Garath arrived in the vacant main hall and started arranging the chairs, couches, and cushioned love-seats into a rough circle. Once satisfied, he took a seat in a chair facing the entrance. The chair itself wasn't anything special, just an old wooden chair. Sitting down, however, was absolute bliss. His bones and muscles ached and his head felt heavier and harder to keep upright than normal.
When Athios and the others arrived, they fixed him with questioning looks, but found their seats.
"God damn that feels good," said Warrion, kicking his feet out and sprawling into his seat. "Almost to the next break, G. How long, like fifteen minutes? If I start now, I may actually get some shut-eye... That's almost an hour," he said, mouth watering as he relished the thought.
"Yeah..." Garath's face scrunched up in a way that can only mean one thing - 'I’m about to hit you with some baaaad fucking news'.
"He's going to give us bad news, isn't he?" Sharon asked as she entered the hall with a purring Tarzan cradled against her chest. "And stop making that face, young man. You look constipated."
Garath made a different face.
"Well, that's why I asked you guys to meet me here.” He paused. “I think we need to leave the building. The smoke is getting ridiculous and we don’t know if this building’s going to hold up through another wave."
"But where would we go?" Gary asked, shifting uncomfortably in his wooden school chair.
"I'm open to ideas..." Garath told them. "But we could start by considering the Navy base. They have plenty of weaponry that should still be effective, it may be a good option. What do you guys think?"
"And just exactly what makes you in charge?" asked an older man that Garath didn’t recognize. The bald, mustached, and overweight man stood from the loveseat he had been occupying on the other side of the hall. Garath was sure they had met, but in the chaos of the last several hours - during which time the Necrologist had met dozens of people - unless something about an individual popped out, they all tended to blur together. "I brought my wife here because of your message, sure. But I'm not going to risk my life on an order from some punk like…"
“That brings up an interesting point, Phil,” a graceful, but severe looking woman of middle age interrupted the man. Garath recognized her as TodoroKen’s wife. The nameplate affixed above her head displayed the name ‘Heather#1717’. Heather stood up from her position on a long, deeply cushioned couch where she had been seated between her husband and their two small children. “My family also found this group from your message on the Community board, Garath.” Phil looked like he could pop any second, his face was so red. Heather continued without waiting for the man to say another word. “I will say that it has been a few hours since I looked at the forums. The last time I did though, there was nothing there from any kind of military or government operation. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find it pretty hard to believe that’s just a coincidence.”
"I don't believe in coincidences," Phil said, folding his arms at Garath and huffing as he swelled with his own self-importance.
"Then you're an idiot," Heather replied calmly, her expression unchanging and unreadable. Garath couldn't help smiling, the man basically just agreed with her and she called him an idiot.
"What is it, exactly, that you're implying anyways?" asked Garath's neighbor, Sarah. She was looking at Heather from the far side of the hall. Sarah looked confused by her own question for a second, and then clarified. "About the coincidence, I mean. You were pretty clear with the second part."
"What I was implying is that, regardless of the situation, the government desperately clings to its control over its citizens. If there haven't been any orders from them, the only explanation can be that nobody is left to give them." Heather sat down. She had made her point.
Garath now understood just a little bit more about TodoroKen. Heather was a petite woman, but she had a towering presence that commanded attention and demanded respect. Garath had never been married, but even he may have hid the time he wasted on video games from this woman.
“Heather’s got a point,” Garath agreed. “But even if everyone there is dead, the Navy base may still be our best option. It was literally designed to be defended, the buildings are concrete, and we may even be able to pick up some guns and ammunition."
"Why do we need to leave at all?" Sharon asked. "It seems to me like we have a pretty good thing going here."
"Well it's just a theory," replied Garath speculatively, "but each wave has been more destructive than the last, and I don't mean just to humans. First it was just skeletons, then archers, then magic users, then those little fire breathing dragons? I'm noticing a pattern here, aren't you? Will this building hold up for two more waves? Do you want your kids to be inside it if it can't?"
“I am with Sharon,” said Almaria, the uncomfortably pregnant hispanic woman. “The messages that have come to my brain says that billions of people has died. We are alive. It is not good for us to leave.”
The group debated the logistics of leaving the building that had kept every member of the Raid safe for seventeen hours as more of The Band filed into the main hall and the perfunctory death count prompt arrived to let them know their half-hour window had already started ticking away.
Monster respawns will be halted for the next 30 minutes as the next wave is prepared. Rest and hone your skills, human. The Culling
