We continued to flee down Manchester. It was less than 500 feet to the next left we could make. I wanted to get over into that office park. I had been assured that it was the best way to get us to the railyard. My gut started hurting the more I moved. I knew I wasn’t the only one nursing my way through injuries. At the rate we were going, it would be the better part of an hour for all of us to get the less than 2 miles to the trains. Limping with the aid of a walking stick was not how I got anywhere in decent time. Yet, I continued to limp.

  Manchester Road was nice in most parts of St. Louis, be it far out in West County or even here. Though it was not as nice here as was far to the west. To my right some place that flooring, cabinets, granite, and other stuff. They looked to have a showroom from I made out in the window, but I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking or signs of Orcs piling down these other side streets that intersected Manchester. If I saw orcs down any of them, it would help to describe how much they had spread from the portal.

  No orcs were coming, but humans were. I could see them running from cover to cover. People were still in the area. They all looked pretty haggard. I wasn’t surprised. The waiting out the demons was a bad strategy. We played keep away at the portals and lost. The people headed for us in clumps and clusters was indeed what the plan had become. I tried to wave over civilians, but it hurt to lift my axe arm much. I had to keep my eyes out for any demons as I limped down the road. I was more than a little paranoid, and I knew it. I felt like at any moment a monster would pop up. Then there would be another, and another, and we would get buried under bodies of our own people.

  Crap! I was panicking. I picked up the pace so that I could make it to Knox Avenue. It was less than 100 feet away. I saw Brittney running back to me. I wasn’t the last person, but I was the last person before the shield bearers. I might be slowing them down. I felt a hand on me again, and I looked back to see Frank this time. “Looks like you still need a bit of help.”

  I nodded and Frank proceeded to drape one of my arms over his shoulder and let me lean in. He had to put away his blade and take the axe from me as well. I felt like the pressure lifted just enough for me to walk faster. It was more of a walk, with Frank’s help. I asked frank, “Do we know how far back those demons are?”

  “Yes. Nora is under her camouflage ability and keeping an eye out. Fortunately, she has that camo ability, or I would not let her put herself in that kind of danger.”

  Brittney had arrived just in time to hear the last part, “And what makes you think you could stop her?,” Brittney asked.

  Frank shook his head and chuckled, “Good point.” He continued to softly laugh as we tried to catch up to the rest of the militia. The faster we went the more my ribs hurt, but I didn’t say a damn word. We would get to a safe spot soon enough.

  We had already turned onto Knox Avenue, and crossed the railroad tracks. The sooner we got off this road and into the buildings the better. The heat was atrocious, many of us were wounded, and my damn feet hurt. With that in mind I walked up to the first building in our way attempted to open the door. It was locked, and all the windows were boarded up.

  Frank chuckled at my struggles before smashing in the door with his shoulder. Except the door didn’t exactly smash. We heard a cracking sound in the door somewhere, but it barely moved at all. I spotted a set of eyes in the almost completely boarded up windows. I immediately put a hand on Frank.

  “Hello to whoever is in there. We mean you no harm. We are just trying to get indoors in the oppressive heat.”

  At first there was no verbal response directed at us. We did hear muttering conversation on the other side. We heard the shuffling of feet. Then a young voice spoke up, “Why should we trust you?”

  I shrugged. “Because, in the apocalypse humans need to help one another. We all need to band together to fight off the invasion.”

  The voice paused before asking another question, “How do we know you’re not some demon in disguise?”

  Damn. That was a good question. Illusion spells and polymorphing were still a pretty new concept to us, so I gave the person on the other side a lot of credit for that creativity. “Ask me a question a native St. Louisan would know the answer to, but a demon that’s been in the abyss for a few centuries or more wouldn’t.”

  “Okay… Who is the first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals?” Well they must be a cardinal fan.

  “Albert Pujols.”

  “Are you really the man from all those videos. I saw a video go up today about abilities n stuff. Do you mean what you said about gettin’ them from dead monsters?”

  “Oh, that went up already? I’m surprised Natalie had the opportunity to upload it. Yes, though. You need someone with the right class ability. We haven’t encountered that ability outside of the few specific classes that have it.”

  “Okay. Give me a minute to get the door unlocked and the barricade moved back.” While we stood there the stone in my pocket went off.

  Nora’s voice popped through, “They are approaching the corner.”

  I was about to warn the occupants of the building, but Frank put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. I raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘what the fuck is about to happen?’

  Explosions were the answer. Smoke and large chunks of metal were all there visible from this distance. Frank filled in the blanks, “We used the last of the explosives for right before they rounded the corner to buy us more time. Billy’s idea.” That explains using the last of our explosives. I wasn’t sure I was perfectly okay with that. However, it worked.

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  From the other side of the doorway the words came, “What was that?”

  “A present we left for the invaders when they got to close to Manchester. Do you perhaps have a side door instead?”

  “Yes, but it is barricaded too.”

  “True, but it is out of line of sight of the intersection.” I left the rest unsaid. If they were smart enough to ask questions to determine I wasn’t some demon in disguise, then they got the point of doing as much out of sight as possible.

  “Good point. We will get that side door open for you.” I heard receding footsteps and decided now was the time to get to that side door.

  What started as just over seventy people had ballooned with refugees to well over a hundred. We now had almost one civilian for every militia. I didn’t like that ratio, not one fucking bit. We didn’t have spare weapons to hand to other adults, despite me having authority to draft people. Which meant that we couldn’t exactly demand all of these people fight. I still clung to the idea that things weren’t so desperate that every adult would be fighting, but we were damn close to that. That was my thought as I made my way around to the side with everybody else.

  I still worried about Nora, since she stayed back, but I hoped she rejoined us soon. She needed to go through a class change, and none of us knew what that would really entail. Leveling up ate over 2000 calories, or that is what we concluded with our limited experiences with it.

  I sat down. I was exhausted, and simply sitting in the heat was taking more energy out of me. How would we even manage to get to the train yard. It wasn’t a train station. So, it would require people to hook up multiple train cars together. Did we even have the people to do that. One of the civilians said they did, but I was feeling rather doubtful at the moment.

  I ate a cookie to heal me some more, as I noticed that I was still several health points down. It was sometimes useful to know when I was down health, but the aches, pains, and obvious injuries told me that much without the number. Yet, it was still convenient to quantify my pain. I hadn’t noticed, but Brittney sat next to me. However, when she leaned into me I did notice that. This child seemed to attach herself to me, and I wasn’t sure if I deserved it.

  “Neal, I’m afraid we’re all going to die here.” She didn’t sniffle or cry. She was probably all cried out after her brother’s death.

  “I’ll try to help us avoid that.” I wasn’t sure what assurances I could give her and not lie. I wished I had something to offer her that was honest yet full of hope, but I had nothing.

  “I wish you could do more.”

  “So do I.” I wanted to expound and clarify, but all the words that would come next seemed to die on my lips. I wanted to tell her that she would make it through this no matter what, but that would be a lie. I feared more of us would die before the survivors got onto even enough footing with the enemy. They could put of magical force fields, and we really didn’t have a great counter to that.

  “Have you found a new class to go to?” she asked.

  “No.” I need to find an uncommon or common class that has at least a few things in common with me. She knew that much already, so there was no need to over explain.

  “I hope you find one soon.” She said it with at least some conviction. Despite the deaths in her family, she still hoped for better for me. That kind of empathy was reassuring. Maybe humanity hadn’t lost itself yet.

  “Me too, me too.” I ate the second cookie from my pack. I needed to rest. I looked at Brittney, and she probably needed it too.

  Those thoughts were interrupted by the side door opening up for us. Behind it was a teenage boy, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. His skin was awfully pale for there being so much sun outside. “You really are that Cassland guy.”

  “Yep. I’d say more, but honestly, I’m exhausted and injured.” I tried to force a smile up to him as I got up.

  “Yeah, we have space. I’ll show you.” He led us into the building and down a flight of stairs. After two corridors and the length we walked it dawned on me that the basement for the entire building was somehow connected. This was despite it being for very different businesses that had nothing to do with one another. I was a large building, a couple hundred feet long at least. And half that at least in width. The other business was an insulation company. There was indeed much insulation in the basement. I was grateful that the basement was deep enough to ensure some safety.

  We found restrooms and places to sit that were much cooler than the ninety plus degree heat outside. From here we could do an actual headcount. I needed to talk to the owners of the businesses still, but first things first I rested my head in a break room.

  Somehow I had fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Someone had moved me to a palette with hardened insulation foam on it. I slept on insulation foam somehow. During that sleep, Jack our EMT had apparently bandaged up my leg after cutting away the bottom half of my cargo pants. They also removed my Kevlar vest. How tired was I? There was a bandage across my abdomen from that injury as well. I looked around and a few dozen others were on similar makeshift beds. The few medical focused individuals were going around and checking on everyone. I turned my head to the side to see Natalie and Billy quietly arguing over something.

  “We need to send people ahead to couple those trains,” Natalie said.

  “We’ll wait for Neal to wake up. I’d like his input.” He was serious. He really sounded like he wanted to wait for me to chime in.

  Natalie gestured to me, “Now you’ve woken him up. I’m sorry Neal. Your friend seems to think only you can send people into danger for the benefit of the group as a whole.”

  I cracked a tiny smile, “Just how long have I been out?”

  “A few hours.”

  “Would one of you give me an update as to our situation?”

  They both grimaced, but Billy started, “We have a total of 144 people in here, including children and those that were here beforehand. Just over half are armed with something decent enough to kill an orc. Nora is back as well, but she is getting cleaned up. We have all our other stealthy people scouting ahead. We are trying to find a way to avoid demons and get everyone to the train yard.”

  “Wait a second. We don’t have people at the train yard yet?”

  “Joe might be there by now. But other than that, no.”

  “Why the fuck not!” I was trying to keep my voice down. That was getting harder and harder to do.

  “There are at least 3 separate groups of lupin patrolling the area. We know of at least one of those teleportation pads, but there may be more. The problem is gunfire alerts all the demons immediately. We need to take out groups of natural hunters without making much noise, and we absolutely need to avoid using guns.”

  “We’ve collected an awful lot of enchanted melee weapons. I think we have a few bows at this point. Hopefully they are in Brittney’s storage. We should be able to get at least one group to take down lupin a few at a time.”

  “We have those things, but we don’t have a lot of people with any skill with bows, or archery in general. We also don’t have a ton of people with enough stealth.” Billy sounded both exhausted and a bit exhausting.

  I sat up, “Then I guess it is time I finish identifying everything we have. Perhaps we can cobble together a plan to get home.”