[Outpost Alpha, City Commercial Strip, Collapse Day Unknown, Dawn]
The sun came up red.
Light bled through the cracks in the metal shutters in thin horizontal lines, painting the floor in something that looked like it had already happened to someone.
Ren was already on the counter. He had found a whetstone in aisle five, wedged behind a display of camping gear that nobody had thought to loot, and he had been working the axe blade for the better part of an hour.
Scritch. Scritch.
Rhythmic. The sound filled the empty store in a way that almost felt domestic.
Chloe came up from the basement. She looked like someone had crumpled her and then tried to smooth her back out without much success. Hair half-collapsed out of whatever she had tied it with before sleeping, dark circles sitting deep under both eyes, her jacket still carrying the cold basement smell and dried sweat underneath that. She had the rapier in her right hand.
I need to figure out how to hold this thing. It keeps wanting to tip.
"Did you sleep?" she asked.
"Enough," Ren said. He dragged his forearm across the axe blade. A thin curl of hair came off clean. He set the stone down. "Eat breakfast. We leave in ten."
Chloe looked at the row of canned peaches he had lined up on the counter. She grabbed one, popped the lid, and ate standing up, slow and mechanical, the syrup smell cutting through the copper and bleach that had been in the air since yesterday.
"Where are we going?"
"Hardware store across the street," Ren said. He jumped off the counter and grabbed a backpack from the rack in aisle three. "Wood, nails, tools. The glass gaps in those shutters won't hold anything serious. We need to close them permanently."
Chloe looked at the sword in her hand. "And if there are things in there?"
"Pointy end," Ren said. "Or you die. Come on."
He hit the shutter button.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
The steel curtains rolled up with a clattering racket that bounced off every building on the block and came back doubled. Ren winced at the sound of it.
"First thing when we get back," he said. "We grease those gears. Quiet is life out here."
They stepped out.
The air outside was hot already despite the early hour, thick with burning tire smoke that had been accumulating since the collapse started and had nowhere to go. It sat in the back of the throat. The asphalt under their boots was soft in places from the heat of yesterday.
Ren activated Heat Sensing.
The street went blue and cold. The cars were dead metal. Nothing moving on the main road.
But in the alley beside the hardware store, four orange shapes huddled close together. Low to the ground. Still, but not asleep.
"Dogs," Ren said quietly.
Chloe's head came up. "Dogs?"
"Not the kind you pet."
He pointed at the hardware store entrance. The glass doors had been smashed from the inside out, safety glass in a wide spray pattern across the sidewalk. They ran across the street, Ren silent on the balls of his feet, Chloe's sneakers slapping the asphalt with every stride.
Inside was sawdust and wet fur. The wet fur smell was fresh.
Ren held up a fist. Chloe stopped.
He used Tremor Sense.
Pat-pat-pat. Four sets of paws. Linoleum. Coming from the lumber section at the back of the store, maybe forty feet out, moving at a walk that said they already knew something was in the store with them.
"They heard us come in," Ren said.
A growl started from the back. Not a dog growl, something lower, something that had more chest behind it than a dog had any right to. It sounded like an engine idling, smooth and continuous.
The first one stepped into the main aisle from behind a stack of plywood sheets.
A Doberman, or what had been one. The skin was gone from the shoulders up, red muscle fibre exposed over the skull and neck in tight cords, the jaw lined with metal spike-teeth that had been pushed up through the original dentition. Its eyes were yellow and constant, not blinking. The muscle in its shoulders and haunches was enlarged, the chest deep enough that it looked front-heavy. It moved with its head low, chin nearly touching the floor, which put those metal teeth at shin height.
[Mutated Hound (Lvl 4)]
The big one isn't moving yet. Waiting for the small ones to commit first. Pack discipline. They've done this before.
Three more came out from behind the shelving units. They spread without making sound, triangulating automatically, the geometry of it too clean to be instinct alone.
Nobody lunged.
"Smart," Ren muttered.
The Alpha came in fast.
It dropped even lower mid-stride and went under Ren's axe swing completely, the blade passing six inches above its spine, and it came up on the inside and bit his leg.
Crunch.
Metal teeth hit the Bark Skin passive and the Chitin Shell under it and neither broke, but the force of the bite compressed the muscle in his calf down to the bone and the bruise was immediate and deep.
"Off!" Ren drove his heel into the dog's shoulder.
It released and flew sideways into the paint can display. Cans scattered and one burst on impact, blue paint spreading across the linoleum in a wide fan.
Crash.
The other two hit Chloe from opposite angles.
She backed into the corner of the aisle, rapier up but moving in wide defensive arcs that weren't going to connect with anything moving at that speed. One dog snapped at her face from the left. The other circled to cut her off from the aisle exit.
"Stab it!" Ren yelled. He was already moving but the Alpha was back, teeth locked around the axe handle, pulling with enough force to pivot the head sideways. "Not the wide swing! Forward! Put the point in!"
Chloe screamed.
She closed her eyes.
She thrust the rapier straight ahead.
Thud.
The silence was the loudest part of it.
She opened her eyes.
The dog had the blade through its neck, front to back, impaled up to the guard. It twitched once, all four legs at once, and then stopped.
I can feel it through the handle. I can feel it dying through the handle.
The last dog looked at the Alpha struggling with the axe, looked at its pack mate on the floor, and turned for the loading dock at the back.
Ren let go of the axe.
[Skill: Jump]
He cleared the paint aisle in one arc and landed directly in front of the fleeing dog, between it and the loading dock door, and he grabbed a hammer off the display rack beside him in the same motion.
The dog had nowhere to go.
Smash.
The hammer came down on the top of its skull and the sound of it was dense and singular and then there was nothing left moving on the floor.
[Target Neutralized: Mutated Hound (Lvl 4)] [Experience Gained: 80]
Ren straightened up. He had blue paint from the elbow down on his left arm and dog blood on the hammer. He looked at Chloe.
She was still holding the rapier out in front of her, both hands, the dog still on the end of it. She was looking at it the way you looked at a math problem that had given you the right answer by accident.
"Pull it out," Ren said.
She didn't move.
He walked over. He wrapped his hand over both of hers on the grip and pulled back in a single steady motion, and the blade came free with a sound that she would probably hear for a while.
"Good kill," Ren said.
"I..." She looked at her hands. "I killed it."
"It was going to eat your face," Ren said. "You won."
He walked back to the Alpha.
The hunger was already there, specific and focused now that the fight was down. The dog was a Level 4 specimen, the pack leader, the one with the developed shoulders and the pack coordination. That was worth something.
Ren knelt down and cut the chest open with the rapier.
The heart was large, dense, more muscle than a standard cardiac organ had any right to be, the tissue dark red and tight-grained.
He ate it.
Chewy. Iron on the back of the tongue and something underneath that was mineral and cold, the way river stones smelled in summer.
Gulp.
[Gluttony Activated.] [Consumed: Alpha Hound.] [Agility +2] [New Skill: Scent Tracking (Passive)] [Description: You can smell blood and fear from 500 meters away.]
Ren stood up and breathed in.
The hardware store rearranged itself around him. Sawdust, layered, the fresh cut on top and the older settled dust underneath. Blue paint, chemical and sharp. The wet fur smell of the three dead dogs, each one slightly different. The metal tang of blood. Chloe, behind him, cold sweat and the synthetic fabric of her jacket and something like adrenaline that he had not previously been able to identify as a specific scent.
And through the loading dock door at the back, through the concrete block wall.
Fresh gasoline. Engine exhaust. Cigarette smoke, current, someone smoking right now.
The smell of people who were making plans.
"Ren?" Chloe asked. "What is it?"
"Someone is close," Ren said. "Fresh gas. Running engine."
He moved to the loading dock door and looked through the crack at the hinge side.
The alley behind the hardware store connected to the service lane running behind the strip. A white panel van was parked against the wall of the gun shop next door, engine running, the exhaust visible in the still morning air. Three men were loading rifles from the gun shop's back storage into the van in a practiced relay, no conversation, working fast.
The first two were young, mid-twenties, lean in the way that people who ate inconsistently were lean. One had a shaved head going patchy at the crown, wearing a canvas work jacket two sizes large, his shoulders narrow but his forearms ropy with the kind of muscle that came from manual work rather than a gym. A scar ran from his left ear down to the jawline in a pale diagonal line, old enough to be fully healed. The other had dark hair pulled back with a rubber band, a bruise yellowing under his right eye, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulder. Both had rifles slung across their backs and handguns visible at the hip.
[Human Scavenger (Lvl 3)] [Human Scavenger (Lvl 3)]
The third one was the one smoking.
He was broad, the kind of broad that came from bone structure rather than mass, wide across the shoulders and thick through the neck. Mid-forties, a face that had been left out in weather for most of those years, deep lines at the corners of his mouth and across his forehead, skin the color of old teak. His hair was dark grey and cropped short. He had a jaw that looked like it had been squared off on purpose. His hands were enormous, the knuckles large, the kind of hands that had spent decades around machinery. He was wearing a military surplus vest over a dark shirt, cargo pants tucked into steel-toed boots that had survived real use. A cigarette in his left hand. A rifle in his right. He was not loading boxes. He was watching the alley entrance.
[Scavenger Leader (Lvl 5)]
Smart move, taking the hardware store first. I'd have done the same. But this whole block is ours now. Whoever came out of that grocery store is going back in a bag.
A woman's body was against the far wall of the alley, pushed to the side out of the path between the van and the door. She had been there a while.
The leader stepped on her arm to move past her toward the van without looking down.
"Ren," Chloe said from behind his shoulder. "Are they friendly?"
"No," Ren said.
He looked at the back of the hardware store. The forklift bay had three propane tanks in the rack beside the charging station, the large commercial size, heavy gauge steel.
He lifted one. Solid weight, sixty pounds at minimum, the valve intact at the top.
"Grab nails," he told Chloe. "Grab wood. Go back to base through the front."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to say hello."
"They have rifles, Ren!"
Ren looked at the tank. The valve fitting was standard. A bullet would spark against steel at close range.
"I have a tank," he said. "And I have a match."
He pushed the loading dock door open with his foot and stepped into the alley.
The van engine was loud enough that none of them heard the door. Ren crossed fifteen feet of alley before the leader's eyes moved.
"Hey!" Ren shouted.
All three spun simultaneously, rifles coming up with the automatic speed of people who had been in the same situation before. The two grunts had theirs level in under a second.
Big. Blue paint on the arm. Axe on the back and a tank in the hands. He's either very smart or very stupid. Shoot him. The leader's cigarette moved to the corner of his mouth. "Drop it!" he called. "Drop it or we put you down right now!"
Boss says shoot, I shoot. Easy.
That tank's leaking. Why is that tank already—
Ren grinned.
"You're blocking my driveway," Ren said.
The leader took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Kill him."
The two grunts fired.
Bang. Bang.
The bullets hit the tank in close succession.
Ping. Ping.
The sparks caught the gas vapor leaking from around the valve fitting. The flame was blue and immediate.
Ren was already throwing.
The tank turned end over end through fifteen feet of alley and the fireball caught before it hit the van, a rolling sphere of orange that took the vehicle broadside and lifted it completely off the driver's side wheels.
BOOM.
The shockwave hit the alley walls and came back and the van came back down on its roof in a shriek of metal, the windows already gone, and all three men were off their feet and moving through the air.
[Dash.]
Ren was through the smoke before it had finished expanding.
The first grunt hit the alley wall still burning and Ren's hammer connected with his temple on the way down.
Crunch.
[Target Neutralized.]
The leader had landed on his chest and was already getting his arms under him, the rifle gone somewhere in the blast, his right hand reaching toward a handgun at his hip. His left leg was at the wrong angle below the knee.
Ren stepped on the reaching hand.
Crunch.
"AHHH!" The sound tore out of the man's chest raw and immediate, the smooth foreman composure gone completely. He turned his head and looked up at Ren with his cheek against the alley concrete. "Who are you?! This block is claimed, we had this block!"
The fire from the van reflected off Ren's eyes, turning the violet in them amber and bright.
"I'm the landlord," Ren said.
He raised the hammer.