Rayna approached at a distance and waved to me as she started into the desert. I walked down to meet her and waved back. “Problem.” She grunted as we neared one another.

“What?” I responded.

“Sada got the spider ranch.” She said, with a furrowed brow. “He asked Hord to talk to our hobbs to distract them, then sneaked past. Hord didn’t know his plan.”

I sighed and pulled up the affiliate. A massive amount of morties had gone through it right into Mr. Sada’s managerial account. Hundreds of millions, leaving only the sad ten percent the affiliate was due for me to operate with. I had twenty-two million morties and some change to work with, and no income for the foreseeable future. “Fuck.”

We walked in the dark to the spider forest, Rayna silent and me muttering under my breath. As we walked, I thought only of how angry at Mr. Sada I was. I should have been worried about the devastation he had wrought. It was bad.

The front row of the spider forest was gone entirely. The trees had been warped away whole, taking even the roots. The large tree at the front was missing too, a singular hole in the ground. Rayna and I walked through the trees at the front of the pathway. They were completely devoid of any spiders or webbing. Nothing moved in their branches or leaves, and I slumped.

Thankfully, at the rear of the forest, a small horde of spiders still crawled and worked. I noticed them when we got too deep, and one crawled across the path directly in front of us, trailing a long shimmering thread. When that happened, I stopped Rayna with an arm in front of her and pointed. The treetops were alive with movement. The only webbing I could see was fresh, still shining in the dark, but there were still spiders. He hadn’t sold everything.

I breathed out a sigh of relief, and then turned back. I hadn’t been this deep into Spider City ever, and the realization that it wasn’t abandoned and empty as I had feared returned my desire to stay far away from it. We exited in a careful hurry, leaving any precious arachnid life we found as it was.

The poor spiders were frantically working. They could tell dawn was coming, and none of them had functional webbing. I wondered how many would die during the day because of Mr. Sada’s idiocy. His trail was easy for me to follow, I knew how that moron thought.

When he arrived, he did a straight sale on the first bunch of trees. Then, as he was eagerly selling and collecting morties at a rapid pace, he realized he was ruining the forest and started selling all the ‘spider stuff’ in the trees instead. That took much longer to realize his mistake, and by the time he reached the end of the walkway, he was only selling spider silk from the trees, and leaving the livestock intact. It hurt to walk through from his perspective, but I knew it was accurate. I also knew that he was going to whine when I confronted him about it.

I put it out of my head, and just told Rayna to stop him if he tried anything stupid like that again. She agreed but hesitated when I told her to shoot him. I wasn’t sure if she understood I was joking, and I realized at that moment that I really wasn’t. His naivete and simple lack of attention was going to get us all killed. He needed to stop fucking up. We walked slowly back to the front lot, where she pointed to another problem just about to get started.

As I watched, a new vehicle was admitted through the front gate, escorted by two armed hobbs.

They directed the newcomer to the parking lot, and the bright red Toyota pickup slid into an open space. Three men with beards and one man without a beard exited the truck, and one of the hobbs escorting them barked something at the men.

Suddenly, more hobbs arrived on site, all brandishing weapons.

One of the men was holding a handgun in the air, by its trigger-guard, and based on their reaction to it, I assumed he had hidden knowledge of it from them at the gate. With a shrug, I slipped my helmet in place and straightened my robe, before walking down to meet the new arrivals.

The men and hobbs seemed calm, the handgun was in custody before I even arrived, but I stepped out of the desert and stopped right in front of the new arrivals.

I knew these guys, they were militia.

I had seen one of them in this exact truck the other day, when Valued Garthrust first came to visit. He had been driving then, and he had been driving now. I stepped up directly in front of him and stared, letting him see his own reflection in the mirrored surface of my helmet.

“Is there a problem here, security?” I asked, to his face.

He blinked and looked between his friend and my helmet as a hobb approached to talk to me. It was Tollya, which made me feel bad for these guys if it came to a fight.

“No boss, no problem. They just forgot to declare one weapon. These guys want in. Need help, so like you said.” She grunted and shrugged, nudging Rayna as she moved to stand beside her.

“I did say that, didn't I?” I leaned toward her and away from the driver. He flinched when I suddenly brought the helmet back to face him. “But we have to stay safe too.”

His brow furrowed and he looked to his friends, who all nodded. “Well, that’s what we came for. To be safe.”

I glanced in the cab of the still running pickup, before turning to lean on the door. “Yeah, safe and fed. Cause hungry folk ain’t safe, right?”

“Y’all got food?” One of them in the back asked.

“Not yet but thank you guys so much for asking!” I chirped back. “I was actually on my way to find some help in making a food run, and we need a lot of cargo space. You boys ready for your first act of service? Earn your keep, prove your good intentions? All that fun stuff, available right here and now.” I finished by patting the side of his truck. The driver bristled.

The hobbs began to disperse, but at a hand motion from me, Tollya, Rayna, and several others stayed nearby and kept an eye on us.

“You asking us to go back out there and help you make a food run, right now?” The driver asked.

“Yes, exactly, thank you. I’ve got a place, it’s nothing more than a quick drive there and back, maybe some land wasps to outrun, or fight. I think they’re speedy. But that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, you boys got quite the armory back there.”

I finished by pointing my thumb over my shoulder at the backseat. Hung from the ceiling was a gun rack filled with heavily customized AR-15 rifles. Cursed guns, every one of ‘em. Each seat back had dual pistol holders, with what looked like large caliber sidearms.

“Would be super handy if we ran into those things. One of you should stay here and get settled in, the rest should pile in with me and help feed all these good folk.”

The driver held up a finger and scowled at me. He and his friends stepped a few feet away and huddled up to murmur. My helmet offered me a directional microphone upgrade, and I quickly tagged it to a wish list I kept meaning to name ‘Upgreyedds.’ Seemed appropriate. That’s the kind of fuckin’ apocalypse I got, after all.

Suddenly, my Afflqwst app brought itself to life and seized the wish list, shrinking it down and making it see through. The name of the wish list erased itself and filled in the word “Upgreyedds” and then closed everything. I was left blinking and smiling. My app upgrade made itself useful yet again.

The driver turned back. “Yeah no sweat buddy. We’ll be happy to take you up on that.” He started to move past me to the driver’s seat and I stepped in front of him. We came face to helmet again and I shook my head.

“No, you, I'd like to stay here. As our guest, until we can get back with the food. Get settled, maybe make some friends. You’re the leader of your little group here, after all. Best if you make the introductions around camp.”

He scowled at me and took a step back. “Uh . . . yeah.”

“Excellent, thank you so much for agreeing!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “See you later.”

I got into the driver’s seat and buckled my seat belt while I activated my MortMobile phone and called Tollya. I saw her press a button in her pocket and then touch her ear.

“Yeah boss,” she grunted.

“Take him to Mr. Sada’s basement and keep Mr. Sada away from him. Don’t let him out of your sight, but don’t hurt him unless he makes you. Search him for weapons, don’t let him get stuff from BuyMort,” I muttered. She grunted her understanding, and we cut the connection.

His friends all piled in. Two behind me, one at my side. The truck bed was empty already, these geniuses not thinking to toss in any semblance of a camping set or gear storage to make it look like they were survivors. Just guns. Guns and ballcaps, each one of them wore one. And the one to my side lightly touched a handgun in a hard plastic holster embedded in his door. I had seen it when I got in, and his arm could only be down there touching that gun, or itching the underside of his kneecap, which he pretended to do when he turned to see my helmet directly facing him. I adjusted Falcor at my side and nestled it in place more comfortably.

“Nice to meet you guys!” I chirped. “Let’s go!”

With that, I slowly and carefully reversed and drove us out of the parking lot, as Tollya and two other hobbs escorted the driver away toward the mansion and Rayna watched us go. More hobbs whose faces I didn’t recognize and names I didn’t know opened the gate for me and closed it behind me. After driving around Mr. Sada’s manor and the wall that closed off his road, we rejoined it and started cruising toward SunDew Valley Foods, and the wonderful hippies who ran the place.

While we drove, the sun began to finally hint at its intentions to rise. The gray of predawn coated the desert, and the few nocturnal animals that remained began their last call hustle. I saw a group of ravens winging their way toward the campground, and they swung over to investigate the truck. I rolled down the window and waved, and they veered off back to the campground. Darclau and his boys, coming in from a night of raiding, I assumed.

“You wavin’ at birds?” One of the men in the back seat asked, mostly covering the sound of a firearm being primed. My helmet identified the sound and warned me of a potential threat to my rear.

I nodded my head seriously. “I’ve been trying to make friends with those ravens for years. Think I might finally be making some progress.”

“Shame,” he said to his friend.

“Why’s that?” I asked, glancing in the rearview. Both men were clutching handguns. “Because you intend to kill me?” My foot pressed down on the accelerator, and the truck noticeably picked up speed. “At seventy miles per hour?” I reached down and flicked off the headlights. “In the dark?”

They hesitated, so I kept talking. “I was hoping to get you boys away from your boss for a bit. Maybe talk you out of this. So few of us left now, and I am just not looking forward to killing my first humans.” I leaned the helmet slightly to the passenger. “I know it’s gonna happen, but I struggle to get behind the thought of being okay with it.”

He yanked the handgun from its holster, and I slammed on the brakes. At the speed we were going, it took a few seconds for the truck to fully stop, and all three of them were pressed forward against their belts. One idiot in the back hadn’t bothered to wear one and smashed into the front seat of my passenger, pressing them both together in a heap, as he slid halfway over the top of his companion.

As the Toyota came to a screaming stop in the desert, I yanked my glittering scimitar out and pressed the blade flat against my passengers chest, in the second he took to right himself. It shredded his shirt into dust where the fabric touched the edge, and I was careful to keep it off his skin. “Don’t,” I warned.

He did anyway, and the gunshot was deafening in the cab. Not for me, of course, my helmet filtered the light and sound out to a manageable level. But everyone else was dazed as if he had set off a flashbang.

What idiot fires a .40 cal handgun in an enclosed vehicle?

The bullet punched into my belly and ripped through, blasting out the car seat and door behind me. I doubled up and grunted, but the painkiller from my starfish suit instantly made everything a million times better as I felt it start coursing.

The gut-shot didn’t hurt nearly as bad as being violently consumed by a Sleem orb. The gray pre-dawn in the windshield twinkled as I looked up from my wound and faced the passenger again.

“I said don’t!”

His eyes gaped as he raised the gun and pressed it to my helmet, before squeezing the trigger. The shot ricocheted and my head barely bobbed from the pressure. His friend behind him took the round in the leg and screamed in sudden pain.

I changed my grip on Falcor, and the man across from me was cut in half. He started to scream, but it cut off almost instantly as the sword cut cleanly through his upper torso. He blinked hard twice, popped his lips together as he opened his mouth, and slumped to the side, dead, as blood erupted from inside his ribcage and the upper portion of him fell over.

The idiot behind me started shooting next. He pressed the gun over my shoulder and fired three shots directly down into my chest. My tendrils were already almost done with the first wound, and several more arose as my cartoon starfish shook an annoyed limb at me on the hood of the truck. I grunted and flinched at the gunshots, and then just tore Falcor all the way around behind me, in a single sweeping strike.

Sparks erupted from the backseat as it cut immediately through the seat back, the holstered guns, and both men in the backseat. Then I carefully pulled the sword back to the front seat and got out of the truck. The bullets were ground up with a horrid metallic sound, but they erupted from the turbine in a spray of wet fragments. Repairs were made as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to stop breathing through my nose so heavily. The stink of fresh blood in the air was heavy, and thick red liquid leaked out from the cab of the truck on both sides. I winced and shook my head.

“Fucking idiots!” I roared at the car. “I’ve been trying so fucking hard to keep everyone, fucking EVERYone alive. I’ve been minding my own business, surviving, trying to keep me and mine breathing. And what the hell happens? Turns out my boss is a fuckin’ idiot, Sleem are just caustic lumps of hungry dishonesty destroying my world and possibly the entire multiverse, other affiliates regularly murder and destroy each other for morties, the church that runs everything is basically just the mafia, and YOU fucking morons would rather see me dead than help each other stay alive!” I only stopped raving because I needed to take a few breaths, but the sudden silence felt almost oppressive.

Then I heard a small sound behind me, from the back seat. Horror gripped me, and I yanked open the backdoor.

He was leaned over, his torso nearly separated just below the ribs. The man’s eyes were blank, unfocused, and blinking rhythmically, unaware of the flood of his own vital fluids on his overshirt and pants. He was grunting and trying to hold his upper half in place with his grip on the seat back in front of him when I thrust the tip of Falcor through his temple with a short scream.

I checked the other men, to make sure they were dead, but a quick glance was enough. I didn’t feel sick enough to vomit, but sick, nonetheless. This weapon really did feel like magic.

I took a few steps away and breathed out the encounter, like Molls had showed me. It helped, surprisingly, right up until I heard rhythmic thumping in the near distance.

I turned and, through the truck’s passenger side windows, saw the swarm of wasps coming.