A faint rustle in the branches above, just slightly out of sync with the gentle gusts of wind moving the boughs, gave Char only the briefest warning. Looking up, she had just enough time to see teeth and claws speeding toward her as some sort of large cat-like creature launched itself from a limb. She raised her gun hand, but was too slow. The cat creature hit her before she could bring the pistol into line, its claws digging into her shoulders and chest. It tried to get its teeth into her throat, but she was able to bring up her left hand with the crowbar and get it between her flesh and the beast’s mouth. It was a clumsy block, but it kept her throat intact.
The weight of the monster pushed her backward, and the breath was knocked out of her as she hit the ground hard. The gun went flying into the underbrush, unfired. It took all of Char’s increased strength to keep the fang-filled mouth away from her face and throat. She tried to identify the monster as she had done the trees, but nothing happened. The creature had the general shape and size of a mountain lion, but its fur was mottled in different shades of green and stood out in little tufts that made it look like it was wearing a ghillie suit. What little fur it had left, anyway. It looked sick. Its fur was falling out in patches, and its skin looked scabby and bubbled in places. Its breath smelled of chemicals and decay, and the hot droplets of spittle landing on Char’s face made her want to gag.
Lulu launched herself at the cat with a snarl, forcing the beast to let go of Char and lunge to the side to avoid the pit-bull’s snapping jaws. Char rolled to her right, bringing the crowbar in her left hand around in an arc that hit the cat’s right forepaw with a crunch of bone breaking. The big cat yowled and flashed a paw at Char’s face, forcing her to roll back the other way to avoid being blinded. Lulu jumped over Char as she rolled, interposing herself between Char and the cat, giving Char a chance to get to her feet. Char switched the crowbar to her right hand and faced the spitting, hissing feline.
Warm trickles of blood ran down Char’s torso from the claw wounds in her shoulders and abdomen, the wounds burned with pain as she moved. She did her best to ignore it and made a lunge for the cat with the crowbar held high. She was acting on pure fear and instinct, unsure herself if she was trying to hit the cat or scare it into running. As the cat backpedaled away from her swing, Char heard the voice of her martial arts instructor admonish her for telegraphing the blow. She remembered his advice about efficient movements and using her whole body to add power to a strike. She wasn’t a wild animal, she needed to be smarter. Those lessons had been a long time ago, and her body had forgotten.
Lulu circled wide around the cat, trying to get behind it as Char swung again for its head. This time her swing was more focused and came much closer to hitting the agile beast, forcing it to dance backward, closer to Lulu. Lulu used the moment to lunge in from behind to bite at the cat’s hamstring, drawing blood, but failing to cripple her prey. The cat turned to face the danger from its rear, Lulu leaping away at the last moment. Char took the opening to swing at the cat’s backside, this time landing the blow with a satisfying thump. The cat yowled in pain, its right hind leg buckling under it.
Lulu darted in again, but this time she was the one left dancing backward with a yelp as the cat scored a blow across the dog’s muzzle, leaving furrows. Seeing Lulu injured brought Char’s rage to a boil, and she brought the crowbar down on the cat’s back, but the cat was fast, twisting in place and taking the blow on its right shoulder, its left paw raked lightning fast claws down the outside of Char’s right arm. Char didn’t back away this time, but kicked out, landing a foot in the cat’s stomach and knocking the wind out of it. Lulu clamped down on the cat’s throat with the steel grip her breed was famous for.
The cat flailed wildly, claws flying. The wild thrashing forced Char to back away again and try to come around behind the desperate creature to end the fight. Lulu held on, despite taking several raking blows to her side. Char brought the crowbar down on the cat’s head with all of her newly augmented strength, ending the animal’s struggles with a sickening crunch. Green and red blood splattered from the cat’s mouth and it twitched one last time before going still. Lulu held her death grip, shaking the limp animal twice, but not letting go until every sign of life was gone from the cat.
Four notices appeared in Char’s vision:
You have killed
Corrupted Tree-top Stalker
Level 19
Experience gained
——————————————————————
Congratulations! You have gained a level.
You are level 16.
You have gained 5 free stat points.
—————————————————————
New skill learned:
Blunt Weapons
Beginner
Maces, flails, clubs, frying pans. If you absolutely
have to beat something to death, you may as well do it right.
_____________________
You have made progress on
Quest: Something Toxic
5 of 30 corrupted creatures killed
Char staggered back two steps and gave in to the wobbliness in her knees, dropping onto her butt in the grass. Out of breath, and cradling her wounded arm, she was surprised to find herself smiling. She hated the terror, didn’t much care for the blood and gore, didn’t enjoy the killing for its own sake, but, damn, did the thrill of victory feel good. She started laughing. She felt strong. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t in a very long time.
The fight with the Dire Opossums had been terrifying, but there’d been more shock and confusion. The vine had left her skin in pain, but her emotions scattered and numb as she’d tried to adjust to the craziness of this new world, but this battle… there had been something primal in the struggle to best the beast. Perhaps it was because this foe had been recognizable, despite its green fur and sickly appearance. It was a wild animal similar enough to the ones her ancient ancestors had faced and fought. Killing the cat left Char with a deep sense of satisfaction, a feeling that she had earned her survival, her right to exist in this world. It was a sensation she had difficulty putting to words, but despite the fear and pain of the fight, she knew she wanted to feel that again.
“You OK, Lulu?” The dog had finally calmed enough to open her jaws and drop the body of the cat. Turning her back to the corpse, she showed her disdain for her defeated foe by kicking leaf litter over it with her hind legs before trotting over to Char. Char checked the dog over. She had scratches along one side of her muzzle, and another set down her side, but they weren’t too deep, and were already starting to clot. A quick glance at the health bars at the edge of her vision told Char that her own health was at about 60%, and Lulu’s was near the 80% mark.
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She reached toward Lulu, meaning to give some vitality to heal the dog, but changed her mind. These wounds weren’t too bad, and Lulu wasn’t acting like she was in too much pain. Char decided it would be better to get an idea of how fast Lulu would heal on her own. She had the feeling that resource management was going to be important. Best to get a baseline for herself and her pet now, than have to worry about it in a more desperate situation. She turned the reach of her hand into a scratch behind Lulu’s ears. “You are a good girl, Lulu. The best girl. I’m pretty sure that cat would have killed me if you hadn’t been there.”
She sat there for several minutes, petting Lulu and letting her own mind and heartbeat calm a bit. She kept her eyes up in the trees, though, worried that there may be more of the ambush hunters lurking. Once she’d caught her breath, and the pain of her own wounds had begun to fade a bit, she pushed herself to her feet. She figured she’d been sitting for around five minutes, and she checked the health bars again. Her health had climbed to 72%, and Lulu’s was up to 90%. About 2% back per minute. Good to know, she thought, I heal just a bit faster than Lulu. I wonder if she got upgraded like I did? She must have gotten something, or she wouldn’t be healing so fast.
She couldn’t see any kind of stat page for Lulu. All she had was a health bar, and a vague sense of how far away Lulu was from her. She’d noticed that Lulu tended to listen and obey her orders better than any dog she’d ever had before, but she wasn’t sure if that was because Lulu had been well trained, or if it had something to do with the Pet Bond. It made her uncomfortable to think that the affection and loyalty Lulu had showed her so far was some artificial effect of this new system. Even for a dog, Char found the idea of free will being overridden abhorrent. All she could go by was Lulu’s own actions, though, and the dog seemed normal and happy enough.
Those musings weren’t getting her anywhere, and she needed to stay alert, so she put them aside for another time. It is what it is, she told herself, parroting her Dad’s favorite saying. He was a big proponent of taking things as they came and dealing with reality rather than wasting time wishing things were different. He had a lot of wise bromides he’d passed on to her, things he’d learned to help him cope with his PTSD and the anger and anxiety issues that had come with it. An aphorism about wishing in one hand and doing something more unpleasant in the other, the Serenity Prayer, and he’d even been the one to teach her about meditation. Following another of his habits, she took in a deep breath, all the way to the bottom of her lungs, and blew it out again, centering her mind on her immediate goal.
“OK, Lulu, we need to find out where these corrupted creatures are coming from. How do we do that?” She looked around at the trees, “We can’t track something that moves from branch to branch. I guess we’ll make a circuit around the outside of the fence and see what we can see. But first…” Char walked over to the body of the cat and crouched down to examine it. The blood oozing from its wounds was odd. It was like there were two different liquids in its veins that didn’t quite mix—red blood, and some sort of green goop. The color of the fluid was too vivid to be natural. It put her in mind of cartoon representations of toxic waste. Radioactive waste without the glow. “I hope you didn’t swallow any of that when you bit this thing, Lu. I get the feeling that would be a bad thing.”
She tapped the creature’s ear and looted it, earning 15 silver credits and no other loot. Then she spent nearly half an hour searching the brush for her lost pistol. She was reluctant to give up the search. Having the gun had felt like having an advantage, and losing it was a blow to her confidence. That left her with only the crowbar and her pocket knife as weapons. There was no sign of it, though, and the day was moving on. “That is so…” she stopped herself before the word ’unfair’ could pass her lips, feeling ashamed for even thinking it, considering how lucky she’d been so far. “I never even got to fire the thing.” The world seemed a little more dangerous, and the woods a little darker.
They were still very near the gate to the warehouse lot. Char moved a little deeper into the woods, just far enough that the fence was still in sight to her right as she walked. “Head on a swivel, Lulu. There could be anything out here.” Char found herself trying to look in every direction at once as she walked, including up. She was jumping at every sound. She recalled hunting trips with her dad in those rare times when he was home. He taught her how to read the woods, and how to move with the woods instead of fighting it. She stopped pushing through the brush and found the thin spots, the tree roots, the clear spaces. The knot in her shoulders loosened as the memory of his deep, reassuring voice came back to her and the woods began to feel less alien, despite the strange vegetation.
She pushed back the watery feeling in her gut, and the creeping chill up her spine and remembered her martial arts lessons, her time at the firing range with her dad, and the terrifying time she went skydiving with her cousin. She could do this. She had skills and knowledge, and she’d faced fear before. She began to repeat one of her favorite mantras to herself: I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration… It did its work and the fear trickled away, leaving her sharp and focused. She sent a quick mental thank-you to Frank Herbert.
It was in this calmer state of mind that she spotted the first group of hairless, scabby, over-sized Opossums. Her first instinct was to avoid them. They hadn’t seen her or Lulu, they could circle around and keep looking for the source of the corruption, and leave the monsters to themselves. The little ball of ice in her belly nearly convinced her to do just that, but the ghostly icons floating at the corners of her vision reminded her that the world didn’t work that way anymore. Surviving in this world would mean getting stronger, and getting good at fighting, and the only way to get good was practice.
Char made sure they were downwind and crouched behind a tree. Peering between the tree and a low bush, she watched the beasts. Being the aggressor still didn’t feel right. Delaying what she knew was inevitable, she peered hard at the creatures the same way she’d done to identify the plants around her, trying to force the system to give her some information. They were a little bit bigger than the Corrupted Juvenile Dire Opossums that had attacked them in the warehouse lot, but far smaller than the mini-van sized Matron had been. Maybe these were adults? The little ones were around level 6, and the Matron was level 26, so maybe these are around my level? They looked just as sick as the others, and the Stalker, had been.
Whatever it was that was making them sick, it didn’t seem to make them weaker. Their fur was mostly gone, just a few lonesome clumps hanging on here and there. Their skin was waxy and scabbed, and they looked oddly lumpy, as though there were tumors just under the skin. There were four of them, and they were eating something. Char couldn’t tell what it was. At first, she’d thought they were tearing apart a rotten log looking for bugs and grubs, but when one of them lifted a blood and gore covered snout above the others she realized it was an animal carcass of some sort.
A shudder ran through her. She knew opossums were carnivores. They had a reputation as snake and rat hunters as well as scavengers. The ones she’d seen before the change had been cute little bug-eaters, but these… these were monsters. She tightened her grip on the crowbar.
These creatures were larger and probably stronger than the little ones she’d fought. Those had been the size of terriers, these were closer in size to a German Shepard. By game logic, that meant they were probably higher levels. She gritted her teeth in frustration as an info box on the creatures failed to appear.
Char started to back away from the clearing. This fight wasn’t one they needed, the odds were too far against them. She motioned for Lulu to follow her, and they moved away from the feasting monsters. They had only moved away by three steps when Lulu’s hackles went up and she began to growl.
