“Last call on this morning's soup. Last call! If you can’t see me, we’ll run out before you get a bowl!” I yelled out at the crowd that had formed in front of our gate. Slowly, as the snow melted, more and more showed up. Hundreds were quickly turning into thousands as our food ran out faster and faster every day. The shanty town that sprang up around our territory might have been a problem if we didn’t have a plan to turn these useless refugees into workers.

“Remember. If you bring bones or metal, you can skip the food line. If you’re not hungry, we’ll hand out food vouchers for later. We’re also looking for more strong men to work as guards for our area.” I knew how this would play out, but the smaller numbers right now meant that everyone was fine with the meager amount of food we shuttled out. It was the fact that both metal and bones were plentiful, so people on foot could still find them around.

I personally made the food voucher chips. They were made of hardened bone, so unless someone also had a bone manipulation power, they’d be almost impossible to replicate. Anyone who could replicate them would be better off leaving and starting their own survivor town elsewhere. Besides the few fights that broke out over food, no one had died, at least not yet. I knew it was coming soon, though… Perhaps in the next few days.

I was off by a few days, as eleven people died by the end of the day. One to a fist fight that quickly turned into a knife fight once the one with the knife started losing. A gang fight broke out between two previous drug dealers, which killed a few more, and then a fire broke out in one of the shanty house clusters, which killed the rest. None of this happened in front of our gate, which was good, but it was a sign of the upcoming conflicts once the resources dried up.

It was five pounds of metal, or a ten-pound metal appliance for a food token, or one pound of bones, which was the most valuable resource. The human body had roughly twenty pounds of bones, which meant every time someone burned to get the bones out, they’d get twenty tokens. I was attempting to make the tokens a local currency, it would make people building up supplies to go start their own survivor faction that much more difficult if they had to convert all the tokens into resources to leave.

It would also make people more afraid to get kicked out of the territory, especially if they built up a good supply of the tokens, because I severely doubted any other faction would value those tokens as we did. Besides the two main scavenge items, there was a long list of other trades possible, and the tokens could soon be used to buy things other than food, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.

The main use I saw for the tokens that I hadn’t suspected was for sex. Women were selling themselves for the tokens, and I could tell the more beautiful ones already had a good stockpile of the tokens. That was what I was doing for a few hours every morning when I woke up, making tokens until I got bored, and as more people kept showing up, more time would be spent making these tokens.

Soon, we’d begin hiring people other than guards to start working on expanding the walls during the day. The guards were earning five tokens a day, while the laborers would only make three; that was still enough to survive on for most people. Vicky yelled out again. “We’re out of infant formula up front. Can anyone go grab a few boxes?”

Vicky had gotten to work almost immediately and was doing peer-to-peer sales, which were mostly with women who needed cleaning products or food for their children. I once again had to thank Vicky for ordering all these items before the flood, because I would have never remembered to get either thing, and she had two truck containers full of each, which she had already made bank on getting us hundreds of pounds of metal and bones so far.

Vanity items and amenities were the last thing I was thinking about, the few days' head start I had before the flood hit. Luna and Lissa were working as bodyguards for her, but nothing bad had happened yet. No one was stupid enough to think my women were defenseless, but once again, it was only a matter of time before someone tried something.

Soon, the police would have to come back and defend our territory instead of policing these shanty towns. Once that happened, the crime would shoot through the roof. That’s when we’d start seeing people poke at our defenses and see how much they could get away with before we did anything about it. They were in for a rude awakening when they did, though. I most certainly wasn’t going to play around, and I was set on making an example out of the first few problem makers that showed up.

I ate a peach as I made my way through the crowd that had set up for the free morning soup again. Tossing fruit to random people who looked like they were behind where the food line would run out of food. I made it about halfway through the line before I came to a stop after recognizing someone. “Hey, big guy, what are you doing waiting in line? Go to the front and get a bodyguard job.”

The big black man, who was actually only seventeen years old, pointed to himself as I smirked. “Yes, you, that goes for everyone. IF YOU’RE A BIG STRONG GUY, GO GET A BODYGUARD JOB AT THE FRONT! IF YOU GOT METAL OR BONES, YOU CAN SKIP THE LINE AND GET A BOWL OF FOOD AT THE FRONT!” I had to yell this a few times every day, which was why I was out there; I just didn’t expect to see someone I knew from the last apocalypse show up without me going to him.

Dominic was part of my friend group in the first survivor town, and I was surprised to see him this early, as he went south to check on his brother before heading back up this direction. He must have warned him and been comfortable enough not to check on his brother this time. I still had to help Sophia find her sister, but we were waiting until things calmed down a little more and we could get away for a few days without the risk of everything exploding.

I’d have to find a way to get him a core. Now that I was looking over the survivors, I was meeting normal, if not even lower, numbers of powered individuals than in my previous life. At the moment, they weren’t worth wasting a core on; unless they joined our team, I wouldn’t bother helping them speed up unlocking their powers. Right now was when the weaker powers would activate, so it was best to let the weaker powers activate before picking out the better powers later on, possibly in another month or two.

After the first real threat to the base came, would I feel comfortable leaving it to the rest of them? They needed to realize that people would be coming after what we had, and they’d need to defend it before I felt comfortable leaving it to them… Especially to Maria’s father. I hoped that saving the sheriff would change things, but he still viewed crimes as if we weren’t in an apocalypse.

Soon, he’d either realize that the law we lived by for so long was impossible to enforce, or he’d die along the way when a powered killed him out of nowhere when he tried to enforce his laws on them. I’d give him one more chance. If he couldn’t learn when the first powered attempted to take our mansions, he was going to find himself in an accident that would take his life. Even with me fucking his daughter, I couldn’t have someone still stuck in the past in a leadership position.