Fresh out of miracles, Roland went upstairs as the last floating lights from the impromptu ritual faded away. He put the shotgun in his inventory after checking it out. It looked great, and he was looking forward to putting it to use.

  Making it to the living room, he spotted Wendy and Dahlia. Wendy was cuddled up on the couch where she’d been napping when Roland first saw her.

  Dahlia had changed outfits. Instead of her usual black miniskirt with ripped leggings underneath and a shapeless blouse that hid some of her weight gain, she was wearing black leather chaps, the kind used to protect motorcyclists’ legs, over black jeans, and a black Scarlet Remains T-shirt. She was sitting on an armchair, two separate decks of cards on the coffee table in front of her.

  That made him roll his eyes. Ever since he’d known the goth girl, she had been obsessed with only one card game.

  “It’s a cult classic,” Dahlia was telling Wendy.

  “I played Magic,” Wendy replied, looking at a black-bordered card dubiously. “But this looks more like...”

  “It’s exactly like MiniBeast,” Roland cut in. “Which is why Tojo Entertainment sued Revolting Games into oblivion for making that ripoff.”

  “Come on!” Dahlia protested. “MiniFiend is superficially like MiniBeast, but the rules were so much better!”

  “It’s MiniBeast with creepy undead Chibi monsters instead of cute and fluffy Chibi monsters,” Roland countered.

  He had learned a good deal about card games during his tenure at GameDrop – where, he realized, he was supposed to be working right the heck now. He went on, not caring about his missed paycheck one bit.

  “The biggest difference is that instead of a BeastyCube to store your monsters, MiniFiend Masters used a card deck. About two-thirds of the power-ups were lifted straight from the original game.”

  “You suck,” Dahlia said, morosely going through one of the decks. “Okay, you are way cooler than you were a few days ago, with a spirit bird and superpowers, but you still kinda suck.”

  “Speaking of birds, where did it go?” Wendy asked.

  “He was just with me,” Roland said. He’d assumed Raven would follow him when he went upstairs, but now both him and Trixie were MIA. “I think he and my guide may be off doing spirit stuff.”

  “Neat,” Dahlia said, brightening up at the mention of spirit stuff. She batted her eyelashes at him. “Wanna play? I was trying to teach Wendy, but she isn’t that interested.”

  “I’m really not,” Wendy confirmed.

  “What do you say? I’ve got two killer decks, and you can pick either one.”

  Roland checked the time on his phone and discovered there were a bunch of voicemails and messages from GameDrop, probably about the shift he’d missed. Sucked to be them. More importantly, there was a text from Mandy:

  Work tdy. Then Elle & I having girls night in – home w/phones off. Call me tomorrow.

  “Guess I’ll call her tomorrow,” he said.

  She should be safe enough for the night. Mandy’s idea of a ‘girls night in’ was to binge watch whatever Netflix show she’d been hoarding for special occasions.

  Hopefully, by tomorrow he and his power-leveled bunch would pick her up on their way to Salisbury and safety.

  It was a little after three p.m. Bob and the others should be back with the rest of the gear in an hour or so. And he had nothing else to do.

  Roland hadn’t played MiniFiend but was guilty of having wasted some of his time on MiniBeast; Cousin Bob had gone through a CCG phase and got Roland involved, back in their early teens, before life came crashing down on him. Like he had said, the rules were similar enough that he could fake it until he made it.

  “Fine,” he said. “Shuffle up and deal.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “It’s just an expression.”

  * * *

  They had finished one game – Dahlia won, naturally – and were getting ready for another when Bob and his posse returned, carrying boxes of stuff, so many of them that everyone had to make another trip to get them all out of Bob’s SUV.

  “Tasers, tasers, tasers!” Bob said. “Four police-issue Taser 10s, with ten individual probes, forty-five-foot range.”

  He proceeded to show Dahlia, Barton and Wendy how to use them. They would each carry one, with a spare in reserve. The System described them as good quality mundane items that inflicted one point of damage and produced Stun, Slow, and Paralysis debuffs for variable lengths of time, with a base 70% chance of working on unprotected skin.

  “NVGs!” Bob announced next, placing six boxes on one of the couches like a discount store Santa. “These have infrared emitters, let you see in full darkness, four hours of charge. I got my buddy to give me a bunch of fully charged batteries from his personal stash. Whole batch cost me a gold coin. Overpaid, to be honest, but my buddy won’t blab about it, so it was worth it”

  “We got spears and chain mail!” Barton said excitedly as he carefully leaned the black-bladed weapons against a wall. “Boar spears from Cold Steel. They’ve got a crosspiece so monsters can’t push themselves up the spear and get to you.”

  Roland examined them while they unpacked the body armor. They were good quality mundane weapons that, in the hands of a normal human, would inflict three or four points of damage (the System-calculated base damage formula was Strength divided by three), maybe more if the wielder got a running start or a monster obligingly impaled itself, in which case the damage would be determined by its Strength.

  They were just the thing for the party members who didn’t want to tote a gun, and he could show them the basics of holding the weapon and aiming the pointy end towards the enemy.

  Except that when Barton and Dahlia see a monster for the first time, they’ll probably drop the spear or whatever else they are holding and run away screaming, the more cynical part of him suggested. Or any of them for that matter.

  He silently prayed that he wasn’t leading a bunch of people to their death.

  I’m glad that I have that leadership trait from the helmet. That should help a lot, although it only improves morale. It won’t make it immune to fear, but maybe it’ll prevent a rout. We’ll see.

  “Got two suits of shark-proof armor,” Bob said, unpacking the woven metal outfit. “Stainless steel, very light. And one Steel Gustav Breastplate. Back and front metal armor.”

  “Nice,” Roland said. “Where did you get it?”

  “Dad’s shop. It’s amazing, the stuff people pawn and never come back for. The boar spears came from the same lot. Guy needed three hundred bucks more than he needed his medieval weapons.”

  “He’s going to regret that decision in less than two weeks,” Roland said, examining the armor.

  The chain mail wasn’t worth much, providing four points of damage reduction against cutting or slashing attacks, half of that against piercing attacks, and zero against bullets or blunt force impact. The breastplate was better, with nine points of protection against cutting, piercing or blunt weapons and three points against bullets, which might stop a glancing shot from a light pistol but little more. Luckily, dungeon monsters didn’t carry guns. Usually.

  That wasn’t all the armor Bob had brought. Another big box held three plate carriers and two sets of Class IV plates, same as what combat infantry wore, rated to stop an armor-piercing rifle round.

  In System terms, they had twenty-five points of protection against most physical attacks, and their resistance wasn’t degraded by bullets, although their Durability would drop down after multiple gunshots began to break the composite plates.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Against hand weapons, they provided a lot of protection, but heavy blows could drive the plates into the body, causing trauma. Still, it was damn good armor. Modern technology was great, at least for dealing with F-Grade monsters.

  Everyone who planned to shoot their way through the dungeon picked a couple of personal weapons.

  Bob had a Kel-Tec shotgun just like the one he’d gotten Roland. Besides that, he was bringing a Daniel Defense AR-15 variant (eighteen hundred bucks retail; Bob’s prized possession), and the AR’s bigger brother, a Ruger SFAR, which looked similar but shot a heavier .308 Winchester round with a base damage of twenty points. For secondary weapons, he had a Beretta 9mm pistol and a Desert Eagle, a fifty-caliber monstrosity of a handgun, ‘just in case.’

  “Anybody want this?” Roland said, offering his Uncommon baton, which he really didn’t need anymore. Bob called it first and added the stick to his personal arsenal.

  Josh selected a Mossberg shotgun with a full stock and eight-round capacity, and cheaper Palmetto State Armory AR-15 rifle, a loaner from Bob. He had also borrowed two silver-plated .45 ACP pistols.

  Wendy had picked a Ruger PC nine-millimeter carbine and a .380 pistol, sensible choices in Roland’s opinion.

  All the rifles and shotguns had red dot sights, which would help a lot. The sights could be configured to work with night vision goggles, meaning the shooters would be able to fight in low light or even pitch darkness.

  Finally, Bob had bought five high-capacity magazines for each rifle and pistol, five hundred rounds for each rifle, and two hundred rounds and shells apiece for the rest of the guns. The mags were from somebody’s personal stash, because they couldn’t be bought over the counter in Connecticut.

  It sounded like a lot of bullets, but Roland hoped it would be just enough. Nobody had ever lost a battle for bringing too much ammo to the party. The opposite, on the other hand, happened a lot.

  Bob hadn’t offered Roland any change from the ten gold coins and Roland hadn’t asked for any. Plenty more where it came from, and Bob had probably blown through most of the forty-odd grand the coins represented. A lot of the stuff was illegal, in short supply, just plain expensive, or all three. Add the need to grease some hands to keep people from getting too curious, and Roland figured most of the money was gone.

  Easy come, easy go. What mattered was making sure his dungeon party members were loaded for bear, courtesy of good old 21st century tech.

  A team of Special Operators in full battle-rattle could probably cruise through a low-level Dungeon, Roland thought.

  If I could convince the government, they might jump-start hundreds, thousands of elite soldiers and turn them into high-quality Classers by clearing dungeons before the main event began.

  The problem was the threat of the System starting Integration early if the authorities became too proactive. The System did not want any government to survive Integration.

  In any case, his original plan to buy a shotgun and a handgun from Bob and then solo the Dungeon had gone out the window. Just as well, because Bob’s shopping spree had included a ton of stuff they might need.

  Another box held four military-grade helmets, rated to stop some rifle rounds. According to the System, they would deflect up to fifteen points of bullet damage, but the wearer would still suffer from whiplash and concussion effects. Against other physical attacks, the protection dropped to twelve points, which was still pretty good. Even better, they could be fitted with the NVGs Bob had brought along.

  More interestingly, Cousin Bob handed him three well-wrapped brick-sized items and twice as many small metal devices packed in individual boxes.

  “Just in case,” he told Roland, who carefully stored them in his inventory.

  “How..?”

  “I got them from my father,” Bob said. “He doesn’t know I took them.”

  “You stole them.”

  “Borrowed them. I talked to him; didn’t tell him any details but swore to him it was for-real serious. He sold me some of the guns and gear, surplus stuff. When I was in his panic room getting the stuff, I saw those and figured having them couldn’t hurt. I left all the spare coins and a note telling him I would explain everything soon.”

  Roland grunted but kept his thoughts to himself. Fred Acosta would be having words for Bob (and Roland) the second he discovered the theft. They better talk to him first thing in the morning.

  The rest of the stuff was useful but less exciting – a few hundred feet of paracord to go with the hundred feet of climbing rope they’d bought the night before, two sets of mountain-climbing gear, five collapsible entrenching tools, a dozen 1-gallon water containers filled with Gatorade for the electrolytes, backpacks for everybody, and three ten-foot poles.

  Rounding up the loadout, there were three full first-aid kits, six rolls of industrial strength duct tape, two cans of WD-40 lubricant spray – ‘you never know,’ Bob had explained – plus some fifty pounds of snacks and twenty-four MREs – Meals Ready to Eat, also known as ‘three lies for the price of one,’ although Roland didn’t mind them, in small doses.

  Packing each thing individually would take up all of Roland’s hundred inventory slots, but he discovered that he could fill a container like a backpack, and it would occupy only one slot. By packing things together, he ended up using seventeen slots for everything. Inventories were incredibly useful; Roland figured that they alone would save millions of lives once people figured out how to use them to their advantage.

  And it helps that we’re living in a post-scarcity civilization where poor people’s biggest health problem is obesity, he thought. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

  Roland wasn’t a prepper himself, but he knew enough of them to know that a major disruption, let alone something catastrophic like what was coming, would lead to an end of distribution chains. Most essentials would run out at shocking speed.

  Cities had at best a few days of food in storage, and if the power went out you could cut that in half in short order as refrigerated stuff spoiled. All the stuff Bob had acquired would fly off the shelves on day one, with no restocking available.

  We’ll see, he told himself. Maybe food and shelter won’t be the main problem. This isn’t like a regular disaster, after all. It’s planned.

  “Ready to go?” Josh asked.

  The guy couldn’t sit still ever since he’d been back. Roland hoped it was nerves and not something worse, like withdrawal symptoms.

  “Almost. We’ve got one last stop to make.”

  “Where to?”

  “The shooting range.”

  * * *

  “I still don’t see why we have to go along,” Barton protested. “I’m not going to be using a gun. Neither is Dahlia.”

  “No, but the rest of us are,” Roland told him as he drove two-thirds of the group to the Green Trail Range; Josh and Wendy were following in their car.

  It was an hour-plus drive, but worth it. The owner was a good friend of Bob’s father and would give them preferential treatment, not to mention he was a potential and valuable recruit for their survivalist settlement. His store’s inventory and his personal stash could probably outfit a small army..

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we’re going to be shooting right next to you,” Roland explained. “I want you two to get used to hearing guns going off nearby. Even with hearing protection, firearms are loud as eff. If you flinch or freeze at the wrong time, it wouldn’t be good.”

  “He’s right,” Dahlia told Barton. “One of my exes took me shooting once, and he almost blew out my eardrums. It hurt bad. The bastard told me I wouldn’t need ear protection just to mess with me.”

  Barton fidgeted in his seat. “If the goal was to make me more comfortable around guns, you are failing miserably.”

  “If you’re not willing to learn how to defend yourself,” Bob said from the front seat. “You are nothing but sheep for the slaughter.”

  “Guns are – ” Barton began to say.

  Roland cut him off before the discussion got political. “Whatever you think about guns, anti or pro, will be irrelevant in a few days. You could make a case for not needing guns when you lived in a civilized society...”

  “Yeah, sure, New Haven is a civilized society,” Bob said sarcastically.

  “Stow it, Bob. The point is, civilization is about to come crashing down. There will be no law, army or police to serve and protect you.

  “It’s up to you to survive. Well, to all of us, but you’ve got to pull your own weight. And until you all get a Class and some strong Skills, guns are a great equalizer.

  “Okay, you don’t want to use them, and training you would take time we don’t have. So, you get a spear, and when a rat humanoid comes your way, your job will be to stop it while Bob or Josh shoot at them. But if you freeze because of the loud noises, that rat is going to eat your face.”

  “We’ll be behind you and to the side,” Bob said. “Just try not to make any sudden lateral movements.”

  “I don’t know if I can do any of that.”

  “You will. I’ve got an ability that will help control your fear. Just try to think of it as live action roleplaying and you’ll be fine.”

  “Actually,” Barton said pedantically, making a meme of himself, as usual. “I never cared much for live action roleplaying games. Too much work, and people look stupid.”

  “Speak for yourself, dork,” Dahlia told him. “I was in a great Vampire: The Dark Charade LARP and it was a ton of fun.” She paused. “Well, it was until too many creepsters joined up and spoiled it for everyone else.”

  “And life is going to be nothing but LARPing, moving forward,” Roland said. “The alternative is death or serving the people who are willing to fight.”

  “Good old warlordism, followed by feudalism,” Bob commented. “That’s the only reason I’m not a full-fledged anarchist. Anarchy gets you places like Somalia. Might makes right is no way to run a society. But that’s what we’re gonna get.”

  “Is it really going to get that bad?” Barton asked in a pleading voice.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Dahlia said. “People suck. Remember middle school? The bullying, the cliques? That’s how people really are, behind all the blather. As soon as the assholes realize they can get away with it, it’s going to be hell on earth.”

  “You didn’t even go to my school.” Barton pushed his glasses back. “But you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. Only reason people aren’t more evil – eviler? – than they already are, is that they are worried about the law coming after them. Roland just explained there won’t be any law.”

  “There won't be any law at first,” Roland corrected her. “Communities will form, people will come together. The leaders of those communities will make the new rules.”

  He took a breath before continuing.

  “The main reason I want to bring everyone to Gorman’s place is that he and his brothers and cousins have put a lot of thought into what happens when civilization collapses. They have contingency plans.”

  “That they do,” Bob agreed. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they are ready for a zombie apocalypse. Not sure if they have plans for a system apocalypse, but maybe.”

  “I bet those contingency plans don’t include people like me or Dorko over here,” Dahlia said, pointing at Barton. “Or people of the wrong color and nationality.”

  “You’ve got that wrong,” Bob said. “Mr. Buford, Uncle Gorman’s main business partner, is African American and he knows more about Gorman’s contingency plans than Uncle Fred or me, because he is in his circle of trust. Served in the Marines together. And Gorman’s wife is Iraqi.”

  “I guess,” Dahlia grumbled, unconvinced.

  Bob shook his head. “He only cares about results. If you’re the best person for the job, he doesn’t care what color or flavor you are.”

  “Tell you what,” Roland said. “If it becomes clear that Gorman is any kind of -ist, I won’t let him have my Safe Zone Tokens.”

  Dahlia shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”

  “On the plus side,” Barton said helpfully. “We might all get killed on the dungeon and will never have to worry about the sociopolitical ramifications of the apocalypse.”

  Bob grunted. “We should be so lucky.”

  Roland was beginning to get a headache.