We all decided to rendezvous a bit aways in Crestwood. People quickly spread the word amongst the various squads, and we found ourselves in a large parking lot near an Advance Auto Parts store. There was a slightly older gentleman, perhaps in his mid to late 50’s in the window of the store assault rifle in his lap. I found myself admiring the fact that this guy was still looking after his shop, even though he was putting himself directly in harms way. I made a mental note to check in with him after the impromptu meeting.

  Somehow we ended up with more Humvees than we started the day with. I quickly found out that the Colonel had already given a few of them over to us given that we had become a fair chunk of his defense forces. All the troops got in a semi-circle all facing me and my team, who all formed up behind me.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen thanks for meeting after the battle. I know we had a few casualties, but not a lot. I want to thank each and every one of you. We will distribute anything worth handing out momentarily, but I wanted to check in with you to let you know what was going on.” There were brief murmurs from the group, but no complaints.

  “It seems that military intelligence is keen on everything we’ve been building in Fenton. I don’t fully understand what it is they want from it or us, but it kind of freaks me out. Regardless of what they want, any attempt to control all of what we are doing is going to end badly for us and our families.” The murmurs got louder and I had to wait for them to die down a bit.

  “At the same time, the guard needs our help. So, I need to put out a general request for some people to transfer to the main guard regiment for the state. I hope in providing people I am showing cooperation that will keep our families safe. I want this to be completely voluntary. I don’t want to order a group of soldiers into transfer.” I let that statement settle in. Finally a few them wouldn’t just settle down, as the idea of being transferred worried them.

  “Captain, I’ll go to this other group if ordered, but I really don’t want to volunteer. I think a lot of the folks here agree with that feeling. After talking to some of the soldiers from the other units they haven’t been focusing on getting people levels, or trying to equip whole squads with abilities. At least not any of the soldiers I talked to. They had heard of the possibility of people learning abilities, but until we told them what some people can do they really didn’t know how they were going to get abilities.” It was one of the guys from Oakland that helped me carry dead bodies to the giant bonfires. I searched my memory to remember his name and finally it came to me, Bill. Increased intelligence stat was paying off at the moment.

  “Bill, I understand what you’re saying. How they have kept soldiers uninformed has been horrid. I don’t understand keeping that tight of a lid on basic system knowledge. The good news is that with you guys in those units, you can spread knowledge. This may very well work out in our favor in the long run by putting some of you in their ranks.”

  “Captain, are you saying you want us to spy?”

  “Absolutely not. I want you to be good soldiers, who just so happen to spread knowledge to all the other soldiers. We’ll make them want things to be done a different way. Think of this as grass roots campaigning and activism.”

  “So, you would just want people to talk about how we gain levels and stuff?” He looked at me like wasn’t sure that is really all I wanted.

  “Yes. That is all you need to do.” I tried to portray absolute sincerity and confidence. I hope I pulled that off.

  Everyone seemed to relax a little bit, or at least all the people I was noticing. I was not sure that was genuinely everyone though. The weight of it sunk in by that time. We would need to have people infiltrate the state’s national guard in order to spread information. Not Disinformation, as that would have been subversive. We needed people to just speak the truth. Logically it made sense, but emotionally it was turbulent. I didn’t want these good people to put themselves in harm’s way needlessly. I didn’t want to put them in unnecessary danger, yet I was doing exactly that. I had resolved myself to that before the meeting, and this was just carrying through.

  I continued, “With that out of the way, we will be spreading out a few enchanted rifles and some ammo. It isn’t much now, but if we use it sparingly we should get a lot of mileage out of both things. We also have several of those orc healing potions. I know they taste bad, but they might just save your life. Anyone who doesn’t have one should see Brittney. She will hand out what she can.” With that information given out, everyone got up and started moving to their squads and to hopefully get one of the upgraded items.

  We were interrupted by system notification that looked to have hit everyone simultaneously. I figured I should take a look at it, just in case it was life or death.

  Notification!!

  Your planet Earth, also referred to as Terra, has reached 75% mana saturation. Full 100% should be reached in just over 48 hours. Due to this increased mana density your status will now reflect additional stat details which were not previously shown.

  Fuck, I guess I had better look at my status.

  Neal Cassland Human

  Level: 5 45% to next level

  Affinities: Intelligence, Charisma, Knowledge, Law, Politics

  Current Class: None Lvl 0/0

  Previous Classes: Legislative Aide 5/5;

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  Str 3.4; Agi 3.5; Con 4.5; Int 6.0; Wis 3.4; Cha 6.2; Health 45/45; Mana 13/13

  Abilites: (6/7) Identify; Mana Reinforcement 1; Predictive Aim; Charismatic Defiance; Heightened Initiative; Detect Mana Class Ability: Assess

  Caster Level: 5 Ability Effect Level: 5

  Skills of Note: Pistols 2.1; Rifles 3.5; Running 4.2; Hunting 3.0; Fishing 2.0; History 3.1; Public Speaking 3.6; Law 4.5; Persuasion 5.6; Command 2.7; Mana-Recovery 2.3; Perception 2.2

  My stats and skills said a whole lot more. It was interesting to see that my strength, agility, and constitution were not merely at their base values, but I would not have the time to really peruse all of it now. I could dive it tonight when I was getting ready for bed. For now, I needed to keep things directed for everybody.

  “Okay folks, I know we want to delve into our more detailed stats, but today will continue to march on.” The statement was initially met with a bunch of grumbles, but eventually we got things moving along.

  I lucked out and a group of people from each area volunteered and would head into Fenton to collect additional volunteers to assist with the rest of the guard. That took one item off of my day’s increasing agenda. In the meantime, everyone else from Sunset Hills and Oakland returned to helping people get transitioned out towards Fenton. I was pleasantly surprised that we had 2 more Fenton squads join my first 3 about 30 minutes later giving me a roving force of 60 plus my own team. We settled in to patrol while everyone else was helping with evacuation.

  I wanted the morning to proceed as planned. One could argue that I wanted it desperately so. However, life didn’t always give me what I wanted or needed, but rather what necessity dictated. I got a call from Billy, over the radio, “Hey Neal, Hound News said they had to change the location of the interview from their offices. Apparently, they are shutting down their St. louis office to relocate it away from St. Louis.”

  “So where do they want to meet?” Something felt off. Why set us up for a meeting, they knew they were closing offices and moving them elsewhere? This feels predicated on this morning’s confrontation.

  “They said they have people who can link you up from the Shrewsbury City Hall. Something about they already have a team on location.”

  “Thanks. Did they give a specific time for the new location?”

  “Yeah, they preferred before noon. They would like to get the team moved, but are staying until lunch at the city hall.”

  “Basically, what you are saying is head over there now.”

  “I wouldn’t say it that way, but you certainly can.”

  “Fine, have another 5 Fenton squads out here to Crestwood while our squads go do a news show. I really want Crestwood empty by the end of the day.”

  “Will do, we should have it mostly done without much interference. I will send what I can over there to help empty it out faster.”

  “I’m trusting your judgement, but don’t leave Fenton too thin.”

  “It won’t be a problem. We’ve activated 500 people from Crestwood in the last three days. I think we’ll be fine. But we are running out of space for everyone. I’ve got logistics on it, trying to use all the supplies at the Home Depot at Gravois Bluffs to build temporary housing. I also have a cadre of soccer moms headed to the Lowe’s near the portal in Sunset hills. They have a lot of militia with them.”

  “Get them in and out with minimal fanfare and maximum protection.”

  “Understood.” Billy may not be very charismatic, but he could read between lines better than I could. He knew that I wanted max protection on as much as we could. We needed supplies and we needed to get them to the right area as fast as possible. Class abilities and skills separately were only going to get us so far; people needed to blend both together. However, I trusted that with a little prompting most people will be able to get on board.

  We headed to Shrewsbury after that conversation. Though part of me wanted to wait until our replacements were in place. It didn’t take long, but I was concerned by the number of people still in their homes everywhere. It was like the military wasn’t trying to actively evacuate folks this close to the city. I had heard from others that much of the west county portion of St. Louis was being evacuated neighborhood by neighborhood. At any decent rate they should be as far as we were. We had less logistical help, yet we seemed a bit more efficient. If we were all over it from the very beginning, we would already have all three municipalities evacuated, but we were delayed a bit in our efforts.

  We had been going to the trouble of trying to squeeze 20,000 plus into a municipality that had roughly 4k to 5k people. It had a lot of shopping area that could be completely repurposed, but all that took time. We had over a thousand people crammed into the high school, and another 500 at the middle school. There were several elementary schools filled up, and the only educational location left was a private religious school, which I couldn’t exactly force into providing shelter. I had to obey as much of the Bill of Rights as possible, despite martial law. These were the thoughts that circled my head as we made our way to Shrewsbury.

  We arrived with no fanfare, but I preferred that to the kinds of greetings I’ve been getting lately. There were only a few people hanging out in the parking lot. They didn’t pay us any mind as sixty some odd people pulled into the lot in their vehicles, several of which were Humvees, and nearly twenty entered the building. I trusted the rest knew how to make perimeter. The building was looking rather sparse. Somehow had taken down everything of value. I have no clue where they packed it away. There was an unoccupied bare front desk, but I could hear lots of noise inside a room off to my left.

  In stepping towards the room, the noise, or talking while positioning equipment, became a bit clearer. These guys were with Hound News, and the snippets of, “I bet this guy is a fraud” and “I bet he knows nothing you can’t find on YouTube” only made me smile.

  We walked in as a group, silencing them without trying to. They looked at me, and I looked I’d been in a gun fight. It really helps me when that is true. We smelled of gun smoke and orc guts, the totally never happening new fragrance for men. They stepped back silently as Natalie stepped forward and took control.

  The interview was planned to take a few hours. Natalie started off with our experience getting to St. Louis. The Hound News guys were skeptical before, but they kept their opinions to themselves now. We went into system details and had notebooks of information. These were originals as the ones we gave to the Major earlier were merely copies. Originally the plan was to present the documents and leave them with the Hound News guys, but we had to pivot from that idea.

  This continued as we went into how stats determine health, mana, and what tier of abilities you can use. We freely admitted that anything above tier four was a guessing game, but did seem to follow a pattern. We didn’t yet know what the mana costs and stat requirements would be, but at least we knew that the stat requirements so far had correlated with prime numbers. Mana costs looked like there was some sort of a number squared plus something. We demonstrated by me using assess on the Hound News guys and them finally admitting to our knowledge live on air.

  We didn’t need to stage anything. We didn’t need to make anything up. We were just getting into enchanting and crafting when a siren sounded in the distance.

  Other sirens went off in other directions. The noise was deafening, but this time I brought ear plugs to protect my ears some. There was panic over the radio, and the best we could make out was, “Multiple breaches and Downtown is being overrun.”

  Yep, Day 5 was going to keep the title of craziest day of the Apocalypse so far. The day started badly, and was only going to get worse.