Laura wiped away the blood dripping from her ear.

  Caroline pressed her face to the glass door, peering out at the boardwalk. Another gull slammed into the door and she flinched back. “Okay, they’re still wound up.” She backed away.

  “That was clever,” a woman with a cane said to Laura. She was the only person left by the doors besides Laura, Caroline, and the older man from the conference room. The rest of the small group of people had retreated to the snack kiosk in the lobby as soon as the doors were locked and were now sitting and eating clustered in the back of the adjoining room where the continental breakfast was usually served. Presumably the other remaining hotel “residents” had retreated back to their rooms. “Those damn birds are always trying to grab my food.”

  “I’m not sure I didn’t make it worse,” Laura said, dabbing at her ear with her sleeve.

  The older man from the conference room handed her a handkerchief. The name “Graham” was embroidered on one corner. “Thank you,” Laura said, pressing the handkerchief to her ear.

  The blood was already starting to clot, so it was likely a more shallow cut than it had initially felt like. The one on her hand still stung but was hardly bleeding at all.

  Caroline went over to the snack kiosk and started rummaging through it. Next to the kiosk was a wire rack with various non-food essentials like pain killers, period products, and foldable ponchos that collapsed down to the size of a tissue packet. Laura made a mental note to put together a kit of some essentials.

  “You’ll probably want to wash that out,” Graham said, pointing to her ear. “The sinks are still working, thank goodness.”

  That meant that drinking water hopefully wouldn’t be an issue for a while. Some small relief there. Did the blocking effect of the fog not extend underground to the sewer pipes?

  Graham cleared his throat. “So I suppose now we wait?”

  Laura examined her phone. A crack ran diagonally down through the screen. Her text messages to Danny had gone through and showed as read, but she had no new responses.

  A system message appeared:

  This device has been scanned and all communication functions have been blocked.

  The cell signal and WiFi status no longer showed on her screen.

  Looks like we won’t be able to try that stunt again.

  Integrating app function…

  A blinking box appeared in the lower left corner of her vision. When she focused on it, two familiar icons appeared. One was her music app, the other was her pregnancy app. It appeared the system was integrating aspects of her phone.

  A banner appeared blocking the top of her vision, complete with a familiar burst of confetti.

  You have to be shitting me.

  You are over halfway through your first trimester! Now is an especially crucial time for your baby’s development. Prenatal vitamins are particularly important during this stage!

  A few more curls of confetti fell. Then the system message vanished.

  Caroline came back with a granola bar. She offered it to Laura. “I get kind of light headed at the sight of blood,” she explained. “I wasn’t sure if you were the same. I figured either way you could use the snack.”

  Laura thanked her and took the bar.

  Since she’d left her stomach contents back in the conference room it felt like she hadn’t eaten in days. She tore into the granola bar. The oats soaked up any traces of moisture in her mouth, leaving it bone dry. There was a water cooler with a dispenser full of paper cups just inside the dining area. Laura filled a cup to the brim and drained it in one long gulp.

  Caroline trailed after her clutching a wrapped pop tart while Graham perused the remaining snacks.

  The group already in the sitting area chewed their food with a shell shocked expression. One woman shrieked and then tittered nervously when another gull crashed into the window near her. The rest of the gulls were finally retreating, returning to making lazy circles high over the water.

  Caroline grabbed a cup of water and joined Graham at a nearby table. They sat, each sporting their respective “war wounds”, separate from the untouched cluster of people farther towards the back of the room. Graham was helping Caroline open the pop tart while she cradled her head in her hands, clutching her water. An empty chair stood invitingly pushed out next to them.

  Laura looked longingly at the chair—her feet hurt and she now had a raging headache—but she stuck close to the water cooler as she guzzled down two more cups of water. She filled her cup one more time and sipped at it.

  The granola bar had protein and fiber, which was a start, but she’d need more than that and soon. The dining area was completely devoid of any of the things they might serve at breakfast. There was no hot food, no cereal—nothing except the kiosk of snacks in the lobby.

  Caroline lifted her head when Graham nudged her with the pop tart. She took it and ate a huge bite. “My mom always gets after me when I eat this stuff. She’s always like, ‘At least eat an egg too, get some protein!’” She took another bite. “I’d kill for an egg right now,” she said around a mouthful of food.

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  “Tell me about it,” said a younger blond man with burn scars on his forearms. He’d been hanging around at the outskirts of the other group and now came over to sit down beside Graham, leaning his elbows on the table. “I’m diabetic and this stuff is going to wreak havoc with my blood sugar.”

  Laura quietly left while they were distracted.

  She eventually found the kitchen down a level tucked into the basement near a giant supply closet and janitor’s storage. Given that most of the nicer hotels near the parks offered room service, she knew there had to be some real food around. If they were lucky, they’d had a delivery recently.

  The kitchen was industrial, with fluorescent lights bouncing off of metal absolutely everywhere—metal counters in a ring around the outside were studded with metal mixers and cookware hanging off the wall, and a metal island in the center with a large hood sported multiple sinks and burners. The tile floor looked old but relatively clean. There was a giant industrial freezer on the left side of the room and a door at the far end looked like it led to a deep freeze. Metal wire racks on the right side just inside the door held cans of food, and another metal wire rack near the deep freeze had a ton of dry goods, and rows of cereal.

  Jackpot!

  During one particularly long camping trip to Yellowstone, two solid days of heavy rain had forced her to hole up in her tent with the only source of entertainment she’d brought with her. It had been a book about food. Specifically, the industrialization of food. She read the entire thing over the two days while shoveling handfuls of dry granola and eating spoonfuls of peanut butter. It had felt a little like torture. The main tidbit that had stuck with her though was the effect of fortifying foods on health—goiters became largely a thing of the past when they added iodine to salt, and people now got many of their daily vitamins and minerals from bread and breakfast cereals. It also was where she learned that an important component of prenatal vitamins, folic acid, was also added to breakfast cereals.

  That was about where her knowledge ended. There was something in eggs that was supposed to be good for brain development, although she couldn’t remember what it was called. And iron—wasn’t there something about needing more iron?

  Just two days after her positive pregnancy test she’d actually had to attend a baby shower for her college roommate. She had already felt like she was having an out of body experience watching many of the other women, including the mom-to-be, cooing over tiny socks and onesies while she sat awkward and uncomfortable, unsure how to contribute. But nothing could have even come close to preparing her for when the other moms started whipping out the stories. Over tea they casually talked about vomiting so hard they burst blood vessels in their eye, one woman talked about passing a blood clot the size of an egg a week after having her baby, and another was so anemic she needed iron infusions.

  Laura checked the pregnancy app that had been integrated into her system menu, but all it did was repeat the very unhelpful advice, “Make sure to take a prenatal vitamin!”

  She yelled out, “Hey, whoever you are, any chance of getting some prenatal vitamins around here?”

  Worth a shot.

  A new icon glowed on her map in the lower right corner. She focused on the map to open it and saw the dot was labeled “vitamins” and was…somewhere inside the parks.

  Well never mind that.

  Laura beelined towards the cereal. Halfway across the kitchen two things happened: 1) she stepped on something squishy, and 2) the squishy thing bit her on the ankle. She flailed her leg wildly and kicked whatever it was off, sending shooting pains through her leg. The “something” was a large rat. It landed with a thud less than three feet away. Laura jerked away from the rat and her hip slammed into the counter. Her hip throbbed as a warning flashed in her vision.

  Warning: You are now affected by a debuff.

  A wave of nausea slammed into her. It wasn’t any worse than her usual morning sickness, but it came on strong without any of the usual warning signs. Her health bar dipped. Holy hell, was that thing carrying some kind of disease? The nausea intensified until she twisted and violently threw up into the sink.

  Chittering sounds coming from multiple directions sent her racing back towards the door. Another rat now stood between her and the doorway. It was labeled as a Level 2 mob. Laura snatched up a heavy pan from the hooks near her and swung it at the rat. The pan glanced off the rat’s side and its health bar hardly budged.

  A familiar notification popped up.

  Warning: You have not distributed your stat points yet. Your current stats are too low to affect this mob.

  She took a running leap and managed to vault over the rat and sprinted through the door back out to the hallway. Back inside the kitchen, half a dozen sets of beady eyes now stared at her from throughout the kitchen. They were all level 2 rats except for a particularly hefty specimen lurking towards the back that was a level 3. After a minute the rats stopped focusing on her and went back to aimlessly milling around.

  Had they freaking spawned when she entered the kitchen? Where had they come from?

  Her health bar slowly regenerated. After a few minutes she got another pop up that the debuff was no longer in effect. The nausea faded. Laura relaxed. She could only hope there were no longer term effects.

  She focused on the menu in the left corner of her vision and opened the section marked Stats. It had a little exclamation point sitting in the corner, showing there was something that needed her attention.

  You currently have 4 unawarded stat points.

  She had one more than she would have thanks to the little “bonus” she’d been given for her observational skills.

  Baseline for every stat was currently ones across the board. There were five categories: constitution, strength, dexterity, intelligence, and charisma.

  Would you like to distribute points now?

  She selected yes.

  It then gave her two options. Manual distribution or preset options? Preset options was marked as “recommended”. She selected it.

  A new menu opened with multiple tabs. Each tab highlighted the recommended point distribution for a different fighting style. The fighting styles broke down into four rough categories:

  Unarmed, Armed (close range), Long Range, and Magic.

  Each section had recommended stat distributions, and some pros and cons. For example, unarmed said: Pro: Weapon availability—you always have your fists.

  When she clicked the magic option a large warning popped up that said: Warning: You will not be able to utilize magic in this area. That was a bummer.

  She selected long range. It seemed the best of the available options. There was no way she would be punching the rats or even getting within biting range if she could help it.

  For long range fighting, the system recommended putting points primarily into intelligence and then dexterity. (For a more stealth approach it recommended a higher dexterity.) She selected the standard long range fighter option which put 2 points into intelligence and 1 into dexterity. After a moment’s thought she put her last, extra point into constitution.

  She leaned back through the doorway and looked at the rack of cans. When she picked one up the system now recognized it as a weapon and marked it Projectile (Canned Beans). She weighed the can. A few steps further into the room and the rats pricked their ears up and started shuffling her way.

  She hefted the can and hurled it at the nearest rat. The can slammed into the rat’s head, and its health bar plummeted into the red. The rat fell to the ground, stunned. Laura snatched more cans from the shelves and kept launching them at the rats still scurrying towards her.

  By the time the cans ran out, there were only two rats left. One was the mob she’d first hit. It had shaken itself out of its stupor and was aimlessly wandering around with its health in the red. The other was the chunky level 3 rat.

  It scurried towards her. This close, the front teeth looked like dirty broken skewers. Faster than she anticipated it got close enough to snap at her ankle. She dodged the bite and kicked the rat as hard as she could. Its health bar didn’t budge, but the kick did send it flying back before it could sink its teeth into her.

  “I just want some cheerios and milk, goddamnit,” she yelled at the rat. The rat shrieked and charged her again. A fire extinguisher was strapped just inside the left side of the door. Laura tore it down off the wall, and chucked it at the level 3 rat. It slammed into the rat and bowled it over. The rat squeaked as it tumbled ass over elbow and its health bar dropped halfway. It scrambled to its feet and scurried away, vanishing into a large gap behind the refrigerator.

  Laura waited several minutes, but the rat didn’t reappear. That left just the dazed level 2 rat still wandering in circles. She picked up a can from the floor near her and chucked it at the rat, finishing it off. She then went over to the gap by the fridge and used her whole weight to shift a storage shelf over a few feet to block the gap.

  Laura took a deep breath. Her experience bar was almost 75% full now. Her face was dotted in a cold sweat and her hands were shaking. Her blood sugar was crashing, she needed to eat something now. “Okay, hold your horses,” she told the baby. “I’m just catching my breath.”

  She steadied her breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—then went and grabbed a push broom from the janitor’s closet. There were no other signs of activity when she got back to the kitchen. Hopefully that meant she was safe to raid it for food for now. Blood smeared the floor as she used the broom to push the heavy rat corpses out of the way and into a corner. She’d just have to make sure not to eat anything off the floor.

  The cereal was the best thing she’d ever tasted. She sat and ate it sitting on the counter, feet swinging over the trails of rat blood.

  Hope you’re happy, baby.