“Hey, hold up” Donnie exclaimed suddenly. Most of the group had already turned towards the road and were looking at him impatiently.

He took a deep breath before continuing, “group up first.”

The Swat leader, Mick, looked back at Donnie and Alex, annoyed, before a resigned look crossed his face. Alex watched as Mick raised a finger in the air and started poking in front of him, eyes distant as he continued to tap.

“Done. Can we go now? Or do you have any more hold ups?”

A blue window popped up in front of Alex’s face and he frowned.

Donnie has invited you to the group. Accept?

Yes

No

“What the hell?” he muttered, tapping the yes button in the air, the blue window disappearing with a pop as he did so.

“How'ed you do that?” Alex asked Johnson, who in return gave an even more annoyed look

“What are you talking about? Just hit the group option from your interface.

“Interface? I don't have an interface. What are you guys talking about?”

At that, most of the group looked at him questioningly, even Donnie looked at him oddly.

Johnson turned to Donnie, frowning, “Where'd you dig this guy up Don? What the hell kind of question is that? You know what? Never mind.” He sighed, before pointing at Alex. “Look. Stupid. I don't know why I'm being forced to take you along with us, or why the hell you are the only person out here who doesn't have an interface. As if talking about an interface and partying up wasn't fucked up enough.” He spat, “but I'll be damned if I end up getting killed out here when you get in the way. So don't ask any more stupid questions and stay in the back your new pal, Don.”

Alex could feel heat rushing to his face as he watched the swat man point his finger at him, an old memory digging its way to the surface, he reminded him of an old bully he know, pointing someone out to separate him from the group. He kept quiet and clenched his teeth, but he could feel the anger simmering inside of him.

“What the fuck Mick?” Asked Donnie, also red faced. A couple of the soldiers were wincing looking at the exchange, but for the most part they were nodding their heads or staring at Alex, as if reexamining him as a liability.

“No, don't you what the fuck me Don. I'm in charge here” he said, tapping his chest plate quickly, “And I'm going to be making the rules on our little adventure outside. I might have orders to keep you around, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, or play nice, or even keep you alive out there. I've seen enough fucked up things out here that I have ZERO. ZERO! Patience for fuck ups! You got me?” He glared at the two of them.

“You got ME?” He asked again, insistent, looking at the two of them.

“I got you.” Alex replied, before clenching his teeth again, a sick feeling creeping into his stomach.

“Yeah I got you Mick” Donnie replied, his fists clenched and face red.

“OK” Mick, responded in a mock cheery voice. “Let’s get going shall we, you two stay in the back, and we'll lead the way.” With that, Mick turned, and walked down the road, the rest of the men taking quick looks at him and then Alex, before grunting and turning to follow him. Alex and Donnie followed as well. Alex wondered just how long this trip was going to take, his thoughts getting increasingly dark the more he walked behind the main group. He could hear the soft patter of feet behind him as his animals quietly followed along

Walking down the paved road they didn't have too bad a trip at first. Alex didn't even concentrate on the idea they would get attacked as he silently fumed at Mick. Not that it mattered, this close to the Police station he noted a lot of dead monstrous creatures that had been taken out. The regular patrols in the area must have been keeping the monsters down.

“Where do they keep coming from” He thought to himself, distracting himself further, before a memory from back in the conference room returned to him. The police headquarters had been circled, but he remembered all of the other circles on the map, with a flash of insight he realized what they could mean. He had thought the circles had been supplies or potential defensive spots, but he had a sinking feeling that they were sighted concentrations of monsters. All of the little circles had been surrounding the police station, which meant....

“Alright,” Mick whispered, holding his hand up. “Keep low and quiet, we are breaking through.”

The relaxed atmosphere of the patrol faded away at that, the men looking tenser as they began to continue down the street. Alex glanced at the sparrow hopping nervously on his shoulder, its head looking from side to side. The animals at his feet also reacted like the men, a sort of tension that hadn't previously been there. It wasn't like the day before, when they were stock still pointed in a direction, hair raised, but they were definitely acting like something was up.

With what felt like an eternity they continued to make their way down the street. He hadn't realized it before, but the cars on the road made a tunnel for the whole trip. He noticed impact marks on a lot of them as they walked, a pattern forming as each of the dents looked similar to him, a faint army color green paint scratching off on each.

He thought about it, “They did say they had driven down here from the base. They must have been knocking cars aside as they traveled”

He grimaced a little as he thought about it further, it was nice having an easy path to follow back to the base the soldiers had come from, but wouldn't the monsters around them know that they would be using this path? The gnolls the day before might have been suicidally bloodthirsty, but he remembered the eyes of some of them as they had looked at him, and the scrap armor they wore to block some of their bullets. They had a crude intelligence, and they weren't the only monsters hunting people either.

As if in answer to his thoughts he noticed Mick slow down and crouch, raising his hand as he motioned one of his men over, a soft conversation between the two of them, Mick was pointing towards a car that was blocking the roadway car “tunnel” that they had been following and noticed another path leading left down the street. Alex crouched down as well, thinking a moment as he puzzled over something else that had been bothering him.

Sitting there he realized that he it was too easy to hear the two men whisper to one another. He cocked his head and waited there while the two conversed, hard “s” noises slipping out of their muted conversation.

Waiting there, he listened to the background noise he had been ignoring. He heard a few soft pops in the distance, and a little later he imagined he heard a faint scream.

He rubbed his chin and frowned at the natural conclusion. The gunfire and violent screams had toned down since the second day. He knew intellectually what that meant, but some part of him was still holding out hope that he was wrong.

Memories of his brief conversation with Eva floated in, “ So far we have managed to eliminate half of your world’s population,” he sat there a moment, crouched in thought and chewing his lip slightly, as if tasting the worlds. A brief tap brought him quickly out of his thoughts and he turned, noticing Donnie looking at him with his eyebrows raised, an unspoken message there.

“Get your head in the game”

Alex nodded slowly to reassure him before looking back at Mick in the front. Mick and the other man were now carefully approaching the car blocking in the street, looking side to side as went. The other men followed him and Alex found himself reflexively getting closer to them, his curiosity getting the better of him, to his surprise none of them gave any response to his close proximity.

Mick signaled to his whispering partner, an older man with a grey mustache whose body was slightly puffed out from his armor, pointing at a nearby SUV. The man nodded and then slowly climbed up the side of it, making little noise as he reached the top. Squinting, he looked, in the distance where the new path of cars led. Alex watched as the man's face registered confusion, before blanching.

Everyone pointed their weapons at the corner of where the new path led. Alex, took a brief glance at his animals, none of them were pointing anywhere, but he noticed that a few of them were twitching a little bit more than before. The badger made a small hop, looking at him briefly before baring his teeth.

Looking more nervous and tense than before, the man slowly climbed back down from the SUV, his footsteps lightly dropping back down on the pavement. With exaggerated slowness, he crept up to Mick before leaning forward and whispering into the squad leader’s ear. Mick stiffened up, but otherwise kept still, crouching there and looking deep in thought before waving the other men over, including Alex and Donnie.

With the same exaggeratedly slow motions as the grey mustached man, Mick holstered his weapon and strapped it in, then crept up to the car blocking the road, and climbed over the trunk, lightly dropping onto the other side. He made very slow motions with his hands and the rest of the men followed suit, securing their weapons and carefully crossing over the car, moving slowly and quietly as they followed suit. Many of them took quick looks down the direction the mustache man had looked but none of them indicated they had seen anything.

Alex waited until he was the last one, then, heart beating, he slowly crawled over the top of the car. A slightly screeching sound was audible and he paused, wincing and turning over, putting one hand on the aluminum bat that had been dragging on the metal trunk.

Mick gave him a quick look before waving him forward, and Alex dropped down with the rest of them. Most of them already had their guns out, the majority of which were pointed behind Alex. Alex looked around at the still men, and, taking their cue, waiting in silence. After what seemed like a few minutes, Mick waved at them again, and they all rose slightly before walking down the road, still in the original tunnel of cars that had been made by the military vehicles on the first day.

After a few minutes of sitting in anticipation, they began of moving forward again down the road. Alex noticed the buildings had started to get shorter again as they made their way out of downtown Appleton. From the more relaxed look of the men Alex could tell they had gotten through the monster zone. Some of them had started speaking in low tones.

“What was that?” Alex asked Donnie trying to keep as quiet as possible.

“Ambush of some kind”

Alex, took in his response, confused “You’re not curious?”

“Nope” Donnie replied curtly, before looking over at Alex “I’m not sure if I really want to know…Let me put it this way. Yeah, we didn’t see whatever was down that other road, but it’s not like you are going to NOT going to see it either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around you man” he motioned at their ruined surroundings, Alex noticed a look of pain on his face. “The world is over. There are things popping up I only read about in books and the amount of people we see out here has dropped to just about nothing. I mean, what the fuck are we going to do when we run out of bullets?”

Alex nodded dumbly in response. Donnie, put his finger on his lips again.

“Get your head in the game”

They continued moving down the road as the sun beat overhead. Despite the heat and the fact that he was wearing more clothing than before he noticed that none of them were sweating. Compared to yesterday he didn’t even feel hot even though he could feel that it was a hot day. Alex thought to himself as they continued their journey, wondering if another game mechanic was in play.

He also needed to get a hold of EVA somehow. How did every other single member of the group have an interface, but not him? It wasn’t as if he had actually needed it, but he wondered why he was being held back. When he got to the army base he resolved to spend some more time on it. It felt like more and more, he was getting further behind compared to others.

The tunnel path seemed to follow parallel to the main highway heading north out of Appleton. Alex took a few glances at the bumper to bumper abandoned cars on the highway. He wasn’t sure of it as they never came too close, but he imagined he saw shapes moving among the wrecked cars.

After what felt like a few mile out of downtown they found themselves approaching a gas station in a residential neighborhood. The houses were all packed tightly together with small front lawns on each.

As they approached, his sparrow started to chirp wildly on his shoulder, hopping back and forth. Looking down at his other animals he noticed them all looking down the road towards the Gas station, each had their fur up and their teeth were drawn back in a snarl, something bad was up ahead.

After casting a wary glance towards Alex and the still chirping sparrow, Mick signaled the men, and they fanned out and slowly approached the gas station, guns up.

A ripping, chewing noise could be heard behind a delivery truck that was sitting next to the gas station’s doors. Mick signaled everyone down and they crouched. Alex, staying behind the group, crouched behind a red sedan, pulling his pistol from his stomach holster.

“ANYONE ALIVE OVER THERE?” yelled Mick towards the delivery truck, lifting his weapon, an old looking MP5 sub machine gun, to his shoulder.

The noise behind the delivery truck stopped, and they saw a massive green hand violently clutch at the edge of the trucks frame, hoisting a large figure into view, looking back at them.

“Troll.” Alex whispered out loud as he took in its details.

The creature in front of him didn’t resemble the troll he knew in video games, but he picked up the hideous and lanky figure immediately. It was easily as tall as the delivery truck and looked down at the men with yellow eyes. Drool and blood slowly dripped down from the corner of a mouth lined with thick, tusk like teeth. Unlike the gnoll leader’s malicious smile, it dumbly smiled at the men, like a child that had discovered some new toy.

“Help” it mimed crudely, “Help me!” Alex’s gut turned as he listened to the troll mime a woman’s voice.

It began to slowly move towards the men, eyes slowly looking at each of them as its grin spread wider. It continued to cry out in rough sounding voice “Help me!”

Drool and blood continued to drip out of its mouth as it moved closer to them, in one of its hands Alex could see identifiable meat and bone. As if realizing it had it in its hand, it paused briefly, shoving the meat into its mouth, blood leaking down from its chin as it was squeezing into its mouth. Bone crunching noises came from mouth before it swallowed, and once again looked at the men with the same dumb smile, undaunted as the guns pointed at it.

“Help me!” it mimed again before slowly moving forwards again, arms raised as it smiled even wider in anticipation.

Mick raised his gun and shot off three quick rounds into its head. Alex watched in sick fascination as the bullets impacted its head, its face being transformed into a green slab of meat.

“HELP” it roared at him, taking a step forward again as Mick hit it with another burst to its face.

The troll, slumped slightly, missing half of his face, before falling forward onto the concrete, its weight causing the ground to shake slightly as it impacted the ground. Green blood slowly leaked out onto the ground from its mulched head. The smell of putrid meat and blood hit Alex then, as if released by the corpse on death.

Mick turned towards the group with a cocky smile to his face, “that was easy.”

“No level up” Alex muttered, frowning in thought.

Everyone smiled, a few of them cheered, and walked up to Mick slapping him on the back after seeing the large monster topple over. Alex felt uneasy, a thought he couldn’t quite grasp trying to rise in his mind. One of soldiers walked up to the corpse, kicking it in the shoulder, the massive body only slightly moving from the impact.

“STOP. GET AWAY FROM IT” Alex yelled as realization dawned. Most of them looked at Alex askance, Mick had a pissed of look on its face again.

“What’s the big deal?” The soldier asked, kicking it again.

“GET AWAY. THEY REGENERATE!” he yelled frantically, red faced and flustered. He knew he could be wrong, but he had to say something

The soldier gave a mocking smile before stepping away from the body, then fell head first onto the concrete as the troll raised its head and swung one of its long arms at the soldiers’ back leg, gripping the leg with its massive hand and jerking the man back towards it.

“HELP ME” it screamed, louder this time than before, it’s bleeding face grinning with the same anticipation as it dragged the man back towards him.

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Side note: Is this series any good? First time doing this and I can't really tell from my perspective. It seems kind of okish I think.