I woke up in a bed, under a ceiling I'd never seen before, with a pounding headache. Everything came back at once: Big G, the tea, the three wishes. Then I realized something I should have thought of earlier. I had been so excited about the wishes that I never specified when or where I wanted to land. I had no idea what point in the story I'd been sent to.
On the little table beside the bed sat a glass of water and a folded note in God's handwriting. He had put the serum into my system inventory, along with bank account details and a bank card. The strength and abilities of the serum would be mine once I injected myself, but I would have to work hard to bring them under control. The rest, he wrote, was for me to uncover.
The moment I finished reading, the note disappeared.
I walked out into the living room and searched for anything that would tell me the date. I found a newspaper under the little TV, which I hadn't expected, and skimmed past everything unimportant until one headline stopped me: a sheriff named Rick had been shot in the line of duty and was in the hospital.
That gave me two or three months before everything went to hell.
My first job was control. Raw power would be useless, or even dangerous, if I couldn't handle it. I opened the system, pulled the serum out of my inventory, and injected it before I could lose my nerve. The first night was brutal. My muscles burned, my heart pounded like a drum, and I spent hours gripping the sheets. By morning, I felt like a stranger in my own body.
So I used the bank card to sign up for a gym and a handful of martial arts classes, and I filled the kitchen with food. For the first few weeks I trained every morning, taking on any challenge that would force me to learn the limits of my new body.
The training wasn't the hard part. The hard part was doing it alone. I knew I couldn't make friends with people I'd barely know before the world ended. The main cast of the show had been through everything together, and I wouldn't have that luxury. Then I remembered I Am Legend, the movie about a man and his shepherd, and an idea took hold. I would adopt a partner in crime.
Of course, it didn't go according to plan. I adopted one dog, then worried it would be lonely whenever I was out, so I adopted a second. Then I worried they'd get bored of each other, so I brought home a third. By then, why settle for an odd number when four was so much tidier? I walked out of the shelter with four Tamaskan dogs and a very full car.
My training expanded to include marathons, weightlifting, boxing, martial arts and even rock climbing, with my new squad cheering me on from the sidelines. I used my thousand times experience on the dogs too, reading everything I could find about their health, diet and training so I could bring out their full potential.