We took the 285th and headed west, towards the Rockies. The first few intersections buzzed by relatively uneventful. The only reminders of our fucked-up situation were the purple hue reflecting off the windows and the complete lack of other drivers on the road.

  At least there were no monsters there either. Our recent tussle with that behemoth must've spooked them all. That is until we had driven far enough away from the toppled building.

  We knew we were far enough when we nearly crashed into a dark bull-looking thing with a heavy downcast head. Quint had to swerve to avoid the creature that returned the favor by roasting the truck's rear bumper with a stream of flames it produced from its oversized nostrils.

  Monsters became a frequent sight from that point on. They weren't particularly interested in chasing us. But if we got too close, they wouldn't hesitate to bump, hoof, or claw the truck. There was even a glob or two of acid from an angry-looking plant that sprouted right through the concrete and used a traffic light for a beanpole.

  Quint's efforts to minimize the damage took us on a detour to the 85th, then back north all the way to the 6th before we could continue heading for the mountains.

  When we settled into a rhythm and the sight of what could've been a small dragon chewing the flank of a lion-bodied eagle was no longer enough to faze us, Quint cleared his throat.

  "Far be it from me to steal bread from Jerry Seinfeld's very mouth, but what's the deal with all the woods in and around Denver? We've now driven through Greenwood Village, Englewood, and Lakewood. We've got Applewood coming up next. Don't get me wrong, I get how when you're a pilgrim and you find yourself in these here parts, the dense vegetation dictates the naming conventions. All I'm saying is, would it have hurt them to get creative with them names? Throw in a forest, a copse, or a grove for variety's sake, dammit. I'd even settle for a glade."

  I understood exactly where that rambling was coming from. My own mind was still reeling. Trying to make sense of it all now would be like feeding a starving man a juicy steak. It could outright kill him. Idle musings and banter were our only shield against that.

  I was about to answer when Quint had to swerve to avoid something on the road. I didn't even get to see what it was. By the time he steadied the truck, he was done with the previous topic.

  "Sorry 'bout your place, Buck," he said. "Must be killing you to lose all your possessions at once like that."

  "Never been much for stuff," I dismissed Quint's concern.

  Everything I cared about, I've already lost years ago. Having my home stepped on didn't seem that bad compared to that. If anything, it only added to that steely resolve I now had deep inside of me.

  "Tell ya what, Quint," I added after a break in the conversation. "If we find out that the insurance industry survived through all this, I'll hire you to sue the Sensates for damages."

  A smile crept onto Quint's pockmarked face.

  "'Preciate it, hoss," he said. "And what about you?"

  I threw him a puzzled glance.

  "We know what I do. What's your nine-to-five look like?" Quint asked.

  "Oh, I'm long retired."

  "You're no spring chicken, that's for sure, but you don't look old enough to be retired," Quint said following a quick once-over.

  This was a long story I usually reserved for beer number three. Given the circumstances, I gave Quint the short version.

  "I used to work in finance. That sort of job makes you think you're hot shit when it comes to investment. Fresh out of college, convinced I knew how everything worked, I kept throwing whatever spare money I had on what we today would call startups. Most of these garage enterprises went tits up within a year. I ended up forgetting all about them. Always had a drink in my hand at the time, you see," I explained my memory lapse to Quint's approving guffaw.

  "Around the big crash of 2008 I was all mature and sobered up. As I was getting my accounts in check, it turned out I managed to put a few of my namesakes into this little company called Apple. Must've been blackout drunk when I did. Mine was a modest investment so I didn't end up a millionaire or anything. It still allowed me to liquidate enough assets to feel comfortable not working."

  "Don't it get boring?" Quint asked when I stopped talking.

  "Nope," I said, remembering that through most of it I had Mary to share all that free time with.

  As I was talking, I noticed Quint constantly scanning the road ahead. He was driving with the purpose of a man who had a destination in mind, not a man simply running away.

  "We going somewhere?" I asked.

  Quint was silent for a spell. Finally, he pointed his chin at the Rockies. "I've got friends living up in them mountains. I'd like to see if they're still there." There was a lot of poorly obscured anxiety behind those words.

  I could clearly imagine what kind of friends lived in the mountains. Words like compound and militia sprang to mind. Still, they were Quint's people.

  "Let's hope they are, Quint," I said.

  We were on a much narrower trail snaking into the mountains when Quint spoke again.

  "What about you, Buck, you've got anyone you're hankering to check up on?"

  "Nope," I said, making it clear this was the end of that conversation.

  The air in the mountains was clearer, with merely a faint hint of that unnatural shade coloring the treetops. You could almost forget that a few miles back, monsters roamed the city streets.

  A distant tapping of gunfire pierced the air, a rhythmic reminder that now was not the time to relax.

  "Shit," Quint cursed, speeding up.

  "It's good news," I said. Answering Quint's puzzled head tilt, I clarified, "Means there's someone here with enough wits to use a gun."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Quint produced a, "Yup," and focused on the road.

  Neither of us said a thing until we approached a clearing around a chain-link fence.

  "Dios mio," I muttered when we did.

  The ground past the fence leading up to a series of single-story barracks-style buildings was littered with corpses. Those mangled shapes alone would be enough to remind you of everything you've eaten that day. What really stood out there, though, was that none of the bodies were human.

  The bulk of the corpses were short and squat, with sickly yellow skin and obscenely long ears. I simply had to designate these as goblins. Scattered among them were weapons. Primitive ones, like spears, clubs, and swords. I was never one to have a wall of mounted swords at my place, but even I could tell those armaments looked crude.

  Here and there, this tableau was spiced up with other creatures. Most of those were horned and goat-hoofed, others dog-faced or lizard-like. There were even a few equine figures with humanoid bodies where you'd expect a horse's head to be.

  "Fucking centaurs, man."

  "So it's not just me seeing these," Quint said with a hint of relief in his voice.

  Having passed the fence, he slowed down in an attempt to avoid driving over that gore.

  As we got closer to the buildings, we were greeted by a welcoming committee. The doors of the barracks opened and out poured about two dozen people, men and women both.

  All of them were brandishing firearms and dressed in military fatigues. None of the clothes fit their wearers perfectly. There were obvious beer guts and flabby arms underneath that camouflage netting. The only time you'd see any of these people on a magazine cover would be when their mugshots appeared in a "Florida Man" type article.

  With everything that's been going on, this ragged bunch was the sweetest sight I could imagine.

  "Hey, it's Quint."

  "Quint's here."

  "Put the boomstick down, it's really him."

  A chorus of murmurs washed over the small crowd.

  Quint less parked and more simply cut the engine. There was a big grin on his weathered face as he jumped outside. When he informed the others I was cool, I followed.

  We were greeted with handshakes, hugs, and back pats. I didn't know these people, yet I couldn't help but see them as kin. It was the human instinct. Weird shit goes down – you band together.

  Once the initial greeting fervor died down, an older gentleman with a bushy beard that would make him a good addition to any reality show for duck-hunting enthusiasts, separated from the crowd.

  "Give it to me straight, Quint. What in tarnation is going on? A while back the sky changed color. No one's picking up their phones. TV's dead. Even the internet is silent. And then these freaks started pouring from the woods. Bill here went out to tell them they were trespassing on private property and they chucked a spear at him."

  "A javelin," said a tall guy with a bandaged leg.

  "Spear, javelin, who gives a shit," the bearded patriarch groaned.

  "I do, Elwood. I'm the one who got stabbed with the darn thing," the apparent Bill replied.

  "A javelin then," Elwood reluctantly corrected himself. "All hell broke loose after that. We showed those critters what for. But I'll be damned if I know what they are or what they wanted from us."

  In response, Quint clued them in on our side of the story and how everyone in the city up and disappeared. His version of the events took a more egalitarian approach to the truth.

  Defeating the minotaur and even that poor skeletal nurse was more of a team effort the way Quint told it. I didn't mind. My participation in those heroics already made me popular with Quint's folks. Last thing I wanted was to ruin that by appearing petty. Not while I could still see the results of their handiwork with those goblins and sundry.

  I didn't actually think they'd shoot me. It's just that over the years I've made a point of staying away from people like this. And now, I didn't want to squander whatever rapport I've been building with them.

  Once both sides shared their stories and that didn't clarify anything, we landed on hunkering down for the night to see what the next morning brought.

  Elwood, who was the group's leader, set up patrol shifts. I was exempt from this honor on account of answering Elwood's question whether I knew how to use a gun with a confident, "Sure, just show me what the safety looks like."

  That out of the way, there was dinner – beans and bacon – and a few hours of muted socializing. Then I was shown to my quarters.

  Looking at the squat long buildings from outside, I imagined them having large open rooms with tightly stacked bunk beds. I didn't consider that these types tended to value their privacy above all. The barracks were partitioned into multiple tiny rooms. Sure, the walls were cardboard-thin and the doors were plywood. They still allowed you to be alone with your thoughts.

  The room was barely wide enough to let me spread my arms. It had a narrow bed with a footlocker under it, plus a desk with a backless chair. Not a stool that was supposed to not have a back, just an office chair that had long outlived its warranty.

  Above the desk was a small mirror. Before, I could see my arms and look down at my body. Here I was able to properly examine the results of the revitalization procedure.

  Since it got interrupted, I was still me. The wrinkles were mine. The longish, more salt than pepper, hair was mine. The layer of dirt from fighting creatures that should not exist – all mine. I was simply bigger, sturdier, healthier. It was vain of me, but I took off my jacket and t-shirt. Underneath, every muscle was taut and well-defined. This was the physique of a lumberjack with decades of experience and a very health-conscious diet.

  I also noticed that even without any layers on, I didn't feel cold. That was a welcome surprise. Having studied myself for only slightly longer than necessary, I plopped down on the bed and closed my eyes with my fingers interlocked behind my head.

  Immediately, the day's events rushed into my mind's eye. It was so vivid yet so unbelievable. I knew it happened, had the bruises to prove it, and still my brain rebelled against accepting all that in its memory banks.

  I tried to push that stuff away from my thoughts. I conjured up Mary's smiling face on the day we met, then wondered what she would've looked like after revitalization. I walked through my apartment the way it used to be. Before that monster crushed it.

  No matter what I tried, the craziness of today was a stray thought away.

  Then it hit me. My eyes were closed, but overlaid on top of my daydreaming I could still see the half-depleted health bar. I opened my eyes. The bar was there. I closed them again. I could no longer see the cheap paint job of my room or the lone dangling lightbulb on the ceiling. The bar remained.

  I focused on the bar, willing it to go away. It did. Both when my eyes were open and closed. Then I called it forth again, and there it was. I experimented with that for a bit.

  As my control over the bar grew, I learned I could even move it around. I finally realized that I wasn't making it appear and disappear. It was always there. Just like your nose. The brain is very good at not seeing the nose. And now I was training my brain to do the same with that bar.

  This got me thinking. What other things could there be that I didn't know how to notice? That was when I saw it. A pearlescent orb burning with a thin wisp of green-blue flame in the lower right part of my vision.

  I focused on the orb and it exploded in a myriad of colors. Those sparks danced for a second before coming together and transforming into a cracked and weathered vellum scroll. It was hanging in the air before me. My hand passed right through it when I grabbed for it.

  Letters in a stylized medieval font appeared on the scroll.

  Level 0 -> 1

  Health 12 +2 -> 14

  You may now customize your character

  I waved my hands with a nervous chuckle. As they passed through the scroll, the writing blurred and then reformed once my hands were away.

  This was my life now. Having a health bar and looking at a level-up screen. I could go ask the others if I was the only one seeing this. But I suspected much like Quint, his people would be blind to this stuff. Whether this was because I was hit with the crazy stick harder, or because I'd gone through partial revitalization, I didn't know. Figuring this out at this point wasn't my top priority.

  If the world around us now had goblins and minotaurs roaming the streets, I would need every advantage I could get to survive.

  Mary used to ask me how it didn't freak me out to dangle my leg off the bed, or why I was always eager to go check out what the noise was in the middle of the night. I liked to tease her by saying I'd rather get eaten by a monster than live in a boring world where there weren't any.

  Having had firsthand experience with monsters, I'd gladly choke on those words and go back to the boring. But since I didn't have that as an option, I figured I might as well lean into it. I focused on the tick mark on the scroll, confirming that I would indeed like to customize my character now.

  Billy Joel Facts - Chapter 5:

  Story Facts - Chapter 5: