“Until you get a skill, you’d better hold onto the spear.”

Jessica didn’t look too pleased but I admired that she didn’t complain and simply tied up her hair and hefted her weapon, soon finding it was most comfortable to rest it over her shoulder. We kept walking in the hopes of encountering more easy prey. My plan was to let her slay any zombies we found, while I killed other, more dangerous enemies with Summon Skeleton. Hopefully, Jessica would hit level 2 before long, at which point I would try to form a group with her. Once the idea of doing so had crossed my mind, I had tested for a group formation menu by concentrating on Jessica with that thought in mind and the option had appeared. For now though, I thought she would level faster if I wasn’t taking a share of her zombies.

The outskirts of the city had few encounters – one zombie for Jessica and three of the goblin type for me – but as we moved in deeper the amount of enemies became increasingly numerous. Looking down some of the longer streets I found the numbers gathered in the distance alarming. It was as if the entire city had become some sort of massive spawn point for creatures.

If this were a game, it was no dungeon crawl. Maybe it was more of a sandbox type of game, where there was no obvious goal and plenty of different hunting grounds for us to explore? Or what if there was some final quest or goal I was supposed to be working on? The city, with a center full of monsters, felt like a hunting ground for us, and we were new ‘players’ to the game. That was how I’d be approaching the situation if I had a game controller in hand. Only now we were playing a real-life game and our lives were on the line.

Carefully making our way through the quieter streets, eventually Jessica and I met our next encounter, and this time it wasn’t a zombie, or a goblin, or anything I’d seen before. This was a four-legged creature about the size of a large dog that had no eyes. The joints of its legs and arms bent at an odd angle and it looked completely alien. A tongue constantly escaped its mouth and licked two antennae located atop its head.

Creatures I’d never seen before required my full focus, and no holding back. I found a nearby body and cast Summon Skeleton immediately. I beckoned for Jessica to hand me the spear and stand back.

After I urged the skeletons to attack, they ran forward like two reliable guards. They rushed the small creature and started to chop at it with their axe and spear. At first the alien seemed alarmed, but then nimbly dodged their attacks with complete ease. It ‘looked’ at me, and then I felt my heart drop.

Instinctively, I knew what would happen next: it jumped at me with those odd legs and rocketed through the air. Fortunately, I had started to raise the spear in preparation for such an attack and I got the point into line just in time to impale it. The battle wasn’t over though, as the creature hadn’t died immediately.

Those long legs extended downward and I could see razor sharp talons extending and scraping towards me, which threatened to grasp my arms. My only option was to drop the spear on the floor. A second later both my skeleton warriors arrived and chopped the creature to a pulp, nearly destroying our only weapon in the process.

Congratulations, you have reached level 3!

It seemed this type of enemy gave considerable EXP. Probably because of its good mobility. Fast monsters were dangerous monsters, regardless of their size. I wiped the sweat from my brow I checked my stats. Curiously there was a new entry listed in my skills tab.

Name: Mike Reynolds (27) Class: None Level: 3 EXP: 1%

HP: 130/130 MP: 20/25

STR: 3

AGI: 2

DEX: 1

VIT: 4

WIS: 1

Available: 3

Skills: [A] Summon Skeleton LV. 2, [P] Sixth Sense

There was a skill there called Sixth Sense, with a [P] in front. The P must mean passive, but what did it do? By concentrating on it, I opened a sub-menu that provided an explanation.

Sixth Sense: Your sense of danger is superb. Trust your instinct.

So if I had a feeling that something was wrong… that feeling was probably right? This was some form of premonition, and in a game setting with danger lurking at every corner, would be considered a godly advantage. Perhaps I had hit the jackpot, but I’d need to understand more how the skill worked. If it was just a vague alert, well, that would still be a huge help, whatever the game system, but might it be directional? Or give me some intuition as to the nature of the danger? If so, my chances of surviving this apocalypse had just doubled or tripled.

Given encounters with such dangerous monsters were likely to happen again, I decided against waiting to form a party with Jessica. I concentrated on the idea of grouping with her and mentally said yes to the menu box that asked me did I want to do so. She looked at me curiously and then I saw her name and HP bar appear. It floated there in green above her head, and there was even a place for her hit points– 55 – at the side of my vision. At first, I thought this was going to be a distraction and bother me, but as soon as I stopped thinking about Jessica as a group member, her stat completely slipped from my view.

“I can’t baby you.” I said to her, “If we work together we can survive, and maybe even find people to help us.” I didn’t want to die, and a part of me now wanted to see how far I could go in this new game world.

My fears of having to baby Jessica disappeared when we fought the next mob. It was a goblin and my skeleton warriors rushed it and began attacking. Something I never expected also happened: Jessica charged it as well, and in the end it was her who stabbed her spear through the monster’s neck.

She looked back and a touch sharply said, “I can pull my weight.”

I could only give a wryshrug in response. “Let’s keep going.” The EXP gain had been cut cleanly in half, which was a welcome result. If it had been participation based, that would have made sharing it more complex.

Seeing that Jessica had fighting spirit was a blessing, but now I felt it necessary to guard against over-eagerness, “So far so good, but we must cherish our lives more than anything. Be prepared to run if we have to.” We continued to hunt the peripheral streets and I felt increasingly confident we could level up again like this. Zombies and goblins were extremely common in the outskirts and we made those our targets.

We ran into a zombie and goblin combo and I didn’t feel the need to run. My skeletal warriors dogpiled the goblin in order to keep it from chucking its spear, while Jessica went face-to-face with the zombie and dispatched it cleanly.

That battle brought Jessica to Level Two and I was getting close to Level Four. This was as smooth a way to get a start in the game world as I could have hoped for.

We rounded another corner and engaged a single goblin. As ever, my skeletal warriors showed no fear as they rushed it like two berserkers. Jessica went to engage as well, and in her haste failed to see another foe whom I only spotted coming out of the corner of my eye.

From an alley on her right hand side, a spear flew like a missile. The tip burrowed itself several inches into her thigh and she immediately let out a scream and fell to the ground. I rushed to her and put my hand over her mouth to smother her screaming.

Noise would have enemies crawling all over us in moments, and she couldn’t exactly run very fast. I didn’t dare remove the spear and instead grabbed the one from her hand. “Try to bear the pain for a minute!” I said in a low voice and turned to the alley.

My skeletal warriors were just finishing up their goblin when I reached the one who had caught Jessica with his spear and pierced him through his chest, killing him in one blow. I rushed back immediately after to inspect my partner’s wound.

It was deep, and with blood pooling around her, potentially life threatening. “Do I remove it? What do I do?” I asked. I didn’t know. If the spear remained in her thigh she would die but removing it might kill her even faster. Some sort of torniquet first maybe? Then pull it out? My time to respond to this crisis was up, as new monsters came around the corner.

Two zombies, a wolf, and one of those odd alien creatures started closing in on us and fast. They were eying Jessica hungrily as she did her best to crawl away on the floor. I didn’t want to lose my first and only friend in this apocalypse.

I separated my skeleton warriors and sent one on the wolf and one at the weird alien crab. The two zombies weren’t anywhere near as agile as their companions, so I opted to ignore them. They seemed the least threatening for the moment.

I rushed to join my undead warrior at the the wolf and stabbed out frantically. The snarling wolf, however dodged my spear thrusts and the warrior’s axe by constantly edging back. Fear was starting to over-take me as I realized this battle was way over my pay grade.

I gave the order to my warrior to try to subdue the wolf as best as possible. The axe dropped from the skeleton’s hand and instead it did its best to grab the wolf. That didn’t seem to be working either though in evading the warrior, the wolf turned away from me: I thought I saw a chance and leapt forward.

There was a searing pain in my leg as a claw came across my calf. It shredded my jeans and rent flesh but I had distracted the wolf. My skeleton warrior managed to bear hug the beast. Ignoring the pain in my leg, I stabbed the spear repeatedly into its gut. I didn’t stop until the yelping ended.

Almost immediately after that, the two zombies reached me and attacked. One caught a spear to the head and quickly collapsed, while the other managed to bite into my extended hand. My skeleton warrior tackled the zombie to the ground and held it down, a bit of my flesh torn off by the pull of its rotten teeth.

There were multiple status messages happening all at once,which I could only ignore. My spearhead came down again and stabbed directly through the Zombies skull. Now there was only that weird alien creature left.

My adrenaline was pumping and despite searing pain from my leg and arm, a newfound bravery came over me. I once again directed my warriors to try to grapple the creature. Their attacks weren’t fast enough to damage the alien, but working together one of the skeletons was able to grasp a limb in its boney hand, even at the cost of the other skeleton’s rib cage being destroyed.

Once the alien crab was unable to use its full speed, killing it was as easy as slipping the spear through its hard exterior and collecting the EXP. With the battle over I surveyed the area for a belt or cord for a torniquet and spotted something that was desperately needed.

There was a skill book, and then also a single bandage floating there. I grabbed both without hesitating and rushed to Jessica. “This is going to hurt, try to bear it and don’t scream.” Her forehead was drenched with sweat and her face was red. She managed a nod and put a large portion of her t-shirt into her mouth.

Grasping the spear in her leg firmly, I ripped it out in one fell swoop. What I had feared became a reality as blood started to gush from the wound with every pulse. Using the bandage that had dropped, I ‘wrapped’ it around her wound.

The bleeding stopped immediately, and the healing power of the bandage meant that even the wound closed over slowly. There was still a raw, pink indentation in Jessica’s thigh, but the life-threatening nature of the wound was now gone. I wiped my brow and forced a smile, only to realize my vision was starting to blur.

Jessica said something appreciative but I found it hard to focus. I was feeling incredibly nauseous and dizzy. Something was terribly wrong, and I decided to read the status messages from earlier.

Congratulations, you have reached level 4!

You have received an infection. You will lose HP overtime.

I checked my hit points in a panic. I was down to 65 from 145.

The zombie had bitten me, and I had failed to appreciate the fact that maybe I could become infected? Was I going to become a zombie? Having used our only bandage to save Jessica, I didn’t know the solution. It was possible I was going to die and I couldn’t help but selfishly wish I still had the bandage.

I nearly collapsed while trying to stand after removing the spear. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Jessica asked in a panicked tone.

“One of the zombies bit me.” I said, “we need to get back to the car.” My vision was growing darker and my head even more fuzzy. An encounter with a monster now would be disastrous. With Jessica leading me by the hand, our rush back to the car was a fog that went in and out.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to die. I almost didn’t realize it when we reached the car, and Jessica forced me into the backseat. “It’ll be okay,” she said. I used my 6 available attribute points and put them all into VIT in a last ditch effort to survive: then I blacked out.