I sat in my running car a bit longer than I probably should have, just watching the rusted metal gate. It was so familiar, and even the sight of my old home filled me with nostalgia and sorrow. I tried to get down to the house every few months or so to clean, but I hadn’t been back in about six months.

I lived here with my mother my entire life. I was from Austin born and raised and had gone to the public schools in the city since I was five. My father married my mother right out of high school. They had gone to college together, where she got a degree in electrical engineering. My father went to law school. She got pregnant the year after her graduation and having children was never a part of my father’s plan. He quickly got a divorce and left. I’ve seen him maybe four times in my entire life, and I really don’t care much for him.

My mother took the divorce hard, but with a baby on the way, she wanted to do everything she could to make sure I lived a good life. She was a talented engineer, and she was able to afford the down payment of this old ranch property with her savings. She kept working through my childhood and was able to pay off the land after only a few years.

I had a good childhood. My mom was also a Texas girl, and she loved the outdoors. She would take time off of work to take me camping or teach me to hunt and shoot. Things were honestly pretty good. We didn’t really have other families because my mother wasn’t close to my grandparents and she was an only child, but I think we lived a good life.

When I was 17, my mom was in a debilitating car accident. A drunk driver plowed into her sedan at a light with his tricked out pickup truck. I still remember getting that call from the hospital explaining what happened. I ran out of my class and got in my car. I rushed to the hospital in time to talk to her, but her injuries were severe, and she died of an internal hemorrhage the next day. It didn’t feel real for the longest time, her being gone. All these years later and I now know that wounds like that never really heal, they just scar. You’re totally fine for 90% of the time, and then you see something that sets you off, and the hurt is right there for you to notice all over again.

After the accident, I had a choice. My birthday was in two months, and I could either live with my maternal grandparents or live with my father until I turned 18. I decided to forgo both of those and spent two months in foster care. The foster parents I was placed with were nice and supportive, and really helped me get back on my feet, but I turned 18 and was out of the system before we could really connect. I used to call them from time to time, but we’ve lost contact over the past year or so.

My birthday is right at the end of the year, so I turned 18 and found an apartment with roommates before I finished high school. I started college in the fall semester of the next year, and here we are now.

I hopped out of the car and grabbed the gate to open it up. There was a combination lock on it to keep people out while no one was here, so I quickly span the dials and got the chain off. I decided to leave the gate unlocked while I was here. I could lock it when I left.

After pulling my car through and closing the gate behind me, I headed down a long dirt road to our old ranch house. It was made in the 1980s and was pretty outdated when my mom purchased the property, but we spent a lot of time and money updating the house. The outside is nothing pretty, but the inside has high ceilings and modern décor. The house is only about a half-mile past the gate, and I arrived at it in short order.

Getting out of the car, I grabbed my bag and ran to check and see if the house was still OK. Based on what I could tell from the outside, it was still relatively clean, and no one had been inside since I was last here. There was an automated sprinkler system that was turned on in the summer droughts that kept the gardens outside nice, clean, and thriving.

I opened the front door and put my stuff down on the kitchen table. The house had two bedrooms and two and a half baths and was only a single story. The rooms were large a spacious, and the clean pastel yellows and greens on the walls made it feel much airier and clean inside. There was only a cursory amount of dust, but I would need to clean it if I decided to stay here for any reasonable amount of time. As much as I’d like to say the dust wouldn’t bother me, that would be a lie. I always think it's important to take good care of your things. It says a lot about a person, the way they keep their possessions.

I decided that the first order of business would be to scour the garage that we kept as a storage space for unperishable foods, ammunition, and tools. I opened the garage door, turning on the light and gazed upon the shelves of goods that covered the garage. My mother was not a hoarder, but she did like to tinker with things. A large portion of the stuff in the garage was old electronics that she was working on, building fun things, or trying to restore.

I quickly found two ten-pound bags of pinto beans and another twenty-pound bag of parboiled rice. Both had an expiration date in decades as long as they were in sealed containers and were must-haves in the event of food shortages. After holding all of them in my hands, I realized that I was holding forty pounds of food in one hand out from my body. I was freaking ripped. Damn that feels good.

As well as the food, I decided to pack lots of our camping gear as well. I scavenged up two survival hatchets, one wood chopping ax, a bow saw, a gas-powered chainsaw, two machetes, a large four-person tent, and a couple of cots and bedrolls just in case. I opened the garage door and loaded them into the car immediately. With the chainsaw, I went ahead and loaded a gas can as well. Better safe than sorry.

The gun case was in the living room and was always left open and unlocked, but I had the key anyway. My mother kept her custom AR-15, as well as a Glock, loaded and ready in good condition. I packed both into their carrying cases, as well as two additional magazines for both. There were also three bricks of 9mm for the Glock, and two bricks of 5.56 for the AR. We had enough to defend ourselves for sure.

I personally had two guns. I always liked the classics, and I had a 3030-henry golden boy, and a double-barrel stagecoach gun, both Christmas presents from mom. I had twenty-five loose twelve-gauge shotgun shells and another two-hundred rounds for the golden boy. This was really starting to feel like an apocalypse level situation, and rule number 1 of the apocalypse should always be ‘don’t forget the shotgun’.

I pulled out my phone and checked the time to see how progress was going along. It was only 3:00, all I needed to do was find the CB radio, load it into the car, and get ready to leave. The CB radio was in the garage with some more of mom’s electrical supplies, so I turned to try and get it disconnected from the house and loaded into the car.

I opened up the garage door, but as I did, I felt another alert message pop into my mind.

As soon as I heard the message, I felt my phone buzz.

Vic, get your ass back into town. – Taylor

Honestly, that sounded like a pretty good idea. I ran to the front door, and locked it shut. I then went into the garage and unhooked the CB radio. I easily picked it up, and ran out to the car, but I stumbled and fell along the way. Luckily, I was able to turn my body in time to keep the radio from being harmed, but still, it was weird for me to trip over nothing, especially considering my new abilities.

As I sat up, I could immediately tell that something was wrong.

There was an old oak tree, almost 60 feet tall on our property about 50 feet outside of the front door. We had tied a rope swing onto one of the branches, and I loved to play on it when I was younger. The only problem was that the oak tree seemed to be about twenty feet to the left of where it should be.

I knew for a fact that the tree was supposed to be right across from one of our front flower beds, but instead of a tree there, there was only a large spot of grass. It was like the whole world moved, except buildings. Looking back on the ground behind me, I realized that when I ‘tripped’, I actually had one foot on the grass, and one on the pavement.

I didn’t really expect this, but I could definitely see it happening. It would only make sense that whoever did this would need more space to enact their changes. Considering that the tree and ground moved, but my house seemed stationary, it seems like anything that was man-made avoided the shift. Deciding to go check out the dirt road, I activated flight and sailed into the air. Immediately I noticed a problem. Because while flying I weighed functionally nothing, there was also nothing to keep me from drifting around. So far, I had only flown in places with little to no wind, but when I flew up to my max of 40 feet, I started being buffeted and blown along with the higher winds. I could try and move against the wind, but it was proving rather difficult, probably due to my low level in flight. I lowered my altitude to only 15 feet, where the wind was much less intense. Gaining some control back, I flew along the dirt road, and found what I had been dreading. The forest had moved over the path, blocking the way.

In this part of Texas, the forests mostly consisted of a combination of Cedar and Oak trees. The cedar trees were actually a bit of a pest, as they consumed something like 10 times the water of an oak tree of comparable size, and they spread like crazy. One of the first things my mom did moving out here was clear and burn as many cedar trees as possible. She decided to keep the trees that blocked our vision to the main road though, and those trees were now keeping my car penned into the driveway.

Pulling out my phone, I tried to text Cindy and Taylor, but there was no reception. Dreading the possibility, I flew into the house once again and tried to turn on a light switch. The power was out. I guess while buildings were counted out of the second wave, power lines and cables didn’t count. I had a solar charger that we used for camping that could power the CB radio, but there was no guarantee that someone who could help could show up. My best bet would be to try and clear out the trees on the driveway enough to get my car through.

Another alert pinged in the back of my mind.

Alright, so practically all of humanity has been transformed at this point. I wonder if they will be as powerful as the beta testers? Based on the original messages, it seemed like those of us in the beta would have a bit of a leg up on others. Also, the fact that only 80% of the population were transformed at this stage really worried me. The next phase was the monster phase. Does that mean 20% of humans are going to become some kind of sentient monsters? About the change in the world, I remember from the previous update that environmental changes would be happening in the third wave. If these were not environmental changes, then what those changes would bring is starting to worry me.

Leaving that on the back burner in my mind, I decided that it was time to plan out my next moves, but more importantly, it was time to get working. I popped my trunk, and grabbed my chainsaw, walking down the road until I made it to where the forest had shifted over the road.

It took a few pulls to start the motor of the saw but given my new strength I had no problems with it. Not one to sit idle, I started working. It didn’t take long for me to get stuck back in the rhythm of labor.

The craftsman’s trance skill was a pleasant surprise and was almost immediately useful. When it activated, I could feel the surrounding noises sink to the back of my mind, and I could focus more wholly on my task. The lumberjack skill actually seemed to help me learn about felling trees, granting me a strange sense to understand where to move my saw to get the most out of my effort. The increase in athletics was always helpful, and one of my primary goals was to increase athletics as high as possible. I also planned on getting my physical skills to their current maximums before I started working on more combat. I also couldn’t neglect my magical skills, because that would probably bite me in the ass sooner or later. I had received multiple scratches while working, and my passive regeneration was taking care of those leaving smooth skin, without blemish or scar. It seems like strength is gained by working the body, and constitution by injuring and healing. This was a good way to level both.

I continued working well into the afternoon, and before I knew it the sun was already setting.

After working the whole day, my character sheet was looking good. I had even managed to level identify by spamming it at trees.

Skill Page:

The road was almost completely clear, and I could finish work on it in relatively short order, but I still had a decent amount of work to do before I was combat-ready. Luckily, I could work on that inside.