- Fresh Air
Char shoved the fire door open, coughing, and stumbled out. Lulu followed, trailed by a billowing cloud of black smoke. The morning sun touched her face with warmth. She sank to the ground to sprawl out and catch her breath. The dew-wet grass was cool and refreshing after the cloying dark and hellish heat of the dungeon.
A few failed attempts at casting her new spell and two sessions of meditation had gotten them both healed up. By the time they’d been in any shape to move on, the factory, and its volatile contents, had been a hellscape of fire and small explosions that tore apart sections of the maze walls.
She’d looted the corpse of the Vasculex Mother-Root, found the final valve and turned it, and the exit door had been right there in the back wall, half-obscured by pipes. There hadn’t been any time to check her notifications, so she could only hope that she’d finished the quest.
Lulu was rolling in the grass nearby, flopping from side to side and squirming her back into the wet grass with little yips and ruffs of pleasure. The sight made Char smile. They were alive, and it was a beautiful morning. She started to laugh at the pitty’s antics, and the chuckle turned into a full-on belly laugh driven by the sheer joy of being alive.
As much as she wanted to stay in that moment, when the laughter ran its course, Char knew that they had to move. They need to find a safe place to hole up for a few hours. They both needed a good meal and some sleep. As she pushed herself to her feet, she turned to Lulu and asked, “So, how do you feel about baths?”
Lulu’s ears went up in alarm, and she backed away a few steps.
“Not a fan, huh? OK, well, I intend to find a spot upstream and scrub down. I stink.” She started walking. There were flashing notifications that she needed to read, and loot from the Mother-Root she should look at, but just then, she couldn’t bring herself to care about that.
She couldn’t decide if the dungeon had been worth the risk. She’d gained a lot from it, but she and Lulu both had come too close to never leaving its depths. If she wanted to get strong enough to make a difference in humanity’s fight against aliens that could rearrange an entire planet, she was going to have to take risks. She was going to have to find people to fight with her, as well. No matter how strong she got, one person couldn’t do everything.
It wasn’t hard to come to terms with the idea of taking risks. She’d started to enjoy the fights and the challenge. She resolved to be more picky about the risks she took, though. No more diving in blind and unprepared. No more Leroy Jenkins bullshit. There would be times when she didn’t have any choice, but when she did have a choice? Well, she couldn’t help anyone as a corpse.
Vague plans swirled in her head as she walked, but none of them coalesced into anything beyond getting a bath, a meal, and some sleep. She was too exhausted for anything more.
They followed the stream until the ruins of the Chinese factory were out of sight, lost in the trees. The stream was shallow and barely three feet wide, but Char found a spot where a large rock forced it to change course. Where the flow diverted around the rock, it carved out a pool that was wider and deeper. Not deep enough for swimming, but it would work for a bath.
Char turned in a slow circle, watching and listening for anything dangerous. She remembered to check the trees for any lurking Treetop Stalkers, and she chuckled to herself as she recalled a running joke from a book series she enjoyed. Then, she couldn’t help herself, and said it: “Puma check!”
Lulu cocked her head and looked at Char, but she didn’t get the reference. That just made Char grin harder. “It’s OK, Lu. I’m so tired, I think I’m getting a little punch drunk.”
She pulled off her armored vest and checked it over. It held up better than the Hunter’s Jerkin. There were no holes in it, but there were plenty of scrapes and scratches where it had done its job protecting her. She set it on the rock to rinse off later.
Her boots were holding up nicely. They were good, sturdy work boots with metal toes, and all they needed was a good rinse. Her jeans were a bloody, shredded mess. Her t-shirt wasn’t much better. Her underthings would need a good washing and a little work with her sewing kit, but she thought they might be salvageable.
She sighed as she went through the pockets of her ruined jeans. “If this keeps up, I’m going to be running around in a loincloth in a week.”
She pulled her shower bag from her inventory and rummaged through it for some soap and a washcloth. She started for the stream, but stopped, considering the pile of items on the rock. Frowning, she decided that the world was too unpredictable to be leaving useful items lying around. She couldn’t afford to lose them if something unexpected happened, so she pulled them all back into her inventory. Even the ruined jeans and t-shirt might be useful for something.
Bracing for the cold, she waded into the pool. The water came to her waist, and the cold knocked her breath away with a gasp as she plunged in. She gave herself a minute to adjust to the temperature, then started to scrub down. Rivulets of red streamed away from her as she washed away the blood and grime that caked her.
Lulu splashed in after her and dog-paddled around the pool for a minute before going to sniff at something on the bank. “Hey, I thought you didn’t like baths.”
Char’s hair was a tangled, clumped, sticky, knotted mess. She started to try to wash it, but it was a lost cause. Pulling her pocket knife from her inventory, she grabbed her ponytail just above the thoroughly tangled and stuck hair tie and sawed through the whole mess.
She was left with a ragged and uneven bob, but she told herself she didn’t care. It would be easier to take care of this way, and it would be one less way for an enemy to grab her. She pretended that it was just the cold water making her eyes tear up, because she certainly wasn’t getting emotional over hair.
The whole world was gone. Cars and internet and books and supermarkets, and how many millions of people had died by now? Her hair didn’t matter, and as the tears came, she knew it wasn’t her hair she was crying for. Her dad, her aunt, and her cousins, the friends that she’d lost touch with over the years… There was no way to know if she’d ever see any of them again.
Trucking had taken her away from them for months at a time, but she’d always known that they were there, living their lives, and she could reach out whenever she wanted, but now? How many of them were already dead? How many had been eaten by monsters? Images of the vine-puppets flashed through her mind, and she shuddered. How many had been turned into monsters?
The tears came, and she let them flow. She ducked down under the frigid water to wash away the soap, and she let the stream carry away her tears as well.
Later, while she was spreading her washed clothes on the rock to dry in the sun, and dressed in fresh, clean clothes from her laundry bag, she knew that it was a good thing that she’d cried, that she’d needed to let herself mourn. But she also knew that she couldn’t let herself get lost in it. The anger was good, it kept her sharp, kept her focused, but that would eat at her, too, if she let it. The emotions were so big, so overwhelming, they’d swallow her whole if she wasn’t careful.
The cold water was refreshing, being clean lifted her spirits, and the long cry had been cathartic. Now, they needed to find someplace safe to get some sleep. She considered going back to the truck, but rejected the idea almost immediately. She needed to make progress towards something, anything. Going back to the truck felt too much like giving up.
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She squinted up to the sky to find the sun. It had been early morning when they’d come out of the dungeon, so she knew which way was east. Or, east-ish, at least. Oklahoma had been southwest of Illinois before the world got scrambled. It might not be in that direction anymore, she might not even be in Illinois at all, but it was as good as any other direction.
While she waited for her clothes to dry, she built a little campfire. She remembered to gather dry rocks away from the stream for her fire ring. Since she would be boiling it anyway, she used water from the stream in her pot instead of using her bottled supply. A coffee mug did double duty as a measuring cup to make sure she got exactly three cups of water.
It was a dish she usually made in the microwave in her truck in a plastic bowl, but since all she needed was boiling water, it should work fine here, too. The storage tub with her food came out of her inventory, seeming to grow in size as she pulled it out. She found her instant coffee, a packet of instant mashed potatoes, a small can of veg-all, and a can of roast beef.
She panicked for a couple of minutes when she couldn’t find her can opener. When she finally did find it, she resolved to sort through everything and get it better organized as soon as they had a safe place to hole up.
Lulu’s food and water bowls also came out, and she opened a can of wet food for her canine friend. Lulu had her food finished off well before the water came to a boil, and she sat, staring at Char, and pawing at her bowl as if asking why it was empty already.
When the water boiled, Char poured one cup of water into her mug and added the potato flakes to the other two cups. She mixed up a cup of instant coffee, then mixed the drained vegetables and roast beef into the mashed potatoes. Once they were mixed, she took pity on Lulu and scooped a couple of spoonfuls into her bowl.
The meal was usually too much for Char to eat all at once. On a normal day, she would eat half of it and save the rest for later, but she’d had nothing but a couple of protein bars in the last day or so. It was all gone before she realized, doing wonders to fill the gnawing, hungry hollowness in her stomach.
Her clothes still weren’t dry, but she didn’t want to spend any more time sitting here. She packed everything away and made sure the fire was out, pouring panfuls of water over the ashes to be certain. She thought about scattering the stones that she’d used for the fire ring, but decided to leave them. She wasn’t worried about hiding her trail, and liked the idea that it might help the next people to come this way.
She pulled on her Cottonwood Hide vest. The lining was still a little damp, but it was a warm day; better to deal with a little discomfort than walk around without armor. She double checked the area to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind, then clicked her tongue to get Lulu’s attention. “You ready to see what’s over that way, Lu?”
Lulu bounded up to her side, looking up at her with a big doggy grin. Her tail wagged so hard that her rear paws had to dance to keep up. “Well. OK, then.” Char grinned, and they started walking.
Lulu rushed ahead, stopped to sniff at every tree and bush, got left behind, and then ran ahead again. It was a warm day, but it wasn’t too bad under the shade of the trees. An occasional cold gust of air had Char checking the sky for storm clouds, but it was crystal blue and clear.
They had to fight a young boar that took exception to Char crossing its path, but while it was large and had an extra set of tusks, it wasn’t corrupted. Instead of looting it, Char did her best to butcher it. Her food wouldn’t last forever, and she needed to know if the beasts she killed would all puff away into dust, or if they could be used for parts the way nature intended.
The boar didn’t puff into dust. That led Char to theorize that, when looted, the system was somehow using the creature’s mass to pay for the loot they were getting. As long as she didn’t loot a creature, she could use its meat and hide normally. And, as well as more data, she got a good twenty pounds of ham and pork chops. Since she didn’t have any way to smoke the meat, this would also be a test of how well her inventory would preserve what she put into it.
The butchering took longer than she’d intended to spend on it, and the day was wearing on. They walked another couple of hours, and Char was starting to worry that they wouldn’t find any place safe to camp when another building came into view. The yellow, orange, and Kelly green paint made it hard to miss.
This one was a low building made of brick with wooden trim and panels. The wood was painted in garish colors, and the front of the building had large glass windows. The sign over the door was in Spanish, and the only word Char recognized was ‘mercado’.
As with the cars she’d found, the store was surrounded by a ragged section of paved ground. A wide stretch of sidewalk ran in front of the store, complete with a curb and a bit of crumbling asphalt roadway.
Char motioned to Lulu to stay close, and she approached the store slowly and quietly, looking for any sign of life. The front door yawned open, swaying slightly as the breeze pushed it. Empty metal shelves were visible through the windows. Something about the sight made a shiver run down Char’s spine. She drew her sword, keeping it low and ready.
Crouching, she crept up to the window to peer in. Condensation fogged the windows and dripped down them. A shape moved in the shadows, tall and thin. It was hard to see in the darkness of the store. It held its arms as if it were holding something precious, shuffling to the back of the building. As she watched, it placed whatever it had been carrying onto a jumbled pile, placing each item carefully, as if it were fragile.
Then it turned. It walked with an odd bobbing shuffle that made it seem to sway from side to side. As it moved toward the better-lit front of the store, it lifted a hand to the shelves. Its fingers were long and almost skeletal, tipped with needle-like claws. It tapped the claws along one of the shelves, making the metal echo through the room. Tap, tap, tap. It felt across the shelf, then moved to another and repeated the motion. Tap, tap, tap.
“It’s searching the shelves,” she whispered as realization struck her. The words were barely louder than a breath, but the creature froze in mid-tap. It turned its head toward the door, and Char got a look at its features for the first time. They were sunken, skeletal. Pale, frostbitten skin stretched tight across the bone. The skin continued, unbroken, over its eye sockets. Its mouth opened wide in a soundless scream, showing rows of shark-like teeth.
With no warning, it was suddenly running for the door, claws held ahead of it, teeth bared. Char barely had time to back up two steps before the monster was out the door. The glass of the door frosted over as the creature passed it.
Char assessed it:
Bonepicker
Level 25
These creatures may once have been human,
but no more. It is unknown if they are some
form of undead, or the result of a curse.
They are scavengers, picking the bones of
any dead they find on the frozen tundras and
ice fields where they roam.
The lore dump surprised her, and she was so distracted that she barely got her sword up in time to parry the creature’s first swipes. It was tall, at least seven feet, and its reach was long. It looked like someone had taken a man, starved him, then stretched him out. It was dressed in fluttering, filthy rags, and it emanated an aura of bone-chilling cold that made Char feel sluggish.
Lulu darted in from behind it, biting at its hamstring while Char held off its wild, slashing attacks. Lulu yelped with pain and backed away. Char glanced away to see what had hurt her. The tender flesh of her gums was red and steamed with cold, blistered by contact with the frozen flesh of the Bonepicker.
Char met its next blow with a snarl, driving it back. She moved from defense to offense in a rage. As the rage clouded her analytical mind, her instincts flowed in to fill the gap. She hacked down at the inside of its elbow as it reached for her again, and flowed past its other reaching claw.
She brought the sword around to cleave through its shoulder, but it was fast. So fast. She didn’t even see the claw that tore through her hip just under the edge of her vest, sending an icy chill deep into her bones. She stumbled back, barely raising the sword to parry another reaching claw. She spun the sword to block another swipe and was gratified when three of its fingers dropped to the sidewalk.
Viscous blue blood oozed from the wound, leaking icy vapor into the air and creating circles of frost where the drops hit the concrete. The Bonepicker lunged forward in another burst of incredible speed, tangling her sword arm and pulling her in close. Its body radiated cold. It felt like being grappled by a glacier. She called her dagger to her left hand. The Bonepicker’s tooth-filled maw descended on her neck.
Char thrust the dagger into its belly and ripped it upward, spilling frozen intestines onto the ground, and splashing herself with blood that burned like liquid nitrogen. The Bonepicker cut off its lunge with a soundless howl of agony, mouth wide as it stumbled back. It tried to scoop the intestines back into itself with its injured hand, its other claw-tipped hand held out, almost as if warding away another blow.
Char had no mercy, though. She brought her sword around, and more fingers rained to the ground a split second before the Bonepicker’s head landed next to them.
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