Stu was anxious to test out his new Speed Freak skill, but he couldn't find an opportunity, in the company of Lucky and Luna, so he held back. They already knew about his unusual strength, and suddenly flying down the street in a sudden burst of speed would only make them more suspicious. He wasn't sure how they would react if they found out about these near-magical powers of his, and he thought it best to keep these cards close to his vest in any case.

  Keeping his abilities hidden was starting to make him feel like a comic book superhero -- hiding his super-powers behind a seemingly normal facade. It was a little strange.

  He also found himself wondering whether he would retain these skills after he returned to his own world. Would the ICON system continue to work for him? He suspected that it would -- after all, Virge had seemed to possess superhuman strength when he had snatched him by the collar and manhandled him into the car, and superhuman strength was an ICON skill. But if there were no zombies in his world, how would he acquire experience? What kinds of quests might the system give him? Quest Available: Purchase Groceries? It seemed kind of absurd.

  There were so many things he didn't know. For the umpteenth time, he wished that either Virge or Wayman had managed to live a little longer, so that they could have explained these things to him.

  He wasn't able to try out the Speed Freak skill, but his body did feel unusually light, and his reflexes felt a little faster as well, after he purchased it. If he stopped for a moment, tensing his muscles as if he was preparing to move, the whole world seemed to slow down by a few fractions of a second -- a bird in flight suddenly seemed to be flapping its wings just a bit more slowly, for example, and Lucky and Luna's voices slurred into long drawls. This was interesting, but it was actually a little alarming, too -- if the base Speed Freak skill was slowing down the whole world, relative to himself, what would happen if he powered it up to the second, third, fourth, and fifth levels? Would he become the Flash? Would he be stuck forever in a slowed-down world?

  These thoughts, and many others, flitted through his mind as the three of them made their way to the Dealership. They stuck to Highway 8 for part of their journey, then turned east, deeper into the city, following several different roads. Luna, who sometimes drove around Meku in her glider, apparently knew these avenues pretty well, and she knew how to get to this Dealership place.

  They did come across a few zombies, roaming about in the daylight. Two of these were blocking a street they needed to cross, and they simply couldn't get around them, so Stu volunteered to take them out. One was a Level 2, and the other was a Level 3, but neither of them looked all that intimidating, and he figured he could use the experience.

  "No guns," Luna reminded him. "There could be more around here, and we don't want to rile them up."

  "No guns, huh?" Stu wondered how he was going to go about this -- it seemed like a waste to use Dead Aim, and apart from the little throwing knives he had acquired in Harbor, he didn't really have any melee weapons.

  They had passed a ruined sporting goods store a few blocks back. Stu hadn't thought much of it then, being preoccupied with his thoughts, but he realized now that it might be worth checking out; he might find a handy weapon there. He turned around and started walking.

  "Where are you going?" Luna asked. "The zombies are that way."

  "I need a weapon." And he led them back to the sporting goods store.

  Luna frowned when she saw it. "You won't find anything in there," she said. "The gangs cleaned these places out years ago."

  "You never know," he said, and he entered the store. It was in bad shape, like every building in this zombie wasteland -- the store windows had been blown out, there was garbage and debris everywhere, and birds had made nests in the ceiling.

  And Luna was right -- the place had been pretty thoroughly looted. There were no clothes or shoes to be seen anywhere, nor did he see any gloves, helmets, or padding. There wasn't a single golf club left in the golf section, nor a single hockey stick left in the hockey section. He frowned.

  "I told you," Luna said, picking through the rubble. "Places like this were hit first, when the outbreak happened. Is there something you were looking for, specifically?"

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  "Specifically? Well, not exactly, but..." He trailed off, because he had just caught sight of a silver glint, gleaming out at him from beneath a fallen ceiling tile. Curious, he bent down and lifted the tile aside.

  Beneath the tile was an aluminum baseball bat with a brilliant silver finish. The word "Excalibur" was printed on it, in bright red letters.

  He picked it up. The rubber grip was still intact, and it felt good in his hands. Stu hadn't played baseball since he was a kid, but he knew a good bat when he saw one.

  "Good find," Luna said, with a bit of a snort. "Gangs must've missed it. Are you always this lucky?"

  She was only joking, but he took the question seriously. There was no "luck" stat in the ICON system, but he knew from the many, many video games he had played that developers sometimes hid certain stats from the player. Was there a secret "luck" stat? Was that the reason he had managed to survive so long in this world, to scrape by by the skin of his teeth? The fact that the first person he had met in this world, after Virge and Wayman, was named "Lucky," only made him more suspicious. Was there some kind of connection there?

  It was all rather irrelevant, though, to the matter at hand. "Excalibur, huh?" he said, looking the bat over. When combined with his enhanced strength and speed, a metal bat could make a very good weapon indeed.

  "It's the brand name," Luna explained. "They made all kinds of sports gear."

  "Cool." He had his weapon; now it was time to take out those zombies. "Well...batter up, I guess."

  * * *

  Lucky and Luna remained on the other side of the street, while Stu, using wrecked cars for cover, crept up to the two zombies. The Level 2 was a female with a ripped-up face, and chunks of long, matted hair hanging off her scalp, while the Level 3 was a man dressed in some kind of makeshift armor. He was quite a bit fresher than the woman; his transformation had probably been fairly recent. Based on his clothing, Stu suspected that he had probably been a gang member at some point.

  The female zombie was closer, so he started with her, carefully sneaking behind her while doing his best to remain out of sight of the other zombie. When he was about ten feet away, he tightened his grip on the baseball bat, surged forward, and struck her in the head with all his strength. The Speed Freak skill had allowed him to close the gap between them in an instant; she had not even had time to turn her head to look at him.

  Even he was not prepared for what happened when he struck her, however. The blow was so tremendous that it cracked her skull like an egg, and the force of it lifted her off her feet and sent her flying into one of the junked-out cars. Her entire body rag-dolled through the air and crashed to the ground in a heap. She twitched for a second and stopped moving.

  Stunned by how easily he had dispatched the zombie -- and still feeling the bat vibrating in his hands, from that incredible impact -- he barely noticed the ICON message which suddenly flashed in his face, indicating that he'd defeated the zombie and earned yet another critical bonus. This bat was a serious weapon; even the rager he had fought back at Southside wouldn't have been able to withstand a blow like that.

  Killing his first zombie, in that bathroom in the subway, had been an arduous ordeal, and that had been a Level 1 whose head had already been partially severed. Now he was killing these things with a single blow. He was definitely getting better at this.

  The commotion attracted the attention of the other zombie, of course -- the Level 3. Snarling, it spun to face him, its eyes bloodshot, its mouth leaking that strange silver fluid. It was faster than the first zombie, and started stumbling towards him almost immediately, but Stu was faster -- he smashed one of its arms as it lunged for him, then hit it in the jaw with the bat. The blow shattered its teeth and snapped its jaw free from its skull, leaving it hanging there, grotesquely. Being a zombie, however, this only slowed it down for a moment; it was soon stumbling towards him again. He used the tip of the bat to push it away from him, pressing it against the metal plate it wore on its chest, and then -- having gained some distance -- he delivered a better-aimed blow to its head, striking it in the temple. Not wanting to see the zombie's head explode, he tried to use a little less force this time, but he still succeeded in denting its skull, which also caused both of its eyes to burst out. It spun completely around and landed flat on its face.

  Grossed out by both killings, but especially by seeing the second zombie's eyes pop out of its orbital sockets, he shook his head in disgust, then motioned for Lucky and Luna to join him. The brother and sister stared at him, and at the zombies he had annihilated. Luna, especially, appeared dumbfounded. "How the hell did you...?"

  "It was nothing."

  "You were moving so fast I could barely see you. You were like a blur. And these zombies...you killed that first one with one hit. You knocked it back like ten feet."

  "It was only a Level 2," he said.

  "A what?"

  "Ah. Never mind."

  "How did you do it?"

  "I'm stronger than I look."

  "No one's that strong. Granger was the biggest, strongest guy back at Harbor -- he could lift three hundred pounds -- but even he couldn't have done what you just did. And you're half his size."

  He shrugged. "Well, I did catch her by surprise."

  She frowned at him. "Who are you? What are you? Are you a brainy? Some kind of weird mutate?"

  "We don't have time for this," Lucky interrupted. "We have to get to the Dealership, remember?"

  "He's right," Stu said.

  Luna, obviously still suspicious of him, hissed through her teeth. "Yeah. Let's go." She poked his chest with her index finger. "But I'm going to be keeping an eye on you."