“But if the storm isn’t a danger anymore, why do we have to leave? We’ve got good sturdy walls here, and enough food to hold out until help comes,” a man in a rumpled business suit was saying as Char joined the group in the main room of the Welcome Center.

  Annabel was addressing the group and had the look of a woman who’d covered the same ground too many times already. “Ben. I don’t know how many different ways I can tell you this. Help. Is. Not. Coming. FEMA? The National Guard? They aren’t coming to our rescue. You’ve seen the world out there.” She waved a hand at the front windows in a wide, sweeping gesture. “The highway is gone. The cars don’t start. This isn’t like Katrina. This isn’t just happening here with the rest of the world going on as normal. It’s been almost two weeks now. Don’t you think, if there was rescue coming, we’d have seen something by now? A helicopter? The Cajun Navy on ATVs? A news van looking for survivor interviews?”

  Ben started to talk over her, but she held up a finger and gave him a death glare. “There’s been nothing, and they aren’t coming because they’re all trying to survive themselves. We aren’t going to survive unless we start thinking about the long term, and this place won’t work for the long term. We can’t farm here. There’s no water here.”

  “How do you know that?” Ben’s voice rose in volume, and a few other voices chimed in, both in support and trying to silence the man. “How do you know the rest of the world looks like this. These people?” He waved an arm at a group of people who had come in with Char. His face started to turn red as his fear found an outlet in anger. “They have all sorts of wild stories, don’t they? Flaming squirrels and giant possums?” He made a dismissive raspberry noise. “This is insane. You want us to just march out there and die.”

  Another voice cut in, talking over Annabel as she tried to respond. “Yeah! You’ve been lording over us since this started, but I don’t remember having an election to put you in charge. You don’t get to decide for us,” said a woman with dirty-blonde hair, who pushed forward through the crowd. “And now we’ve got twice as many people to split the food with. We don’t owe these people anything. Why should we share our food? They can go ahead and leave.” The woman’s eyes darted briefly to a teenager in the crowd, and Char noticed the strong resemblance between the pair. Her growing disgust at the woman’s selfishness was deflated by sudden understanding.

  Cory’s voice rang out then, cutting through the increasing noise of everyone trying to talk at once, “Hey! First off, we wouldn’t have that food if Char hadn’t led us out to go get it. Everyone was huddling in here scared and hungry with food right out there in the parking lot, free for the taking.” He glanced over to Char then back to the crowd, stumbling over his words a little, but emphatic, nonetheless. “She helped you take that risk, and things got better. Well, Char and Declan say they have a safe place. Sure, it’s a risk, but it’s better than the sure thing you’ll get if you stay here.” He stopped, then realized that his words might not have been the right ones, so he tried to clarify. “And by sure thing, I mean slow starvation. Starvation is the sure thing.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath, cleared his throat, then tried to get his speech back on track. “Second, Char is the strongest person I’ve met so far, since the world changed. She’s done nothing but help, even though she didn’t have to. If I’m going to follow anyone, it’ll be her.”

  Char was a little taken aback by Cory’s declaration. For a moment, all eyes turned to her, but she froze under the attention, and the moment passed. The crowd erupted in a jumble of sound as everyone tried to talk over one another. Char watched as they argued, willing to wait while they worked it out, but when a shoving match broke out between two men near the back, she realized things might turn ugly if it wasn’t stopped. It was too easy for fear to turn into violence.

  With an easy vault, she hopped up onto the countertop. She sent Lulu a quick request. When Lulu’s barks rang out through the room, accompanied by a bright flare of fire along the dog’s back, everyone stopped talking and turned to look.

  Char’s belly filled up with manic butterflies, and her neck suddenly prickled with sweat as every eye in the room landed on her, but she swallowed hard and found some words. She wasn’t sure if they were the right words, but they were what came to mind. “We don’t need to argue about this. No one has to come with us if you don’t want to. No one is going to be forced to do anything.” She motioned briefly to Declan. “Declan and I defeated a Challenge Zone, and the system awarded us with control of a Sanctuary. It’s a city built in a massive tree. I’m inviting you all to move there. As far as we can tell, the valley where it’s located is free from monsters. There’s even a sort of kiosk thing where you can buy things from a system store. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine.” She held up a hand in reassurance. “I understand that it’s dangerous and scary out there. But Declan and I have crossed this desert a couple of times now. We know what’s out there, and so far, we’ve beaten everything it’s thrown at us. We’ll be leaving in the morning. Anyone who wants to come is welcome to.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  She looked around the room and found Anais and Annabel, then pointed to them. “Anais, Annabel, you both seem to be natural organizers. Would you be willing to help figure out where we stand, as far as supplies go? We can figure out the fairest way to split up the food and make sure anyone staying behind has their fair share. Does that work for everyone?”

  Anais and Annabel both nodded to her, and Anais cut through the crowd toward Annabel. Among the crowd of refugees, most of them nodded and agreed as low murmurs broke out, but there were still a few faces that looked angry, sullen, or uncertain.

  Char hopped down from the counter, glad to be out of the spotlight. She arrowed over to where Annabel and Anais had their heads together, talking intently. “Um, sorry to put the two of you in the hot seat like that, but you seemed like the best choices. You’ve kind of already been doing the job, anyway.”

  Annabel waved her concern away with a tired smile, “No, it’s fine, hon. I was already considering dividing up the food anyway. We’ve got five people holding all of it right now, but that was starting to create some friction on its own. Better if everyone’s carrying their own share.”

  Anais nodded, “We can set up at the counter, there, and let everyone line up for a share. I’ve still got quite a bit from the mercado in my inventory, though Voss took most of the best stuff. Too bad we couldn’t get it out of his inventory after…” She shrugged rather than finish the sentence, and Char nodded in understanding.

  “Another good reason to split it up. Having only a few people carry the food means we lose too much if something happens to one of them,” Char said, then her eyebrows drew together. “That does make me wonder what happens to the stuff in inventories when the person storing it dies, though.”

  The three of them talked for a while about the best way to divide things up. Char still felt like five miles of bad road after her experience with the storm, though, and she mostly stayed quiet and let the other two women handle the details. When they had a plan hammered out, Char excused herself.

  Her body had healed, but her brain felt like it was pushing against a headwind, and the damage to her mana channels felt like a toothache in her soul. The ache and discomfort were real, but it wasn’t a physical pain that she could point to. She wasn’t up to talking to people and dealing with questions, so she went back behind the counter and found herself an out of the way corner to sit in. She figured the food distribution efforts might go more smoothly if people could see her there, supporting the As.

  She snorted to herself over the new mental nickname for the pair, but it fit. They were proactive, organized, and took no shit, and they seemed to be bonding over the thankless job as the day went on.

  Leonard, the biker, was never far from Annabel. He seemed to have appointed himself her bodyguard. His presence beside the counter, and Char’s behind it, seemed to do the job of keeping belligerence to a minimum, though there were several people who wanted to argue over how much they got.

  Char zoned out for most of the afternoon, letting her mind wander, making plans and thinking about the future and what it might hold. Then her thoughts wandered to the past, and Ty, and to wondering where her dad and her cousins were. Lulu curled up next to her and fell asleep. On the edge of dozing herself, it caught her off guard when Anais shook her shoulder.

  “We’re done, and Declan, Cory, and some of the others are going over strategies for keeping people safe on the trip. Why don’t you get some more sleep. I can see that you still aren’t fully recovered from whatever you did yesterday. Better if you’re sharp tomorrow, yeah?”

  Char yawned and ran her fingers through her messy bob. She nodded. “Thanks, Anais. I’ve been running from fight to fight for so long, it felt nice to just sit still for a while and let someone else handle the problems.”

  “Well, you deserved the break. Sorry I can’t offer you the cot for another night, but Annabel says there’s only the one, so to make things fair to everyone it’s reserved for the injured, and you’re technically not on that list any more.” She offered a lopsided smile of apology.

  “Nah, the floor’s fine. I’ve slept on worse.”

  It was still relatively early when she spread out her bedroll. The orange light of sunset reflected from the large picture windows along the front of the building, sending shafts of ruddy light into the room. Voices drifted over to her from clusters of people eating and talking around the room. Anxious anticipation seemed to buzz in the air as they got ready for tomorrow’s trek. Despite feeling like she should be up and doing something, her body greedily embraced the chance to catch up on the rest she’d been so short on over the last couple of weeks, and she drifted off to sleep before she realized.

  She was grateful she’d taken the chance to sleep while she had it when a commotion in the early hours woke her.

  Shouts of alarm pulled her from sleep, and she blinked her eyes open. Shifting orange light shone in through the windows, but this wasn’t the same sunset glow she fallen asleep to. The flickering dance of the light, and the confused shouts and rising panic of the refugees left no question that something was very wrong.