The large man nodded. “Yes. I took my girls and got out of Atlanta. Diamond and a few buddies of mine joined us. Once we made it to the suburbs, we huddled in the first shelter we found, what was later known as the Grand Mall. It was rough at first, but with me and a couple of our guys backing him up, Diamond became the shelter leader and managed to keep things under control, mostly. We weathered the first two months of the Calamity in relative safety, but in the third month, the Warped situation got worse. We started getting a rougher crowd of refugees. Some of them thought they should be top dogs, but we made it clear to them who’s in charge.” His face darkened. “They didn’t like that. Two of them waited until I was away and made it to our hut. When I got back it was too late. The two assholes thought that seeing the bodies of my wife and daughter would scare me to play along.” His fists tightened. “They were wrong. I beat them to death with my own hands. It took a while … they kept healing … probably was the same for them when they …” He choked, and a single tear dropped from the corner of his eye.

Nori looked away. Lana’s face was horrified.

He wiped at his eyes and his expression hardened. “After that, I gathered some of the guards and we took care of their friends too. But some escaped, so I left the shelter and hunted them down. I didn’t care what was out there, I just wanted them dead. We quickly learned how to kill efficiently. These days you can shoot a guy a dozen times but he’ll recover. A bullet to the head usually does the trick, but you have to get close to do it properly. For me, it was easier just to beat them up.” He let out another mirthless chuckle. “It’s funny, hit them with a crowbar and they’ll heal, but fists put them down for good. After we took down three gangs, I got the first ‘level up’ message. Once I had put the two points in Strength, killing became a lot easier. The Warped were still a threat, but with a few people holding them down with chains, I could finish off the small ones with my fists. We slowly worked our way up to killing the level twos and threes, and I kept getting stronger by absorbing their Tec. I was planning to keep at it and raise the levels of the rest of my group to hunt the bigger ones. We had casualties, but we learned how to work together. Having a functional vehicle helped a lot.”

“I meant to ask,” Nori said. “How did you make it run again? And how did you get a working light console?”