The might of our clan is more versatile and powerful than all others. But it is also the most shackled and difficult to learn. We warp reality itself. Reality is however ridged and fights back when bent too far. -Geldath Archmage of the Pattern.

Adrian

The drive as we head towards Outdoor World remains rather uneventful, sure we saw smoke rising from the distance and few bodies is the street but no creatures were in our way untill we are about a mile away. Tomas swears as we turn a corner, a ten-foot-tall brute with dark skin is smashing a car with part of a telephone pole.

The thing is in our way, the other streets we could have turned down are blocked by abandoned cars. It hasn’t noticed us yet, I pick up the pistol and roll down the window. The creature still hasn’t notice us, it must not be too perceptive. I start unloading while aiming for its torso, too far for me to be sure in hitting its head.

After the first shot, the giant rushes at the car. Tomas begins to back the car up, though we are limited in where it can go as Bryan’s truck is not far behind us. I fire four more bullets into the chest of the giant before it is closes in on my car. The bullets are not doing much, the giant too large to be brought down easily by a 9mm caliber bullet.

“Ditch the car” I tell Tomas as the giant come within twenty feet of the vehicle, and open the door on my right to exit. I manage to get a few feet away from the car before the giant’s club lands on the hood, a loud crash results from the car flipping onto a building. Tomas screams in pain, he must have got hit by something.

Looking at the giant its chest is bleeding from the holes created by my bullets, but the wounds are letting out trickles of blood compared to the size of this creature. Bryan is accelerating his truck and having it ram the giant. I don’t think that will be enough, we need some way to cause massive damage to this creature quickly; that or a way to flee. It has already seen us, fleeing will be difficult.

I quickly shoot at the gas tank of my car, creating a leak. Bryan’s window is down.

“Ram, it towards my car, then run!”

I am going to have to do another ‘impossible’ thing, I focus on a bullet in the magazine of the pistol. If I screw this up, an explosion will go off in my hands; hell, even if it works a backlash may kill me. My throbbing head doesn’t make it easier either.

Bryan’s truck smashes into the giant, a crack of bones breaking sounds out as the giant falls towards the wreck that was my car. Bryan, Jason, and Abagail run out of the truck, the giant roars as it throws the truck off its legs. The giant’s actions reveal a compound fracture of its right leg; good, the gas spilling out of the tank of my car will reach it soon. I fire at the tank of Bryan’s truck, adding its gas to the spill around the giant.

I release the bullet that I had been focusing on, a small burst of sparks comes out of the barrel along with the bullet itself. The shot lands in the wound of the compound fracture, the giant releases a scream of pain as a static discharge ignites the spilt gasoline. The giant screams loudly as it begins to burn to death.

Shortly after both vehicles erupt in an explosion of flame. Tomas crawling away from the wreckage of my car yells out in pain as his legs are light on fire by the explosion. He begins to roll in attempt to put out the fire, as the rest of us rush towards him.

We manage to get the fire put out, though Tomas has third degree burns on his legs. He has passed out; his left shin is also broken. I speak up towards Jason, “find me two rods or sticks.”

“For what?”

“Making a stretcher. Now!” Jason runs around the street searching through the rubble of what used to be cars, mail boxes, and other things that line the streets of a residential area. Bryan clears the nearby area as I check for other injuries. Tomas is not going to be useful in a fight for a while. Abagail seems to be crying a bit as she keeps a lookout.

Tomas does not have any life-threatening injuries, but aside from the broken leg he also has several cuts that are now cauterized along his arms and on his torso. He’ll live so long as he doesn’t get infected. We’ll have to find a place where we can clean out the cuts and find some medicine.

Jason comes back after a few minutes with two pipes that probably used to hold up mailboxes. He gives them to me, they are long enough to use but thick, it will be heavy. Bryan speak up as he removes his shirt “we will need more than two, we’ll need your shirt too.”

“What does a shirt have to do with . . .”

“The part that holds the person” I interrupt, as I remove the tattered remains of my own shirt. Bryan and me finish creating the stretcher and move Tomas’s unconscious body onto it. “Jason, move ahead of us as a scout.”

“You’re armed, I’ll carry the stretcher.”

“Ok” I let Jason take my place holding the stretcher, and scout head as we travel the last block towards Outdoor Sports. I move staying a few hundred feet ahead of the others, the vigilance of having a scout proves unneeded until I reach the parking lot of the store.

There are a few cars in the otherwise empty lot, but that is not what catches my attention as I turn around the corner of a building to see the lot. There are five midgets, these ones with red skin; as if they were gingers who had stayed out in the sun for a few days. They are huddled around something but a jeep is blocking my line of sight. They seem to be eating something, not sure what but I probably would rather not know. I walk back to Bryan and the others.

“There’s some midgets eating something near the entrance. These ones have red skin. I’ll take care of them and return.”

The three who are conscious nod, acknowledging the information. After returning to the corner where I can see the red midgets, I turn the safety off on one of the pistols. I’ll need a better angle to take one out in a sneak attack; so, I move in an arc to take cover near a minivan.

I can now see the midgets without looking through the windows of the jeep. The midgets are clustered around two mangled corpses, chunks are missing. They are eating the two. Great cannibals, or is it not cannibalism since they are a different race? Not the time to think about that, I take aim on the midget that looks somewhat larger than the other four. He’s probably their leader, though any of these five are larger than their green cousins that were at my school.

I fire the pistol and the largest of the midgets is now leaking brain matter out of a hole; the other four are startled and have started to look around as they pick up clubs made from pipes. They haven’t noticed me yet, perfect two sneak kills then.

As I take aim for the second shot one of the midgets looks almost directly at me, but he still did not see me. They seem to be squinting their eyes as they look around, they must have overly sensitive eyes. The sun behind my back creating a glare in their vision as it reflects off the hood of the minivan. Are they suffer daylight blindness, or is it poor vision overall? Regardless I release a second shot having aimed without worry of them immediately rushing me until after I fire again.

The bullet puts a hole in the head of the second largest of the midgets, the three-remaining turn towards me and begin to charge. I was hoping for another free shot but I already got two free shots. They move faster than the previous midgets and I only manage three shots before they reach the minivan, two of the shot struck the chest of one of them and it fell dead the other missed. I don’t have a melee weapon, I need to slow them down.

I open the door to the minivan and hot air pours out of the opening door, I enter and close it, the midgets a few feet from the door as I slam it shut. The midgets strike the door shattering the glass, a few shards scrape against my flesh as the midget screeches as it tries to climb into the window. The odor like that of a latrine wafts off the creature as it climbs.

I release a bullet into the head of the midget who broke the window. He falls out and to the ground, and his companion screams in what seems to be terror as it turns to run. I take aim once more and after three bullets to its chest the fleeing midget falls as well.

I open the door behind me, as I have no desire to see the remains of these creatures, the smell of the one that started climbing through the window was as bad as a truck stop bathroom. After returning to the others, the group walks up to the front entrance to Outdoor World. The front door is ajar, held open by someone's dropped backpack. Bryan speaks up as he picks up the backpack

“Should we worry about something showing up after dusk?”

“I don’t know, better we prepare for it than be attacked without preparation" I respond.

“I’ll get Tomas set up in the back after a quick search, then help with barricades.”

“I’ll check for power and get some food ready” adds Abagail.

Jason follows Bryan as he moves Tomas to the western end of the store. That’s where the weapons and camping stuff is. The eastern side is boats and fishing, less stuff we could use. I look around the front of the store, the windows have the blinds down, but there are too many here to be defended; the camping section of the store has no ground floor windows; we’ll have to set up there. I close the front door and lock it before making a quick sweep of the store, no creatures but there is a dead security guard. He died from a stab in the back, as that was the only injury I could see on him. His firearm was also missing. Mabey the two corpses outside have a gun on them?

Bryan walks up and interrupts my thoughts, “I took his gun, I’m thinking we’ll have to set up in either the second-floor food court or the camping and hunting section.”

“Camping, we need the weapons and its more defensible anyways.”

Bryan nods, and we walk to the hall that leads to the camping section, grabbing some clothes on the way. After we reach our destination we set down what we scavenged from the sports section, clothes, defense equipment, and some bats. We end up returning to the registers and pull the minifridges out to take the drinks and stack them as part of the barricade. We want to keep the organization of the shelves in camping for now. Abagail helps unload the fridges after turning the backup generator on, and shutting down most of the power to sections aside from camping and the food court.

About an hour after dusk we have a shoulder high wall across the width of the hallway, we also closed and locked the staircases to the food court that are not connected to camping. The main stairs to the food court is still open and too large to block, so we set another barricade between camping and it. We spend the next few hours gathering the weapons in the store, a dozen pistols, a dozen revolvers, 17 compound bows, 7 hunting rifles, nearly a hundred knives, 6 cases of .22 rounds, 2 cases of .308, just over a case of 9mm, a partial case of .45 for the revolvers, several magazines, and two speed loaders for the revolvers, a few accessories for the firearms, 400 arrows, a half dozen crossbows and 200 bolts; far more than we can carry.

Everyone takes one of the rifles, two of the knives, a few boxes of bullets, and other than me they each take two pistols. The bows and arrows are left to me as I’m the only one who knows how to use them. I hope Jason's knowledge of firearms is more than the point and shoot variety.

Abagail also found a few months’ worth of food for us five, at least if the fridges were still on.