They had all grabbed chairs and brought them over to be by Charlie’s bedside while they waited. Everyone passed the time by resting, even with stats and magic in their lives the past three days had been brutal.

  Regular reapplication of healing magic or in David’s case just sitting letting his new skill work was dealing with their physical damage, just as donated health was helping Charlie. The soft soothing aura of the safe zone helped to gently unravel stress the longer they sat.

  This gave David time to think, so he tried to step back and look at the big picture. What did he want to achieve in the next day, week, month, year?

  He also took the time to sort through his system notifications, silently thanking Charlie for showing him how to suppress them to avoid distraction.

  There were three messages about his advanced skills. Apparently, he had qualified for a new skill at level five of reinforce and an upgrade to the skill at level ten. Halt had made him eligible for a new skill at level ten. He had no idea why they were different. Right now he was too tired to care, he would deal with it all later.

  While there had been sporadic conversation they had quickly agreed to wait for Charlie to be awake before doing anything substantial. It also gave them a chance to see the hubbub of activity though the open sides of the medical pavilion.

  There were a lot of people arriving and being moved to the Obelisk for their tutorials. People were obviously working on things as they moved around in determined fashion, others wandered and looked lost, but most seemed to come into the park to visit the Obelisk and then move out either individually or in groups.

  It took Charlie nearly an hour to wake up, during which time Sarah and Camila went to the cooking area and eventually returned with seven portions of stew, rustic flatbread and water.

  By the time Charlie opened his eyes everyone else had inhaled their food, leaving one portion of still warm Stew for him. It was now night, though the light of the barrier still provided dim illumination, plenty to see by especially when nobody was trying to read or do similar fine work. They chose not to brighten the area, not wanting to attract attention with artificial light.

  David was feeling, physically at least, mostly fine at this point. Regeneration paired with warm food and cool water had fixed him up. There was still an itch from his head where the bloody wound he had taken was repairing. A quick check of his status told him that the concussion, which had worried him the most, was gone from his condition list and his injuries were well on the way to being restored. That left the mental side of things, which was less good though the soothing influence of the Obelisk was helping keep a lid on guilt and trauma.

  Charlie woke slowly and as they realized he was aware again the six clustered around his bed and let their conversation die out.

  “Dude, why do I feel like an army of angry Rhinos is dancing the macarena in my head?”

  Charlie tried for humor as he saw his friends clustered round him. That set Camila off.

  “Men! You joke, at a time like this. When your stupidity nearly got you killed! Even after David got you back here, we couldn’t heal you. Because some idiot didn’t buy Health! Who does that? Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

  Charlie managed to look guilty before saying, somewhat defensively.

  “Look it all worked out in the end. We all got out and my choice meant I had the juice for that big fireball, that helped, didn’t it?” He sounded almost plaintive.

  Carl spoke softly. “I’m glad you’re alright kid, your headache aside. From what I saw you were the bitches first target, that’s why you need to be able to take a hit. This ain’t one of your games where you can start again from your last save…”

  It was Mark who really brought the hammer down though. In a choked voice he said. “To answer your implied question, no we didn’t get out OK. A lot of people died. I’m sorry man there isn’t an easy way to break it to you. Billy is dead, Bessie too. It’s my fault. I should have stayed with them, maybe…”

  As Charlie’s eyes filled with tears Katie moved to put her arms around Mark and spoke softly. “Not now babe…”

  “No, it needs to be said. Let me say my piece.”

  Then he continued.

  “That whole mess was my fault. I should have been with you all, able to use my healing to support you so you could fight free. Then I should have stayed with Billy… It’s all because I’m a coward.”

  Camila looked levelly at him, shared a glance with Katie and spoke.

  “OK, we are going to catch each other up on what happened from our perspective, just the facts. No drama! If there is going to be drama, I’ll be the one being dramatic!”

  Her declaration sounded ridiculous, yet deadly serious. Somehow it helped. Bit by bit Mark filled them in.

  He and the support team were unaware of what was happening until they heard gunfire. Not sure what was going on, they had grouped up and started to move back towards the check-in area and had met the runner with the radio coming to warn them even as everything stated going quiet. A brief conversation with the Convoy and their inability to raise David had led to a cautious approach and their seeing the tail end of David’s attack and defeat.

  With so many zombies around Mark had made the call to make a break for it to get to the convoy and they had tried to get out, his team had been mostly those who didn’t or couldn’t fight and panic had been setting in. Things had started to go wrong immediately as they were spotted and attacked, forced into a fighting retreat that had turned into a rout when the two fast zombies hit them quickly downing and injuring several people.

  That was when Billy had intervened, along with Bessie and his weird spectral hound thing he had been able to push the fast zombies back and Mark had been able to pick up their wounded and carry them out.

  Billy had kept covering them, buying time for everyone by fighting the fast zombies in a delaying action that had resulted in him being surrounded by the slower monsters. Rather than trying to break out and run he and Bessie had stood their ground.

  “There were too many of them, and they were coming for us, so we ran. I was in the back of a truck and we were driving away before I knew what was happening. They didn’t stop until we got back here, I couldn’t get them to turn around…”

  Camila looked at him. “So your act of cowardice was what? Dragging an injured person to safety?”

  “Two actually, and it was more like a double fireman’s carry.”

  “Now I know you are being ridiculous. Right moving on…”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She proceeded to recap events from her perspective, Carl, Sarah and Charlie had little to add, Katie and David filled in the rest, with both trying to take the blame for various issues.

  Carl spoke softly, his drawl cutting through the bullshit.

  “Well, y’all have had your pity party. We lost people, including someone who we were getting to be close friends with. Now did we all make mistakes? Sure. Hell, I made plenty but I ain’t letting that define me. We need to do better, to be better going forward but we none of us did something unforgivable.”

  “We have to go back to the airport. First thing, maybe sooner.” Everyone looked askance as David for that bombshell.

  “Two reasons. Carl’s right. We have to keep going, which means going out again before the fear has a chance to set in our minds. None of us did a perfect job but we all did more than enough to be proud of. I’m just going to have to keep telling myself that until I believe it, maybe. Second, more importantly. We left unfinished business – the Zombie Queen is dead. Or at least that one is. I bet there are more. More to the point I won’t allow any of our fallen to rise as zombies. Will you?”

  They all looked profoundly troubled by that. “How do we stop it? Or rather how do we stop it without desecrating the dead ourselves?” Katie asked the question on everyone’s minds.

  “We get them back to the Safe zone. Things don’t rise here. We ask the Obelisk questions until we find a way to shelter them from that final indignity. We cremate them. Hell, that is just off the top of my head.”

  Everyone nodded at that.

  Carl spoke softly. “We need to speak to the other raid survivors and give them a chance to step up. But, before we do we need to have a plan for how we deal with another one of those things without getting people killed. Everyone is going to be asking hard questions about that.”

  “Do we engage with the council?” Camila’s voice was hard, her experience with Micky clearly coloring her view.

  “They aren’t all bad. Dr. Chen is a good woman, and a skilled doctor. She is already working out better ways to combine magic and first aid. We should tell her about Health transfer too…”

  Charlie looked quizzical.

  “Leader perk.” David explained, then elaborated on what he had found out.

  Charlie unfocused his eyes and everyone knew his ‘make the Obelisk help function my bitch’ face. After a moment he spoke softly, urgently.

  “Are we still on the same plan as we were before?”

  Camila looked at him sharply, as did Carl. Both asked what he meant at the same time.

  “Well, we were sort of on you know, collision course with Phil and Big Micky especially…” Charlie rushed to continue “I’m sure Dr. Chen is very nice and the others” his hasty addition had been when Sarah looked like she was going to say something.

  Surprisingly it was Sarah who responded. “Yes, more than ever we are on that plan. I don’t think Big Micky is going to forgive and our credibility is in the dumpster right now, so we need something to work with if they decide to make a move.”

  Charlie nodded and then to David’s surprise a new window appeared in front of his eyes.

  This was an easy one, David voted yes without even thinking about it. He also kicked himself, while he hadn’t had access they hadn’t even checked if this was possible before launching the airport raid. He was sure they could have kitted more of the team out. Would it have made a difference? He wasn’t sure. Would they have been delayed? Probably.

  Then Charlie moved straight ahead with the next request even as everyone else was dealing with the notification about save your people 2 he went and pushed save your people 3 out for approval.

  Seeing all of them there David paused, quick mental math told him that they would only be able to award a single person the next stage unless someone waived their rights to this one…

  “Charlie, wait one. We need to consider if we want to take two people to stage 4…”

  “Dude, look at the counter. Wait an hour or two and we can do it anyway.”

  With that David nodded and approved the transfer. This time he got a message telling him about his rewards and he paused to read it.

  Even as the others started to blink their rewards away David was thinking. A limited reward meant that they were blocking others from following fully in their footsteps, which was both good and bad. He was honestly surprised that nobody else had figured out the ways to get the leader title and actually purchased it. He supposed the limit on the Save your people path might mean that a couple of random helpers who portered people in early had the title sitting on their status.

  That would change, people would realize what he and the others had done. Still, that was a future David problem. A quick check confirmed what he already suspected; ten thousand people needed for save your people four.

  Before he could really think about that too much a new box appeared.

  “Hang on a second. I’m not sure we just want to launch into that Charlie. Any one of us makes sense and I’m worried that there will be more limited rewards going forward. We need to discuss this. I’m not going to vote for power for me like this.”

  “Charlie, pana do I just need one level of the title to vote?”

  When Camila asked Charlie just gave David a shit eating grin and nodded.

  A new message appeared.

  Charlie looked David in the eye and mouthed.

  “Take your reward gracefully next time dude!”

  Before he could engage with that David got the expected notification.

  David definitely needed to get his hands on the Obelisk, he quickly checked and as expected Save your people five required an absurd 100,000 people, so he ignored it after reading the first couple of lines. Though now that he thought about it there was a good chance that number would be exceeded in the next day. There were several million people in the city and suburbs after all. That sobering thought made him speak urgently to his friends.

  “Right, we grabbed some benefits for ourselves. At least we will have once we access the Obelisk but we need to focus on what comes next. Things are about to get crazy with everyone waking up. I don’t know how many survived but given what we have seen there are a lot of survivors. A lot of people who need help.”

  Mark nodded, then spoke firmly. “We have to let Dr. Chen know about the Health transfer and make sure ALL the medics have the ability to do it. That will save lives.”

  Charlie responded. “It will also reveal the importance of leadership to the council, you know the people who tried to have us shot. They will claim all the boosts as soon as they have more leaders than us.”

  David spoke slowly, even as he threw an inquiry at the Obelisk. “Hold on, there is a theme running through these rewards. Let me check and see if there are any…”

  Then he came back and spoke softly. “That ship has sailed. Now I know what to ask about I can confirm that once I accept the reward from save your people four we will be in control. More accurately I will be.”

  Charlie looked at him and immediately put two and two together. “Another limited reward? This time first past the post?”

  “Yes, The Obelisk says that once it is linked, which is the unique reward, I can restrict access to System features for anyone using the Obelisk with a lower system recognized title than me. It also gave me a title Squire of the System.”

  Charlie got that distant look in his eyes and said a moment later “Leader is NOT a system recognized title, they are apparently special and ‘I should strive to achieve one by serving the Lords and Ladies.’”

  “So, we let the cat out of the bag?” Mark’s question cut across the discussion before the two of them could dive into system minutiae.

  Everyone nodded, things were about to get interesting.

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