I looked at my watch when the convoy came up the road: 12:12 pm. “Past noon and no portals in sight folks. Let’s go down to greet the cavalry. Joe stay up here on overwatch. There’s no one I trust more up her than you.” Once I got to the ground I used newly available free use of Assess on one of the wolfmen bodies we had in a pile not far away.

  Lupin Scout, Level 2

  That was good to know. Probably explains how we were able to dispatch them so easily. I popped my head into the McDonalds to lock eyes with the mayor. The older woman raised an eyebrow at me, which caused me to nod my head towards me in hopes that I could pull her away from most of the people in here. She hesitated for several seconds before walking over, “Yes, Mr. Cassland?”

  “If anyone in here still has cars out on the road they should move them now that the army convoy is here.” Just as I said that the first Humvee came into view from front windows of the Mcdonalds. I do like it when I have visual aids to make things easier, and the timing was perfect. She simply nodded as she saw more military vehicles passing in front of the fast food joint.

  That done I, followed by my growing posse, worked our way over to the middle of our barricade of cop cars. The convoy eventually stopped with the third vehicle in order was saddled up next to the barricade. Soldiers got out of both passenger doors, as well as the back door on the driver’s side. Two of them looked like officers, while the third was just a private or something.

  One in particular looked like the person in charge. He was in his mid to late 40’s, his cap covered any hair he might have on his head. He had a frown on his face, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if there was a reason, or if it was just resting bitch face. He was neither skinny nor thick, merely in shape based on the muscle twitching on his neck. That twitching neck muscle was going to bother me. He stopped on the far side of a cop car. “Who in the hell is in charge here?”

  “I am, sir. Neal Cassland.”

  He paused at the mention of my name. Was he here to pick me up? Was he going to force me on a plane to Colorado? Any further thoughts were cut off by him. “I’m Colonel Kent of the United States Army. You are one of the people I am supposed to pick up and get to the State Capital.”

  “I’m sorry sir, but the plan changed about a half hour ago when the Governor of Missouri just told me that I am to fill in for my grandfather. So that makes me a provisional state house representative. I should be getting a text shortly confirming it. Then we just need a judge to swear me in. Also, I have been drafted into the state’s national guard. I am not sure you have jurisdiction to move a national guard officer against their will, apocalypse or not.”

  He scowled. “No one told me anything about that. Lieutenant Moss, get on the horn with command. Try to find out the damn truth.” The man spoke with more venom than Billy could muster on a bad day. He refocused on me, “Cassland, just so I understand you and this God Damn Catastrophe, where were you ordered to go to by your commander?”

  “Fenton Missouri Sir. It’s my district, or will be. My grandfather had a heart attack, and he had already requested that the Governor name me to the seat. By the way, we have two retired Army veterans here including First Sgt. Jackson over there. I imagine they are being recalled to active duty.”

  Colonel Kent nodded at the first part of what I said, but stopped and looked past, presumably at Sgt. Jackson. “Well hot damn! First Sgt. Jackson, you are hereby recalled to active duty. You should grab your gear and fall in a few Humvees back, bump out whomever you want. I want you keeping an eye on the boys while I get this polished pile of a shit problem sorted out.” I saw a smile break through his angry face at seeing Sgt. Jackson, but then it was gone a moment later.

  I heard Billy groaning behind me, “fuck, I really wanted to keep green beret with us.”

  I snapped Billy, “Please help me out by shutting the fuck for the moment. I’ll entertain all your complaints after we get through this.”

  “Keep you whiners in line, Cassland. I’ve got no time for whiners in this God Damn Apocalypse.” Colonel was back to angry face.

  Brittney poured a little more fuel on the ‘roasting Billy fire’, “Yeah Billy, less whining, more demon killing.” I guess she wanted the honor of teasing Billy now that Chris was gone.

  The Colonel raised an eyebrow. He didn’t quite know what to make of her. She looked like she had seen combat, which wears heavy on a thirteen year old girl scout. She could laugh at Billy, but the look in her eyes spoke of loss and rage. “Girl, you look like you’ve been through something. What class did this God forsaken system give you?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Girl Scout Savant, Colonel. Level 2, in case you wanted to know. One confirmed solo kill against one of those wolfmen in the pile behind us. Assisted my brother with another, and helped several people bring down the big demon wolf back there.” The Colonel’s face went from curiosity to pleased, before it drained before our eyes. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “And how old are you?”

  “13.” She smiled, like killing monsters as a thirteen year old girl was awesome. Well, maybe it was a little bit.

  “13.” He said back to her. He was clearly trying to work his way mentally through the whole thing. He then shook his head slowly, before focusing on Brittney, “This girl deserves a field promotion. Cassland, I’m guessing you’ve already snuck her into your command structure.”

  I nodded my head, “Yes sir. Since she is too young to draft, I hired her and her brother onto my staff. Her brother has been on top of the McDonalds helping to spot enemies for Joe to take out at range.” My having a plan to keep the kids close, and to have someone on the lookout up top softened his angry face.

  “Cassland, you haven’t done too bad.” He finally looked a little more closely at piles of dead bodies, especially the giant wolf and recently moved demonic-gut-monster. “Not bad at all given the circumstances. Casualties?”

  “On the road behind me two police officers in addition to Brittney’s and Brett’s mom. Here there have been 7 highway patrol and an equal number of police officers killed in action, in addition to my friend Chris, and at least one civilian. Conversely, we have taken down over a dozen of those wolfmen, called Lupin, 6 abyssal orcs, that demonic wolf creature, the big demonic-gut-monster, two small flying demons, a wolfman spellcaster, and magical thing carved into animal skin that allowed the spellcaster to constantly receive teleported reinforcements.”

  He looked at me, really looked. I don’t know what he was searching for. Finally, he spoke, “Well, it seems you’ve given better than you got. Can we expect more of those magical animal skins ahead?”

  “Absolutely, since they didn’t have portals opening up until 15 minutes ago. My guess is that sometime between 6 and 9 am multiple somethings were able to teleport themselves to areas in our time zone. They likely want to keep people stuck in highly populated areas. They want veritable killing zones for their troops as they come out of the portals.”

  Colonel Kent blinked. He opened his mouth to speak before pausing. Several seconds passed, “Why would they do all that?” I wasn’t sure if he was quizzing me, or if he didn’t know what we knew.

  “Colonel, it’s what I would do. I’ll break it down. Everything from the abyss has some sort of damage reduction or resistance. This is bypassed by magical weapons and ammo. Hitting creatures in critical spots does a lot more damage, but the damage reduction lessens that. We confirmed that when we were able to take an ability from one of those dead Lupin scouts. It was an ability to enchant ammo. Since then, Joe has been super deadly when he needs to be. He did the most damage to that big demonic wolf. With all that in mind, the demons need people in close to them. Those orcs are built for melee, and nothing else. Without magic ammo, they will certainly get into said melee. Once they do that, you will lose multiple soldiers per orc. They’re big, strong, fast for their size, and don’t go down easily. So, killing zone is what the demons want.”

  “Son, how have you all figured this much out? We have reports coming in, and I’m not getting info like this yet.”

  “Billy and Nora mostly. Billy is smart and likes himself some game theory. Nora is so smart the system gave her the class child prodigy.” I pointed to Billy and Nora while saying all this. The Colonel did not stand still for long.

  “Corporal, relay the stuff about magical symbols on animal skin, the need for abilities, and get people on the whole abilities thing. Cassland, how exactly did you find an ability to enchant bullets?”

  “That is thanks to Dennis. He got a class called grave robber, which gave him the ability to steal from the dead. It lets him steal one ability from the creature for each level Dennis has. We have him up to level 2. I am hoping that tomorrow when he gets a refresh on his ability, and has 5 new uses of it that we have him at level 3. Every ability we steal from their dead is one more soldier that will have additional impact.” I had pointed to Dennis during my statement. I mentally intoned ‘status’ to see if I was getting xp from talking to the Colonel. I hoped that all these social encounters was helping me. I am partially a charisma based class after all.

  Level: 2    58% to the next level

  Yes, it was working. If we can get more system info from the Colonel’s men then I could potentially get to level 3. I looked back at Billy, “Do you happen to have a copy of what we put together on classes already?”

  He smirked, like he knew the question would happen sooner or later. “I have 3 actually. Several teens got a scribe ability as part of their student class. So, I had them copy as much as they could, until they were out of mana.” Yeah, Billy was far too pleased with himself. I’ll let him have this. He needed a small victory for as much crap as we give him. He handed a copy over to me, which I then handed to the Colonel.

  “This is what we have on classes and their abilities. It isn’t all the data on everything we have collected, but it is a huge bulk of it.” It wasn’t a massive book, but it was still close to 75 pages.

  Then Lt. Moss was back. “Colonel, what the Cassland boy says is accurate. The governor wants him in his new district, and they said that the boy is good to get sworn in for duty by the first state judge we find.”

  The Colonel narrowed his eyes at Lt. Moss, but then said, “Let’s get this show back on the road. Cassland, join me in the command vehicle when it gets up here. It sounds like we need to keep discussing a few things. I’m not done piecing together everything you’ve learned.” Time to leave McDonalds behind.