Morning with over a hundred people is fucking loud.

Voices wake me, even with setting up my camp away from everyone. Jovial, cordial, angry. Smells of food cooking fire and cooking food remind me I never checked with Elizabeth on everything they’d gotten out of the grocery section. The thought is followed by a ‘it’s not my job’ one.

I look at my watch, seven thirty-eight, and reflexively wind it up. I’d expected to sleep in longer, considering how late I was up going over my sheet and assigning points, and figuring out how I wanted my ‘build’, as Terry calls it, to go.

I was a fighter; there was no avoiding that. Probable because it infuriates the memory of my father so much, I can’t seem to help putting myself between people and danger. That wasn’t something I’d seen coming, considering how hard I worked at keeping away from everyone.

So I put two points in strength, dexterity, endurance, and health. That left me two from leveling, and they went into Aether. I’d used mana too much to stretch the reach of my Switch ability to ignore it. The two points as the bonus for existing the dungeon I put in Intelligence. Despite Terry’s advice of ‘don’t ignore charisma’; I’m not a people person.

My skill points from leveling when into Strength and endurance training, staff, parry, block, and Dodge. The bonus ones I put in Dodge, staff, and Strength training.

I raise my Switch Ability to five, which opened up a new choice and I haven’t decided what to take, either from it[need to come up with options, ideally 3], or from one of the already accessible options from when I took my class.

I stand and run through stretching exercises, then summon my barbell. It being steel had made it more resilient as a weapon, but I still wish I’d found another one as the scratches on it are a good sign it’s not going to last forever.

I add weights to it and barely feel them, even one-handed. I add all my weights, bringing the total to a little over two hundred and fifty kilos and they barely register when holding then it in both hands.

I bring up my attributes, and what I see doesn’t seem right for what I’m feeling

Attributes

Strength: 30 (base 20, item bonus +10)

Dexterity: 12

Endurance: 34 (Base 24, Item Bonus +10

Intelligence: 13

Charisma: 10

Aether: 18

Health: 24

How does plus ten to my base strength make the weights this light? I check the Stats Pool and stare.

Stats pool

Hit Points: 240/240

Mana: 180/180

Will Power: 47/47

Stamina: 470/470

Base Weight capability: 342 kg

How? How can I lift nearly three hundred and fifty kilos? A few days ago, a hundred and sixty made me sweat.

System Query: Strength

The strength Attribute governs how much you can lift, how much damage physical attacks depending on your body do, and the size of your personal inventory.

The effect of strength can be further affected by related skills.

Right. And the gloves are where the ten extra points come from. I remove them and I feel the weight a little more. Checking my weight capability, it’s down to two hundred and twenty-eight kilos.

I whistle at what adding eight points did to my strength. The two points in strength training probably helped. Only now, I have a problem. How am I supposed to keep up with my weight training if I can barely feel the weights? Do I lift cars?

I put them away and put the gloves back on. If I can simply throw points in there and get stronger, do I need to train? No training feels wrong, but it has to be because I’ve done it for most of my life as a way to channel my anger. I glance at the green bar. Knowing how much willpower I have gives me a different way to deal with it.

I head for the smell of food. I’ll figure something out.

I keep my distance. The cooking fires have groups clustered around them. Most are only humans or only non-humans, but a few are mixed. Maybe people will get used to this new world after all.

I see Bernard in the distance and use the troll as a guide since the others will be with him and immediately a man steps before me and even before he opens his mouth, the green bar flashes.

“Chuck, right?” He’s burly.

You mean fat.

The black suit can’t be good in this heat, but it’s in decent condition, which means that like most, he’s been staying away from problems.

They’re cowards.

“Yes.”

“We have a problem.”

Just one? “I’m sure someone can help you with it.”

“I’m telling you. You can get someone to deal with it?”

I narrow my eyes and not snapping at him cost me a decent sliver of willpower. “Why me?”

“You’re in charge, right?”

“No.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Well, we still have a problem. I’ve found all this stuff and I don’t have a way to carry it, so I need you to get the strong people like you to help me with them.”

I don’t reply immediately, and that costs me more willpower. “What did you find?” even I can tell my tone’s clipped, but if he notices it, he ignores it.

“Bunch of stuff. There’s a lot of iron that got broken off from cars when whatever this was happened.” He motions around to the remnant of the Walmart parking lot battle we are camping in. “Considering that we’re back in the dark ages that’s going to be valuable. I want to bring it and sell it where we’re going.”

“Then you can work out how to carry it.” I step around it.

“Hey, listen here. You don’t get to talk to me like that after you—”

I round on the man. “After I what?”

He wisely steps back.

“Come on? What, exactly, did I do that entitles you to demand anything of me? I didn’t ask you to follow me. I didn’t tell anyone what to do. So you deal with your problems yourself. And no, I’m not in charge. You guys are just tag-alongs.” I go back to heading for the rest of my group.

Go you, standing up to that pompous man.

Fuck off, dad.

“Chuck!” Bernard bellows the greeting and waves. The others look in my direction, and Terry waves happily.

“You’ve looked better,” Elizabeth comments as I sit among them. The only one missing is Griff, and a glance at the team window shows he’s gone from there, too.

“Had some guy demand I find people to help him carry a bunch of iron for him. Something about it being valuable now.”

She hands me a place of scrambled eggs, vegetables, and meats.

“He’s not wrong, you know,” John comments. “Metals are going to be more important now that we can’t make fiberglass or plastic anymore.”

“You really think that’s over with?” Hanz asks.

“Anyone here has anything computerized that works?” he replies. “Plastic is pretty modern in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know how any of our modern stuff gets made without computers, but forges have been around for always.”

“Is anyone going to know about that stuff?” Terry asks. “Hey, I know games. In those, making a sword is about throwing the ingredient in a grid in the right order.”

“Didn’t you say this was a game now?” Marie asks.

“I don’t think it’s on that level. Did anyone have a targeting reticule? How about damage readouts?”

“My health bar drops when I get hurt,” Hanz says.

“Yeah, but you don’t see the damage you do to your target, even in the combat log. It just shows that you did hit it. As far as I can tell, the system runs the world according to some game-like ideal, but it isn’t replacing doing stuff with mini-games. We’re just getting easy to measure results on how good we are, or how well we did if you have the right skills for it.”

“There’s going to be books about it,” I say. “If we find a library, we should stop and drab as many as we can on historical recreation.”

“There’s also going to be recreationists who’ve been living for the day this happened,” John says with a grin. “Or you know, all the preppers who think they know how to survive the apocalypse.”

His wife smacks his shoulder. “Don’t talk about my family that way.” She grins. “They are all going to die because each one of them, to a fault, stored all the information they’d need on their cell phone.”

“Do you think he’s right?” I ask John, looking around. “We should grab all the iron we can find?”

“All the metal we can find. The problem is we don’t have a way to carry anything resembling decent quantities.”

“Bernard strong.” Bernard’s smile is full of pride and Marie pats his massive arm.

“Yes, you are,” John says. “Unfortunately, we can only stack identical stuff.”

I grab junk from the ground as Terry says.

“Maybe it’s all ‘scrap’ and counts as the same thing?”

“It doesn’t,” I answer, watching each piece take a slot. Even when two of them are called the same thing, ‘aluminum scrap’ and look similar. They don’t stack. I drop them.

“We could look for the largest pieces,” John offers, “but even that’s going to be a problem, I think.”

“So why not get a trailer?” Elizabeth asks.

“We have the problem of pulling that trailer,” John points out. “No cars or trucks anymore.”

“Bernard strong.”

“Yes, Bernard, you are,” John replies, then stares at the troll.

“I think we have a truck right there,” Hanz says.

I look around at the damaged vehicles. A lot of them, maybe most, have been destroyed beyond use, but not all of them.

“I think,” I say thoughtfully, “that for those of us with the strength problem, this could be a solution.”

* * * * *

The harness bites into my shoulders uncomfortably, but I ignore it.

“Are you sure about this?” Elizabeth asks. “I get hooking Bernard up like a mule, but you’re—”

“A man and not a beast of burden?”

She looks away. It’s easy to forget there’s a person in the troll’s body. An old man who lost a lot of his intellect in the change, but according to Marie, regained clarity. Dementia had started claiming her husband.

A lot of the people, the human-looking people, seem to think like that. Those who no longer look like them, by choice or bad luck, aren’t entirely people anymore. I wasn’t much of a person growing up. Just my father’s plaything, so I empathize.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

I nod. It’s easier than to call her on what is probably going to become a new form of racism.

“I need to train my strength, and this is the only way I can think to train it.”

We spent hours locating any pickup that could roll, then those of us with the know-how disconnected the drive shafts and turned them into ordinary trailers, while others scavenged metal.

There was a dust-up with the suited fat man when he tried to stop everyone from using his idea. Hanz calmly told him he was welcome to try to force them to stop.

The man left.

The downside of the altercation is that more people joined the religious group.

I hope we reach Harrisonburg before this division between humans and non turns ugly.

It would mean fewer people for you to deal with.

I glance at the quest I made sure remained visible, just over my willpower bar. The reminder that each person I get to Harrisonburg is worth a hundred XP. I hate that I have to use that to continue to do the right thing, and not just leave everyone and strike out on my own, but as my mother said. In the end, it isn’t how you do good that counts, it’s that you did it.

The pickup creaks and I turn and stare as parents are putting children in the seats. I almost tell them to get them out. That there’s already enough weight on it from all the scrap.

And I hate that it costs me willpower to keep my mouth shut. These are kids. What kind of person would demand they walk?

Look in the mirror?

Shut up.

I growl, and Elizabeth looks at me. “I can put on one too.”

I shake my head. “We only have six pickups, and they are all harnessed already. And,” I add. “We need someone to remind the others that the people puling them aren’t animals.”

Me and Bernard are the only ones pulling alone. Bernard can probably pull two loaded pickups. The others are pulled by non-human-looking people, three or four to a pickup. It seems that most non-humans come with greater strength.

More to fear.

Yeah. I would love to think that their contributions will show how valuable they are to have around, but I don’t have that kind of faith in humanity.

And I really wish the blame for that fell solely on my father’s shoulder.

“Everyone ready?” I call out. A lot of people reply, but I’m only interested in those attached to pickups. When they give me to okay, then I face forward and put my weight into the harness. “We’re moving out!”

Bernard is off as if he was pulling something made of balsa wood and John has to run after him to get him to slow down.

My pickup isn’t moving. I’m not the only one standing still as we put weight into it. Two pickups are moving before mine creaks forward.

I don’t feel anger or even resentment at not being the first. This is something I’m used to, comfortable with. Pushing through a physical problem. All I have to do is remember that momentum is something you build and that once you have it, it works with you.

It creaks again, and I lean further forward before moving a foot. It creaks some more and I take another step.

I’m no longer in a hurry. I no longer care or think of the other people around me. The children cheering encouragement. This is me against something I can beat. My own desire to quit. This is me, beating myself.

I have a lot of experience doing that.