"Well now… we've hit the jackpot, haven't we?"
In the secure gloom of the storage shed, Michael's voice was a hushed, reverent thing. He was taking inventory, a ritual as methodical as a goblin counting Galleons. Each item—each cold, metallic piece of potential violence—was laid out before him, and his heart swelled with a fierce, proprietary warmth. A slow, silly grin spread across his face, the kind of grin a simpleton might wear upon finding a sack of gold outside Gringotts, utterly devoid of cunning, brimming only with pure, unadulterated joy.
A point of order: the weapons themselves had been hauled through the shimmering portal by the eager, grunting forms of Onyile and the others, who had been waiting like hungry dogs on the other side. But the sorting, the cataloguing, the intimate appraisal of each piece? That was Michael's task, and his alone. The crates were heavy, denser than sacks of dragon dung fertilizer, yet he moved among them with a zealous energy, buoyed by a passion that burned away fatigue. The final tally was a thing of beauty.
The haul was a testament to a certain subcontinental procurement philosophy. The backbone was the infamous INSAS assault rifle—sixty-two of them, their polymer stocks feeling cheap and insubstantial in his hands. Alongside them, like rare jewels among paste, were two Russian-made SVD sniper rifles, sleek and purposeful, and the true prizes: a pair of hulking 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine guns, disassembled but gleaming with lethal promise. Handguns, forty-one of them, were a chaotic parliament of different makes and calibres, a perfect snapshot of an armoury assembled by committee.
Ammunition was counted not in clips, but in crates. Forty crates of 5.56mm rifle rounds, fifteen hundred shining brass cartridges per box. Sixty thousand tiny messengers of lead. It wasn't an infinite sea, but for a warship—a place where such small-arms were an afterthought—it was a fortune. The heavy machine guns were fed by eight crates of their own weighty slugs. The sniper rifles came with a paltry eighty rounds, scavenged from the marines' own webbing. Then, the special guests: eight bulbous 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifles, a hundred and three grenades (a mix of fragmentation, and a score of useful flashbangs and smoke canisters), and finally, thirty heavy, brass-cased 76mm naval shells.
These last items gave Michael a particular thrill. His mind, ever the tinkerer's, flew to the rusting hulk of the old Sherman tank. Its gun is 76mm,he thought, the idea forming like a mischievous spell. Could it work? A bit of polishing, some careful incantations over the breech…He was, at best, an enthusiastic amateur who learned from fuzzy pictures on the 'Wizarding Web'. The sheer, catastrophic audacity of trying to fire naval shells from a worn-out tank gun was a notion that would have made even the most reckless of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes inventors blanch.
But for now, the weight of imminent doom had lifted. With this arsenal, the oppressive threat of the Detroit ruins seemed to shrink. Other supplies were needed, of course—mundane things, the kind you could buy with plain Muggle money, often with a smile and a handshake from the seller. The path forward was clear. He would simply wait for the portal's cool, humming stillness to subside, step back into the anchored apartment, and board a plane home to Guangzhou. He'd have to remember the 'souvenirs'—the socks. Not the skirts; those were… misshapen. The socks, however, had a market.
For now, blessed leisure. He settled back into his rickety deck chair, a king surveying his armory. A long pull from a bottle of cola, cooled in the deep well-water, sent a shiver of simple pleasure through him. Life, in this odd, post-apocalyptic pocket, was good. A fine dinner, perhaps a few rounds of that card game the women were teaching him… His plans for a quiet evening dissolved as a deep, resonant thudvibrated up through the concrete floor.
He looked up. Zak was squeezing his immense bulk through the shed's main doorway, having to turn sideways and duck his head. Even in the high-ceilinged space, the ogre's horned scalp nearly brushed the exposed pipes and conduits. The sight of his 'golden fighter', finally mobile, sparked a thought.
"Zak," Michael called out, taking another sip. "You're all healed up then?" He'd been so preoccupied with the grand assault, he'd almost forgotten his primary enforcer was on the mend. But seeing the ogre now, a mobile mountain of muscle, Michael realized what a formidable asset he'd be in the ruins. A living shield. A battering ram. "Are you fit? Ready for a fight?"
But before Zak could answer, Michael's eyes, sharpened by recent paranoia, caught a detail he'd missed. There, in the centre of Zak's broad, sloping forehead, just above the thick ridge of his brows, was a protrusion. It was small, no larger than his thumb, and dark as polished jet. It emerged from the skin like a nascent stalagmite, a twisted, budding horn.
A cold spike of dread drove straight into Michael's gut. Mutation.The word echoed in his skull, accompanied by images of the shambling, mindless infected. The wound… did it fester? Did the rot get him?A frantic, angry thought followed. John and the other oafs! How could they miss this?
Instinct took over. He flung himself sideways from the chair, hitting the gritty floor in a roll that was more panic than grace. His pistol was in his hand, the cool grip a fleeting comfort against his sweating palm. Even as he brought it up, he knew it was futile. A mutated ogre? The bullets would be like stinging flies. So this is it,he thought with a bizarre clarity. Eaten by my own bodyguard. What a stupid way to go.
His roll ended with him on one knee, pistol levelled at Zak's chest. The ogre hadn't moved. He simply tilted his great head, his small, deep-set eyes blinking slowly.
"Master Michael," Zak rumbled, his voice not a guttural roar of infection, but its usual, ponderous baritone, laced with genuine confusion. "Why are you rolling on the floor? Is it a new… game?"
He speaks.The thought cut through the terror. The infected didn't speak. They groaned, they hissed, they howled. They didn't look puzzled.
Michael climbed to his feet, feeling foolish but keeping the pistol cautiously aimed. "Your head, Zak. That… horn. Do you feel… strange? Sick?" The words felt inadequate.
"Strange? No." Zak shook his massive head, the motion surprisingly gentle. "Zak feels strong. Stronger than before. Good."
The fear receded, replaced by wary curiosity. "Then what is that?" Michael gestured with the gun barrel towards the ogre's forehead. "Is that a sign of… the sickness?"
Understanding dawned on Zak's blunt features, followed by an expression that looked remarkably like exasperation. "Master," he said, with the patience of one explaining that fire is hot to a very small child. "That is the mark of an Ogre Taskmaster. You should know this."
"A… what?"
"Taskmaster," Zak repeated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The blood is… purer. Stronger. Only a few, sometimes, when they are lucky or fight many big fights, they grow the horn. Become Taskmaster." He puffed out his chest slightly. "When it is full-grown, Zak will be much stronger. Much tougher. Better fighter for Master."
The relief that flooded Michael was so profound it felt like warmth spreading from his core. Not a curse, but an evolution. Not a liability, but an upgrade. His personal guardian was about to level up. The grin returned to his face, wider this time.
"Zak, that's brilliant!" he exclaimed, lowering the pistol entirely. "What do you need? To help it grow faster. Meat? Special… minerals?" His mind raced with possibilities, imagining rare magical reagents or potent elixirs.
Zak's answer was immediate and delivered with utter, solemn conviction. "The stew. The thick stew the prisoners eat. The… 'Larou' is tasty," he conceded, referring to the spicy strips Michael had introduced, "but the stew has more… good things in it. For growing. The horn needs the good things from the stew."
Michael stared. The Ogre Taskmaster, a being of purer, ancient lineage, a symbol of martial supremacy in the ogre world… required nutritional supplements from industrial-grade, processed meat slurry and vegetable mush. The sheer, crushing mundanity of it left him speechless. It was the most scientifically sound dietary request he'd ever heard, and it was for a mythical being growing a magic horn.
He started to laugh, a real, hearty sound that echoed in the shed full of guns. "Right. The stew it is." He waved a hand magnanimously. "Consider it done. We'll get you extra rations. Double portions."
After all, he mused, already mentally adjusting the logistics of his burgeoning operation, if everyone already thought he was running a clandestine farm for hundreds, what was one more mouth to feed? And not just any mouth—the mouth of a future Ogre Taskmaster. He wasn't just running a hideout or a mercenary band. He was, for all intents and purposes, fattening the war pig. And he found he didn't mind the prospect one bit.