It was pretty clear that the main force of this small encampment of humanity had been persuaded. Now they needed to convince the others. Which Fern promptly did by marching up to the porch and laying it out for everybody.

“My son, Jake, may be alive. He’s changed though. He’s what Hildi here calls a dungeon. He can make things, like food and crossbow bolts. He says if we come, he’ll help us survive. I may be a damn fool, but I believe her. I believe in him. One of the reasons, the chief one I believe her is she knows stuff about my family that nobody not in it should. Another reason and this one is dark, is that without help, we aren’t gonna make it. I’d rather move forward with hope than wait here to die.”

At this, the crowd on the porch stirred a little but then settled down. She continued on, “We’ve got 20 adults left and 15 kids, sorry Jon Jon, but you’re in that number.” Jon Jon looked a little offended, but the adults on the porch laughed a little.

“That’s everyone that’s alive left on this block. There used to be 50 adults and 40 kids that lived on this street. Now, we’re it. We’ve been living off of monsters that we killed and what’s planted in my garden. We’re getting low on crossbow bolts and I don’t know how long my garden is going to last. We need help and so far, I haven’t heard any other offers. Have any of you?”

There was a silence then as everybody pondered what Fern had said. It was pretty clear that everybody recognized the seriousness of their situation, but wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Finally, old man Withers spoke up and said, “This dungeon is Jake? Is that what you’re telling us?”

“That’s right,” said Fern.

“I’ve heard some whoppers before but that one takes the cake! How’d he become a dungeon,” he asked.

“Well, according to Hildi here, it happened before the event. He woke up and a god asked him if he wanted to do it.”

“That’s a pretty tall story,” he said and more than one person on the porch nodded their head. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “We are living in weird times. It may be possible. I just have never heard of such a thing before. Never heard of gods before except on Sunday. Especially gods that talk. Did this girl offer any kind of proof other than telling you some things she may have overheard? She is a friend of your daughters, after all, same age, went to the same school, didn't she tell us that?”

Fern turned at looked at Hildi then. “Did Jake give you anything? Say anything else?” She wasn’t doubting, but she was looking for something to back up Hildi’s claims.

Hildi stood there thinking.

The crowd grew a little restless, but Fern waved them down, “Calm down, give her a chance to think.”

Finally, Hildi got an idea. “Hang on, hang on, let me show you something,” she said to Fern. She called up her status screen then focused on the title. It appeared again, looking almost exactly like when she’d gotten it.

First Bonded: As the first person to enter into a Soul Bond you’ve been granted the title, “First Bonded.” This title grants you the following permanent benefits. +2 Wisdom and Intelligence, +10% to all experience gained, +2 attribute points gained per level, + 2 skill point gained per level. The title cannot be unequipped.

As you elected to enter into a greater bond, with the dungeon ‘Jake Silvestre’, this title’s benefits have been increased.

The addition was the words at the base of the title, “with the dungeon ‘Jake Silvestre’.” She was pretty sure they had not been on the title description when she’d opened it before. “Thank you!” she whispered.

She said, “Share Title with Fern Silvestre. Share Title with Will Silvestre.” Then she decided to experiment a bit and said, “Share Title with everyone at this address.”

A bunch of surprised exclamations burst out as everyone could now view the title. This included the kids in the basement because there was a huge amount of noise coming from down there. But, the older kids evidently calmed things down, because the noise dropped off. Kids that survived the apocalypse learned fast to be quiet.

“Thank you for that, Hildi,” Fern said. “I take it you can share other screens or menus, like skills or titles or spells.”

Hildi said, “I’m pretty sure. I’ve only shared my status screen and this title with Jake. But I imagine that you could share anything. I’m not sure it’s wise, but I think you can.”

Fern turned back to the others on the porch and said, “Does that satisfy you? I hope so, but I, well, my family and I, we’re going. I mean it, we’ve got little to no chance staying here. We are living just above the water line and the creek’s rising. You all know it. You remember the announcement, don’t you?”

Everybody, including Hildi, nodded their heads. It was from the system or the Bobs or whatever they called themselves that said, “40% of the human population was either dead or injured.” This happened on the second day after the apocalypse occurred. If Jake were here he would have cussed the Bobs some more for not sharing the information with him.

“Now, how about a show of hands for those that want to come along. I’m taking all the kids without parents with me.”

There were a few more questions, but everyone accepted Fern’s decision. They all raised their hands. They’d grown used to accepting her decisions since they were living at her house and nobody else felt like taking responsibility. Nobody felt safe and everybody wanted somebody in charge that had a plan, somebody who looked like they knew what to do to survive.

Fern and Will had been leaders on the block for years. Starting with renovating their house, they turned their neighborhood around, and about ten years ago they started holding a block party with roast venison, hot dogs, hamburgers, and homebrew, one of Will’s hobbies as he grew older. Everyone had just grown used to listening when they talked. And after the event, the survivors moved down the street, camped at her house, and just waited. If you’d asked them what they were waiting for, they couldn’t have told you.

After talking a bit more, Fern came up with the plan, two groups of two guards and a helper would take everyone, couple or kid back to their house, one at a time. The group was given several boxes and told to load up everything that the owner needed or wanted to take. Pantries were pillaged, bedding, any weapons, medicines, eyeglasses, books, anything that they could find that they thought would be useful, lawn tools, shovels, axes, hatchets, machetes. Anything. And lastly, pictures, letters, birthday cards, journals, anything that would help the kid or couple remember their family. They wouldn’t be coming back.

All the kids were quiet when they returned. They usually had a favorite stuffed animal or toy in their arms. They also retreated to a corner and slept or cried. The other kids tried to help, but they were grieving too. That might have helped the most, everybody hurt, everybody was in pain. Everyone had lost at least one person. The adults were not much better, retreating to a corner of the porch, a room. It was hard but everybody tried to give everybody as much space as possible.

For the first time, Hildi saw a couple of the Shocked. It happened when she was looking for a bathroom. She opened a door on the first floor and it instead was a bedroom with two people sitting in it, both on the bed.

“Oh, excuse me!” she said, embarrassed to have walked in on them.

They didn’t respond. In fact, Hildi didn’t even notice them responding at all.

“Leave them be, hon. There ain’t nothing you can do for them. They lost themselves,” came a voice from behind her. And then an older, black hand reached out and pulled the door shut in front of Hildi.

“What?” she began, not really knowing what question she even had. The two inside were dressed in athletic wear and had no shoes on, they were just wearing socks. Both the man and the woman were dressed in old pink women’s sweatpants and a Converse hoodie and t-shirt.

The little, oldish black woman who’d pulled the door shut on Hildi, said, “We ain’t met yet. I’m Georgia Kale. I help cook and take care of them two. Now. Before this, I was in sales for Bama Pie in Tulsa.”

“What’s wrong with them? What happened to them?” Hildi asked.

“Don’t know. I suspect too much happened. Too much change. Too much death. They sat down one day and just didn’t get back up. We found them both in houses down the street. The man had a wife and two kids. The woman was raising three kids by herself. Don’t know what happened to any of their kids, his wife. They were just sitting in locked rooms, didn’t talk. You can lead them, feed them, put them on the toilet, they go, but that’s it. I started calling them Shocked and it kind of stuck.”

“How many are there?” Hildi asked.

“Probably millions. There were 50 couples on this street, this little neighborhood, plus a couple, maybe three, single-parent families, that’s about a hundred people. Two of them are sitting in there. You tell me,” said Georgia.

Hildi excused herself and went out on the porch, a little stunned. She, Billy, and Baxter had walked past a bunch of houses. She wondered how many of them had people in them sitting in lonely rooms. She looked back into the house, gloomy with its dim natural light from windows. Even the hallways were lit from the daylight coming in through the windows of the rooms attached. She pictured all the people, the Shocked, sitting, waiting for death and shivered.

The gathering of supplies, looting, whatever you want to call it, took longer than expected. Fern had planned to allow each person or couple, three hours to gather up their stuff and come back. It took longer. They also only did it during the daylight hours. Monsters may not come out more in the night, but it was harder to see them, to defend against them.

Hildi wondered if she should tell Fern and Will about Baxter’s secret identity because he alone could guard either the house or one of the groups. She wanted to but finally decided not to tell, that she’d just be exchanging problems of one type for the other.

She told Baxter to not help out unless it looked like somebody was going to be hurt, at that point to do whatever he could to save them. She really didn’t want to have them fear the monster dog.

It took them until about noon, seven days later to get through everybody’s houses. Fern and Will had the most time and since they had the most usable supplies, it was probably for the best. Will had a lot of tools, hunting and camping supplies, brewing gear, sausage-making tools, he’d started beekeeping once, but his hive died and he quit. Fern had a lot of plants that she wanted to bring. She needed to pot them and find a way to pack them.

In one of the twists of the apocalypse, the Bobs had given cash or substitutes for items that no longer worked. They left coins in driveways where cars were parked before the apocalypse. The cars vanished, leaving little piles of coins where they used to be. Sometimes they left rickshaws. Coins for laser sights, rifle scopes, rifles, ammunition, cell phones, gas and electric stoves, refrigerators, and microwave ovens. Or sometimes things disappeared and were replaced with other things that people didn’t know how to use. Fern’s microwave oven was replaced with a stone box that opened and had a handprint on it. No one had a clue what to do with it. That is until Hildi showed them mana and someone tried pushing mana into where the handprint was. Suddenly they had a working oven.

The Bobs also seemed to be tidying up other stuff too. At least that was the way Hildi thought of it. The giant coyote house next door disappeared on the second night that Hildi was at Fern's home. The man on watch whistled twice and everybody got up thinking it was another attack. There was just nothing left. He said it just grew dimmer until it was gone. In the morning everyone went over to see. Everything, even the foundation, the driveway, was gone. And there were already chest-high saplings growing in the place where the house had been. One of the trees seemed to already have walnuts growing on it.

“Anyone know what happened to Miss Miller?” Fern asked. Miss Miller was an old lady in her late 70’s. She’d seemingly outlived her entire family, but she was feisty, so Will and Fern kept an eye out for her. She’d owned the house since way before Fern and Will had moved into the neighborhood.

One of her neighbors said that she had seen a light on in the house the first night after the notifications, but nothing after that. Fern looked at Will, who shook his head.

“I went over there and knocked the day after, but Miss Miller didn’t answer the door and all her doors were locked. No signs of something breaking in either,” he said. “I called out, tried to get her to come to the door, did the same the second and third days too, but never got a response. Then I just had too much else to do.”

The next night a couple more houses on the street disappeared too. All the ones that nobody answered a knock on the door. Normally there was some sign of violence, a broken-in door, a dried, blackened, blood puddle on the walk, flies buzzing around it. The street was starting to look like it was part of a greenbelt. Houses interspaced with a wood lot or two, followed by another house. But none of the group’s old houses disappeared, not even the orphan children’s homes. At least not until they have gone back and done their final looting. The Fisher’s house, the one that they’d tackled first, vanished on the fifth night.

Because of everybody’s inventory, there wasn’t a lot of hauling needed. They’d boxed things up and shoved them in their inventories. Even the kids had them so they were able to haul a huge amount of stuff. Which was good, because they had a lot of stuff to haul.

Twenty adults, twenty-two if you included the Shocked which Fern definitely did and fifteen kids made for a large party. They worried about getting them all to their location, but it turned out the Bobs had provided. Between the twenty adults, the Bobs had left ten rickshaws, including one at Will and Ferns.

Will had investigated it and thought that it had some improvements to it over what he could remember about the rickshaws he’d seen in the movies. For one, the seat, the cab area stayed level. In the movies, people riding in one always seemed to be either perched at the front of the seat or looking at an angle up into the sky. Another improvement was that it had lights on it. Not that they need it, but it seemed to come equipped with a spell that cast a pool of light around it. He’d noticed the feature before but couldn’t figure out that it took mana to run. Once they figured out the oven though, he went back and figured out the light. And finally, it had shocks! Leaf springs that made the ride a lot smoother. The cab would fit two adults or four kids if they were small enough. He figured using the rickshaws ought to help get the group to Max’s safely.