David, Mark and Camila shared a glance.

  “Dios mio, we can’t abandon these people. We have to do something.”

  “How do we cook it all?”

  Mark and Camila looked at David in confusion.

  “The food has to be cooked tonight, a lot will spoil if it’s left in the trucks for more than a few hours, some of it is probably spoiled already…”

  Camila was the first to reply.

  “They have all the grills and things that we liberated right there in the safe zone. Of course they can cook it.”

  “We can’t deliver the food to the safe zone, we are going to have to cook it at the mill. I think I can see how to make that work, but it might cause some friction.”

  “You still want to go there after hearing all that about the contamination?”

  Mark didn’t just sound skeptical he sounded downright hostile to the idea.

  David nodded. “Yes. First that stuff will kill you in like twenty years, we need somewhere to stash people tonight. Second, we have a solution, the world runs of magic now.”

  Before they could fall to bickering, their radio’s crackled to life.

  “David, Camila, Mark do you copy? Over.”

  Katie didn’t sound panicked, which was good.

  “Go ahead Katie.”

  “We are turned around and ready to roll, but there are a lot of people coming up behind us in cars. Should we wait for you or are you riding with people to guard them?”

  Carl’s voice cut across “We are most the way back to you and there are more people coming. We need to give them another few minutes to get sorted.”

  David chimed in after that update “There is no way for them to get in here, the road is blocked and they tell us the whole zone is completely full of cars.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Can you mark your route?”

  “Not easily, I’m sure we could improvise something though.”

  “Do it, once you have a method get started. We need to break into the Mill site. Apparently, there is a drainage ditch this side of it do you know if you will be able to get in?”

  Katie sounded uncertain. “I think so, I remember there being gates in the fence but I’m not sure if there is something beyond them, I might not have noticed.”

  “We are going to sweep back as soon as we know if the Militia are going to protect anyone, so get going and work to get in we will bring up the rear on foot and join you.”

  David raised his voice after that.

  “Right people. We are going to head to an alternative safe area where we can hunker down and feed everyone and figure out how to get you into the actual safe zone marked by the beacon.”

  Camila added her own acerbic comment.

  “Or you can wait for these guys to finish playing parking attendant and find space to put you. If of course they even have someone trying to figure it out… Oh and it sounds like no food.”

  The militiamen didn’t even rise to the bait.

  As David and his group started to move away most of the people gathered around them followed, it seemed that food and possible safety somewhere else beat waiting in front of a barricade…

  The journey back along the main road was chaotic. They had reached a tipping point and herd instinct kicked in. Seeing people who had managed to turn around in front of them convinced more and more people to at least ask David and his friends what was going on as they jogged back, all reveling in the power of Stamina.

  They ended up refining their update to a single sentence repeated over and over again.

  “The road ahead is blocked and stationary cars are being attacked, we are going somewhere safe to hunker down and feed everyone.”

  They kept moving back along the stationary cars with a steady stream of vehicles passing them on the opposite side of the road as people got turned around and streamed through intersections.

  There was more chaos as some people tried to advance but they didn’t stop to try and resolve it.

  By the time Katie radioed they were en route and marking the turns they had already covered well over half the distance back to their convoy.

  David kept his senses focused and spirits hunting for signs of danger but, for now at least, the threat seemed to be controlled.

  Running in the dark with a headlamp seemed to be familiar territory to Mark and Camila and David found that thanks to his boosted stats he was able to keep pace with the athletic duo, something that would have been impossible even a day ago.

  As they ran David caught traces of isolated individual mutants, always high and concealed. They didn’t seem to be making any moves, just watching. So, he let them be.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  He did wonder if they were scouts or lone hunters.

  When they reached the turn, they saw a big piece of chipboard and a garish neon pink sign sprayed on it saying one word. Safety. With a big arrow pointing into a side street.

  There were signs on both sides of the road, and someone had left some traffic cones to direct motorists.

  As they cut across, using the smaller residential street they were still being passed by cars, but the stream of vehicles was starting to slow.

  Before they reached the next main road they could see the red glow of taillights, even on foot they had caught up with the convoy, now massively extended and they were soon running past stopped cars.

  Their radios crackled and Katie’s voice gave them an update.

  “We found the entrance and we will be able to cross; we just need to break the lock on the gates. Marking up signs now.”

  Camila responded smoothly without breaking stride, not even out of breath. David, who was keeping up just fine realized that she was nowhere near her top speed.

  “Thanks Katie, we are passing the cars in the convoy behind you and should be there soon. Maybe a few minutes at this pace.”

  David tested whether he was able to manage the same effortless speech. Not so much.

  “Katie, get the raiders to start sweeping the parking lot… Make sure we have people directing parking… Look at the back fence and try to find a good spot to cut through and put our trucks there.”

  After following the main road on its mostly straight course there was one more turn down a large road into the industrial area housing the Mill. All the businesses were locked and shuttered and as they got closer to their destination the area began to look more run-down.

  It wasn’t long after they saw the first clearly abandoned business that they reached the chainlink fence and barbed wire closing off the contaminated site.

  A final set of garish signs and a pair of gaping wire gates wide enough to admit a truck led them to their destination.

  Carl and a radio team waiting for them. The older man grinned and drawled a greeting.

  “What took y’all so long? Out for a pleasure run?”

  Camila waved good naturedly at him, she definitely didn’t make a rude gesture with her hand in his general direction…

  Carl just laughed as David pulled up next to him, sweaty but pleased with the pace he had been able to maintain. It only took a few deep breaths to catch up with the drain on his body as Stamina and Endurance saw him though.

  “Well David, what’s the plan?”

  Even as they spoke the radio team were waving the drivers though and sending them along the weed choked and cracked pavement towards the back corner of the site away from the abandoned shell of the old mill.

  “We need to establish a perimeter, clear the Mill and find a good spot to cut through the fence at the back to give us access on foot to the Safe zone. Then we go and grab some of the propane powered grills and bring them back here to start feeding people.”

  “Yeah, and what are we doing with this site to make it usable?”

  “That’s where I need Charlie, and I suspect the Herald.”

  “I thought you had a plan?”

  “I do, I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything.”

  Carl nodded and started calling people on his radio to get things moving.

  Before long there were three focuses of activity.

  Katie was coordinating with the food trucks and even without cooking gear was dipping into their ready-to-eat supplies to give people something to tide them over. David guessed that most people had probably never been so happy to be handed a cellophane wrapped bread roll and the other shelf stable pieces that went onto an airline food tray.

  A second group dealt with parking and people’s need to access their vehicles, some of which were fully laden with everything the people could pack.

  The final group formed up outside the mill building, which towered dark and silent over the whole site.

  There had been some effort to keep the elements out of the building, but not all the broken windowpanes had been boarded up. All the doors were, with no trespassing signs plastered on them, some covered by the graffiti scrawled across much of the accessible area.

  David looked around at the group already extending his senses and dispatching spirits within. He smiled. He was getting a vague sense of what was inside back and so far, there was nothing that raised Immediate alarm. One of the raiders spoke to him softly.

  “David, sir. We found one of the entrances round the back where the boards had been pried away, you can squeeze in easily enough, but we didn’t enter yet.”

  David nodded and spoke.

  “Good work. I can sense a half-dozen zombies in there. I expect they are stuck. Honestly, I’m more worried about people getting needle sticks if this is the sort of place I think it was.”

  Then he addressed the group.

  “Listen up! There are a few zombies inside. We need to go in and clear them! I want people using lots of light and keep an eye out for used needles and the like. Camila if you would like to kick things off?”

  David gestured to the boarded-up hole, a doorway once but long since broken in. It took Camila less than a minute to break it open again with her crowbar and supernatural strength.

  The raid group swept through the building with a flood of electric light from headlamps, torches and lanterns. The interior had been stripped of anything valuable long ago leaving a crumbling concrete floor and piles of debris. The Mill extended to a second story with wooden flooring held up with concrete pillars and steel I beams. The flooring had collapsed in a couple of places, adding to the mess. Pipes snaked here and there their purpose lost to time and their utility to corrosion.

  David dealt with the zombies personally after checking his status.

  The use of his power to avoid death screams was logical. The longer they avoided attracting enemies the better he reasoned.

  A tiny part of him admitted that he had an ulterior motive, as the XP allowed him to finish something he viewed a tiny bit of a chore. His plans after all depended on both his status with the system and the benefits he could give to his raiders.

  As the zombies died and he tore their spirts apart he finally took the advice he had been given and poured experience into his Squire of the system title…

  With the building clear of threats, they set people to tidying up the debris to create a space indoors for the civilian population.

  Meanwhile the raiders fanned out to patrol the area and keep an eye out for danger under Carl’s supervision.

  David set his spirits to watch the area as an added layer of security. It was easier to infuse them with energy and purpose now and he experimented with walking the perimeter and creating an invisible ‘ghost fence’ behind him of setting spirits in place with instructions to report anything that approached to him.

  As he completed his circuit David arrived at the back of the abandoned area, crossing rusted, long disused rail tracks that had once gone to and from the Mill he considered the area closest to the safe zone, trying to spot landmarks to orient him.

  Grabbing Harrison and a couple of his buddies who worked in maintenance he went to work on the next stage of his plan.

  They needed access to the safe zone. That meant crossing the drainage ditch, cutting the fence and busting out the other side of whatever business they found themselves in.

  It was harder to spot from this side but finally he found it.

  “Hey guys, what do you think of just here?”

  “Not terrible, the ditch is maybe a bit shallower on this side. You want to go here then?”

  “Yep, can you make it easy for someone who is carrying something to make it over the ditch?”

  The three guys looked at each other and Harrison spoke decisively.

  “Give us an hour and a couple of helpers and we’ll give you a temporary foot crossing. It’ll be a problem if it rains but…”

  “That’s fine! We can work on something better later. The business on the far side is abandoned. Just cut through its fence and make a nice wide gap. Come and get me when you’re ready to pop open the front gates.”

  With that taken care of David grabbed his Radio.

  “Listen up folks. We need to plan a run into the Safe zone to pick up some things.”