And the best part of taking in that pack: a hundred and fifty points.
That alone paid for the beef.
I opened the shop.
This time I read it properly, item by item.
Ten entries under food now, from the energy bar all the way up to a hundred-point super energy fluid.
All of it stamina in a wrapper, holding off hunger from hours to days.
Food I didn't need. But medicine had grown by two.
Besides the twenty-point hemostatic powder: a fifty-point super bandage, and a hundred-point first-aid pill.
I opened both entries.
Super bandage — adheres to any wound, closes it fast. Arteries included.
Well. Cut a throat, tape it shut.
The pill was better.
First-aid pill — as long as there's one breath left, it brings them back.
Both of them were absurd.
And then I scrolled to the thing that stopped me.
Zombie virus inhibitor — 100,000,000 points.
An inhibitor. The virus could be cured?
Then I counted the zeros.
One hundred million.
Never mind.
With a hundred and fifty-six points to my name, it wasn't even a fantasy worth having. But my eyes stayed on it.
Something like that in this world would break every rule left standing.
I rubbed my hands together in the dark.
A hundred million points. I'd get there.
I was going to keep one for myself.
Then weapons. The weapons tab had me drooling.
A plain P5 ran five hundred points. A decent Glock, a thousand.
Submachine guns and shotguns started at five thousand. And there, in the middle of them, an AK. Eight thousand.
Everything the system made sat a full tier above anything on the street — power, lethality, all of it.
Expensive. Also exactly my taste.
I put the AK in my cart and went back to saving.
Below that, another tab, locked.
Five thousand points to open. I had no idea what was behind it.
This shop knew me. Everything I wanted, nothing I could afford.
Agonizing.
I tapped the points icon, looking for how to earn.
Three lines appeared.
Complete system missions.
Expand your territory.
Add members to your territory.
I sat back.
The six men at my gate had been mission one. The fifteen dogs last night had been mission three.
Which left number two.
Expand. Starting tomorrow, I'd take ground.
Up at dawn, I didn't run the perimeter. I ran for the hill behind the base.
And behind me, the pack ran with ropes in their mouths, laying a line.
Once, kings claimed land by riding around it. Now it's claimed by dog.
I sent Summer left with half the pack — Ace, Jack, Queen, King, Joker, Spade, Heart — and took the right side myself with Diamond, Club, Chip, Bluff, Dealer, River, Flush.
Fifteen dogs needed fifteen names, and I'd picked the only set that fit a woman who'd bet everything on one hand.
Two columns, one rope, up the hill from both sides.
By afternoon we met in the middle of the ridge. I tied both ends off, then went down the line knotting every joint.
By dark, the hill was wrapped.
Two miles of hilltop, more or less, now mine.
Ding — territory area doubled.
Reward: 1,000 points. First expansion bonus: Territory Link.
Oh, that felt good.
It worked. Walk the ground, wrap it, and the system called it yours.
One hilltop, a thousand points. Take the next ridge, and the next — that number climbs fast.
And if I ever took City A itself, a hundred million stops being a fantasy.
Then I sat with the other reward.
Territory Link. I closed my eyes, and the hill I'd walked today and the bunker in front of it drew themselves in my head like a map.
Anything alive that crossed the line, I'd know.
"Summer — five hundred yards west."
Bark.
She was gone.
Half a minute later I heard the kill.
By the time I got there she had a zombie pinned in the dirt — one that had slipped into my land without a single camera seeing it.
So that's how it works.
Inside my sensing range, a few more gray dots surfaced.
"Ace, Jack — take King and Queen south. Joker and Spade, west. Diamond, Club, Chip, east. The rest with me."
We swept the whole territory in under an hour.
And the more I used it, the clearer it got. Gray meant dead. Even in the worst corner of the woods, I could walk straight to it.
No camera alarms needed. Nothing moved on my land without me knowing.
Which mattered, now that the land was growing faster than the cameras could follow.
I worked past midnight and went home full.
Tomorrow: more ground.
* * *
Next morning I started on the ground in front of the bunker's wire.
Different method this time.
Clear every dead thing from the fence out to the highway, then plant a sign.
PRIVATE PROPERTY. DOGS.
A signpost is a border, if nobody's left to argue.
Think about it — who's still walking around out here? And of those, who's going to stand in front of a woman with a crossbow and litigate a property line?
The sign's in the ground. The ground's mine.
Any complaints?
Ding — territory increased: 1 acre. Reward: 500 points.
I grinned at nothing at all.
It worked. Empty land, even land that used to belong to somebody — all of it was claimable.
One condition, though.
It had to be ground I'd walked and cleared — me or my dogs.
From the bunker to the sign was about an acre, and every step of it had my boots or their paws on it.
Mark what you've explored.
It's like one of those old exploration games — the map stays dark until the hero walks there.
Lucky for me, the dogs count as my team. They'd more than doubled my range.
I drove the post in, dusted my hands, and felt the map in my head push out to meet it.
Then I stood there and thought about which way to go next.
The hill my bunker sits on was mine now, all of it. Left was the highway. Right was empty mountain country — an abandoned quarry, a few scattered cabins.
North along the highway was City A, flat ground, easy to take.
The mountains would be work.
I picked the mountains.
Of course the mountains. I'm not in a hurry, I'm in this for good.
Rough ground I can hold beats a highway I can't.
Because that's the rule: territory has to be clean.
Anything dead inside the line gets cleared, or the system quietly cuts that parcel loose.
Which makes sense. A patch of ground full of zombies isn't your land — it's theirs.
It also killed my idea of keeping a few dead ones as guard dogs.
Fine. I've got better guards now — fifteen working dogs with the brains to run a patrol and the speed to end anything that wanders in.
More dogs. Especially as the line moves out.
Fifteen isn't nearly enough.
I put the thinking away and walked into the trees.
By dark I'd taken another hill.
Another thousand points — two thousand six hundred and fifty-six total.
"Good work, all of you. Dinner."
Out came the fresh beef. I don't short my people, and the dogs are my people.
If I'm eating meat, everyone under me eats meat.
For myself: a hot Korean fried chicken combo, still steaming from a mall that no longer exists.
Too much food to eat through. Every night a different cuisine.
Fried chicken tonight, army stew tomorrow, then crispy roast pork with skin like lacquer.
Out on patrol I eat standing up — a breakfast burrito, a cold-noodle wrap, griddled noodles, whatever's fastest.
Everything comes out exactly as it went in. Hot stays hot. Crisp stays crisp.
I pulled a drumstick apart with gloved hands and the crust crackled like it had left the fryer ten seconds ago.
One pull, and the juice ran.
Garlic-soy. The smell went straight to the back of my skull.
Then a mouthful of ice-cold cola.
That's the stuff.
Two weeks into the end of the world, eating better than I did before it started — and every ache of the day gone.
I put away three people's worth without slowing down.
Summer and the pack crowded in, noses working. I ate half of each piece and threw them the rest.
They ate around my boots, tails going.
Stuffed, I got up and walked the farm to let it settle.
Eggs had been piling up in the coop, and the first chicks had hatched.
System-enhanced poultry. Strong stock, and they breed like a rumour.
Ducks take about forty days to hatch, chickens about twenty — so no ducklings yet, but half the hens were sitting.
The two goats were the real surprise. Growing fast, filling out — dairy goats, the seller had told me, bred for milk.
Milk soon.
Then the garden.
Bok choy and chives were already in full production — fast, heavy, relentless, and I had to harvest every single day.
Harvest today, more tomorrow. Skip a day and it's wasted, and I don't waste.
So no matter how tired, I make the rounds.
One whole storeroom now holds nothing but fresh vegetables.
Radishes, spinach, leaf lettuce, stem lettuce — all coming up on harvest. Tomatoes and potatoes after that.
And the pond.
The fish had doubled, fry everywhere, and I'd done nothing to help. I don't know the first thing about fish farming.
The system handles it. Every fry alive, every one of them fatter than yesterday.
Everything on this base was moving the right direction, and the line kept moving out.
The future looked good.
Next morning I took the armored vehicle out.
Summer stayed home with seven of the pack to patrol the hill and kill anything that showed up. I took the other eight.
Today's target: the villas.
Ten houses on a hillside, a famous development once, built for people with money.
They say not even half sold. Almost nobody ever moved in.