CHAPTER 7 – New Kid In Town...
Arthur brought two sticks up and sat one down on top of each grave site. We sat next to our friends for a few hours until the sun started to dip below the mountains then we went inside for the night.
Upon walking inside we were slapped in the face by the strong copper scent of thick coagulated blood, “Ugh… This is the last place I want to sleep.” Arthur returned my sentiment with a weak growl, “Fuck it, let’s go say good bye then walk back to the house. We can loot the chipmunk and stay there for the night.”
Arthur voiced his agreement, “Ruff”
I went through the home to look for anything that may be useful then we set off on our way back to the house. The trip actually went smooth. We heard some noises but nothing came out to say what’s up. Before entering the house I went to loot the chipmunk corpse that I kicked out into the yard.
The chipmunk provided what the system calls ‘Small Beast Meat’. It says consumable but I’m still not sure if it’s edible, or rather if I trust it. I might give it a shot if we get hungry enough. If I didn’t feel the need to stock up on potions I would have skipped looting this thing all together. Seems like the fight was way too difficult to get nothing from it but I can’t expect cool shit from every single kill I guess.
We went straight into the basement and passed out for the night in our makeshift beds that were still messy from the night before.
Morning arrived too fast.
We both crawled out of bed, I don’t know about Arthur but I was feeling groggy and distracted, Arthur had a normal dog food breakfast and I had a piece of bread with a sip of water.
I whispered weakly, “Ugh, I really miss coffee. Fuck...” I forced myself off of the cold basement floor as Arthur finished devouring his food.
I changed into my last outfit that wasn’t destroyed during the exorcism of my house.
A pair of jeans, plain Black t-shirt, with a thick lumberjack flannel and a Navy Blue hoodie that depicted an old timey football guy grinning under his neat tricorne hat, he was bent over with a ball in his hands playing the center position.
When I finished changing I remembered something.
I went around to the back of the house opening the cellar bulkhead where I found my sledgehammer tucked away in the corner. I looked around and also found my survival knife in a 5 gallon bucket with some rope and zip ties. The survival knife was decent enough quality with an eight inch serrated blade. Inside the sheath was a 3 inch ferrocerium rod for sparking tinder.
The sledge probably wasn’t the greatest weapon for what I’d fought thus far but I was sure it would come in handy on a few occasions, plus with how strong I felt now swinging it should be easy peasy. It would at least help to make camp faster. I tossed the items into my inventory then made my way to the front of the house.
“Arthur!” A second later he barreled through the front door with a shredded piece of his once favorite ball hanging from his mouth. I grabbed the piece of ball and stored it in my inventory.
Staring at the small single story two bedroom house where so many memories were created, good and bad, I spoke to Arthur, “Time to leave our home for good, I’m sure we will figure something out when this shit is over. Then, I guess we’ll just have to start fresh. I don’t think my insurance covers hell taking over the house but, it’ll be Aight.”
We planned to spend our lives here. Now it was a ravaged monument of what could have been.
Arthur took off as I turned to follow, leaving my past life behind, along with the hopes and dreams.
My house is 15 miles from town, luckily for us, the snow finished melting away and it warmed up unusually fast for the time of year, but unlucky for us because there haven’t been any cars driving since the explosion. Also unfortunate, my boots were too far gone after the fight with the Mutts and my two other pairs of shoes were too close to the vacuum cleaner during the explosions, this left me to trek through the woods and muddy roads in my old beat up moccasins that had no tread at all.
I thought on how the past day had been so intense, the few hours walking slowly down the mountain helped clear some things in my head as I tossed around ideas, I took the time to really think about what’s going on.
The thoughts in my head started to grow too loud so I started voicing them to Arthur, “So, obviously this is going on everywhere or we would have seen someone drive by us already. It’s at least happening on our mountain. I’m hoping it’s just in the town or county rather than the state or god forbid world wide.” I was attempting to be more optimistic than I normally tend to be. The thought of losing more people was making my chest feel heavy.
Arthur just looked back at me nodding his head in agreement.
Arthur sniffed the air as we methodically moved in and out of the road and woods. He was using his nose to help navigate away from any monsters so we could enjoy a peaceful morning walk.
A few times in the first hours of our journey he picked up a scent or sensed something. He steered us around a few Spriggan mobs then 2 overgrown chipmunks fighting over dead prey that apparently wasn’t as fast as they were.
After seeing the Spriggans, I could tell Arthur was itching for something to chew on so I tossed him a Spriggan arm and he happily led the way carrying the big stick arm in his mouth just like he always use to do when he was a normal dog.
A few more miles and a few more scents, we ended up straying into the woods further than anticipated.
I called out, “Buckster, let’s sit for a minute.”
He sat down next to me panting.
He knew I was up to something so he spoke up, “Bawrwoor?”
Laughing I started, “Okay Buckle, I was thinking,” he suddenly interrupted me.
“Rrrruff!” He started wagging his tail and shaking his head.
I swear my dog just made a fucking joke at my expense.
I looked down at him incredulously, “Yeah? It’s like that? Smart ass... I can think you know. I’m at least capable of that!” I said chuckling after being thrown off for a second. I continued, “Anyways, I was thinking we need to grind some levels. Safely, and on monsters we know. That way we can go in with a solid game plan each time.” He nodded in agreement, still panting and wagging his tail, “You must be proud of yourself for that one eh?”
“Woof!” He answered, tail wagging a bit harder, slapping into my side.
For the next few hours we continued to zigzag through the woods, keeping the road center to our position at all times, never veering too far in one direction. We fought a group of 4 Twisted Spriggans, Arthur made quick work of them but I was still able to test out and get use to swinging my sledgehammer with the intent to kill.
We also ran into a pack of those mutated dogs. With Arthur’s new speed and strength he made quick work of the abominations, crippling them and prepping them for me to slide in and finish them off with one big swing.
In between fights I spoke about different tactics we could use for current and future fights, giving each tactic different names for Arthur and myself to memorize.
Arthur and I both gained two levels from the all of the fights on our grind into town. I spread my stat points out to even things up a bit. I could sense the Intelligence stat gain as time went on during our travels.
It wasn’t like I was all of a sudden much smarter, but I could remember things much more vividly, I could slow down my train of thought and focus much easier.
I was randomly thinking back to a time when I was just a child, my family was really into contact sports. Being the youngest meant I grew up with my brother always beating on me and using me as a dummy to practice his new Sikaran kicks or his newest wrestling moves he learned.
So many headlocks, nelsons, cradles and his favorite move to torture me with, the lady maker, now known as a spladle for obvious reasons.
It didn’t matter if I was in the mood to be twisted up like a pretzel, it was happening. I remembered all of the “we’re just playing” moments and even more odd, the dull times sitting around afterwards that I never could have remembered before.
One memory that always stuck with me was just after I finally hit my growth spurt, when the years of my brothers “play fights” finally got old.
I went into his room where the only computer in the house was located, it was his Christmas present but I wanted to use it for a few hours and suit up as a barbarian to whirlwind my way through hellish mobs playing my favorite ARPG, really the only one in that time period worth playing.
When I told my brother it was my turn he told me to leave the room. Clearly, he was in another bad mood, but little stubborn teenage me didn’t go anywhere and he had enough of his little brother in his sanctuary.
“Get out!” He yelled standing up and swinging the computer chair violently in my direction, hitting me with it as he began to charge.
I retreated down the hallway to my room, normally I would run in and slam the door behind me then lean my body into the door, but not this time.
This time I stopped in the doorway, turned around and squared up. He threw a kick at my stomach and I walked right into it and threw a wide right hook connecting with his ear and dropping him in a lump.
My father was not far behind us walking up the stairs as I panicked and dropped to the floor to try to help my brother awake. It made me feel worse than any time he beat on me growing up.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
My father sighed as he came around the corner, probably thinking he would just see me in another head and arm, yell ‘let go’ at my brother and that would end of it.
Instead he rounded the corner to finally see what happened and ran down the hallway to help my brother. He took a knee next to us and dropped his palm into my chest to clear me out of the way, the force of it knocked the air out of my lungs and sent me onto my ass. He tapped my brother lightly on the cheek and rubbed his chest as he woke up.
I shut myself in the room.
My brother was fine, it was his first and I think only time getting knocked out.
My father wasn’t happy with me and didn’t talk to me for a couple days, likely to hide his rage. Only grunting at me until I couldn’t take the awkwardness and eventually walked away.
My mother also wasn’t happy, she gave me a good verbal beat down before grounding me for a month or two.
“You are getting big, you can’t be hitting your brother like that. I wish you guys didn’t hit each other at all but I can’t watch you 24/7. You’re both too old to act like this,” My mother began.
“He started it. I finished it.” Feeling defensive I cut her off with all the teenage attitude I could muster, even though deep down it felt wrong to hit my brother or anyone really.
“I don’t care what he did, I’m talking to you, not him.” My mother continued, “As I was saying, you’re getting big and you’re a lot stronger now, you need to be careful. You shouldn’t hit anyone. We pay for all of this wrestling, boxing, and Martial Arts crap so you guys can protect yourselves. So when you grow up you can feel safe and be able to protect the people you love. I don’t do it so you can beat the crap out of each other.”
“I know Mom... I’m sorry. I feel bad enough, okay?! I never meant to hit him like that.” I said, trying to take the attitude out of my voice, unsuccessfully.
“Watch your tone.” She scolded, then finished, “I know you feel bad, just make sure you listen to what I’m saying, and NEVER, hurt those you love again. Save that for the bad guys,” she said then began waving her hands around like she was practicing karate on a fly.
All of these older memories were coming through much more vividly than I ever could have remembered before.
I looked down at the muddy road as my moccasin slipped under foot and thought, “I’ll try to protect everyone. I’ll put all that time and money you spent to good use. I’ll try my hardest.”
A few more chipmunks tried jumping us as we crossed back into the woods but we were prepared and made quick work of them since we knew their weakness. We were finally closing in on town.
We passed house after house, they were all destroyed the same way ours was. Every now and then, we would walk past a pile of clothes on the sidewalk, each pile resembling an outfit. Coats with shirts sometimes sweaters inside of them, pants, underwear, each outfit resting on a pair of shoes.
No shoes that fit my feet...
We checked the first few houses for survivors but found only empty homes and more outfits piled on shoes, it was super bizarre.
As we continued down the road Arthur began to slow.
“What is it bud?” I asked.
“Grrr.” He responded, shaking his head towards the nearest house up the road.
“New Scent?” He responded with quick sharp nod, up and down.
“Okay. We go silent.” I removed the hunting knife from my inventory as we moved off the road pushing into the tree line once more.
We continued through the woods until we came up on the large dilapidated house. I had Arthur follow behind to the back door where I signed for him to wait and guard the exterior.
I could smell it, even before walking in.
The putrid sickly-sweet smell of decay stung my nostrils. The decayed smell was an oddity to me as it was only the third day and although it’s been warm, it hasn’t been rotting flesh kind of hot. I don’t know. I didn’t truly have any knowledge of how quickly it takes for a dead body to stank a place up.
I hope most people didn’t know that answer.
The back door was already slightly open, only a few broken boards hung from the hinges on the trim, so getting in quietly was easy.
I followed the horrid scent deeper into the house, passing open bedroom doors and peeking in to see grisly scenes of a massacre as I cleared the home.
One room with a king mattress, one with a queen, one with a twin. All but the queen bedroom told the same story, a slaughter had taken place in each.
The king bedroom had a pack and play knocked over and my stomach began to turn.
At the end of the hallway, the twin bedroom on the left looked like a young child’s room. It was difficult to make out what happened due to the explosion but I think there was a monitor and a desktop PC in the room that were placed on a desk across from the bed.
I was following the scene, trying to place together what had happened in this house, that’s when I noticed a mangled leg sticking out from underneath the bed, I put my knife back into my inventory.
I fought back the small amount of food in my stomach that was trying to escape as I pulled him out from under his bed.
I removed the chair and the rest of the shrapnel from the bed and laid him down. I pulled my blanket from my inventory and laid it over his body.
After a moment of trying to gain my composure I removed my knife once more and made for the last room.
I slowly opened the door, seeing one of my greatest fears come to life.
A crib in the middle of the room. A mother lay exposed, face down with her torso over the crib and feet just barely hanging off the ground.
Standing outside of the crib was a teenage child, around the age of 15. Only, she was mutated into something else.
Rather than the girl I saw in the broken family picture on the ground next to her parents bed, she looked more like a mashup of a Zombie and a Borg from Next Gen.
She was standing above her own mother, devouring her.
It was hard to be silent while witnessing this and shaking so hard, but I wanted to make this as painless as I could so I contained my rage at the world.
My rage and anger was not toward this girl turned monster in front of me, rather it was for whatever made her this way to cause such butchery.
The control I had of that anger was for these people, this innocent family.
I began to move, I couldn’t feel anything. My entire body and mind numb, maybe due to shock or all of the adrenaline coursing through my body, but that didn’t matter.
Once within reach I brought my knife up and stabbed it into the side of this monsters head while wrapping my other arm around the girls body.
The abomination should have died instantly but unfortunately that was not the case.
I picked the girl up with one arm and wrestled the monster to the floor. As we fell, I removed my knife from the side of the teen’s head.
We landed on the floor, this evil creature still facing away from me as my legs held tightly in a mounted position. The poor girl was unable to move or retaliate.
I jammed my knife in and out of the back of the skull in rapid succession as I watched the health bar drop to zero.
I refused to read whatever the system called her, she was just a fucking kid.
An exclamation mark popped up in my HUD, and her body let off a slight glow, indicating that she could be looted.
My face contorted as I barked at the world, “Fuck you! Whatever you are! I will fucking kill you!”
I took a moment for myself and for the family before calling out to Arthur, “Yip!”
He came running into the house as I met him downstairs after covering the rest of the bodies, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He looked at me sideways then after a moment of consideration, I continued, “Why don’t you go out into the woods a ways and look for a safe and hidden place where we can set up camp. If you get into any trouble just run back here. I’ll be in the back yard for a bit.”
I went out to the back yard, removed the shovel from my inventory then began to dig.
Arthur returned about an hour later and found a spot to chill in the shade of the house. He chewed his Spriggan Arm until I finished burying the family, making sure I handled their bodies with extreme care. I picked up the mother and laid the child in her arms, I placed her next to her husband and put the older children next to them both.
I started covering them up, time had no place where I went.
The anxiety of this hellscape was now setting in.
Fuck this world.
After I finished, I sat for a while. Arthur joined me at my side placing his head on my lap. I started to lose feeling in my body and everything started to feel like a dream, I think I was losing touch with reality, or whatever this is. The shit I’ve witnessed the past couple of days threatened to destroy my mind and soul.
I just continued to pet Arthur as I cried, after what could have been hours, I finally took a deep breath and tried to unload all of this shit.
I can do this.
No, you can’t.
Fuck you I can’t.
I felt as broken as anyone could be. What a load of shit.
“No, no. Fuck That,” I said out loud, startling Arthur who jumped up and spun around twice before cocking his head sideways at me. He nudged my shoulder with his nose and laid back down next to me putting his head on my lap.
“Good boy.” I said beginning to pet his head, I looked down to see the reason I was still pushing through. The light in the dark. I realized that ‘light’ can be anything, really, whatever you need it to be during the dark times, and Arthur was enough for me, probably more than I deserved.
“If I want to survive, I need to be stronger. The once smiling young man who loved to laugh and joke, he needs to be locked away, somewhere deep, to spare him of whats to come. To spare him of the things I’ll see and the things I will have to do. Otherwise, I won’t survive this shit.”
I need to at least pretend to be stronger. I can’t show this weakness, even to myself. If I do, I’m not sure I’ll come back next time.
“Fuck this. Come on Arthur, show me camp.”
Arthur led the way until we came up on what looked like a small cave that went into the base of the mountain, it wasn’t anything to write home about. However, it was something else very out of the ordinary for the area, I don’t think I’d ever seen a cave while walking through the woods.
I snapped a few old busted trees down and dragged them back to the cave front where I used my sledge to spike a few Y shaped branches vertically into the ground then laid more branches horizontally to create a rail about 5 feet tall.
I gathered bushy branches then laid them alongside the front of our tiny cave, weaving them in and out of the posts to secure them in place and create some camouflage.
After a few more trips gathering wood for a small fire. I grabbed some weird looking dried up blue weed that I’d never seen before crumpled it up, then used the ferrocerium rod that came with my hunting knife to create sparks. After a few strikes into my weird blue tinder bundle, I had fire.
I built the fire up just enough to heat up my second to last can of food, a can of mixed veggies.
Yum...
Once finishing my terrific dinner I should have went to sleep but after today, there was no way in hell I could get to sleep so easily.
My brain was still racing and heart was beginning to thump harder and faster as the horrors played on repeat in my head.
“Arthur, stay here and protect camp.” I told him then took a deep breath, “I have to go blow off some steam.”
Arthur was always a very smart dog and he knew when to just listen and let me do what needed to be done. He was better at reading me than most people were, especially now. He gave me a bark in response and I was on my way.