Kendra worked her way back to the camp. The humans had congregated on the west side of town, around the high school. It was a brick building that was more easily defended than the other buildings in town.

Corey and Shayla ran a barter shop in the camp. They provided a place for the scavengers to trade their items. There was a bar attached to the shop. Shayla looked up from the bar to see Kendra walking in. “How you doing? You look awful.” Shayla said.

Kendra walked upto the bar and sat down without looking up. “I’m so tired of this. I lost Jason today. We walked up on a tree. It looked pretty normal. Maybe a little bigger than normal. Jason saw something and tried to move closer. Then the ground opened up beneath his feet and something attacked both of us. Before I knew it Jason was gone. I ran away. And now I’m here.” Kendra’s voice trailed off as her story got closer to the end. Shayla decided to let Kendra sit in silence for a bit. She didn’t need to fill every moment with sound. Shayla thought about the last few months. No one really knew what was going on anymore. Something happened that day. All the electrical items stopped working. Nothing could be done to get them working again. It could have been localized or it could have been global. No one was really set up to travel really far without electrical systems and modern conveniences.

Shayla nodded her head. “It's been happening more often. Groups are coming back missing people. We haven’t had anyone from outside the town come in for a while. Corey and I think whatever happened was damn near global in scope. We should have seen or heard something by now. But we haven’t.”

“We are running out of food. All we grow here is wheat and it hasn’t been long enough to get any gardens going.” Kendra pointed out. “I think the groups have gotten all the easy stuff. Jason and I were over on the far side of town because those houses haven’t been picked over as much.”

“I think something happened over there. Corey was taking a roll call to see where everyone was from and what they had. There simply are not that many people here from over there.” Shayla told Kendra.

“What do we do?” Kendra asked back.

“We stay alive as long as we can.” Shayla sighed. “Also we need to get a handle on the abilities people seem to have now.”

“Jason had a theory the abilities would follow RPG conventions. People have classes and abilities. His theories seemed to be a working explanation for what we are seeing now. He was super frustrated by a lack of a status screen. He thought there should have been one. Regardless, people have abilities and are actively using them.” Kendra said.

“Give us a couple of days, Kendra. We’ll get a bigger group going and head back over to where Jason is. How about you just take a break until then.” Shayla said.