Sponsored Apocalypse, ch 4

I didn’t know exactly where I was as I lay down in the undergrowth of the dark forest, trying to catch my breath and get my bearings.  My earlier sprint had actually let me cover a lot of ground.  That’s right, I thought.  My stats rose.

If my understanding of stats was correct, that meant I would at least physically equal an olympic athlete now.

It was a weird thought.

Luckily, the moon was bright enough to see by.  I used a broken stick and the claw of my old hammer to open the cardboard box I’d brought from my garage.  Every sound I made seemed incredibly loud to me.  My beating heart was like a drum.  Memories of the cyclops chewing on a person while it tore apart my house made my blood run cold.

Luckily, I finally managed to open the package with my crude tools.

Once it was out of the box, I took the cover off a wickedly curved blade and nodded slowly. It was a good piece.

I examined my one and only current weapon.  It was lucky that I found this one on the way out, and I was sure as hell was not going back to my destroyed house to comb through the ruins for anything else the system might have missed.  Holding the weapon triggered my memory and I recalled what it was.  That’s right, I thought.  This thing is called the Reaper.

Not quite a sword, and not quite a spear, the blade was about two feet long and so was the handle.  It was a little bit like a Japanese nagamaki, except the handle slightly curved in the opposite direction as the gracefully swept blade.  The fact it came with a sheath was lucky for me because I did not want to be carrying around so much sharp steel without a cover.

I absently felt around in my pockets but didn’t find anything in them.  Then I glanced at my watch and grinned.  The band for my watch had a decent amount of paracord wrapped around it.  At least the system hadn't taken that. I used almost all of it to fashion a simple sling for the Reaper, my new glaive-like weapon.

It felt a little weird on my back, and I remembered why I’d left the thing in the box in the first place.  Ordering from custom shops took a while, and by the time I’d received this weapon from Zombie Tools, I’d had doubts that I would be able to use it very well with the martial disciplines I’d practiced.  After all, I was much more confident with a side sword, or spear, or longsword.  It was ironic that now I didn’t have anything else, but at least this glaive was well made and built to take one hell of a beating.

Once my weapon was on my back, I examined the hammer I’d grabbed. The strange feeling drawing me to it was still there and I quickly figured out why.

[You have been recognized by the spirit of this hammer]

The notification popped up so unexpectedly I almost yelped.  It took me a moment to figure out what was going on, and another to figure out why the hammer might have triggered my skill. That was when I remembered this old, time-stained ball peen hammer that my grandfather gave me had supposedly belonged to his father before him.

I must have been the truth.

[Would you like to establish a contract with the spirit in the hammer?]

The prompt hung in the air while I thought it over.  There was nothing in my skill saying anything about a limit to the number of items I could bond with--I just checked–so I carefully pressed, "Yes."

Suddenly, I felt a new awareness at the back of my mind with the hammer.  It was a connection I instinctively knew would disappear if I discarded it or was too far away for too long

Lindstrom Family Hammer

This hammer has faithfully served the Lindstrom family for generations.   As a Lindstrom, you have the right to call this hammer your partner.

You may summon this hammer into your hand at any time. There is no limit to the number of times you may use this ability.

I considered the hammer before gently tossing it away so it wouldn't make too much noise, then mentally called it back into my hand in a way I instinctively knew how to do now.

"Works like a charm," I muttered.

I wasn't sure how useful the hammer was going to be. Maybe I could throw it, use it as a weapon and call it back or something, but it wasn't exactly Mjolnir.  It was just a regular, antique ball peen hammer.

So the world was being attacked by monsters, but all I had were some skills I still didn't entirely understand, an odd, if very high quality bladed weapon, and an old hammer.  Could be worse, I admitted.

Sounds of violence and mayhem echoed through the forest from the distance, punctuated by gun shots.  I hoped every bullet killed a monster.  But the noise made me consider that even with higher stats, I was still basically just a guy with a sword now.  Well, and a hammer.

I might even need to be wary of other people, soon. The odds of the end of the world being global was high, and I didn't trust people in general to act right with only their own morals to guide them.  Especially if they were scared as hell and they had to worry about themselves or their families being eaten.

That fact was underlined a moment later as I heard footsteps and the sound of a group moving through the woods nearby.  I didn't jump up right away, figuring I'd wait to see who it was first. My heart dropped when I heard voices that didn't sound human, speaking a language that I'd never heard before.

That's right, I thought.  They're moving a bit too casually for a group of freaked out humans, at night, in a forest, with the sounds of world War monster out there, huh?

I carefully raised my head above the clumps of ferns I was hiding between to see who, or what, was nearby.

Once I got a visual, I lowered myself just as carefully again and tried not to freak out.  Goblins.  It had to be goblins. They looked just like every depiction I'd ever seen of them in my life.  Goblins in real life. What the hell?

I did a lot of thinking in the space of three heartbeats.

My whole life, I'd just really wanted to be left alone.  It seemed like nobody close to me ever really understood that.  They thought I didn't like people, but that wasn't true.  I liked people individually, I just didn't like society.  Society brought out the worst in people.  I didn't like large groups of people.  And I especially didn't like some people telling other people what to do just because they had more money or power.

I always preferred to judge someone more by what they did or how they treated others than what kind of car they drove.

But I'd learned that most of the world was not like me. I’d mostly learned this lesson the hard way, painfully because a lot of people claimed to be like me, but when push came to shove, they always wanted more.

More stuff, more recognition, more validation.  I liked to improve, but I’d never really cared what people thought about me.  I was happy with who I was.  Unfortunately, that’d seemed to never be good enough in any of my short, failed relationships.  Like, I wanted to be the best person I could be, mind and body, not compete with my neighbors’ pool size wars.

So I’d tried to do what I wanted to do, stay true to my own conscience. And as I'd prepared for a coming apocalypse, doubting my own sanity at times, I'd promised myself to never let anything that happened change who I was.

Laying on the slightly damp forest floor, I thought about how the world was rapidly changing.  Maybe now…what I wanted in life might change if I actually survived all of this.  Maybe if I hadn’t been preparing for the end of the world for so long it would have taken me more time to accept what happened.  But I had been preparing, and it seemed I had an advantage over most others now.

Ultimately, I still wanted to be left alone.  In the past, I hadn't had the strength, the power to truly live the life I'd wanted.

But maybe I did now.

While I came to that conclusion, one of the goblins threw something near me.  In the darkness, I managed to see it was a chewed human arm. The fingers were still attached.

Well, that answers whether they're enemies or not, I thought.  Hand on my weapon, heart racing, I braced myself to stand, to attack.

If I didn't seize the opportunity I'd worked for, if I didn't try to take control of my own destiny, I knew I'd regret it.  I’d been shit on my entire life because I’d never had any power.  That fact was depressing but true.

Things had changed.  The whole damn world had just changed, literally overnight.  I had a character screen!

With the night being punctuated by the sounds of distant violence, it didn't take too much thought to realize I wouldn't be able to avoid blood and death in this new world, not with what I'd seen so far.

Something deep inside myself, something I’d suppressed for a long time started to come to life again.  Underneath all my dismay and my fear, a glowing kernel of righteous anger I thought had died long ago began to glow.  Life wasn’t fair, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.  And maybe now…maybe now things could be different!

With a heart ready for violence, I tensed.