The portal was not a completely black, non-reflective circular space; rather, it was a type of crack in the wall that descended vertically, reflecting a certain pink aura from the endless darkness it emitted. As he approached, the portal did not suck him in, and there was not the slightest pressure directed toward him.
With one hand in his pocket, a backpack entering his dimensional space, and a flashlight in his hand, he crossed the crack on foot.
_______
The thermal shock was instantaneous. In the span of a millisecond, he left behind the cold, constant embrace of his backroom's air conditioning and the electric hum, only to be suddenly devoured by a climate that made no sense to him. Living in one of the coolest cities, the temperature always stayed between 28-30°C, regardless of whether it was summer or winter.
Here, it was probably 38°C; the heat wasn't the only problem, but also that hot humidity and heavy atmosphere. There was also a strange black mist swirling at ankle height everywhere. Additionally, there was that strange smell everywhere—a type of vegetable oil mixed with a lot of medication; it was quite addictive and unpleasant.
Alexander's eyes moved slowly across the ruined place where he had appeared; he blinked a few times, recognizing what this was supposed to be before. He couldn't help his expression turning offended by the panorama.
He had appeared in the backroom of another grocery store, or at least, in the skeleton of what one used to be. To call this dumpster a "store" was to do it an undeserved favor. The place had been looted to its foundations with violence. The metal shelves, which should have been anchored to the floor, were twisted, dented, and overturned in the aisles as if a hurricane had passed through. The floor was a mosaic of filth, torn plastic wrappers, rusted cans, and a crunchy carpet of broken glass. Not a single sad bottle of water remained, nor a trampled pack of gum. Nothing. It was the typical and predictable scenario of mass panic: people had stampeded in to take even the ceiling lights when the world went to hell.
"What a total lack of civility," he murmured, his voice sounding strangely muffled by the density of the air. "If you're going to loot a commercial establishment, at least don't leave it a mess. You could take the things and leave the shelves in their place. Whoever owned this place must have cried blood seeing this".
He walked slowly, dodging the larger pieces of debris. His boots crunched over the glass and trash, echoing in the cavernous, empty space. He peered down the wrecked aisles and noticed dark marks on the walls—dried stains that told stories of fights to the death over a simple can of preserves. To him, all that desperation felt foreign. It simply seemed to be in poor taste. Who hasn't fought desperately for something before?
He reached the front of the premises. The large glass window that once looked out onto the street was completely shattered. Through that irregular frame of broken glass, he stepped outside onto a sidewalk that was barely recognizable.
Outside, the mist extended endlessly in all directions; there were large severed vines everywhere and the asphalt was upturned. In the distance, an enormous tree nearly 20 meters high could barely be distinguished due to the distance; the sky looked like something you would only see in movies, with a reddish color and gray clouds. He stood on the edge of the sidewalk, taking in the landscape. It was hellishly hot, making sweat break out on his forehead beneath his dark hair.
Suddenly, a wet and guttural noise interrupted. About fifteen meters away, crawling between a thicker bank of mist and the weeds sprouting from the asphalt, he perceived movement.
Three figures emerged from the darkness.
They were human shapes... or, to be more exact, they were the failed draft of what was once a human. The Black Mist had wreaked havoc on them. Their skin was covered in grayish tumors and hardened scabs. Their clothes hung in rotten tatters. Their eyes lacked pupils, reduced to whitish sockets that oozed a dark liquid, and they moved with a clumsy slowness, dragging their feet as if gravity weighed twice as much upon them.
They stank.
The stench of rotting flesh and decomposition reached the protagonist, mixing with the humid heat. They were solitary zombies, stragglers—the most pathetic and lowest rung of this new, constantly changing ecosystem.
The three mutants, attracted by the sound of his steps on the glass, turned their necks with an unnatural crack. They raised their deformed faces in his direction and opened sagging jaws, letting out a moan that was half hunger and half lament, before starting to limp toward him, drooling. The young man let out a long, heavy sigh, bringing two fingers to the bridge of his nose in a gesture of pure visual exhaustion.
"Really?" he said aloud, dragging out the words with a mixture of disappointment and laziness.
"Is this the grand welcoming committee the apocalypse offers? I expected something more exciting. I don't know, three-headed mutant wolves, killer vines... but they send me three subjects who can barely walk in a straight line. They are the equivalent of advice from a divorced neighbor who never had a partner again after her first love. How annoying". Alexander couldn't help but complain with exasperation.
The first zombie, slightly faster than its companions, moved forward. It raised bony arms ending in blackened nails and lunged forward with a dull screech, its jaws chattering. Alexander didn't even take his hands out of his jacket pockets. He didn't retreat a single millimeter. He maintained his relaxed posture, leaning his weight on one leg.
In his mind, he opened that vast dimensional space. He visualized the perfect inventory he had stored minutes earlier in his world. With a thought as fleeting and natural as a blink, he selected one of the heavy metal shelves he had "vacuumed up" from his backroom. The enormous behemoth of solid steel materialized out of nowhere, three meters up in the air, right above the zombie's path. Earth's gravity, relentless as always, took care of the rest.
The shelf fell straight down. It crushed the mutant against the cracked asphalt with a dry, disgusting snap that echoed in the silent street. A small cloud of grayish dust and black blood splattered the ground. The first monster was reduced to an unrecognizable mess beneath the metal.
The other two zombies didn't even flinch. Their intelligence was so null that the sudden appearance of a ton of metal falling from the sky didn't register in their rotten brains. They continued advancing, stepping on their companion's blood, with arms outstretched toward fresh meat.
"My god, can't you even take such a direct hint? You're definitely lacking brains," he murmured, tilting his head. With a new blink of his will, he pulled the heavy, sharp knife from his mental space. But he didn't make it appear in his hand. Using that strange spatial inertia he was beginning to master, he caused the knife to materialize directly in the air, already in motion, centimeters from the second mutant's face.
The stainless steel blade penetrated the zombie's softened skull with the smoothness of a hot knife through butter. The mutant collapsed backward, falling like a sack of potatoes without making a single sound. The next instant, with another casual thought, he returned the knife to his mental space, storing it perfectly clean and ready for the next use.
One remained. The last zombie was less than a meter away, throwing a useless swipe at the air. He simply smiled—a lopsided, charismatic smile—and dropped an entire heavy, antique cash register directly onto the monster's head. The impact resonated with a metallic noise and a dull bell chime. The zombie fell dead, joining the small improvised graveyard in front of the ruined store.
"I'm really very good at this; I truly don't understand how those movie characters are so limited. Hmmm, now that I think about it, will there be more people like me? Well, whatever, first I should think about what to do here before anything else". He looked up and down the street for a few more seconds. The dark haze hid the skyscrapers in the distance, and the sounds of other larger creatures could be heard very far away. He could have kept walking, exploring the depths of this city, but the sticky grime under his soles, the hellish heat, and the absolute mediocrity of the landscape took away his desire to keep strolling.
He had already seen enough for a first excursion. He already had enough knowledge of this place to move forward in the face of unknown dangers; today he encountered a weak being, but could he ensure the next ones would be just like these zombies? He would not venture out to explore without preparation, and even less so without entirely understanding his current capabilities. He turned around, giving his back to the apocalyptic disaster, re-entered the ruinous and depressing store, navigated the debris again, and crossed the imperceptible portal crack in the back wall.
The return was instantaneous. The transition from the humid hell to his paradise felt like a balm. The clean, dry air conditioning of his backroom welcomed him like a familiar embrace. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the pleasant smell of cleanliness. He went straight to the beverage cooler, took out a bone-chilled can of cola, opened it with a satisfying snap, and took a long drink. The sugar and cold returned his freshness instantly. He sat on the edge of the checkout counter, legs dangling, and decided it was the perfect time for a serious training session. It would be better to understand his limits, if he had any.
__________
One week
After a week of testing all sorts of things, he realized several things he hadn't paid attention to at first. Every time he used something that entered his mental space, a kind of barrier extended around him that increased the more he used his ability; and within this barrier, he had complete control over everything inside it, while he couldn't control anything outside this range. It was a type of domain outside his mental space that he could control at will, but so far he could only use it for 3 hours straight; beyond that, it would make his brain feel a pressure as great as a vice pressing against it.
"I have everything ready to return to the apocalyptic world; I hope there are people alive, otherwise they are wasting my valuable time for drinking until I pass out." Alexander had thought of ways to benefit from that world. And after a few long hours, he had an epiphany: gold was a mineral with great value no matter where you went; as long as there was gold in that world, it would be worth the risk, though he had also considered these risks and there were more risks than benefits. But how to maximize benefits and decrease losses? Of course, let other people do the heavy lifting. And what is it that people seek most and has the most value in the apocalypse? Food, of course, and food was something he did not lack. Considering he had an infinite mental space and an ability where he would have total control of an area of 250m², it was enough to keep that previously dilapidated store under his domain and protection against whatever comes.