As the weeks went by, my strength and endurance grew by leaps. I got better at controlling the serum, and my teacher in the martial arts classes was impressed enough to start pushing me harder. But fighting skill was only the start.
I spent my evenings studying leaders, both historical and fictional: their strategies, their mistakes, how they made hard decisions under pressure. Thanks to my wish, everything I read stuck. I started learning how to lead.
Then I found one of the gifts God had mentioned. Buried in the system was a virtual combat training mode. Every night, when I fell asleep, I could enter a training room and fight masters of every style: close combat, hand-to-hand, gunfights, traditional weapons and modern ones. I could make mistakes and learn from them without dying. The pain, though, was real, and I woke up sore more often than not.
The system also taught strategy. Some nights I led teams of virtual soldiers through missions where I had to make fast, critical decisions, just like in a real war. I lost plenty of those battles. Each loss taught me something.
After a month of this, I felt like a different person. I was stronger, sharper and more disciplined than I'd ever been. But I hadn't forgotten why I was here. I tracked down the hospital where Rick was being kept, and I started gathering everything I could for the road ahead.
By the time I was done, my loadout was standard military: helmet, uniform, boots, body armor and bulletproof vest, an M16, a handgun, a combat knife, ammunition, food, canteens, a compass, and several first aid kits. All of it stayed in my jeep, ready to go at a moment's notice.
Day Zero
I woke up unable to breathe, with dark fur in my face. Fenrir had decided that my head was the best bed in the house. I wrestled him off and sat up, laughing. When I first brought the four of them home, they'd been scared and ready to bite. Now they lay all over the floor, looking completely harmless. Even Fenrir looked innocent, although not for long. He was already watching me pour his breakfast, because there's a reason I call him Gluttony.
Once the bowls were down, I turned on the news. The past few days had been calm, but I knew today wasn't. Today was the day the dead started to rise.
A reporter was talking about people "acting strangely" when the camera caught a man behind her, twitching on the ground in a pool of blood. A few seconds later he stood up and lunged at the nearest person, tearing out their throat.
There it was. Hell had arrived.
I geared up, grabbed my rifle and knife, and called the squad. We loaded into the jeep and headed for the hospital where Rick lay in his coma.
The city looked like a scene from a horror film. Abandoned cars clogged the roads, smoke hung in the air, and gunfire crackled in the distance. I saw a man shove someone to the ground to get away, leaving that person to be torn apart. It was a cold reminder: out here, you can only trust yourself.
But I couldn't ignore everyone. Near an overturned bus, I found five people crying for help. I checked each of them for bites and found one with a wound on her arm. I told them what would happen to her, but they refused to believe me. I helped them reach the building they wanted to hide in anyway.
Four walkers shuffled toward us. I kicked the first one to the ground and drove my knife through its skull, then grabbed the second by the head and finished it the same way. The squad took care of the other two, and I turned to see Thor, Rex, Dawn and Fenrir tearing the walkers apart, their muzzles red.
As I wiped my blade, small objects glinted on the ground: four coins, one from each body, and a bottle of water one of them had been carrying. A notification appeared in my vision: Auto-pickup: ON / OFF. I chose ON, and the items vanished into my inventory.
Further on, I came upon a group of looters. They were armed and dangerous, and they weren't about to share. I decided they weren't my problem unless they made themselves my problem, and we slipped past them. I had enough to worry about: collapsed buildings, piles of broken glass and a partly collapsed bridge that forced a long detour around it.
When the hospital finally came into view, I was exhausted. But I was also relieved. I'd made it.