It took about ten minutes for the group to organise itself after the fight. The volunteers returned with five bows and a few medkits, those who were laying on the ground and dying from their wounds finally finished that business and died, and those who looked horribly wounded but treatable finally got treated.

  There were lots of crying as family members watched their loved ones slowly die in front of them while desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but thankfully Dennis was able to not think about it too much.

  People argued a lot about who was supposed to get the bows before finally settling on giving them to those who seemed the most capable yet unsuited for melee combat, which meant mostly women and one teenage boy, even if everyone believed that they were unsuited for melee combat, a fact that Dennis wholeheartedly agreed with.

  Ness got herself a bow.

  She was very angry at him for some reason, but he didn’t really care.

  After saying their final goodbyes and performing a very quick burial which consisted of praying for a bit and dragging the corpses to the side of the road, the group finally started moving again.

  They were even slower this time. Dennis thought that they needed just a last little nudge to make their speed negative. A few people managed to get their legs injured, including Richard, and that did not help at all. Some looked also feverish, or in shock? Not really capable of anything but cosplaying zombies as they walked.

  But at least they were moving.

  After his prompting the group collectively decided to try to deal with goblins by using the bows and not relying on Richard’s gun in order to make less noise and hopefully attract less goblins to their locations. It kind of worked?

  Since they generally looked more vulnerable and Richard stopped oneshotting everything he saw they started encountering lone goblins brave enough to try and attack them, which was probably good. If the goblins attacked them on sight it meant they weren’t preparing another ambush, or at least that was what Dennis assumed. He still was on a duty of cutting down everything that came too close, but mostly people managed to stick enough arrows in the creatures before they approached.

  Somehow their current system worked and they were making progress and covering the distance.

  Two more people joined them on their way towards the shop, a married couple that noticed their group through the window of their basement, where they were hiding.

  Dennis wondered just how many people were actually dead, and how many were just holed up in their basements, or closets, or whatever hole they found and just didn’t come out or approach their group. Maybe they were hoping for a more decent rescue team? Sure, the streets were littered with bodies, but if you assume that a typical house had 4 people living in it, the math didn’t add up. There were definitely less bodies on the ground than 4 for every house he saw.

  Looking at their group he kind of understood how someone could decide that they were more comfortable hiding a bit more instead of doing whatever it was that they were doing.

  Still, what they were doing was working and as time went by he finally saw the gun shop in the distance.

  It was a small building, and it was surrounded by bodies not unlike the space in front of Richard’s house. Both humans and goblins were everywhere, and all of them were dead. It was a battlefield.

  He studied the signs of the fight that occurred in fascination. A group of armed people laid dead in an alley nearby, clearly trying to funnel the goblins and being simply overrun with the bodies. Bullet holes adorned every wall in the surrounding buildings. The entrance to the shop was literally blocked with the pile of dead goblins, but someone already pushed most of them to the side so it was possible to squeeze in if you tried, or if you were small like a kid. Or like a goblin. The windows to the shop were all broken, and more than that, they were broken from the outside, with most shards of glass falling inside the building.

  And yet despite the carnage that occurred here not so long ago, there was no sign of life. Whoever won, they left.

  It was probably goblins. Dennis was pretty sure that they were the ones who won.

  “There’s so many of them,” the leader guy muttered. “Why are there so many of them?”

  “There was a literal army of them at the beginning,” the grandma said. “I saw them when it all started. They were like a swarm, everywhere you could look. Whatever we’re fighting now are the stragglers. Like locusts, they killed everything they saw and moved on.”

  “I didn’t see you fighting anything,” the guy with the bandaged leg grumbled.

  “Is there even any point in getting guns?” the teenaged boy asked. “It doesn’t seem like it helped these people, and if the noise can attract this swarm then I don’t think we should use them at all.”

  “Might as well get them while we are here,” Richard said. “We will stick to the bows, but when everything goes to shit and you don’t care about the noise, having a proper weapon wouldn't hurt.”

  “Okay, people,” the leader said. “Let’s get some weapons. Archers and Richard stay outside in case of an attack, those who can fight in melee go through the building and clear out any goblins that may or may not be there, those who can’t fight go after the fighters and loot the guns and ammo. Try to stick to a single calibre, check Richard’s crate to see which one.”

  “Who made you the boss?” one of the ‘fighters’ asked. The guy apparently didn’t like the idea of being the first to go in and maybe encounter a goblin or two.

  “I can’t force you,” the leader said, clearly annoyed. “But someone has to do it. Or would you rather the kids go first? Or Mrs. Carter?”

  “This kid can go,” the guy pointed at Dennis. “I’d rather not risk my life while we have a literal nerd-ninja just standing here.”

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  “I’m not a ki–”

  “Of course he will go,” the leader said. “I did say fighters, didn’t I? The question is if you are one of them.”

  “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “No one did.”

  “Why don’t you go then?”

  “I will,” the leader said. “I wouldn’t ask people for anything that I wouldn’t do myself.”

  “Fine!” The whiner kicked a dead goblin’s body in anger. “I’ll go. After you.”

  Dennis didn’t really see the point in all of the complaining. If you were weak and trying to find safety in a group it kind of made sense that you were supposed to have a role in that group and be useful? Unless you were a grandma. Dennis really wanted to ditch grandma. And it was kind of annoying that he was assigned work without his say-so since he didn’t consider himself to be a ‘fighter’ or a part of the group really. More like a benevolent superhero who was helping the locals in a time of need. If someone asks him to clean dishes or something he would ditch them, hero or not.

  Still, clearing the building of the remaining goblins was something he wanted to do anyway since he needed all the exp he could get. That was another thing he didn’t understand about these ‘fighters’.

  Didn’t they want the exp?

  Shrugging, he went inside the building while everyone was watching the silly argument. He needed to clear all the goblins before anyone else got to them.

  All for him.

  The main room didn’t have any, sadly. Just a few more dead guys and a bunch of dead goblins. He went to the first door that he saw while pulling out his sword dramatically with one hand.

  While trying to pull his sword dramatically with one hand. Pulling a sword from behind his back was still fucking awkward and he had to use his second hand to adjust the sheathe before he managed it.

  He walked from room to room carefully while keeping his sword ready for any action. Dramatically.

  Regretfully, anything that could’ve been a threat was already pretty much dead. It seemed like goblins didn’t tend to just sit in one place doing nothing and waiting for the player to find them in such a convenient location. It was like they knew nothing about good game design. He looked everywhere he could but no one jumped on him. It was annoying.

  After checking all the rooms he came back to the entrance where the main ‘fighter’ group was arguing about the way they were supposed to check the rooms, spewing nonsense about covering each other’s backs and boasting that they knew how a real swat team did it because they watched the documentary.

  “There’s no one there,” he said while passing them by. “You can loot the building.”

  He walked outside, approaching Richard and sitting nearby. Only then he sheathed his sword. Slowly. He could be cool and dramatic enough if he did it carefully.

  Richard was sitting on his crate of bullets, his gun laying nearby, in his arms reach. He was trying to fix the bandage on his leg.

  “I doubt that we can reach the police station,” Dennis said. “Any big confrontation on the way will make people shoot stuff, and that would attract more stuff, and we would look dangerous enough that we’ll probably get another coordinated assault on our asses. And if we somehow win that one, then the question is if goblin messengers are a thing and if we would have to expect a visit from the whole swarm if that happened.”

  “If only there was a way to be able to hide and be mobile,” Ness said quietly, standing nearby and shooting complicated glances at Dennis.

  Richard just nodded, his expression grim.

  “It took us forty minutes to get here,” he said. “Granted, a big part of that was the fight, but now we would be even slower. Some people here are getting feverish and won’t be able to make it to the market, not even talking about the station.”

  He finished fiddling with his bandage and took a small box that Jenny passed to him. Then he started dismantling his gun.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I admit that. I thought that our hope would be in finding other groups who are dealing with this better. The police station felt like a natural spot where those groups could converge. I also hoped that this gun shop would be a pocket of resistance. A safe haven. If I managed to hold off so many of those creatures alone, then how good were things supposed to be here? But this is just a graveyard. I bet the police station is the same. We need a safe place, but I don’t know of any anymore, and I don’t think we could reach them without leaving people who need us now more than ever.”

  “It’s like this everywhere,” Jenny said while scrolling on her phone. “Calling anyone is almost impossible but the internet still works, even if a lot of websites are down and not many people post anything. There are no safe places, but some are better than others. In Chicago they have huge wolves instead of goblins, and a lot of people managed to hide on the roofs and other high places. In Paris they have slimes. Amorphous acidic things that burn through everything they touch, but are slow and dissolved by water. The firefighters are obliterating them.”

  Dennis silently thanked god or whoever was responsible that they got goblins instead of slimes. Trying to fight those with his sword would be the end of him.

  “Is there any help?” Ness asked. “For us?”

  Jenny shook her head.

  “If there’s nowhere to run, then shouldn’t you guys just bunker down?” Dennis said. “Like, find a castle and defend it?”

  “There are no castles in America,” Richard said. “Not in a way you’re imagining them.”

  “There’s a fort though,” Ness said.

  “It would take an hour to get there by car,” Richard said. “But yes, that would’ve been the most defensible position in town if we were to somehow get there.”

  “Why don’t we ride in a car again?”

  “Does this look rideable to you?” Richard gestured at the bodies on the ground and abandoned cars in the middle of the road. “This is just one of the reasons among others. Theoretically, we could reach the fort on foot. It would take us eight hours at our pace. We would get there before midnight if we start now. People will die.”

  “They will die anyway!” Ness snapped, clearly annoyed at Richard. “I don’t see any other way for at least some people to survive. We can’t stay because there’s no place that could be defended from an assault. We can’t hide because there’s too many of us. There’s no one to save us, and everywhere is as bad as here. The only way to survive as a group is to make a safe place. We need it. And we need it long term, with a source of food and water and fucking walls not made of cardboard!”

  Huh. Dennis found it a bit funny how quickly she got invested in the overall survival of the group the moment she understood that she couldn’t ditch them. Not without Dennis' help, and he didn’t really feel like leaving them. After all, the only way a hero would leave people to die was to do that dramatically and against his will. Like if the grandpa screamed ‘Leave me! I need you to save the kids, an old man like me is only good for making a cool last stand!’. Then Dennis would absolutely leave him with a clean conscience and a good backstory. That moment was yet to come.

  Richard sighed.

  “You’re right,” he said. “By trying to protect those who are weak I am dooming those who are strong. Until this moment everyone followed me because I was the only one who kept people alive, but now everyone gets a gun. Maybe splitting in two would be better. Those who cannot move would stay here, armed and trying to hide. Those who can should go and find a safer place. Maybe you would find help and return for us. In any way, now that we are armed, being a big group without a safe place to stay and the ability to move just makes us a target. Those who are capable should leave. I will, of course, stay.”

  Was the grandpa making a dramatic last stand?