip of water from his little whisky flask and though for a moment, “There might be some more funny lookin’ ones coming, once we saw a little purple bugger, Maes shot the fuck before it got too close, and it got real close real fast. There was also a dark blue one with spikes, took a beating but moved slow as a turtle. Maybe also a thin yellow one that died too quickly for us to know much, that’s ‘bout it.”

“That’s…” Roy considered all the varieties of killer mushroom Greyson had expounded quite elegantly on, one of his favorite aspects of DTDW and MMORPGs in general had been the large variety of monsters. In no other genre could one find such a colorful array of pixels to find and kill ad infinitum. Now he was both excited and horrified to experience the real life counterpart, based on what he’d seen so far real life variety was unlikely to be just the same monster re-skinned over and over again.

Contemplating his new hobby, Roy settled in for the wait and watched the guys downstairs make mushroom medley out of the parking lot.