The cycle repeated.

  Every time something good came my way, my past would rear its ugly head and it would all unravel again. Connections broken. Instability shaking up the sediment that had barely started to settle. Noir misery painted my internal monologue with black paint so thick it wouldn’t dry. Everything owned now upturned and left behind as I vanished into the distance.

  The trouble was, the apocalypse made the usual process nigh impossible.

  Even if I could stomach ditching everyone else here, hop in my van and hit the pedal… how long would it be before I just ran into a group of monsters? There was no society for me to mingle in with and hide away.

  There were no couches to surf, cigs to bum, or temp jobs to scrounge for. Having the fake ID and a pseudonym meant nothing when the one person I was avoiding knew my real name and could needle me from wherever in the world he was. It didn’t matter which System was in charge of this bullshit; it had done me dirty either way.

  “You alright, Scarlet?”

  I blinked and turned my idle gaze to the waitress. She was looting the last of the orcs and could clearly see me staring off at the horizon.

  “Found out who put the bounty up,” I said. “Rico.”

  “Ah.” She paused and pulled a face. “So now you’re wondering how far you’d get running away before monsters killed you.”

  I looked down at Bucky, who had been staring at me intently all this time, as if every word of praise I gave him granted him life eternal. “No,” I lied. “I just want to get this little scruffball washed clean, like I promised.”

  Although he had done well, I wasn’t thrilled that he had thrown himself into combat. Killing Blow gave us—or at least me—a brief window of invulnerability, but even if it extended to my ‘assistants’, it was far too risky for him. Given that Richard had proven he had gaps in his knowledge, I was almost sure there was a way to give the System to the dog.

  Would I risk his life if compatibility was low? Hard to say. Forcing this on him wasn't fair, but our options were few.

  “Well, I’ve finished looting,” Sally said, standing. “Let’s head to the motel. This area is cleansed according to the map.”

  “It is?” I looked over to where the few orcs had escaped. “I didn’t even know it had that information. You’re good at this.”

  “Duh.” She smiled. “I told you I’m a nerd for this sort of thing. The actual physical aspect of it… not so much, but I’m getting there.”

  She had certainly found her feet—and her stomach—returning to her usual overly-positive self. It might be useful for me to delegate some of the boring parts of understanding the System to the waitress and her brain. At least while she was here and had it inside her skull. I licked my lips and looked out at the desert.

  “Alright, let’s move. Talk to me about loot to keep my mind off of the bounty.”

  Although, in saying that, it was hard to think about anything else. Mostly because now there was a chance I would get attacked by a group of monsters at any point… it made the prospect of escorting the other two to the motel even more problematic. Danger was always a possibility, but now with it being guaranteed… how much risk was I willing to put over their heads?

  “Here’s the sledgehammer,” Sally began, handing me the weapon with some difficulty.

  “Something with some actual weight to it, huh?”

  [Dense Sledgehammer]

  [+1 Power, +1 Vitality]

  The stats were nothing impressive, but it was a slight upgrade over my hammer in that regard… and a massive upgrade in terms of the amount of damage it could do. I placed it in one of my three weapon slots to replace its smaller cousin.

  “And this…” Sally continued, “I’m keeping, I don’t care what you say.”

  She placed the captain’s tricorne on her head. The red almost matched her diner skirt, as well as the blood stains across her white shirt.

  “Suits you,” I said. “Smells like sweaty orc, though.”

  The waitress pulled a face. “Sometimes you have to suffer for fashion.”

  “Or just pass it here. I have a skill that can fix up magic items, takes ten minutes.”

  “Yeah? Please, then.” She took it off and handed it to me. “They weren’t too wealthy, so your share of the riches is seventy-two gold. There are three pieces of magical gear, but none have Morale. A few bandages, and… one uncommon upgrade stone. Oh, and a ‘puzzle piece’.”

  “Eh, just keep it all. I’ll take the puzzle, though. What number is it?”

  She drew the small piece out of her Inventory and handed it over, as well as slipping me the upgrade stone at the same time. Not very sly, but I accepted it anyway. “Forty-eight,” she said. “What are they for?”

  “Beats me. Cluttering up my Inventory to give whoever loots my corpse a headache.”

  Inspecting the upgrade stone, it looked as though the reason she passed on it was because it would give Morale stats to the item. It made a nice change from all the random distribution items we had come across.

  I applied it to my black tie.

  [Sharp Business Tie]

  [+1 Morale, +5% Luck]

  For some reason, it seemed to fit in the ‘shoulders’ slot of the equipment paper doll. There was no ‘neck’ slot, so maybe it shared the same purpose. Plus, I’d much rather this than wearing some garish oversized shoulder pads like some early 2000s MMO.

  “So you can just straight up murder motherfuckers?” Sally asked, as we continued to the motel, referring to my more active role in combat.

  “Under certain circumstances, yeah. If you ever find gear that fucks with conditional activation, I want to know ASAP.” I adjusted my newly empowered tie. “Getting stronger seems to be partly rolling the dice and seeing how much the System favors you.”

  “Richard recommended that I get as many skills as possible, even over scrounging for stats. While Uncommon skills are mostly minor percentage increases, Rare and above can be certain levels of… broken.”

  I pulled a face as I withdrew a flask of water from my Inventory. “Just how much time did you spend talking with him since last night?”

  “Not enough.” Sally pouted. “I’m not sure how you can get by being half blind to part of how this all functions.”

  “I hit things and receive power. That’s enough.”

  The waitress grumbled about me sounding more like a barbarian than any kind of knight, but I had paused to put some water down for Bucky. I wasn’t sure exactly how I ended up with a dog as well as someone I didn’t constantly detest, and it soured my mood to think it took the apocalypse for me to find something that might last.

  A thought I was bound to repeat until everything did fall apart, as it always did.

  “How worried are you about the zombie curse?” the waitress asked, now stopped a few feet away as the dog lapped up the water.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’ve been below ten percent HP several times in the last twenty-four hours, so… that’s why I’m on babysitting duty instead of running myself ragged again.” I stood and clocked the expression on her face. “Sorry, I’m being dismissive of your improvements. I’m taking my existence a little more seriously now, yeah.”

  “It’s too early in your arc for character growth. I’m sure you’d run given half the chance.” Sally smiled slightly, an expert jab that had some truth to it - even if she was just prodding for amusement.

  “And here I was worried it would be the dog that turned into an annoying yapper.”

  The three of us moved on from that conversation and grew more composed as the motel came into view. Sally made some comment about how it looked the same before the apocalypse hit it, but I was too tense to engage with more banter.

  My forearm itched as I recalled the damage I had sustained, the panic I felt still churning at my insides. Something clearly wasn’t right with my psyche when it came to who I dealt out violence to, and I planned on asking Richard if he had a clue why. Other than me just being crazy, of course.

  “Keep an eye out,” I warned the waitress as we approached the back of the building. “I didn’t have the time to give the place a full sweep before.”

  She nodded, but her eyes were up in her STAR. “Bernie has revealed more around here. I can see the other bunker on the map.”

  I followed suit by checking it out myself. Another mile or so out west, the small symbol identical to ours sat there, with no surrounding monsters or events. Whoever had made it there had probably cleared the path from the bunker to the motel, which explained a few things. It didn’t make me feel any more comfortable about being back here.

  “Want to go inspect it after here?” she asked.

  Did I? My plans for a less terrifying day two were slowly unraveling. Normally, I didn’t think visiting the bunker would be worthwhile… but keeping focused on moving forward was actually helping me ignore the fact that Rico was still after my head, despite the world burning around us.

  “Sure. There might be some benefit.” At the least, it would take up some daylight. With Bernie’s scouting taking half the time, it meant more of the route to the castle would be explored before we sat idle. I did not want to be idle.

  We fell into silence as we walked along the side of the motel, both of us bringing our weapons out. Around the front and… it looked just as quiet and unnerving as yesterday. I kept my eyes peeled as we stepped cautiously over to the reception door.

  “Busiest it’s ever been,” Sally murmured, glancing over at the three vehicles.

  “Any of them belong to the motel owner?” I glared through the window at the cluttered space inside, almost daring something to jump out at me.

  “No. He must have run his aground somewhere, like yours.”

  The desert was already hit or miss for driving through in a vehicle not meant for off-roading. Now that there were dunes and crested hills, any regular car or van would probably find some point of failure within an hour of driving. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t touched Doris’ vehicle, despite the time it might save me.

  “Could you hot-wire any of them?”

  I paused with my hand rested against the door handle. “Just because I have a less than stellar background, doesn’t mean…” I glanced between the grinning waitress and the trio of sand-swept vehicles. “If we find a toolbox, maybe.”

  Bucky had been sniffing around the lot out front, but didn’t seem to have found anything concerning. I watched as he paused in place, before hopping around in a circle to surprise-attack his tail.

  “C’mon Bucky, bath time soon.”

  He trotted over as I opened the door and stepped inside. It looked just like it had yesterday, the additional daytime lighting not doing the aged clutter any favors. My eyes went straight to the rack of keys on the wall. It hadn’t changed. That was some… partial relief.

  “I haven’t been in here before,” Sally said, her face scrunched up as she looked around. “Perhaps Mr Norris should have been searching a little closer to home for why his business was failing.”

  “Turning into a murderous psychopath at the first given opportunity didn’t help, either.” I paused and rolled my tongue across my teeth. “He’s in the storeroom, which we should visit to take anything useful.”

  The waitress nodded, and we went on our way out of the cluttered office and through to the doorway leading into the recreation room. While I had been somewhat pragmatic about what I wanted to take, Sally was a vacuum for anything the System allowed her to collect. Aged chairs, a broken table-tennis net, and two-thirds of a mah-jongg set were the start of her spree.

  All things I hadn’t really noticed my last time through here. Not because they were new, but my mind had been pretty scrambled. With the light of early afternoon now illuminating everything, the decay of a place rarely used was more apparent.

  Then we stepped into the open doorway of the storeroom.

  The corpse of Mr Norris was still where I left it. Despite the System attempting to round of the edges of existence, there were certain things it didn’t make the effort of changing. Smells, for one. A dead body left out for a day wasn’t pleasant, and would only get worse. I indicated this to the waitress and told her we should get everything now so that we wouldn’t have to return.

  I stepped through and started scouring the shelves. There were a lot of useless things here that might only find use as fuel for a bonfire, but other than some metal containers, loose tools, and an oddly out-of-place box of vinyl records, there wasn’t anything really worth my time. I looked over at the doorway to see Sally crouched down by the dead body.

  “You’re as bad as the dog,” I chastised her. “What are you doing?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up. “Part morbid curiosity, part theory-crafting.”

  “A little more to the point?”

  She stood up and brushed her skirt down. “The STAR injection didn’t change our physical form for the most part, right? My theory is that the stats we have only affect how monsters interact with us.”

  “So weapons and attack skills are super effective against other humans because it ignores half of the rules it tries to apply?”

  Sally shrugged. “Perhaps. My thinking is more along the lines of… Guile can increase my dodge chance, but that doesn’t really force me to be more avoidant. Maybe having a high dodge chance just makes monsters miss me more… like it's on their end.”

  I rubbed at the back of my neck. While I followed her train of thought, I wasn’t sure it was that cut and dry. It didn’t explain things like attack speed or the fact our bodies could regenerate from near-fatal injuries in just seconds. I didn’t have the spare energy to think about it in depth.

  “If you’ve got the time for that, then you must be done looting.” I nodded towards the door. “Let’s go to one of the rooms. I’ll stand guard while you shower.”

  The waitress pouted. “Could I wash Bucky at the same time?”

  I felt a slight pang of envy that I wouldn’t get to bathe him, just like I had envisioned in my head, but it was more efficient this way. “Sure,” I relented. “Just don’t take forever. This place gives me bad vibes, still.”

  “Want to check all the rooms first, give yourself a little peace of mind?”

  Something else I agreed to rather reluctantly. After seeing the owner’s corpse again, I didn’t want anything to do with the motel if I could help it. As a source of running water, it was unavoidable… although the diner might be an option. It probably stunk of rotting zombies, though.

  We stepped into the rec room and closed the storeroom behind us, sealing the dead body away. Bucky stood like a statue in the middle of the room, now also covered in cobwebs and unsure how we would view his latest escapade.

  “Shower time, Bucko!” Sally beamed. “I sure hope you never gain sapience and the ability to talk.”

  I rolled my eyes and led them out. As much as I wanted to get the dog the STAR System, it was purely to help him survive. The world was weird enough without talking animals. Plus, he had promised to never judge me, and the ability to yap back would surely run afoul of that.

  The row of rooms was similarly unchanged from yesterday. I pointed at the ground where patches of my dried blood had been lightly dusted by shifting sand. “I almost died there.”

  “Where haven’t you almost died at this point?”

  I glared at the waitress and withdrew the master key from my Inventory. My frequent dances with death weren’t meant to become the trait I was known for. Then again, compared to some other things… that wasn’t the worst.

  Key went into room number one door, and I opened it up.

  Sally was ready by my side with her spear poised to defend me should something try to burst through the door at us. Despite her constant need to annoy me, she was sensible when it was important.

  The room was empty, however. Much like the second room, there was plenty of dust and disrepair that would probably give you respiratory problems if you stayed the night. Bathroom door was open and also clear.

  “Second room is what I’ve been using,” I told her. “We’ll come back to it once we’ve checked, as I feel safer with something familiar.”

  “Understood. I’ll follow your lead.”

  Seven rooms in total. The keys for four, six, and seven had been missing from the reception rack.

  Third and fourth were just as worn and dilapidated as the first two. Bathroom doors were closed, so we opened them cautiously. Empty. Medicine cabinets raided for more nondescript bottles of shampoo and body wash. I watched as Sally figuratively pocketed the condoms, not as sly as she hoped.

  “What?” She glared at me. “They are useful in survival situations, like for carrying water.”

  “Uh-huh. I prefer to use the many flasks and other containers we’ve looted.” I almost tripped over Bucky as I went to leave the room. “That said, if you find Theo, then it’s probably a good idea not to bring a kid into this world, huh?”

  Sally followed me out, casting a glance out at the distant city. “Yeah…” Her composure wavered slightly before returning to me with a renewed smile. “You don’t think you’ll find some wasteland hunk to fight off the alien invasion with?”

  “Please.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m more concerned about not getting my head caved in. You’ve seen apocalypse movies - most survivors are unhinged assholes.”

  “Just your type, then.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the waitress again. Perhaps going solo wasn’t the worst thing, even though we got on most of the time. These things tended to be short-lived for me, and I already knew she had grander plans than following my sorry ass around the desert forever.

  With both her and the dog giving me the most intense eye-contact, I rolled my own eyes and sighed. I was one-tenth a zombie, and would surely go hungry amongst this pairing.

  I clicked the key into the lock of room four, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  The smell of death immediately washed over us.