This entire region on the outskirts of the city was one large community meshed together. There was no main street, but just a winding mess of paths that went from one farm to the next: surely one of them would take us to a highway?

We eventually came upon a brick wall across our path. “Shall we just hop over and keep going?” I asked. The other option was walk along in the direction of the wall to see where it led; both involved moving into the unknown.

“Let’s keep going, we’ll hit a road eventually,” Lucas suggested, and no one disagreed. Jessica ran and leaped for the top of the wall, hauling herself on top and then assisting everyone else in turn. After I scrambled over the wall, I could tell we’d moved out of the farming district into a residential area of a very different kind.

“This is a trailer park,” I said. The rows of homes was something I’d never mistake. The fake plastic paneling and the metal grating that did a bad job at hiding the underside of a trailer gave it away instantly. I’d grown up in a trailer park in my elementary school days. This one, however, gave off quite the cleanly vibe. “Probably a retirement community,” I guessed.

Every trailer was white; the driveways were a black asphalt. The homes were minimally decorated and most of the vehicles in the driveways were a newer model of car and didn’t show many signs of being used. The whole feel of the place screamed that it had been used by the elderly. Confirmation of that came shortly after we had set off walking as a group.

Calm Waters Retirement Community. A white real estate sign stood in the front yard of a trailer for sale. Part of the problem with it being an old person’s community was that most of the vehicles were small and therefore wouldn’t allow us to travel as a group. There were eight of us and for that we needed a truck or minivan or SUV. Two vehicles would be a last resort.

“There are people here,” Jessica said, “individuals, not a group.”

“Survivors?” Richard and Alan asked in unison.

“Seems there are some people hunkering down in their trailers,” Jessica answered, “more than I expected.” We were barely a week away from the two-month mark since the apocalypse had happened. I guessed that this must be a low traffic area for mobs, where survival was more a matter of how much food and water you had stocked up than if you could fight back.

“We should take them with us,” Lucas suddenly said. “We can’t leave them here…”

“Wait a minute; don’t decide that so quickly,” Thomas said, “these are elderly people; we need to talk about this.”

“How many?” I asked.

Jessica looked up, “There’s six of them so far.”

And we had merely walked two or three blocks. That was too many for us to safely take, accommodate, and protect already. This community could have dozens of people still in it.

“I don’t want to sound cold,” Richard said. “But we can barely care for ourselves. Are we expected to take in every stray we meet? They are old, they won’t be able to fight or keep up.”

It was a harsh reality, and Lucas opened his mouth to retort but it looked like he just couldn’t find the words that reasoned with anything other than emotions. “I hear you, but they are people too.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, but we have to be rational,” Richard said, “What about those in wheelchairs? Those that can’t get out of bed? Are we meant to accommodate them too? Where do you draw the line?”

“There’s no reason to argue over it,” I said, “neither of you are wrong.” It was a hard decision to make, and there was no right answer. “We don’t have anywhere to take them if we ‘save’ them. This is probably the safest place they could be.”

And what I said wasn’t wrong either. The mob traffic here was almost non-existent. Goblins, ghouls, and zombies were a threat outdoors in these low population areas, but they couldn’t break down doors, nor even tried to do so.

“So they’ll just sit in their trailers till they die?” Lucas asked. “It doesn’t sit right with me.”

It was Jessica who responded to him, even before I could, “The other option isn’t much better. Would you rather bring them along and watch them die one at a time to monster attacks we just couldn’t stop? They can live out the remainder of their life here, as peacefully as possible.”

We were on our way to Rotterdam to save our families. If the farm had still been intact, moving them there would be a priority and it wouldn’t even be a question; but we didn’t have a place to keep these residents safe and we couldn’t provide for them. We had only managed to secure about a week’s worth of Rations for ourselves from Withersburg before the True Believers came after us.

“And even if we did want to take them, how do we choose? There is bound to be more, so in the end you’ll still be leaving some to die. All you’ve done is move the goal post,” Jessica concluded.

“FUCK!” Lucas suddenly yelled, “I hate this shit!” And he stormed off.

Alan was going after him when Jessica caught him by the shoulder, “Don’t. Let Lucas cool off. He was raised by his grandparents.” That was something I had overlooked. Lucas’s parents died young and his grandparents raised him. Leaving the elderly behind had to be hard to accept. “I can keep track of him, let’s just follow behind him.”

We walked a good distance behind Lucas, just close enough to keep track. All the low level fodder in his path had been rushed and cut swiftly in half. All his worries, his anger, his regrets, he was letting them all out right now. It took twenty minutes before we came up to him, crouched down on the ground, seemingly done with his rampage.

Alan put a hand on Lucas’s shoulder after we reached him, then extended an arm to help him stand up. Lucas took it with a firm grip, “Are you feeling better?” Alan asked.

“I’m not mad at you guys,” he clarified, “I know we can’t help the people here; I know it’s not the right choice for us, but it isn’t something easy to accept.”

“There were more than we thought. We couldn’t move this many people even if we tried. Jessica has counted thirty so far, and not all were friendly,” I said. One of the trailers we walked right in front of had an older gentleman in the window, not only that, he was holding a shotgun. I caught his eye and he mouthed to me ‘keep walking’. Not everyone even wanted our help.

It took us thirty minutes of slow pace to move to the opposite end of the trailer park, where there were finally some decent roads to give us options. It would be possible to find a highway and make our way towards Rotterdam from here.

Unfortunately, there were no suitable vehicles to take from the trailer park, and as we entered the suburban streets, I saw mostly destruction. More than half the vehicles were damaged and several were completely wrecked. We did check the bigger ones that had no obvious damage, but there were no keys in sight, and none of us knew how to hotwire a car.

There was a small shopping center across the street, and, contrary to what I expected, monster traffic was almost non-existent. Jessica didn’t report any enemies at all. “Let’s take a look,” I said. If we could find anything of use than this was well spent time.

We moved swiftly across the street, checking every vehicle that wasn’t completely wrecked or boxed in, before crossing into the parking lot of this little plaza. There weren’t many vehicles here still parked, a few here and there. Specialty shops littered the plaza area and one grocery store.

It was funny to see human nature displayed so readily in front of our faces. The pawn shop, the cell phone shop and the PC repair shop’s storefronts had been busted down and everything inside had been ransacked. Even at the end of the world, people cared about personal wealth and material goods.

“Let’s check the grocery store before we go on. I’d love to eat something that isn’t stale bread,” Maria expressed a sentiment that was clear everyone shared. As useful as the Ration was, it just didn’t taste good at all.

We pried open the electronic sliding doors and entered inside. It was pitch dark, and after Jessica confirmed we had nothing to worry about, we started to move through the aisles. The place was an absolute wreck, and most of the shelves had been knocked over.

Whatever contents they held had been spilled onto the floor, and the entire area smelled of mold and rotting food. We looked for where canned goods would be, only to find that area had been ransacked clean. In the end, after a good fifteen minutes of searching, we came out with a few containers of roasted peanuts and some boxes of cereal.

“Let’s be smart about how we—” and before Lucas could even finish his sentence, Alan had already tore into a box of Captain Crunch. He tilted the bag without shame and let the pebbles fall into his mouth.

“My God that’s sweet,” he said while passing the box. “Taste it; was it always that sweet?”

Lucas didn’t even bother to finish his sentence, and he had clearly given up on the idea he was about to express. He took the box from Alan and started pouring cereal into his mouth, “Yeah, it’s actually so sweet it kind of ruins it for me.”

“That’s because you haven’t tasted sugar in a long while,” Thomas said. Eventually, everyone had a pass at the box with mixed feelings. The general consensus was that being able to taste anything was a blessing. Even little things like this could really raise your spirits.

We kept moving in the direction of Rotterdam while scouring the area. As quickly as the cereal raised our morale, our lack of luck with regard to a car brought it back down. “I swear to God, in the movies they make it seem like finding a vehicle is so easy,” Alan complained.

“Yeah, but that’s movies,” Maria replied flatly. “What did you expect?” And he really couldn’t retort. Everyone shared his pain. We walked for over an hour, scouring any vehicle we could see that would work for our situation, that wasn’t ruined, that wasn’t scorched, and that was able to get out of whatever enclosure it might be in.

“Where the fuck are the keys?” Richard nearly lost it. “Did these people just toss their keys into the wilderness after exiting their vehicle? Did the monsters eat the fucking keys?” Every time he went on a little rant about it, Anna couldn’t help but snicker while covering her mouth. Seeing her was enough for Richard to realize he should cool off a bit.

A part of me still worried how the two would fit in, but so far there were no problems. Anna showed her emotions on her face, it was easy to tell if something was wrong. Richard was similar, and he just said what he was thinking without reservation. Someone who could come out and just say what everyone was thinking, regardless of how bad it was, was a valuable asset in my book.

It was early afternoon when we had our first real development, “Two strong enemies.” Jessica suddenly said. “A block that way, not humans.”

“How strong?” I asked.

“Elite level, similar to how the Children of Sobek felt.”

“Should we take a look?” I asked everyone. It could be a potentially valuable leveling area for us. Time was of the essence; but being prepared was also important too. We still needed to get Anna and Richard some levels as well.

“Lead the way,” Alan said and no one disagreed. Everyone was tired of walking without anything happening. Humans were so fickle in their mood swings; just yesterday we would have killed for this peaceful travel. Now we were pining for adventure.

We followed Jessica just one street to another small shopping plaza of three or four buildings. There was nothing we could see, “Behind the middle building.” And so we made our way there by going around the back. What we found was not what we were expecting.

Behind the building was an open lot of dead grass and sand, surrounded by a fence that had been torn to shreds. Standing there were two large gorillas, or primates of some sort, at least eight feet tall.

“They don’t look like they belong here at all,” Anna observed, “is there a zoo somewhere nearby?”

“Look at the map, doesn’t this seem familiar?” It was Thomas who helped me understand. There on the map, besides the manmade structures and the shoddily drawn roads, was a black doorframe.

“Is this the dungeon thing you were talking about?” Richard asked.

“I think so…” I said.

“Alright, are we ready to go?” Alan asked. He was roaring for some action, and I couldn’t blame him.

“Wait a second, let’s watch for a moment,” I suggested. If this was a dungeon entrance, and the mobs were leaking into reality from within, then where did they go? They couldn’t possibly just hang around here permanently. Surely there would have been a lot more than two if that was the case? It had been days since we received that message.

We took cover as best we could and watched the two apes. They didn’t attack each other but instead moved around randomly, eventually one of them made it to where it spotted a zombie in the distance. As if it was a bull that saw red, the giant ape rushed the zombie and grabbed it by the torso before tossing it like a ragdoll into a nearby building.

The zombie exploded into blood and gore before sliding down the wall. After that, the primate just meandered away until we could no longer see it. “So they… just walk around? Is that why this area is so barren?”

We had wandered upon their spawn point, and this was too good of a situation to pass up. The amount of information, and potential EXP we could gain from this was incredibly useful.

“Let’s grab the second before it runs off, yea?” Alan was itching.

“Stats?” I asked Jessica.

“Level Twenty-Six. Elite. Blood Ape,” she reported, “should be easy enough.” She laid a Quagmire trap in front and then prepared to pull.

“Richard you can just support for now, I don’t want you anywhere in melee with something almost twice your level. Anna, you can just toss out spells as you see fit.” They both nodded and Jessica pulled with a regular arrow.

Once the Blood Ape reached the Quagmire trap, Maria hit it with an Ensnaring Arrow for good measure and we pummeled it down in less than fifteen seconds. The ape didn’t seem to have any skills, and was simply equipped with overpowering strength and attack speed. Alan ended up complaining for at least five minutes after that he couldn’t even use his new sword in earnest.

The gorilla attacked with such fervor that doing anything other than holding his Steel Bulwark with both hands sent him hurdling backwards, and this was someone who had tanked a dungeon boss. That memory made me downcast at the thought that I couldn’t reanimate Elite enemies, as they would make excellent vanguards.

“Let’s stick around and figure out how fast these apes are being spawned into the world.” I suggested. “After that, we should continue to Rotterdam. Risking getting stuck in a dungeon for a week or more could ruin our plans completely.” It wasn’t only that though. In four days, it would have been two months since this all started.

Nothing was set in stone, but new developments seemed to happen based on intervals of time, and typically there was some symmetry to it. Two months seemed as good a marker as any to unleash a bit more hell on the world.

“We can return to the dungeon in the future,” Thomas reminded everyone, “the map has been filled in around the dungeon icon, so we don’t have to guess anymore.”

No one expressed any disappointment that we weren’t going to try the dungeon right away. Anna asked several questions about our last experience, but considering she was only level 15 and the Elites coming out were 26, the dungeon boss here would probably end her with a single breath.

We passed the better part of an hour on idle chatter before more mobs spawned in. They appeared in the exact same position, which seemed interesting and definitely exploitable, but they weren’t the same enemies.

Instead of two Blood Apes, there were four large black cats there. “Level Twenty-Three. Elite. Phantom Jaguars.” Jessica gave us a quick rundown on the enemy.

“How long do we think it has been?” I asked. A quick consensus put it at anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, which meant multiple elites were spawning every hour in this exact spot. There were probably more dungeons than this, too. The world was being flooded.

“Ready?” Jessica asked as she set her trap, that laser-focused attention was there again in her eyes.

Alan couldn’t stop himself from jittering. His sword started to slap in his shield, “What? Are you a gladiator now?” Thomas poked fun at him.

“Ready!” Alan ignored Thomas and let Jessica know to pull. The bow sang and four cats the size of minibikes came rushing directly towards us. Alan held out his shield and prepared to rush in when something amazing happened.

The four cats in front of us suddenly turned into two, and then to one, and then three appeared. They were vanishing in and out of sight as they rushed at him. We’d never encountered an enemy like this, and Alan was at a complete loss on how to react.

All four of them lunged into the air at Alan and continuously disappeared from view. Even if you knew exactly what was happening, it still messed with your mind. Your reaction time would be off, or slowed, it created a vulnerability in your defense.

It created an opening for a mistake. The four jaguars created a vulnerability in just their first attack. “Shit!” Alan cursed. There was a long streak of claw marks on his left bicep. He had mitigated some of the damage, but the slash had still drawn blood.

The four cats landed and then circled looking for their next opening, the constant disappearing and reappearing almost made it look like two jaguars were simply teleporting around in front of our tank.

Fortunately for us, we had just the thing to deal with agility-based monsters. Maria had Ensaring Arrow and I had an overwhelming number of summoned undead to pin them down. With those two things combined, we quickly surrounded the four jaguars. In the end, I lost half my minions and Alan needed to be healed for half of his life, but we took them down without much issue.

Unlike the Blood Ape, these monsters actually dropped items. In fact, we received a wrist guard for Anna and several more Rations.

Magister’s Vambrace: WIS +2, VIT +2, Casting time reduced by 5%

This was a beautifully crafted wrist guard with a mixture of silver and gold decoration. Red gemstones circled around the cuff. Anna equipped it immediately then raised her hand high. The metal fit adhered perfectly to her wrist and went up her forearm. It would surely take a strong blow when she needed it to.

“This was kind of easy…” Anna suddenly said. “Isn’t good gear supposed to be pretty rare?”

Jessica and I took for granted how difficult it actually was to get gear. Most people only had one or two pieces. For Anna, that was actually only her second equipable item.

“The EXP wasn’t bad either.” Lucas said. I opened my stats to check.

Name: Mike Reynolds (27) Class: Necromancer Level: 22 EXP: 37%

HP: 1130/1130 MP: 440/460

STR: 5 Fear Resistance: 5

AGI: 2

DEX: 5

VIT: 29 +14

WIS: 27 +23

Available: 3

Skills: [A] Summon Skeleton LV. 9| [A] Summon Skeleton Mage LV. 2| [A] Decay LV. 3| [A] Reanimate Dead LV. 3| [A] Bone Armor LV. 2 | [A] Vast Shadows | [A] Temporary Grave LV. 1 | [P] Sixth Sense | [P] Bravery LV. 2 | [P] Mutated LV. 3| [P] Pain Resistance LV. 2 | [P] Skeletal Mastery LV. 4| [P]Intimidate Living |[P] Inner Calm LV. 2 |[P] Necrotic Vision|[P] Blood Thirsty LV. 1

Wasn’t bad? We had killed one ape and four cats with eight people and I had gained thirty percent of my level. This was as good as any place to rest. I needed to find some time before the walk to Rotterdam to recoup my leg, so why not here? “Should we maybe stay here for a few days and grind?” I threw the idea out there.

“Isn’t time the reason we don’t want to clear the dungeon?” Alan asked. “So is waiting really a good idea? I think—”

“This is a legitimate place to farm some gear and EXP though.” Maria cut him off. “I know you want to clear the dungeon now, but I think it’s better to do that later when you aren’t trying to save your family.”

Alan was about to open his mouth but stopped himself. He had probably realized that staying three days wasn’t the same as entering a dungeon with an unknown amount of floors. A dungeon like that could take weeks to clear.

“I need to find time to rest my leg, regardless if it is here or before Rotterdam. I just think it’s more efficient to do here, where we can kill Elites on respawn with ninety-nine percent downtime,” I said. When put that way, no one gave a retort. I also threw out something on my mind. “Four days from now will be two months since the apocalypse began.”

“You think something will happen?” Jessica asked.

“It’s been a while since we received an unprompted system message.” I used the term ‘unprompted’ because our ‘dungeon clear’ message was most likely not based on time but our actions. That message had appeared when the first dungeon was cleared. “It would be as good a time as any to throw oil on the fire.”

“Then we should definitely stay,” Maria said, “more strength isn’t gonna hurt us when we go to Rotterdam.”

Richard seemed conflicted with the situation, but going as he was now would surely be a death sentence for him. The outer ring monsters in a city like Withersburg were already level twenty. Going deep into Rotterdam without some extra levels risked a quick death.