“Great,” I sighed being knocked down to the ground by the strength of the earthquake.

The ground moved back not letting me stay in the same place for a second. I looked around and saw my brother in a similar situation. There was yelling, confusion, and fear, my empathy went into overdrive with that emotion and I almost blacked out then and there. I tried to shake out of it and get to my brother.

The earth shifted again and suddenly I was flying. Then I could see it, just for a second the ground looked like if it was made of liquid, it bent like a wave flowing around the tent and kept going to just stop at the next moment. I fell again to the ground.

“Knight!” I yelled at him trying to get him to move towards me.

Then as soon as it had begun the earthquake stopped and left me scrambling in the ground trying to get up. After a minute I only managed to maintain something that resembled a vertical position and scanned the area. Somehow the tent had survived the onslaught, but everything and everyone else was down. Fortunately nobody seemed to be very hurt and only…

Shit. My brother was lying in the ground close to on the beds, bent backwards and with a piece of metal sticking from his back. I didn’t think and simply moved to him which almost made me fall again to the ground. I was dizzy and my head hurt, I wanted to sleep.

No, Knight is hurt, you have to help him.

Somehow I got to him, and examined the wound. He was still breathing but barely, the metal spike had punctured a lung. I tried to go back to every piece of medical knowledge I had, whatever I could remember to save him. I examined the wound from the other side trying to figure something out, I checked the pulse, I…

I realized I didn’t have the equipment to save him. He was going to die.

“Shit, Knight,” I snapped at him tears falling from my eyes. “Don’t do this to me, please, please.”

Hi didn’t answer, unless stop breathing was a new form of communication. I moved him around. He was going to die on my arms and I couldn’t do anything. Shit.

My mind stopped, I couldn’t think anymore. I don’t know if it was the pain, the fear or whatever emotion I was catching with empathy but my mind just stopped. Everything disappeared from my mind and from a moment I didn’t know anything. I was in automatic mode.

And that was good, because although my mind didn’t know how to save him my instincts did. I moved my hand to the wound and removed the spike from his back carefully but in one go. He jerked back and breathed sharply from the pain. That was good, but now he was bleeding quickly and probably his lung was filling with blood. He was dying quicker and some part of my mind, some part that still remembered medical things knew that I was doing everything wrong, but that was okay.

Because I was not playing doctors now. I was doing magic. It was all there. I knew perfectly well how to use it. It was like muscle memory if magic had a muscle. I moved my hand on top of the wound, the blood of my brother pouring through my fingers, and closed my eyes.

The mana of the environment responded to my call and flowed to me, in that moment I instinctively knew it would take minutes to cast the whole spell. There was no time for that. It didn’t matter, the spell didn’t had to be strong enough to heal him in one go, just to maintain him alive for a few minutes.

I concentrated and built the shell of the seed, tiny but effective, and poured in it as much mana as I could in the few seconds I dared to maintain it. Then I just let it flow through his wound. There was a sudden and almost unnoticeable flash of green light and the bleeding stopped. Again some part of my mind that had started to wake up, asked what was happening, how was the spell stopping the bleeding but I shut it down. There was no time for that part of me at the moment.

And in any case if this worked and my brother survived I could always bleed him again and analyze how the spell worked.

I started to cast the spell again trying to speed the progress of the mana. I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn’t notice the ground shaking again. It took almost five minutes but the spell was finished and I let it do his job. I breathed loudly and looked at the result, the bleeding had stopped and the wound was closing quickly. Very quickly, like zombie on steroids quickly, in a moment I saw the muscle and the skin growing back under my eyes.

When it was over I checked him, he was breathing and his pulse seemed fine. I sighed with relief. If that was the normal effect of the magic it was going to be very useful.

My mind was coming back, trying to piece what the hell I had done but again there were bigger problems. The ground was shaking again. I looked around. Everyone else was lying down on the floor waiting for the earthquake to stop.

“Oh, for fucks sake. Can’t we have a nice apocalyptic day for once?” I cursed to the sky.

The tent was still in place somehow and outside people were still yelling but every moment the yells seemed to be getting faint. No, I moved in place my mind working at full speed again. The yells were the same, it was the sound of the ground what was getting louder. I cursed silently, of course, this wasn’t a normal earthquake and the aftershocks had to be worse than the earthquake itself because apparently that’s life now.

I looked at my brother, he was unconscious but alive. I felt so damn powerless right now. There was nothing I could do to…

Wait, there was, another piece of magic I hadn’t tried yet but something told me could be useful. I moved my hand on top the head of my brother and casted the other spell I knew. The next few minutes the ground kept shaking faster and louder and I almost got distracted but just when I thought I was going to fail the spell finished and released over my brother with a faint green light.

His skin didn’t change color or texture but I knew it was tougher than before. With any luck it would be tougher that whatever decided to fly towards him this time. And I made it just at the perfect moment because suddenly the earth shocked and everyone in the camp flew a meter into the air.

We fell again and the earth literally screamed like if it was in pain. For a moment the earth was alive, it yelled, tore, yanked, cried and with a last sharp shock it stopped. There was a sudden silence all around, not even the screams could be heard anymore. I checked my brother and he was still breathing, he was fine. He was alive.

I left a sigh of relief pass over me.

You have gained 5 luck and 20 exp points.

Oh, great, there was that too.

“Is everybody fine?” asked Amelia getting up.

There were grunts of assent all around and I moved my attention to my surroundings. Despite the bluntness of the earthquake everyone seemed unharmed, the guards were already getting up dazed but whole. The only ones that didn’t looked very well were the people already wounded. I guess an earthquake wasn’t a good treatment for when you are bleeding.

“Hey… you!” called the doctor making me look at her. “Are you okay?”

It took my head a second to understand what she was saying.

“My name is Adam, and yes, I’m fine.” I said. “My whole body hurts but I believe nothing is broken.”

“Good,” she said. “And your friend?”

“My brother is fine but I think I should move him to somewhere where he can rest,” I answered getting up and carrying Knight as best as I could.

He was unconscious and that was not fine but my knowledge of the magic I used told me he would be fine with some rest. I could feel the seed still doing his job inside, repairing the last pieces of the puzzle.

“Don’t go too far, if this is as bad as it looks I’m going to need as much help as I can get.” She warned me.

I nodded and walked outside precariously, holding my brother as best as I could. I pushed aside the flaps of the tent that for some reason was still intact and stopped staring at what was left of the camp.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

The camp was… not a camp anymore I guess. Well, it was if you ignored the huge crevice that passed through the middle and the part of the perimeter fence that was down leaving us exposed to an attack by zombies. Fortunately the crevice looked like the only damage that had happened, cars and people were still around alive. The Zombinator looked fine, it wasn’t close to the crevice.

The people were starting to yell and cry again, calling for his families and friends. I moved Knight towards the Zombinator as quickly as I could, trying to pass through the moving people. When we were almost there the door of the Zombinator opened and Sam walked out of it.

“Adam?” he asked seeing me walk towards him.

“A little bit of help would be nice,” I said propping up Knight.

His eyes widened seeing my brother and moved to help. “What happened? I felt the ground shock and then…”

“I don’t know,” I said and then started laughing. “A system update maybe?”

Sam grunted and helped me get Knight inside.

“What,” I said looking at the interior of the RV.

Surprisingly everything inside the Zombinator looked more or less normal, there were a few things that had fallen and some other things were broken but most of it was still in place. The cabinets hadn’t even opened. We let Knight in a bed and I started fiddling around trying to see how the things actually were.

It turned out everything was still in place.

“Good boy,” I whispered caressing a wall of the Zombinator. “I knew I could count on you for something like this.”

“Should I left you two alone?” teased Sam smiling.

“Shhh, don’t listen to him. He is jealous of our love.” I said.

Sam rolled his eyes and started coughing. Shit, I had forgotten to check if he was fine.

“Are you okay?” I asked scanning his body for signs of wounds.

“I’m fine,” he said dismissively.

I stared at him and forced him to sit on a chair.

“I told you I’m fine,” he protested trying to get away.

“Would you like to know that in accidents like this the people that say that are fine are usually the ones who are worst?” I asked worried. “You may have a concussion or something worst, you may not be registering the pain right now so shut up and let me have a look.”

That got him and I started to examine him more closely. Inadvertently my right hand started to cast the seed of regrowth, somehow it was like second nature to me and in the few minutes I took to examine him the spell was ready. I patted his chest planting seed there with a faint green light.

“What the hell?” he asked after seeing the light.

“Don’t worry it’s just magic,” I smiled and looked at him.

He stared openmouthed. “Sure, if it’s just magic there’s nothing wrong with that…”

“That’s the spirit,” I nodded. “I’ll explain later but now I need you to make sure that my brother is fine and to check the Zombinator is still working. Can you do that, Sam?”

He nodded slightly, still confused about the seed and I walked out.

“Wait!” He called just before I got out. “What are you going to do?”

I smiled confidently. “I’m going to power level.”

--

A few hours later of mostly sewing skin back together, setting bones back in place and in general trying to keep people for yelling, the most interesting case I had was a woman with a high fever. Well, that and someone tried to stole some meds, but that was solved fairly quickly.

You have reached level 8. You have unspent points.

I did level up several times and when nobody was looking to closely I casted the seed on a few people that wouldn’t have made it without it., which I guess is what made it level up to.

All in all it had been a very busy and rewarding day, at least it had started to been so when I convinced Amelia to let other people help with the patients given that most of them only needed to be stitched back together. She being the hell of a woman she seems to be told me that and I quote: “I’m not going to let any idiot that believes to be a doctor after an afternoon of Wikipedia and beer get close to a patient.”

To which I very eloquently pointed out: “You are right, because to be a doctor you need six years of Wikipedia and beer.”

And after that we were friends. Which I guess is not that different to how I made the rest of my friends.

Sam and John had passed a few times by to tell me everything was fine. The Zombinator didn’t had anything broken and my neighbor was still looking for information into what the military was doing exactly and everything else he could find out.

It was late and dark outside. I was tired after so many hours working and we were starting to run out of patients to treat. The people that were too bad where treated the first with the few soldiers that were hurt after the earthquake and they were either fine or dead. I finished splinting a broken arm and sat back on a beaten chair breathing loudly.

“How are things going over there?” asked Amelia from the other side of the tent.

“Fine…” I answered within raged breaths.

She snorted and walked to me. “If you overwork yourself to death you are useless here. Get out and rest.”

“I’m fine,” I said with a sigh.

“Sure,” she said and then looked at a guard. “Soldier, get this man to his vehicle and make sure he rests. Even if you have to knock him out.”

The soldier smiled. “Yes ma’am.”

I rolled my eyes and started to get up when the flaps of the tent went open and someone entered. Everyone stopped whatever they were doing to look at him and the soldiers saluted quickly.

“Amelia,” the man said simply.

“Commander,” she said sharply.

An old western music started to play, they both squinted their eyes and a dust ball rolled around the tent very slowly. No, actually none of that happened but the tension of the moment went along those lines.

“How are things going here?” asked the commander looking around the tent.

“We are fine,” said Amelia with a certain disdain. “Have you received some new information from…?”

“All communications were cut off after the earthquake,” he cut off. “The last thing we received where emergency signals about the earthquake happening on all camps and communication centers.”

She stared at him and I didn’t need empathy to know what she was feeling.

“WHAT?!” she yelled and walked to face the commander. “And you didn’t think of informing me?”

“You were busy,” he said. “We needed you here and I fail to see the point of telling you unless you could have done something about it.”

“Of course you fail to see the point,” she mocked him. “It would have been nice to know that the earthquake was apparently happening all around the world or that everyone competent enough to do something may be dead. Did you think that wasn’t worth mentioning?”

One of the soldiers looked the other way trying not to laugh.

“It’s irrelevant right now, some survivor brought information about the zombie. Apparently light hurts them and my men have verified it.” said the commander. “They seemed unstable and kept saying this was some kind of game but that information at least was true. In absence of new orders we will try to evacuate the survivors from the city tomorrow when daylight will help us.”

Shit. Who of them was so stupid as to tell that this was a game? I mean, I don’t even believe it completely yet and I’m the only one who can see this windows. Wait, no, what did he said?

“You are planning to enter the city?” I asked without thinking.

The commander looked at me like if he only noticed now I was there. He glanced at me, sizing me up and then ignored to go back to Amelia.

“Since you are the second in command of this mission you will remain in control of the camp until we come back from the city.” He said.

Amelia snorted. “Sure, if somebody comes back.”

“Our soldiers are ready,” he said simply and walked out of the tent without waiting for a reply.

We spend a few minutes in silence, I was startled and for what I could see everyone else was too.

“Well, that went well,” I said to break the ice.

Amelia snorted and went towards the outside of the tent.

“That’s what happens when half the officers die,” she said. “They start to use the stupid ones. I need to yell at him for a few more minutes. Get some rest, try to sleep or something.”

I nodded suddenly feeling very tired. I think the news from the commander tired me more than all the hours healing people. I walked out of the tent. It was dark and the people that hours before couldn’t stop moving from one place to another had joined around improvised fires along the camp.

I casted my sight to the crevice, it was still there, no one had even tried to approach it or put planks to cross it. The hole in the perimeter wall had been patched though. Several cars were stacked one after another where the fence had been, making a stout wall.

I moved towards the Zombinator, hoping that John had found less grim news that the ones I had but when I was close I started to hear yells.

“No, no, NO!” said the voice of Sam. “You can’t just come here and…”

“Look, I’m sorry. I have orders from the commander and we are going to need your vehicle.” Said a soldier. “There is nothing you can do.”

“Oh, I can do a lot,” Sam continued saying. “I want to see you try taking the Zombinator from us.”

The door of the Zombinator opened.

“Sam, please, calm down,” said the voice of my brother. “I’m sure we can talk about this.”

“There is nothing…” started to say the soldier.

I walked in then.

“Hellooo, I’m back,” I said trying to not sound as tired as I was and failing. “What is happening?”

Sam looked at me and jumped. “Adam, thank god! They want to take the Zombinator.”

The soldier sighed and looked at me. “We need it for the operation of tomorrow, we are short in vehicles to transport survivors and yours is big enough to move a lot of them.

Shit. I knew something like this was going to happen but I was too tired to bother about it at the moment. I walked between them to the door of the RV and looked at everyone.

“Sure,” I said simply.

“Thanks for being reasonable,” said the soldier quickly.

“But,” I cut him before he could say something more, “it’s broken at the moment. The earthquake made a job with it. Sam says he can repair it but it will not be ready until tomorrow, right?” I lied.

Sam looked at me confused but nodded immediately when he noticed. I looked back at the soldier waiting for an answer. His emotions told me he didn’t want to do this, the commander was ordering him and he had to do it. I hoped that would be enough.

“Okay, I will come back in the morning,” he said after a tense minute. “And sorry, but we need it.”

I nodded absently and entered inside the Zombinator, I was yawning already and lied in the first bed I found. John was already inside reading a book and nodded to me when I entered, the rest entered shortly after.

I started to feel how tired I really was.

“What the hell was that?” asked Sam moving to me. “We aren’t really going to give them the Zombinator, right?”

I yawned and moved my head between the pillows. “Who is now the one in love with it?” I teased.

“I’m not…” he started to say and smiled. “I don’t trust them.”

“And with reason, the commander is a total idiot,” added Knight.

“Yep. You should have seen it talking about how he was going to rescue the city of the evil monsters, for how he talked it seemed there was no doubt about it,” I mumbled. “By the way John, have you found something talking with your military buddies?”

He looked at me confused. “They are not my buddies, I was never in the military.”

That woke me up, I stared at him confused. I thought he was in the military, he looked the type with the muscles and the weapons and… Actually there were no more clues he was in the military.

“I though you…” I tried to say. “What the hell are you then?”

John smiled mysteriously. “I found something talking with the soldiers, they are in a mission. Operation Citadel.”

“Military names,” sighed Knight.

“Yes, but there’s more,” he started saying.

Over the course of a few minutes John explained everything he had found like the loss of communications with other camps and the earthquake being something that had happened in other places which left my brother and Sam dumbstruck. They had lost control of all the cities and only the places that were less populated had managed to survive more or less unscathed. The most important piece of information to me was the one about their mission.

Apparently Operation Citadel was fairly straightforward. They were going to set camps and collect as many survivors they could before the zombie become a threat too big to handle and then they would transport all the survivors to a safe zone where there were no zombies.

“Of course, nobody seems to know where that ‘safe zone’ is, but that is their plan.” Finished John.

Everyone was silent for a moment processing the information.

“That’s doesn’t seem like a bad plan,” said Sam.

“Wait, if that is all. Why are they trying to attack the city?” asked my brother.

John sighed. “I think that’s mostly their commander trying to show that he is fit for the post.”

“Which is going to get everyone killed,” I summarized yawning. “Good to know.”

“Yes, they don’t have enough soldiers here to do that they want to do,” acknowledged John.

Sam moved back and front in the Zombinator nervous. “Then what do we do?”

“We run in the other direction,” said Knight.

I grunted in assent.

“I’m serious, we need a plan,” said Sam.

“What hour is it?” I asked.

“2:30” said John.

I cursed and got up looking through the window. Hours of monotonous work had left me some time to think and after the earthquake I gathered whatever the hell was happening to our world hadn’t finished yet. If I was right we were going to have problems soon.

“I think I’ll have a plan in a few minutes,” I said simply.

At 2:33 the purple sky appeared again.

“Great,” I sighed. “I hate to be right and awesome.”

I looked back at my friends. They were staring at the infinite with surprised expressions. I smiled.

“HEY!” I yelled. “A wild blue window appeared?”

They nodded absently. They were surprised at seeing it, perhaps they were hoping I was lying. Still that finally proved that I wasn’t crazy.

“Good, the purple sky is back and we have to go now.”

That woke them up. They moved quickly to look at the sky and cursed.

The yells started then. The people of the camp had noticed the purple sky and started to run around like crazy. Trying to outrun end. They were too late. This time the black rain started to pour immediately and they were bathed in it. I grimaced at the scene. I had a first line seat to watch the apocalypse repeat itself.

But nothing happened, the people were not transformed, they just kept running in all directions trying to find a place to hide without noticing the rain wasn’t affecting them. I smiled, they were alive, I thought they were going to die the moment the rain fell and nothing happened. It kind of blew my plans to escape in the chaos but knowing that it wasn’t happening again felt good.

And for over a minute I felt good until the rain started to form shapes where it fell. The people where still running around and didn’t notice how the rain pooled on the ground and grew starting to take the shape of something. No, not something.

Wolfs, big black wolfs with glowing purple eyes. The wolfs took a few seconds to take full shape, then when they appeared they looked at the sky that had gave birth to them and howled. I tried to inspect them, they were big, bigger than normal wolves, their fur seemed to fuse with the shadows, and in their heads sprouted a black horn.

Chaos wolf Lv. 9The Chaos wolves are one of the most common forms of live in the Void, they can dance in the shadows without being seen and like to eat their prey when they are still warm.

Shit.

“Okay, time to go,” I yelled to everyone. “Sam, take us out of here now. Through the fence if you have to.”

He didn’t even said anything, just jumped to the controls and started driving. In my haste I barely noticed that the wolves weren’t spawning close to the Zombinator, but that didn’t seem to stop them to try to attack us. One of them jumped over the windshield and tried to break it, luckily the steel bars impeded him.

Sam made the Zombinator run in reverse dropping the wolf to the ground and then ran over it. We were knocked out to the ground by the quick acceleration and I barely saw how we launched through the fence. I got up and look behind through the windows. Two wolves were following us it seemed. And I say it seemed because they were completely black and only the glowy eyes gave them away.

“Where do we go?” yelled Sam over the noise of howls and yells in the camp.

“East!” I yelled back.

“Why east?” yelled Knight.

“Because west is where we come from and is where the ocean is,” I answered still looking behind.

Even when driving cross-country the Zombinator was outrunning the wolves. I let go my breath in a sigh of relief.

“Wouldn’t go to the ocean be a good idea?” asked my brother smiling. “We could get into a boat and find an island without zombies.”

I smiled. “Yes, good idea. By the way I’m not a geologist or anything but I don’t really want to see what happens to the ocean when a global earthquake strikes.”

It took them a few seconds to get it, and everyone went pale.

Oh, yes, they forgot to think about the possibility of a Tsunami.