Chapter 15: Book 1: Chapter 7 (Part 3 of 3)

About ninety minutes later we were ensconced in the manager’s lounge which was adjacent to Gareth’s office. I’d given a lowdown on how the inventory worked to Keith, Mia and Malky, as well as explaining my species change.

It turned out both Keith and Mia had done the same thing as Shana. They had both refused to pick a class, so were both stuck as Civilians until they reached one thousand XP. Malky had been a surprise, he had taken the Knight-Errant class.

I managed to have that chat with Quixbix about the odd classes. So, it turns out that above Civilian there was a whole raft of non-combat classes for those who didn’t want to endanger themselves. They kept the expanded inventories but picked up additional advancement when they levelled. If you stuck to the Civilian branch of the class tree there were a greater number of town quests available from the podiums that allowed them level-up without having to fight.

Interestingly, Victor, Constance and Vincent may not have picked their classes. If their potential was too low to allow them to take a combat class then the Framework would have automatically assigned them an appropriate Civilian class.

We used the Civilians extra inventory space to easily move some beds, mattresses and bedding to the two rooms. Keith was being a pain in the ass and kept trying to sneak off to collect high-end electronics once I’d informed him that he could carry a thousand kilos.

Keeping him on track was wearing my patience thin and I was reminded why we hadn’t progressed from acquaintances to actual friends.

After that, Shana and I went shopping without them, so we could stock up on the stuff we thought we might need for our travels.

Initially, despite my lack of experience using them, I was disappointed our branch of BuyMart didn’t sell firearms. Even though they no longer packed the punch they used to, they did do some damage. On the other hand, if they had sold guns Constance and Vincent’s group would almost certainly have been armed. I survived four slugs to the chest, yes, but how well would I have stood up to half a dozen shotgun shells and if Shana had been caught in the crossfire she would have been shredded.

Our shopping list included camping equipment, sleeping bags, firelighters and purification tablets for drinking water. I wasn’t sure how necessary these would be but thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

Torches, or flashlights as Shana corrected me, as well as plenty of batteries of all sizes. We managed to find a few expensive solar-powered lamps and grabbed some cheaper solar powered garden lights.

I knew from customer complaints the garden lights wouldn’t last more than a few months, a year tops, but if we hadn’t sorted something out by then we’d be in real trouble. Candles joined the growing collection of survival gear for when everything else ran out of juice.

Spare clothing and plenty of desiccated foodstuffs like ramen noodles, condensed milk and cereal were added. We could load up on fresh food if we wanted as the inventory apparently kept it that way, but it would weigh more so I felt dried would be a better use of our available space.

That didn’t stop us from using a portable gas stove and cooking up a meat-heavy feast and pigging out that evening, though.

Shana laughed when I guided her to the toilet roll shelves after we had stocked up on hygiene products and told her to load up as many as she could. She laughed right up until when I asked what the first thing shops ran out of during the pandemic panic buying and did she fancy wiping her arse with leaves. She managed to pack in about two thousand rolls with the space we had left.

When our shopping was complete, I sat in Gareth’s office and spread the map of Michigan in front of me and asked Shana to join me.

<Would you like me to overlay the positions of the dungeons on this map for you, Torin?> Quixbix asked.

That would be very helpful Quixbix, thank you.

“Okay, here we are.” I jabbed my finger on the map to indicate our current position to Shana when she settled down beside me. “The dungeon we are interested in is here.” I pointed to the middle of the Ionia State Recreation Area.

Shana produced a marker pen and dabbed it in the spot I pointed at.

“You can see it’s a little bit southwest of Ionia itself. We can take the M-21 most of the way.” I traced my finger in a straight line following the M-21. “How experienced are you on a bike?” I asked her.

“I haven’t ridden an actual bike since I was a child, but I’ve done some spin classes, so I think I’ll be able to keep up,” Shana answered, correctly inferring the reason behind my query.

 “Good. Under normal circumstances with a bit of elbow grease, we could cover the full distance in a day. I don’t think we are going to get that lucky. We’ll aim to make it to St. Johns. That’s roughly forty-five miles so we should make it easily before nightfall,” I said.

“Why St. Johns? I think we could make Fowler it’s only another ten miles,” she asked, pointing at the smaller town further along the M-21.

“True,” I said. “And we may decide to push further on if we encounter no problems, but St. Johns is a fair bit bigger, and Dean told me the larger the population centre the further away the monster spawning crystals will be.”

“Torin, you’re not from Michigan, are you?” she asked.

“What gave it away? The English accent?” I joked.

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“That’s not what I meant. You haven’t been to any of these places have you,” she pressed.

“No, I was at the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan until recently. I only transferred to Flint in the spring,” I told her.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Ann Arbor and Flint are urban centres with a pretty big population, over a hundred thousand people easy in each. These other towns along the M-21 not so much. St. Johns may look much bigger than Fowler on the map but we’re only talking a few thousand people. If St Johns is significantly more exposed than Flint, I don’t think it can be much more dangerous in Fowler,” Shana reasoned.

I mulled over what she was saying and couldn’t find any fault in her logic.

“Alright, we will aim for Fowler as a minimum. If things look good, we’ll push even further. Maybe we could even make Lyons,” I said and pointed to the small town spanning the Grand River to the southeast of Ionia. “We’ll be passing through that way anyhow. Agreed?”

“Yes, I agree,” Shana said.

I looked out the window of the office. The sun was setting, and we would have to light a candle or use a battery-powered lamp soon.

“Sun’s going down. If we want to get as far as possible tomorrow, we should get some shut eye now so we can head out just after sunrise,” I said.

To make my point I pulled my shoes, shirt and jeans off and climbed on the double bed we had brought up an hour earlier.

“What time is that?” Shana asked.

“The sun will be up at 6 so we will be up thirty minutes before that,” I told her.

Shana groaned audibly. Then it occurred to her to ask a rather more pertinent question. There was only room in the office for one double bed.

“Um, where am I supposed to sleep?” she asked.

I shimmied from the centre of the bed and patted the sheet beside me.

“Plenty of room right here,” I said with a sly grin.

Shana looked conflicted and then said.

“Did Quixbix put you up to this?” she asked.

“No,” I answered and furrowed my brow in confusion.

What did Quixbix have to do with the price of apples?

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You can crash in the other room if you like, but they will be restless and bitching most of the night about the heat and the lack of air-con,” I said.

“No, you’re right, we should stick together,” Shana said, making her decision.

Shana climbed up onto the bed, but she didn’t change out of her sports bra and exercise leggings. She curled up on the other side of the bed. Shana wasn’t sleeping on the edge of the bed but was just out of easy reach. I found myself a touch hurt and angry, which was stupid as we’d only known each other for half a day.

“Good night, Shana,” I said after a minute or two.

“Good night, Torin,” she said.

Was that a slightly pleased tone I detected? Or was my rampant libido leading me to hear what I wanted to? Those questions faded as it wasn’t long before I heard the change in her breathing that came with sleep and I didn’t last much longer before drifting off myself.

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