CHAPTER 6: The Price of Progress

  Nora was about to get herself in trouble. She was back at the counter holding on to Kevin’s apron in one fist, Colt 1911 in the other screaming “What have you done with my son? Give me back my son you sons a bitches!” I called out to her, asking her to let go and back away. Telling her to calm down was my first instinct, but if I did, I’m pretty sure I would be the first one shot. With a face twisted in rage and tears streaming down her face she screamed, “You can’t have my son!” and pulled the trigger. The crowd was still and silent, watching in horror, finally realizing why this madwoman had been acting so strangely with the barista the last couple of hours. She had been keeping her voice to a whisper prior to this, but had finally lost it. Many were openly weeping, no need to struggle finding empathy for anyone still alive these days. We all had fresh scars to the soul. Some more than others.

  As Nora pulled the trigger, it was so quiet that everyone in the room clearly heard the click of the hammer hitting the firing pin. And then she was gone. A small blue dot hung in the air for a second, then nothing. It was like when I had turned off my grandma’s old TV … it kinda collapsed to the center, then a dot, then black.

  Kevin had remained motionless and silent throughout the episode, vacant eyes never betraying anything that may have been hiding behind them. The wax museum barista, once again patiently awaiting his next customer. I whispered a “god damnit” and walked outside. I quickly allocated my points, three into each of the physical stats, six into absorption, and eleven into intelligence. I had a long ways to go, but I needed to get to 100 intelligence to be able to spend 1,000 mana in one go. I left the safe zone, headed for Walmart, sending a silent prayer for Nora as I went.

  There’s this strange sense of guilt, stepping through the blue-hazed perimeter, like crossing an invisible picket line. The moment I left the Starbucks bubble, everything felt five degrees colder, as if the air itself felt the absence of the protection. Nobody followed. The party atmosphere inside didn’t leak out, not even a little. The parking lot still had cars arranged in neat rows, all of them dead and useless now; the auto world’s version of Pompeii. I skirted the perimeter, wary of snipers or trip-wires or whatever new horror people might dream up once the rules are thrown out.

  The walk to Walmart was maybe half a mile, and for the first stretch I stuck to the sidewalk, hands in my jacket pockets, eyes forward, like a kid walking home after a shitty day at school. There was a bank on the corner, and the front door was propped open with a bloody shoe. I didn’t linger. A crow squawked at me from the roof. I gave it the finger and kept moving. I’d always considered crows the assholes of the bird world, which, now that I thought about it, made them sort of my spirit animal.

  I cut through the post office lot, then doubled back to 4th street instead of taking the main drag. Even with the upgrades, I wasn’t ready to just stroll down Broadway and wave at anyone who might be lurking. The houses here were the sad, small kind—peeling siding, broken trikes rusting in front yards, and flagpoles with faded American flags flapping like they’d given up. This was life in the harsh North Dakota climate. I could see movement in some of the windows; a woman peeking through a slit in the curtains, a guy with a beard and a ball cap holding a bat. Everyone a survivor, everyone a mass murderer. Maybe the real trick wasn’t surviving the Purge, but living with what it made you.

  Three blocks from Walmart, I saw movement at a second-floor window. For a second I thought it was just the wind, but then a flash of pink caught my eye—a child’s jacket, bright as a flare. I stopped, not wanting to spook whoever was watching, and made a show of setting my AR-15 down on the cracked sidewalk, raising my hands. The window creaked open.

  A little girl, maybe 7 or 8, with a tangle of long black hair and cheeks smudged with dirt, poked her head out. She looked like Lacy. She was holding a shotgun—an ancient, battered double-barrel that looked like it weighed more than she did. The barrel trembled as she tried to steady it against the window frame.

  I tried to say hello, and my throat locked up.

  “Hey,” I croaked, voice cracking with emotion. “It’s okay. I’m not looking for trouble. Do you have a grown up with you? Please tell them that the Starbucks at 14th Avenue and HWY 83 is a safe zone. You can get food and water there, and nobody can hurt each other.” I wasn’t actually sure about the water, but I doubt she was in interested in a cup of coffee.

  “My mom and dad will wake up soon, so you need to go away.” She said, but she was doing everything in her power not to burst into tears. Something was definitely wrong. “Maybe do you have some medicine though? They were real sick before they went to sleep. Mom asked me to get everybody a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and I did, but then they all went to sleep and still haven’t woken up.” I nearly fell to my knees. Tears instantly streaming down my face … this poor child.

  Twenty minutes later, I was leaving Starbucks once again, eyes red and cheeks stained with tears. The lady with the new fingers had caught on immediately and wrapped the little girl in her arms like a mother hen with a baby chick. Her parents and what must have been her grandmother, all dead, seemingly by poison, technically by her hand. I had talked her into letting me in, where I had found the rest of the family dead and bloated, all laying on the dining room floor, every head on a pillow, each with a blanket. I had scooped up the little girl and ran as fast as I could back to Starbucks, bawling my eyes out the entire time. Her name was Clarissa.

  I arrived at Walmart in somewhat of “a mood”. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in my right mind, and absolutely furious with the universe at the moment. I was in no mood to put up with anyone’s shit. I thought about trying to sneak in a back door or through the loading docks, but right then, I kinda needed a fight. Who better to fight than some assholes not only hoarding everything a post-apocalyptic shopper could need, but shooting at them as well? Shooting at kids no less. I burst through the front door like I was The Mask hitting the night club. The place reeked of cigarette smoke. There were immediately shouts of warning, to both me and to other gang members within the store. I ducked behind the lottery ticket machine … seemed pretty solid, then I yelled out. “We’ve all been through some shit, and I’ve had a very. bad. day. I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of looking for a fight right now, but I also don’t want to kill a bunch of people who are just too scared and stupid to understand that the purge is over and we don’t HAVE to kill anybody anymore. All the Starbucks are safe zones now where you can get food and drinks, and check out the pillar. Nobody can hurt each other inside of them. Because I’m not a total piece of shit, I am going to give you once chance to put away your weapons and head out. In ten seconds, I am going to start killing any motherfucker still in this store.”

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  “You serious?” Somebody yelled from what sounded like the chip aisle. “Yes I’m serious! The purge was sixty minutes, and you assholes are still trying to murder anybody who gets in range three days later. What the fuck is wrong with you!?” I replied, screaming so loud there at the end that I may have burst a blood vessel.

  “8. 7.” I counted down, loud and slow. I could hear them having a quiet but furious debate about whether or not I was lying. Doubtless they thought I couldn’t hear them but with my perception up to eighteen, I could hear a bird fart from 100 yards.

  “I’m going.” I heard one of them say. “He’s right about the purge being long done, and this isn’t right. Murdering people just for a few random stat points isn’t right. I’m out of here.” Said one of them… pretty sure it was the same guy who asked if I was serious.

  “The fuck you are Chris. He’s just trying to lure us out so his gang can kill us and steal our stats. Nobody is going anywhere. As long as we stay in here, they would need an army to take us out. We walk outside, we are dead fucking meat.” This voice sounded older with a definite rasp to it. Sounded, and smelled, like somebody had been taking advantage of the free lifetime supply of cigarettes Walmart had on offer.

  “6. 5.” I continued counting, but my brain was running a mile a minute. Well shit, I thought to myself. It looked like “claiming power” was a thing. I certainly hadn’t killed anybody since the end of the purge, so I couldn’t be 100% sure, but these assholes had. If true, that was bad news. Everyone on the planet is a mass murderer as it is … most were reluctantly so … but I knew to the roots of my teeth that there were plenty of psychos out there who were having a blast. If killing other people still had a benefit, especially one as powerful as stealing their stats … we were in trouble as a species. Well, on this planet anyhow.

  “4. 3.”

  “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot!” Yelled Mr. Serious, aka “Chris”.

  I peeked around the corner of the lotto machine and saw a thin young man of about seventeen or eighteen, and wearing a Buffalo Wild Wings uniform come out of the candy aisle with his hands raised high. Off by one … could have sworn he was in the chip aisle.

  “Get the fuck back here now Chris!” Demanded Marlboro Man. Chris kept walking. He made it another three steps before he was shot in the back, going down without a sound other than his limp body hitting the floor.

  “Get that motherfucker!” yelled the apparent leader, at which point the bullets started flying. Fine by me.

  The bullets came hard, at least six shooters and all of them aiming to kill. I dropped flat, tucked into the soda fridge alcove, and drew two of the Glocks from inventory. They materialized cold and oiled in my hands, each magazine already home. Someone with a shotgun blew a fist-size hole in the wall above my head, spraying me in insulation and flecks of pink paint.

  I let them think I was pinned, then rolled out fast, shoulder into the tile, both guns up. It was a straight shot to the electronics section—aisles of TVs and laptops that would never flicker back to life. I squeezed off two shots. At this distance, with stats juiced beyond the edge of human potential, every bullet flew exactly where I aimed. Two bodies went down, one with a slug through the bridge of the nose, the other center mass.

  The rest of the gang opened up, but I was already gone, weaving through the seasonal aisle, knocking over a mountain of Easter bunnies for cover as I went. It was surreal. I of course see the numbers in my stats, and knew how they compared to “peak” humans, but now that I was actually using them to their full potential, it just didn’t seem real. Nobody could move this fast, react this quickly, shove a display case over with one hand. Much like perception, it took a bit of intent to move fast, to be strong, but it was intuitive as breathing.

  I paused for a second, a strange feeling, like that one time I took way too much Niacin by accident. Lots of heat and I could feel my face flush and knew it had to be bright red. A quick check of my stats, then closed my eyes tight. The guy was right… you could steal stats. I felt like I was going to puke. I breathed hard, on the edge of hyperventilating, but I could hear them moving, voices gruff and panicked, but none of them were quitting. They had killed since the purge ended. They knew the payday it brought and were as addicted as any meth head. Two of them were just one aisle over, trying to be sneaky, and failing miserably. I popped up over the endcap, put two into a chest and one into a mouth, teeth flying like a pack of flung chicklets, then ducked back down.

  A quick double-check that Reactor Shielding was active and I was off. I knew exactly where each one was, all within three aisles of me. I decided to be a bit reckless. I stood up straight and walked around the corner into the next aisle.

  Two guys wearing full hunting gear saw me come strolling down the soda aisle. One snapped off a shot with his rifle, a neat "crack" that punched a chunk of plastic out of the sign above my head. I felt it whiz past and could’ve sworn I saw the bullet’s afterimage. I raised both Glocks and opened up. The first guy took a double-tap to the chest, spun, and dropped. The second was struggling to load his shotgun, dropping three shells for every one that went in the tube. He apparently gave up on getting a full load and swung the gun up, but my fingers were already squeezing. Despite my adrenaline fueled rage, I was trying to make it quick for them. No matter what they had become, I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had been decent men before the world went to shit. I could have played with them like a cat plays with a mouse, but I wanted nothing more than for this to be over. I really needed to throw up. I felt like Mike Tyson uppercutting a toddler.

  I kept moving, side-stepping instinctively as a shotgun blast detonated a Mountain Dew display, painting the air with fizz and neon goop. I felt a slug catch my hip, but the pain was dull, distant, like a tap from a hammer at the bottom of a swimming pool. Reactor Shielding was doing its job.

  Two minutes later and nine men were dead. Ten if you counted Chris … apparently the only decent one among them. As the adrenaline rush subsided, the smell of blood and cigarette smoke, mixed with that of spoiled meat and fish, coupled with what I had just done hit me like a ton of bricks. I ran for the bathroom, vomit spraying as I ran.