We carved our way through the valley below, murdering more zombie hell hounds and other undead creatures that grew in size, strength, and ferocity. I restrained myself from going hog on my firearms as we didn’t want to attract attention as we made our way towards the sporadic gunfire that came audible several hundred meters from the first of the many subdivisions and neighborhoods that dotted the outskirts of the city.

The housing was largely eradicated, burnt and broken, some still smoldering from recently spent fires. The poison miasma hung thicker here, mixed with smoke and ash, black oily trees layed dead across the roads and in the yards. The remaining stumps glowed with a sickly green poison that drifted from the cracked wood. Randomly strewn about the horror-scape were the bodies of the people that were too far damaged to rise from their eternal slumber.

We found a two story ranch style house that was still largely intact and quietly climbed to the roof to get a view of the first of several neighborhoods we would be required to fight our way through. The quick echo of a high caliber rifle was much clearer from our vantage point and we were all able to adjust our direction of travel based on the weapon report. What I saw in the survivors' direction gave me reason for pause.

Every city street between us and the survivors was jam packed with the undead. I attempted to identify the horde of creatures in our path and was almost overwhelmed. Everything from zombies, ghouls, magically animated skeletons, and all manner of lesser undead. They were so massively packed together that all one could see in the hazy darkness was a shifting and writhing enormous silhouette.

“There’s no sneaking through that.” Carly came up next to me, her chill aura nipping at the hairs on my neck.

I looked at everyone gathered and could see they all had the same thought as Carly, not that I was thinking anything less myself. I reached into my spatial inventory and withdrew my heavy plasma machine gun and smiled at my team. “Let’s make some noise.”

Stephen began the festivities with a casting of [Solar Flare]. The bright white beam of solar energy stabbed through the gathered mass of undead and vaporized everything in its path for a hundred meters. The creatures on the edges of his attack stumbled into the sudden gap of smoldering ash, then it was Carly’s turn.

“[Ice Meteor]”, she muttered with her hands stretched high into the air. A brief moment later a giant rocky chunk of ice the size of a compact car tumbled lazily out of the dark sky. The meteor slammed into the earth just past the point that Stephen’s Solar Flare had fizzled out then erupted against the ground with a deafening roar and thick shards of ice shrapnel. The bodies of the undead that weren’t crushed under the weight of the icy rock were flung into the air as a shockwave cleared an area in a roughly fifty meter radius.

When I allowed myself to return from my reverie at her display of power I activated [Steady Shots] and casually stroked the trigger of the heavy plasma weapon and steadily advanced into the unending throng of undead. Courtney covered our rear as Stephen and Carly fanned out on my flanks with me in point, steadily dumping massive amounts of plasma bolts into the reanimated menace all around us. When the weapon would buzz empty, Stephen would step up with a [Void Beam], or Carly would launch a flurry of [Hoarfrost Lance]s.

Our destination was roughly five kilometers into the city, a two story bar and grill built in a frontier style evoking the wild west stereotype tourists had of Arizona before the System. We had caught sight of it during an earlier break from the roof of another house. Courtney’s laser pistol snapped continuously covering our advance as we pushed through the streets and yards and reached the main street that cut through the commercial heart of Show Low, the oddly named Deuce of Clubs Street. We quickly sought shelter in a burned out three story office building so we could get a better visual on our intended destination.

“Carly, Stephen, keep the dead fuckers busy, Courtney, let’s go get eyes on our survivors.”

Carly moved to the staircase we had just come up and sealed it with a block of ice while Stephen went about casting the occasional [Void Beam] into the throng of angry undead, then Carly moved to the other side and launched a variety of attacks at any undead that came too close. Courtney and myself scrambled to the roof of the building and finally found an unobstructed view of a pair of survivors with hunting rifles on the roof of the bar and grill.

“Two men, older, with hunting rifles. That’s why the shooting is so sporadic. Bolt action with five round magazines.” Courtney summed up the two men’s situation accurately enough.

“What’s making that white barrier around the bar?” I asked absently as I watched the men fire their rifles from the roof of the bar. Good position, undead can’t really get to them, and they can sit up there and spend all their ammo with impunity.

Just as I was about to get lost in my thoughts a bright flash of brilliant white light nearly blinded me, if we had been closer I’m certain it would have taken Courtney’s help to return my sight in a timely manner. When the afterimage cleared I noticed that all the undead in a twenty meter radius from the bar had fallen over, and didn’t even twitch anymore. It only took a minute for the shifting, writhing throng to close the gap the unknown attack had made.

“Alright, so there’s at least a third there helping to hold the fort, and they have powerful magic. Let’s wait for the next time our mystery mage uses that skill then make our own push.”

“Sounds like a plan, that magic used felt like some of my new spells, I wonder if I’ll unlock something similar.”

“Maybe, let’s tell the others the plan.” I moved down to the second level where Stephen and Carly were lazily lobbing attacks at the ineffectual variety of undead. “You guys notice that big blast of energy earlier?”

“Yeah, almost everything around us bee lined for the bar when that went off.” Carly commented while flinging a trio of [Ice Bolt]s into the darkness below.

“What of it, boss?” Stephen asked as he scanned the darkness on his side of the building for targets.

“When that attack goes off again, we’ll jump down and make our final push to the bar. I wanna meet whoever’s managed to survive this never ending shit show.”

“Sounds good, I’ll ready a Solar Flare when the time comes.” Stephen agreed and chose to save his mana.

About two hours later the familiar explosion of bright white light lit the murky sky and Stephen began channeling his attack. He aimed it straight in the direction of the bar and his [Solar Flare] erupted from his hands and burned a path through the building next to us and at least a hundred zombies. The offended undead moaned piteously at his affront then exploded in a shower of body parts as I tossed a trio of fragmentation grenades along the flanks of Stephens' attack, widening our path forward further.

We all jumped down into the carnage and began carving our way forward once again. As soon as we had crossed the first 100 meters of the last quarter mile to the bar the two hunters spotted our advance and began laying down steady covering fire. As we reached the final 100 meters of our assault I stored my HPMG and commenced carving my way through the horde with my axes.

Just as we were about to breach the front line of undead and skeletons another wave of holy energy surged forth and surrounded us in radiant light. All around us the horde stumbled then fell over backwards like puppets with their strings snipped. As the way cleared in front of us, a dark skinned man in gleaming full plate armor stood before us with a similarly high quality sword and shield held in his hands. He flashed us a pearly white smile that stood out against his coal dark face, yellow eyes gleamed in obvious relief at our presence.

“Greetings! Let’s make our way inside before this rabble gathers itself.” He spun on the balls of his feet and moved quickly to the front door of the bar and grill. I looked for something that indicated what this place used to be and found nothing so I slipped into the dark interior with a casual look over my shoulder. The undead horde slowly shambled back into the gaps we had created and then one of the men that had been firing from the roof stepped behind me to lock and bar the door.

The room we entered was lit by oil lamps that hung from support beams and cast a dim yellow light that barely pushed back the darkness. The other shooter came down and the three men gathered in the center of the room that had been largely stripped of its heavy wooden tables to barricade the windows and entrances. My team gathered silently behind me and looked around the room nervously.

Now that I had time to really look at the man that greeted us with the holy light show. He had sharp features and hair blacker than his skin, tied back tightly in a long ponytail, with long pointed ears sticking up and away. His nose was slightly longer than normal and skinny, and a light colored scar adorned the tip of his square chin.

“I’m Keeg, Paladin of Mork. These are my compatriots, Henry and Albert.” He smiled that too white smile and spread his hands to indicate the men on either side of him. They nodded in greeting and eyeballed my large form.

I stepped forward and offered a hand to the tall dark elf looking man. “Karl, and this is part of my team, Carly, Courtney, and Stephen.”

The man took my hand in a firm grip, “Well met. So what brings you to our little slice of paradise!?”

We disengaged as I answered the man, “I’m currently in control of Snowflake, Winslow, and Flagstaff, I wanted to see what happened to Show Low as it was labelled as the next closest official city to my VPA. Are you all that survives?”

“As far as we know, yes.” He said with a grimace, the two older men had taken a seat at the bar and poured themselves a drink, my team casually joined them and began chatting the men up.

While I considered his response I eyed the two men that looked like they were definitely longtime hunting buddies. They both basically wore the same thing, heavy Carhartt jackets, old bluejeans and flannel shirts. Trucker hats covered their grey hair and I began to wonder just how old they were when the System came down on them.

“Where’d you drag those two up?” I poked a thumb in their direction.

“Oh, they were here when I took refuge, guess they decided when the undead showed up they would go down with a drink in their hands. So, Karl, you’ve seen Show Low. It’s dead. What do you do now?” Keeg spun about when he talked about how dead Show Low was.

“I’ll be honest, I have so many questions right now I don’t know where to start. Let’s go with, who are you? Where’d you come from? And what the hell happened here?” We had taken a seat in a booth that was still in one piece.

His face darkened and he looked to the side briefly before answering my question, “I’m the last of my people it seems. As a settlement owner I assume you are aware of the Refugee system?” he paused in question and I nodded for him to continue, “Well, my people, the Kordak, were actually being driven back by another infestation of undead on our home planet.”

“Veep, is it possible they followed his people through the portal?” I asked the obvious question and saw the man cast his eyes down with a bit of shame.

Veep appeared between us and the others in the room turned their attention to us. “No, in all the millions of years the System has existed, monsters don’t cross through Refugee portals. This infestation is the result of the End Bringer.”

“Thanks, that’s what I thought, one can never be too sure though.” I returned my attention to Keeg. “So you came through, sought refuge with Show Low I’m assuming, then what?”

Henry and Albert dragged their chairs over to sit with us and my team followed suit.

“The mist happened, that’s what, like that shitty Stephen King novel. Came outta nowhere, people got poisoned, then people died. Keeg’s people tried to help but were soon afflicted just as bad as our own people were.” Henry provided for me.

I looked at Keeg questioningly and he picked up his end of the story, “I am the only Paladin of my people. I was the only one who had taken to using Holy Magics in our group. I was the only one immune to the poison.”

“Ok, so what happened? The rebreathers we got were effective at blocking out the poison, they didn’t cost that much.” Courtney pressed for clarification.

Keeg looked up as the sound of scratching increased in the background while we were talking, he looked at Henry and spoke, “Henry, my good man, why don’t you tell the story? You do it better than me and it sounds like I need to go activate the ritual again.”

Henry nodded and Keeg went to the front door and knelt in prayer. He softly murmured words in an unknown alien language. Henry picked up the story while Keeg worked, “Alright, so here’s the short version, System comes and scares the shit out of me and Albert here.” Albert grunted in agreement, “I’m able to walk again, been stuck in a chair for about a decade, and Albert stopped pissing and shitting himself.” Albert just glared mirthlessly at his friend's jibe.

I laughed a bit at that and motioned for the man to continue, “Anyway, restored bodily functions aside, we decided to team up and go hunting, I mean, all the beasties had grown and there were some real record breaking trophy Elk out there to hunt.”

“I know what you mean.” I said and gave my team a knowing look.

“So we’re out in the woods, when there’s still woods to be out in, and we stumble across this green mist that was hanging low against the ground. We didn’t think nothing of it til we got the notification that we was poisoned. We hightailed it outta there and were satisfied when the poison wore out on its own.”

“Kay, that’s good to know.”

“Sure, problem is, when we returned to the city to let the Mayor know what we’d discovered, we found that the mist had already engulfed the city. We got some breathers while the Kiosk was still functional, but soon people started dying.”

“Ok, so, no healers? I mean, if you get out of the poison it goes away after a time.”

“Sure, but we weren’t hit as bad as the rest of the world, everyone was fairly low level when the mist came in, so, you know, kinda hamstrung us. Most people were in their mid teens when this hit, healers were the slowest to level.”

“Ugh, so no one had the ability to properly remove the poison. I don’t even have that ability yet.” Courtny frowned at that revelation.

“Right in one.” Henry acknowledged her.

“Yes, I knew I sensed the power of the Divine in you Miss Courtney.” Keeg returned to the conversation, having completed his ritual. “And my people were more about the Arcane. If it was something substantial they could kill it quite handily, but the mist, not so much.”

“So all of Showlow, and all of the Refugees are assumed dead?” I asked, a bit skeptically.

“About a thousand of my people, ones that were out clearing a location for us to settle, never returned, maybe they fled the area, I hope they did.” Keeg looked off, clearly not wanting to consider that he’s the last of his people.

“Yeah, so the mist took half of the townsfolk. Then a week after that they all rose from the dead. Like one of dem zombie movies. Took us by surprise. Overwhelmed the rest. Albert and I were trying to get out but were hemmed in and decided to stop for a drink.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“And this is where we’ve been for the last week. We were certain this is where we would end.” Keeg added with a solemn expression.

“Alright, alright, well, I think if you guys want out of here, we can definitely help with that. I have three settlements that are secure and -”

“Not so fast, ladies and gents. I would have a word with this Reaper.” I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a well dressed man who absolutely radiated danger. He was dressed in a simple grey three piece suit and held a silver pocket watch in his left hand, attached to his hip with a chain and stood with his right hand behind his back. He had pale white skin with dark hair and emerald eyes that didn’t really glow, but were radiant, and they were firmly fixed on me.

“Who the fuck are you!?” Albert spoke for the first time since our meeting.

The man smiled evilly, never removing his gaze from my own, “I, good sir, go by many names, for our purposes here allow me to introduce myself as... The First Horseman of the Apocalypse, Pestilence. At your service.”