11 – Settlement

Andy stood behind the closed gates of the Sleepy Saguaro Trailer Park. He’d gone to push them shut after helping Lucy carry her brother’s body back to their trailer. He didn’t like the idea of her keeping a corpse around, but what was he supposed to do, tell her to leave it outside? He’d promised to help her bury him if things didn’t miraculously return to normal and she couldn’t call an ambulance or something.

As he wrapped the chains around the two sides of the rolling gate, clicking the padlock shut, a woman’s voice called out from behind him, “What are you doing there?”

He recognized the voice right away—Bernice, the trailer park manager. He turned to face her, leaning on his spear. “I’m locking the gates.”

“What? Why? There are people out there who will want to come home!”

Andy gave her a good look; she was wearing her usual overalls, and he didn’t miss the handle of a kitchen cleaver sticking out of one of her oversized pockets. According to the System, she’d contributed to the battle for the trailer park, so she must have fought something, right?

He cleared his throat, nodding. “Yeah, I hope you’re right, Bernice. We can always open the gate for them. In the meantime, you want more weird creatures to wander in here? More monsters? We’re only a mile or two from the furthest of the east-side suburbs, and who knows how many ranches and whatnot are out in the nearby desert.”

She nodded, slowly. “Right, I guess. It’s Andy, yeah? From lot forty-two?”

“Yeah.”

She looked past him into the darkness, then up at the cloud-filled sky. The wind had finally died down, and the thunder was distant. “Wish the phones or something would work.”

“Me too.” Andy had been thinking about that—nothing working—and he’d had some thoughts. He decided to use Bernice as a sounding board. “James says it’s the mana; the System told him so when his gun wouldn’t work right.”

“Oh yeah? The hell is

mana?”

“You got the System’s little lecture, right? About how it found Earth and decided we were worth joining its, uh, I dunno, collection? It said the mana doesn’t follow physics or something. It’s basically magical energy.”

Bernice smirked. She was a rough-looking woman, probably in her forties, and it looked like she’d worked outside for most of her life. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail, and, while he watched, she drew a blunt out of her overalls and sparked a lighter, taking a long, deep drag. “You believe all that shit?” she asked as she exhaled.

“I mean, you’ve seen everything going on, right?” Andy pointed to the lighter. “That still works. So do James’s butane camp lanterns. I have a feeling gasoline will still burn, too. It’s just that I think they burn a little less. I think the mana is all around us. You saw the lightning, right? It’s still lightning, but it’s different. It seems like the more energy something has, the more the mana saps it. I don’t think any batteries are going to work.”

“So no cars?”

“I’m not sure. I can try to push start my bike, but if the sparkplugs don’t work right, the engine won’t either. Even if the sparkplugs work, if the gasoline doesn’t burn as hot anymore—I mean, most modern engines won’t tolerate that. Maybe a diesel.” Andy shrugged. “I’m not a mechanic. I’ll go try my bike, though. I’ve gotten it running without a battery before.”

“Lemme know what you find out. I think I’ll go around and see who all is here.”

“We should keep someone watching the gate.”

“I’ll get Leonard out here. He’s just sitting on his porch drinking warm beers.”

Andy nodded. Leonard was an old guy who lived right behind Bernice. He only knew him because the guy was always sitting on his porch drinking beers. He waved and started walking. “Talk to you soon.”

He had a lot on his mind as he returned to his trailer. He’d seen horrors. He’d been nearly killed more than once. He’d watched a young man who might have been his friend die in front of his eyes. Those were just the immediate, visceral experiences he was going through. Then there was the System. There was the apparent apocalypse currently underway on the Earth. His mother was thousands of miles away, and who knew what kinds of nightmares were between him and her? “Lord knows what’s going on in Miami.”

He had to assume that things were bad everywhere, and he had to assume things weren’t going to be peaceful just because the trailer park seemed to be calm for the moment. There had to be something like a million people living in and around Tucson. If half of them had “mutated,” then that meant there were a lot of damn monsters out there. Were there other people fighting to clear out their neighborhoods? The city? Were the monsters winning in some places?

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He looked at his status page again, focusing on the blinking numeral six beside his “improvement points.” Six. It seemed like he was earning those points pretty damn quickly, considering James only had one, and when he’d asked Lucy, she’d held up three fingers. He hadn’t wanted to try to fish for more details, but he had a feeling she’d already spent some. Did she have a class yet, though?

As he walked, Andy resolved to spend his six points. It might be smarter on paper to save them until he knew more about the System, but saving them wasn’t going to keep him alive if a giant spider started sucking his guts out. “After my bike,” he said to the quiet night as he approached his trailer. He leaned his spear beside the door and then wheeled his bike to the narrow, paved lane.

He tapped the gear shifter until it was in first, then, holding the clutch, he sprinted down the lane, pushing the bike. When it was rolling as fast as he could run, he swung up to the seat and let go of the clutch. The engine coughed, rumbling and sputtering as he cranked the throttle. Then, with a bang and a cloud of black smoke, the engine backfired and sputtered out. His little adventure took him close to James’s trailer, and the older man ran out, holding the bat Andy had given him.

“Yo! Your bike work?”

Andy shook his head, rolling it toward him. “Sort of, but not enough. I think the mana keeps the gas from burning right. I think it messes up how the sparkplugs work.”

“Well, if mana’s gonna take energy out of everything, maybe we need to figure out how to use mana for this stuff.” James snapped his fingers. “A mana engine!”

Andy got off his bike and shrugged. “You’re the tinker.”

James shook his head. “I ain’t got the first clue about any of that…”

“Yeah, I know—not yet, but man, you read the System’s notice, right? It said it was basically treating us like we’re in a game. Maybe games aren’t your thing, but I can tell you that in most of them, the way you learn how to build or ‘craft’ the cool shit is by starting at the bottom. You made a spear earlier, right? Keep making stuff, and maybe the System will encourage you with more points and a better class or something.” Andy nodded toward the trailer. “How’s Keshawn?”

“He’s up! Stuck on the couch for now with that ankle, but he ate something. Hey, speaking of eating—what the hell we gonna do with no water? No electricity?”

Andy sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know, man. We'd better have a meeting or something and talk about what kinds of supplies we’ve got. If people don’t return soon, we might have to go into some of the unoccupied trailers.” Andy started pushing his bike back toward his trailer. “I’ll come around in a few minutes. Gotta figure a few things out.”

“All right, Andy. See you in a few.”

Andy rolled his bike to his trailer, put down the kickstand, and went inside. With a sigh, he pulled off his helmet and his leather gloves. It was dark in there, but he could see everything in shades of gray and blue. Why blue? He looked out the window, craning his neck left and right, and then he saw the moon, huge and bright, gleaming down on the Earth in definite, blue-tinted light. Was that another effect of the mana? Was it in the atmosphere, distorting the light? “At least the clouds are clearing up.”

With a sigh, he sat on his couch and called up his status page. What was he going to spend his points on? Before he could address the question, bright, sparkling golden lights appeared on the ground near his feet and, with them, a tinkling sound like someone dropping pieces of glass on a tile floor. When it faded and the lights winked out one by one, a small wooden box was on the ground before him, and a new System message appeared:

***Your personalized System-generated award for gaining control of the Sleepy Saguaro Trailer Park has been delivered!***

“Huh,” Andy grunted, leaning down to pick up the container. It was about half the size of a shoe box, and the wood was smooth and polished. He lifted the lid and caught his breath. A polished metal spearhead rested inside. About six inches long, it featured a conical socket, designed to slide securely over a wooden haft. The head split into four wickedly curved blades, each honed to a razor’s edge; he tested it by rubbing his thumb over the blade, smiling as it caught, biting into the fine ridges of his fingerprint.

“So, I see how this is personalized, I guess.” He closed the box; he’d bring it to James after he figured out his improvement points. With any luck, the “tinker” could attach it to his shovel handle. He pulled up his status page again, but then he saw a blinking button on the upper-right-hand corner labeled, “SETTLEMENT MANAGEMENT.”

Maybe because he appreciated the distraction from his quandary regarding the improvement points, Andy said, “Settlement management,” and a new System message appeared:

***Congratulations! You have accessed the SETTLEMENT MANAGEMENT page for the first time. Are you ready to begin your interactive tutorial? You will be removed from the flow of time in a small dimensional bubble while you complete this process. Yes/No.***

Andy shrugged. “Yes.” His ears popped, and everything faded to a flat gray, featureless plane. A moment later, a glowing orb of yellow light floated into his vision, pulsing softly before him.

The orb throbbed with slightly brighter light, and a pleasant, masculine voice said, “Hello, Andy.”

“Um, hello?”

“I am Guide 7643X006. I am here to orient you and help you understand the nuances of managing a settlement on a System-controlled world.”

“Are you the, uh, System?”

“I am an agent of the System.”

Andy frowned and folded his arms over his chest. “If you can speak with me in a dimensional space, don’t you think the System could have been a lot more informative about this whole thing? People are dying and no one has a damn clue what’s going on!”

“This process is reserved for the leaders who emerge from the initial integration. You have claimed a settlement and thus are a leader. The System must manage its resources. Please understand that enormous amounts of mana must be expended each second the System maintains this space and projects my consciousness to speak with you. I will try to answer some of your unrelated questions when we finish, but we must focus on the task at hand—learning to manage a settlement.”

“Why is it a settlement? We’re not settlers. We’re—”

“Please focus, Andy, and I will begin with a brief explanation of the situation you are facing.”