Chapter 3

"Hayes." The voice of SSG Underwood cut through my self-pity and brought me back to earth.

"Yes, sergeant," I responded as I usually would when an NCO talked to me. I thought it was strange how that piece of training still stuck with me even after all of this happened. "Did custom and courtesy even matter now?" There was no time to ponder this, though, because everyone had gathered around me, and SSG Underwood was talking.

"I don't know what exactly is going on, but I do know that there are people back on base that might need our help. The vics and comms are both down, so we have no evac from our current situation. Pack your rucks tonight because tomorrow at 0600, we are rucking back to base. Tonight we will cover our comrades, and once we make it back, we will send a recovery team for them. Remember, every one of them died heroes so that we could live. If there weren't so many, I'd have us put them on the stretcher and bring them back with us." She paused and looked around at the many dead lying around us and gulped. She may have been a combat veteran, but that didn't mean that she was unfeeling. After her brief pause, she continued.

"Unfortunately, that is not an option for us this time. There are six of us, so that we will pull roving guard in shifts. If you see another one of those monsters, you will alert us immediately, and we will take up a defensive position. Two-hour shifts each, then try to get as much rest as you can. Turner, Roberts, you have the first shift, Bravo, Savant you have shift number two. Hayes, you're with me taking the final shift. Hooah?" There was an echo of hooah, and we all split up to start packing the essential things.

We were at least twelve miles from the base, so we knew we would need plenty of water. We were tasked with grabbing a few extra water sources and MREs for the trek. If it was a straight shot, most of us could make it in just under four hours, but with soft sand and hills to traverse, it might take a little bit more time. The pace was going to be fast, though, and we all knew it. We all had people we cared about in the rear, and we needed to help in any way that we can.

As we used the extra sleep systems to cover the bodies, you could hear the sounds of crying from the others in the group. We were saying our goodbyes to people that we had worked with, trained with, and laughed with. It hit the NCOs extra hard because some of these people they had known for years coming up in the military with them. Once the work was done and we were all packed, I bed down for the night. I'd only be getting roughly three hours of sleep before it was time to get up for my shift.

Sleep came easier to me this time for some reason. You'd think that after everything that had happened, I wouldn't have been able to sleep for days. But I was so exhausted that as soon as my head hit my pillow, I was out.

A few hours later, I heard Bravos' voice yanking me out of my slumber. It was time for my shift. I got up and yanked my boots on, tying them up tightly with a sigh. Oddly enough, I didn't feel as tired as I should have. I wondered if this had anything to do with the system and the transformation my body underwent. As if reading my mind, a new message appeared in front of me.

"Energy infused beings do not tire in the same way they did before the transformation. Raise your stats enough, and you may never be tired again." "So.." I thought. "The system can be helpful sometimes." It was good to know that I could get stronger though, I had a feeling that I was going to need to before long. It was still dark outside, but in the distance, I could start to see the light coming up around the earth's curvature. It would be dawn soon.

"Ready, Hayes?" It was SSG Underwood pulling me out of my internal musings. Nodding my head, we began our shift, walking around the exterior of the camp. Now and then, the earth shook, and we had to steady ourselves and look around more carefully, wondering if there was a stampede of monsters coming towards us or if it was just your average California earthquakes. A thought crossed my mind, and I had to ask it out loud.

"Hey, sergeant." I began, and she looked at me. "If the coyotes grew, do you think things like bugs did too?" Her face turned pale as what I imagined was an image of a minivan sized tarantula flashed through her mind.

"Let's not think about that right now, Hayes." I had to agree with her. It wasn't an entertaining image to have especially when thinking that you might have to fight one of those things. The sun reached higher in the sky, and it was finally time to wake the others so that we could get moving. They all stirred easily and grabbed their bags. We decided to leave the weapons. They would slow us down, as it was evident last night. Adjusting to the new weapons was easier than I thought it would be, though.

I discovered this being the first one to put my rucksack on the staff just disappeared. Now that I really thought about it, they had done the same thing last night when we'd been cleaning up. I just hadn't noticed it. When I wanted it back in my hand, the staff reappeared. I pointed this out to the others, and they all started playing with the new function. It was so strange to make something appear and reappear without even having a trick to it.

"Hey, do you think that this system has any more video game like features?" SPC Roberts had been the one to speak. We all looked at him aghast, and SGT Savant was the first to speak up.

"You think this is all a game?" It was clear that the sergeant was getting angry, but Roberts just held his hands up at him.

"No, not at all. I'm saying that the system with points and messages and stuff reminds me of a video game! None of this is funny or fun to me!" I understood what he was saying, and having played a couple of RPGs in the past, and I decided to try it out.

"Open inventory," I said out loud. Almost as soon as the words escaped my lips, a screen popped up in front of me. On one side, it had a full three-dimensional view of me in my underwear. The only thing that it said I had equipped was my staff. This leads me to believe that the system didn't recognize non-system clothing or items as something that was stored in my equipment slots. I told the others about it, and they checked their own inventories.

I was curious what kind of stuff could go in the other side of our inventories. This one was a pretty standard looking grid five across and ten down. I picked up a rock and said. "Place in inventory." The rock suddenly disappeared from my hand, and I saw it reappear in my inventory. I tried to do the same thing with my canteen, but I got an error message.

"Error system does not register any items not infused with universal energy." I guess that made sense. After all, the canteen was human-made and not connected to nature. Or at least its parts were so broken down at this point that it wasn't. I looked back over at the camp as we hadn't started on our trek just yet. The large body of the Coyote loomed inside the boundary; we'd lined the bodies up the night before and covered them away from the monster that had taken their lives.

I ran over to it, thinking of something else that was commonly found whenever playing an RPG. Bending down beside the animal, I whispered. "Loot." Again the system took no time to respond. The large beast disappeared, and in its place was a hide, a few bones, some meat that was already packaged in some strange shimmering clear material; a few vials of blood also packaged the same way, and some teeth and claws.

"What did you do, Hayes?" SGT Turner had come running up behind me when I came to do my experiment. The others weren't far behind.

"I looted it. It's something commonly found in video games when you kill an enemy; you can loot its body for some rewards." I stored the items in my inventory, where I could see descriptions of each item when I focused on it. Some of the items were stackable, like the bones, blood, teeth, and meat. Today we were learning a lot about the system already.

"Alright, everybody, enough experimenting we have to get moving." SSG Underwood called over to us. We all gave her "rogers" or "Hooahs" and walked back towards her. Shrugging my ruck up further onto my back, we began the fast-paced walk back towards base.