The second bunker was identical internally to our own. Or it had been, at least. Now it looked like the scene of a horror movie, the visuals dramatically nauseating.

  Two men lay on the ground in small pools of blood. Both looked late thirties, one with broken glasses and a slim build, while the other was more portly with lighter hair. I was willing to make the assumption that these were the pair from the motel.

  Slit throats.

  In addition to the words written across the walls, the flickering lights also picked up damage done to the STAR pods. Three of them had cracked glass, while some of the others looked as though they had been beaten or disassembly had been attempted.

  “Shit,” I said, looking around for clues. “You think the motel owner…?”

  Sally shook her head and took a few steps over to the first body. “No. Mr Norris was a sleeze, but he wasn’t this… deranged.” She jabbed her spear toward the writing on the walls.

  “Shit,” I repeated. That meant there was another lunatic wandering around the area. As if I didn’t have enough things to worry about. “It’s turning into that cliche zombie thing, where people are the actual danger.”

  The waitress shrugged as she kneeled down beside the first corpse. “There just needs to be better zombies.”

  I wasn’t too sure if she had remembered I was going to turn into the living dead in a handful of days, or just held her own ideas about what really makes a monster impressive. Maybe if she had seen that giant leaving the city, then a few of her views might change. Either way, I was in no hurry to get into more fights with other survivors anytime soon.

  Given our present company, I might not have the luxury of choice in that matter. Looking at the bodies made me worried for Bernie, who was at the other bunker on his own and wouldn’t be able to defend himself.

  “He joined the System,” Sally confirmed. “Inventory is totally empty, though.”

  “I imagine the other will be the same.” I looked down at Bucky, who was currently panting. Either anxious, or thirsty. “We’ll make this quick, bud. Then take a break outside to get refreshed.”

  “The good news is that the lunatic might be working alone.” The waitress shuffled over to the other body to check it. “Everyone else from the motel has been accounted for.”

  That still wasn’t comforting. Was there a chance there were other people out in the middle of nowhere? With the diner and motel accounted for, there shouldn’t be anyone else around other than maybe… cars driving to the city at night. A shame that there was no way to check how many or how often the STAR pods had been used but…

  I raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t there be another Guide—if not Richard—here?”

  As if spurned on by my words, the middle pod on the left side hissed and spluttered. It was one of the most damaged ones, as if someone had attempted to take it apart to see how it worked inside. Without any tools, they hadn’t gotten very far through the metal shell. The smell that had filled my nostrils the first time Richard had appeared filtered through the air again, albeit this time stronger.

  An orb of light started to bloom in the middle of the chamber, mostly white with a shade of blue. It thrummed and wavered in and out, just as the broken pod started to leak a weird, luminous blue liquid.

  The glowing ball wasn't transforming into a wireframe figure, though. It just hovered. “Something isn’t right-” I began, before being interrupted by a bright flash.

  As my ears rang, I spun on the spot, completely blinded. Raised my axe into a blocking position toward the door. I wasn’t likely to be able to defend us in this state, but if we were attacked at this moment, then I wanted some base preparation.

  There was no attack, and as my vision slowly returned, my ears also started picking up the muttered swear words coming from the waitress.

  I turned, and she was still crouched, hands over her eyes. She must have been closer to the flash. As I turned, my vision adjusting to the gloomy and empty room, there was no Guide present still. The only thing that had changed other than the smell was-

  “Bucky, no!”

  My command came a little too late, as the dog lapped up his third mouthful of whatever liquid had been running from the machine. The glow had gone from it, but it couldn’t be anything good. Bucky turned to me, a shameful look on his face, but he heeded my call and began moving away from the pod.

  He made it three steps toward me before flopping over onto his side.

  “Shit!” I stepped over to him.

  “What’s happening?” Sally said, still rubbing at her eyes. “I think I’ve gone half blind.”

  “Bucky drank something he shouldn’t.” I kneeled down beside him and scooped him up into my arms. His eyes had closed, mouth hung open with his tongue lolled out.

  “Is he okay?”

  I pressed the side of my head against the dog. Warm, and his heart was still beating. Lungs moved in and out, just as if he was asleep. “He is unconscious, but I don’t know.”

  Guilt rolled around inside my stomach. Not even a day and I’d allowed him harm. I didn’t think he could be so thirsty as to want to lap up whatever was coming from the pods. I continued to hold him in my arms as if a firm hug could cure him of whatever I had caused.

  Sally stumbled over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. Her eyes looked red, and she was wincing, but otherwise okay. “May I?”

  I nodded and handed him over. The waitress continued to grimace as she laid him on the floor. She performed a few checks before withdrawing a bedsheet from her Inventory. After placing it on the ground beside the dog, she gradually folded it around him to form some kind of sling.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked, mostly because I was at a loss.

  “I volunteered at an animal shelter for a few months,” she replied, shooting me a sore glare. “They made me quit because I spent eighty percent of my time there crying.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Makes sense.” I nodded, my brow furrowed at Bucky. “That kind of thing can be depressing for an animal lover.”

  “Oh, no,” she said as she stood, lifting the dog up in the harness. “It’s because the animals were all too cute. One time they had chipmunks.” She pouted at me as she put the hoops of the harness over her head.

  Ignoring that random aside, I furrowed my brow at Bucky. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  Sally shook her head. “As far as I can tell, he isn’t in any immediate harm. It’s hard to tell if he doesn’t start throwing up, so it’s either something weird or something terrible.”

  “Great.” I rubbed at my forehead. This had always been an inevitability, to some degree. The dog wasn’t as sturdy as the rest of us, and for all the emotional intelligence he had, he was still an animal at the end of the day. “Whatever it was, it came from the STAR pod, so Richard might know something?”

  A glance over at the liquid that had leaked out… and it had gone. Evaporated or something. The whole chamber felt colder, as if… I brought up my Map - but any attempt to deduce something was immediately interrupted by a System message.

  [Warning]

  [System anomaly experienced]

  [Local area will be repopulated shortly]

  “Damn it,” I said and ground my teeth together. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Sally stood with one arm underneath the bundled up dog. “Sounds like good and bad news.”

  I raised an eyebrow for her to extrapolate. “More experience and rewards to grind?”

  “Maybe, but my thinking was different. Cleansed areas might be able to lead us to where the crazy person went… or lead them to where we’ve been. It could also have the same effect once we have to go through everything again.”

  I gave her a nod. We had the advantage of having someone who could track and reveal the Map, so anything shown after the ‘repopulation’ as being cleansed would signal there was another human wandering around. Whether we’d ignore them or not was something I didn’t care to think about right now. There were other puzzle pieces I had joined together.

  “The Map no longer says this is a bunker.” I looked over at the door. “My guess is that the previous occupant has broken it beyond repair, which explains the lack of a Guide. The part of the System that deals with structuring the world saw the bunker vanishing as an error of some kind, and so is rewriting the monster’s spawns or something.”

  Sally smiled. “A very nuanced take for someone constantly trying to ignore most of the workings of the System. Richard might know, which is why I’m taking Bucky back to base.”

  “You say ‘I’ as if I’m not coming with you.”

  “You’re not.” She gestured toward the exit. “Babysitting duty is over, Scarlet. You don’t need to follow me around and slow your leveling down. I’ll update you constantly with anything that happens to us.”

  I pulled a face and led us back to the stairway out. Part of me agreed entirely with her. I needed to get strong and be selfish with my growth, not only for my own survival, but for us all. The newly formed part of me that wasn’t as keen to dump any new connections with others wanted to make sure they were both okay. Eventually, as we made it into the fresh air of the day, I sighed and made my choice.

  “Fine. Just stay safe and let me know when you get there.” I scowled at her as I closed the outer bunker door. “I’m not sure when this ‘repopulate’ thing is going to happen, but I don’t want either of us stuck in the middle of it.”

  “Head south toward the dungeon,” she replied, ignoring me. “There’s a quest there that will give you a special kind of skillbook.” In seeing my blank expression, she rolled her eyes. “Bernie’s tracking now gives basic details about event locations. Take a look sometime.”

  I sighed again, for lack of a better response. It was enough tracking all my own abilities and skills, without being up to date on whatever everyone else had. “Get going then, before the rain hits us.”

  Half the sky was darkened clouds now. If my estimations were correct, then we were an hour or two away from actual rainfall. I would want to find shelter as well, if not return to the bunker after doing this quest she had mentioned.

  “Ciao, Scarlet,” Sally said, beaming at me as she turned and started off away.

  I stood and watched them; the waitress using her spear like a walking stick as she carried the canine payload on her front like a baby carrier. How strange things had become.

  With a shake of my head, I started off south. Things had been too muddled, and I hadn’t even asked her if she had the time to assign her stats before the bunker had broken. An adjacent thought that led to me considering if intentionally destroying bunkers would be a good way to farm experience and items if the System saw fit to fix the situation by throwing new monsters at it.

  Once again, I was annoyed that Richard didn’t have a way to talk to me directly. Having to stroll back to base for answers to my hundred questions was exhausting and unsustainable long-term. It made him more of a tutorial NPC than an actual Guide for surviving the apocalypse for more than a week.

  If I didn’t turn into a zombie first.

  As soon as the waitress vanished from view over one of the dunes, a message from her pinged through.

  //Sally: I should have put a point in Power!

  //Sally: Bucky is heavy~

  //Scarlet: You went full Guile?

  //Sally: Naturally. Only so I could use the crossbow immediately.

  //Scarlet: Understandable. If we can find more bolts, that would be great.

  //Sally: I trust in the STAR to provide!

  I wanted to ask her to see if she could prompt Doris into joining the STAR, but with the sick dog, that might be too much to put on her right now. One thing at a time, although I was sure the diner owner would be getting sick of sitting around with only Bernie for company. She didn’t seem like the sort who liked being idle.

  The Map came up so that I could see where exactly I was going. Slightly more to the west and further south. A question-mark on the map signaled there was a Quest there, something that now needed capitalization as they were an actual thing for me to deal with occasionally. Being referred to as players by the System made a little more sense with how much of a game it sounded at times. If the city wasn't such a danger zone, I could imagine it being even more like a RPG with how dense monsters and challenges could be.

  I focused on the event to bring up more details and immediately regretted it.

  The reward looked fine, sure.

  [Affinity Skillbook]

  [Grants a skill related to your Class or Stat distribution]

  Not only was that as specifically beneficial as a reward could get, but the Quest also gave a decent amount of gold and three random types of chest. There was no indication of what the Quest actually was or what I’d need to do to get the reward, but that wasn’t what had set my nerves off.

  It was because the Quest location was in a tavern.

  //Scarlet: I don’t suppose you know what Affinity relates to?

  //Sally: Did Richard intentionally train you wrong, as a joke?

  //Sally: Just kidding.

  //Sally: He hasn’t mentioned it to me - I’ll ask him when I’m back.

  Part of me felt like everything I knew about the System was just a drop in the ocean. Of course, we as ‘players’ were hacking, in some manner. From my understanding, the STAR that Richard had brought here has replaced the usual way the System dealt with giving out power to us. It was the only way that made sense if we were to actually defeat the aliens rather than just become part of their collection.

  That just brought up more questions. Like how we were supposed to get by before. Would there be a chance of dying like with the STAR? Maybe the cockroach System had a more defined way of leveling to keep us within certain thresholds. Now we were wild and free to get power differently, with a little guidance from the STAR. All straws I was grasping at and wild guesses on my part. At the end of the day, a slim chance was better than none.

  But it did help me decide on one thing - I needed to learn more about the System and how to exploit it. Ignoring the fine details had been fine to a degree, but I was starting to understand that certain things were tilted in our favor. We just had to be vigilant and accept what came our way.

  My options were few and far between, anyway. Back on my own again. I should probably stop and eat, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. I was left with the sour feeling over what had happened to Bucky, and how much I should blame myself for it. Also paranoid about the idiot roaming around and killing people, thinking this was the rapture or something.

  As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, with the zombie curse and a bounty on my head.

  With the dark clouds rolling overhead, I sighed and continued towards the tavern.

  Things would surely go well there.