The Apocalypse Exchange: I Can Trade Anything

Chapter 5: Opportunity, Departure

Day fifty since the Exchange appeared.

The moment Ryan's balance ticked over to 50 Survival Points, he rewarded himself immediately three packs of ramen, the soak-not-boil kind, plus two sausages on the side.

That long-forgotten feeling of an actually full stomach left him almost giddy.

He knew perfectly well that a nutrient formula every few days would've kept him far more comfortable this whole time. But people carry their own private brand of stubbornness, and Ryan's happened to be this: live off the interest, not the principal. Not even for a single day.

Stomach full, he crawled back into bed for the best sleep he'd had in weeks.

The next morning, the first thing he did was check his balance.

50 points. He smiled.

Fifty days in, and his own little world had stayed remarkably calm. The one outside it hadn't been so lucky.

Back when phones and networks still worked, the country had still functioned, however shakily, as a country. Once that connection died, so did whatever was left of civil order.

The survivors who hadn't turned had started clustering into small strongholds mostly built around supermarkets, warehouses, anywhere supplies could be found and defended.

Law had stopped meaning anything. Only two things mattered now: force, and whatever conscience a person had left.

On the other side of the planet, things were worse. The meteor debris had carried heavy radiation with it, and across the Northern Hemisphere, only about one in ten people had survived at all.

Maybe the radiation was to blame but the infected over there had mutated into something far more frightening. Some could sprint at speeds no Olympic athlete could match. Some could clear the roof of a two-story house in a single leap.

Even the infected animals had changed. Rats the size of small dogs. Cats and dogs bulking up to the size of lions. All of them roaming freely through ice and snow like the cold meant nothing to them at all.

Day fifty-one.

Ryan woke early, checked his balance 51 points and immediately traded one for a bottle of nutrient formula.

He didn't drink it right away, though. First, he started rearranging his apartment.

The place had been his grandparents' before it was his two bedrooms, one living room, standard layout for the building. Ryan's parents had split when he was small, and both had started new families within the year. He'd grown up with his grandparents instead, watching his visits with his parents shrink from monthly, to quarterly, to eventually nothing at all.

After his grandparents passed, his father had signed the apartment over to him and vanished from his life completely. Ryan had been a senior in high school at the time.

Now he hauled everything out of the living room and crammed it into the two bedrooms, then shoved the bedroom sofa out into the entryway hall.

Just that much left him winded and gasping.

His stomach growled right on cue. Only then did he finally drink the nutrient formula.

Strangely, the hungrier he felt as his body seemed to metabolize it until, about an hour later, the hunger vanished completely, along with every trace of the exhaustion from moving furniture.

So he got started on his workout plan for the day:

200 squats, 5 sets of 40.

100 push-ups, 5 sets of 20.

1,500 jump-rope reps, 5 sets of 300.

An hour of jogging in place.

1,000 sword swings.

The sword training wasn't strictly necessary more a bit of self-indulgence. There was just something about carrying a blade that appealed to him. Every apocalypse story ever written eventually found some excuse to make guns useless. And honestly, in a world where his phone had turned into a literal cheat-code system, Ryan wasn't ruling anything out anymore.

None of these numbers looked especially brutal on paper. But they were calibrated to where his body actually was which, after years of hunching over a keyboard and weeks of starvation rationing, wasn't exactly Olympic shape. Getting back to any kind of baseline wasn't going to happen overnight.

Except it kind of did.

By the time he gritted his teeth through the full routine, his body wasn't nearly as wrecked as he'd braced for. He was pretty sure he had two more full sets left in him.

Painful, sure. But doable.

So the plan doubled, then tripled morning, noon, and night.

Seven days in, Ryan felt like he'd been dropped back into his eighteen-year-old body at its absolute peak. Back in his senior year, his best 1,000-meter time had been three minutes thirty-two seconds. Now, he was fairly confident he could beat three minutes flat.

His balance hit 55 points. He spent 2 on a set of resistance training gear.

Peak physical form at eighteen wasn't going to be enough to survive what was coming. He wanted more.

A month later, Ryan sat in his usual spot in the window seat, watching the sunset the way he had nearly every evening since this all began.

He'd changed a lot. Pushing his body to its limits daily hadn't just built muscle. It had sharpened his willpower and, if anything, made his body absorb nutrients more efficiently. His physical ceiling had risen, full stop.

"...Huh. Something's off."

He watched the street below, same as always infected chasing down stragglers, business as usual.

Except this time, one of them wasn't chasing a person. It was chasing another infected.

He watched, frozen, as one zombie tackled another to the ground and hunched over it, tearing into it like it was feeding.

A moment later, it threw its head back and let out a long, guttural howl.

Ryan yanked himself back behind the curtain on instinct.

Through the gap in the fabric, he kept watching. The howling thing scanned the street then lunged at yet another infected nearby.

"...They're evolving."

"Okay. I need to be ready to move. Any day now."

"No more nutrient formula for a while I need to start stockpiling actual healing items instead."

"Still got a full case of ramen left. Twenty packs."

"Starting tomorrow one bottle of nutrient formula every three days, just enough to stay at peak condition."

"Weapons. The pistol's not going to cut it against whatever that just was. I need real stopping power."

"Everything else... I'll figure out as it comes."

"85 points banked. One a day in income, one in interest."

"M16 rifle 7 points. Thirty-round mag runs 1 point each, and I'll want at least three. That's 10 more."

"Combat suit need to actually buy that now. 5 points."

"Healing potions, for bleeding and general recovery. At least two of those. 4 points."

"And adrenaline emergency burst item. Should grab two... actually, that's pricey. One for now. 5 points, but worth it."

"...God, that's 24 points gone already, and I'm nowhere near 300."

Ryan didn't even seem to notice he'd started talking to himself out loud.