It took about fifteen minutes. We were at the steepest point, a place where we had to walk sideways to keep our footing.

Patches was fine, of course, hopping around and barking at shadows. Then a pair of high beams flipped on from a driveway, pinning us dead center. Three men rose up from some side brush, one in the lead, all of them wearing pinstripe suits, and wielding long lengths of piping.

“Well, well, well, what do we have—”

I let him have it. I flipped Static Shock on, then threw an overhand right straight to the man’s misshapen nose. It crunched and blood sprayed from out the nostrils, the man pinwheeling back then slipping and falling onto the asphalt. A pool of blood wandered out from where he’d hit.

“About time,” I growled. “My fists were starving.”

The two looked skittish and Patches was advancing on them, his body low to the ground as he growled and bared his teeth. I wasn’t too worried about them.

Joel was hanging to my flank. His eyes narrowed and his hands were clenched into fists, but it looked like he wouldn’t do anything til I gave him the go.

Good.

One of the two feinted forward and Patches launched himself, striking out at empty air. The man’s pipe head bounced off the dog’s back a moment later, a loud clong that made me wince.

“That’s my dog, dickwad,” I yelled, sprinting to the rescue. It was slick so I angled myself to dive into the one that’d just struck Patches. “Hey, Eric Joel, get the other one, will ya?”

My target tried to turn and dodge, but he seemed to be expecting a punch like I’d given his friend. No chance of that. I wasn’t about to fall onto the slope and let him curb stomp my crotch. I leapt with outstretched arms and pincered him into a bear hug. We hit the street hard and started to roll.

On the first revolution I saw that Eric was kicking the living hell out of the other dude, and that two other guys had come out from where the high beams were blaring. They also had lengths of pipe, but they seemed to be angling for the first dude I dropped. I wondered if maybe they weren’t medics.

The guy in my arms squealed something and I headbutted him in the face. He spit blood and snarled. So I headbutted him again.

“I can do this all night, bro. Not gonna, but I could,” I sneered. Couldn’t help myself. These guys were weaklings, probably half a challenge rating apiece, the sorts that you killed by the dozens the minute you started a new online hack and slash. It was hard not to feel disgusted at them.

On the next revolution I saw a small tree jutting out from a rocky outcropping, itself at an angle in the mess of granite and sand that made the hill. I let go of the man and seized the branch, laughing in triumph.

The tree jerked with my weight and motion and tore out from its roots. I was tumbling again. Crap!

I already couldn’t see Patches or Eric, but I rolled hard and fast. I saw my former opponent roll up and then bounce off of a curving bit of railing, the road taking a sharp 60-degree angle to the left toward where the Pike’s Peak Highway used to run.

I prayed to the AI that it wasn’t there anymore because there wasn’t a minute of the day that there were cars and trucks speeding over it at a hundred plus miles an hour. The thing was the Autobahn of the American West. And the people who drove on it weren’t just fast.

They were crazy.

I bounced off of the curving bit of rail and saw the worst thing possible. The highway wasn’t just there. It was super there. As in the thing had changed into the biggest and widest super freeway that I’d ever seen. There were towers on the sides of the ten lane roads every hundred meters, each of those with a spotlight and what looked to be a cannon or turret.

Every single one of the cars down there looked to be going about two hundred miles an hour. The glimpse I got showed various different sized cars all floating about three inches up off the highway, in an endless stream that all blurred together into a stream of neon and high-gloss gleam.

Not enough to slide under if or when I pitched over the side.

And of course this road rolled straight down into traffic. Just like with the old Pike’s Peak Highway, there was no on ramp. It was the worst design ever, a steep road down from the hilltop apartments into the busiest traffic ever . . . and all they had in place was a stop sign.

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The stop sign! I tried to change my sliding roll, edge myself over to the side so I could catch the thick, black, seamless pole that had replaced the rusted stuffty bar of iron that had been there before.

A rusted bar of iron that I could have grabbed easily, I griped to myself. This was madness. Who the hell was out there driving anyways? There weren’t that many people living in the rotten place.

While I angled and kicked, I caught sight of my former enemy sliding out into traffic. There was a high-pitched truck horn, the audible crunch of bones, and I got 50 xps. Oh, and a card.

That told me one of two things, I thought, as I reached out my arms to take a swipe at the oncoming stop sign. Either dude and I were considered a new and different combat after we rolled out a certain distance . . . or you got xps and cards from every single enemy you killed in combat. Something worth figuring out if I lived.

My right bicep struck the pole and my right arm flailed away from the pole, but my left arm curled it hard from the opposite direction. I swung wildly for a moment, then my motion ceased. Laying on my back, staring up at the sky, my heart pounding, and my head clearer than it had been in a long time.

I laughed. Long and hard.

This was the apocalypse, right? So why was I having the time of my life?

I worked my way back up the slope as quickly as I could. It’d been a reckless move to dive at the guy in such terrain. An effective one, but balls-to-the-wall crazy.

And selfish.

I’d left Eric Joel behind. And more importantly, Patches. If a single hair on his head was out of place when I got up there, there’d be hell to pay.

It was a bit of a slip n’ slide but I got there. And I was impressed. A dozen of the low-level toughs were down on the ground, Patches bleeding from his side but gore dripping from his fangs while he savaged the throat of a fallen foe. Eric Joel was in the middle of what appeared to be the last five dudes, swinging hard but slow and panting audibly.

“Ya miss me?” I yelled, trudging up the steep incline much more carefully this time. The sound of my voice unnerved them. They scrambled back away from Eric, their sodden pin-stripe suits flapping torn ears of fabric as they did so.

“What the hell?” asked one of them, his face expressing pure horror. “You’re dead. We all saw you flop down the slope.”

“Yeah, about that. Assume makes an ass out of you and me, buddy.”

Eric Joel stumbled back over to me and I saw that he was hurt pretty bad. Patches dropped his dead opponent and trotted over to my side as well.

“Listen. Fight’s over. You guys can see what’ll happen if you get in my face again. So piss off.”

Attention: You’ve succeeded an Intimidate check! You’ve also succeeded a Luck check! You’re on a roll. Beware the curse of Beginner’s Luck.

The little +1 Intimidate didn’t appear like last time. Further levels would take more attempts. And also no Serendipity. I’d need to read up on those a bit.

All five of the men frowned, making hesitant steps forward, their shadows growing a tad bit longer in the light of the high beams. I clenched my fists. I’d intimidated them, but not enough to make them take off running. That was alright by me. I was down to clown.

I charged forward.

One of them gave a thick squeal, falling backwards and beginning to roll down the slope. Another brandished his pipe, setting his feet sideways to meet my charge. The smart ones took off running in the opposite direction.

A move that was absolutely unexpected by my remaining opponent, I saw in the widening of his eyes. I reached him and kicked out sideways, maintaining my stability in the slippery environment while launching him back to the slippery asphalt. I saw my hp go down a little in surprise, then realized that he’d managed to land a blow without me even noticing.

Meh.

I strode over to him, noticing that the slope leveled a little in expectation of a driveway. After all, those high beams had to be coming from somewhere, right? I stood over the gasping low-level goon, ready to stomp the life out of him, when a sudden thought entered my head.

“Hey, Eric Joel, who do these guys work for?”

I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Eric was sitting on the ground, tending to Patches’ bloody side. +50 reputation points, Eric Joel. Good call, I thought.

“The Pinstripe Pirates, Boss. A loose confederation of a gang. Not too important or dangerous, really. Easy fights, so they come at you in numbers.”

“Hear that, boyo? Not too important. Shoulda run when you had the chance.” I stomped down on his neck, feeling it crunch and break. The man made whistling noises and reached to his travesty of a windpipe with a reverse choke, looking all the world as if he were trying to repair the damage. Idiot.

I strode back to my posse. “That was amazing. How’re you and doggo doing?”

Eric Joel sighed. “Patches is doing fine. I’m out of breath but ready to move on if you need to, Boss. But honestly, I wouldn’t mind sitting here for a bit longer. Or, maybe, just maybe, heading over to those high beams and seeing what kind of ride they left us? Wouldn’t mind a drive.”

I slapped the side of my head, a mannerism that worked a lot better and hurt a lot less back during my days wearing kevlar.

I was being so stupid.

Loot the corpses, check the treasure. Classic video game behavior. Duh. It’d been years since I’d really been into playing, despite my computer game forays between work and sleep, and I needed it to come back in a hurry.

I nodded.

“I’ll loot these bodies. You two head over to the vehicle. Yell if you need something. Honestly, I bet those bastards would have tried to run us over if this slope weren’t such a mess. We’ll have to be careful around driveway and alleys from now on. And watch for snipers. Honestly, the more that I think about this, the luckier I think we got off here. Probably because of our low levels.”

Eric Joel and Patches sat, their heads cocked, completely lost by the words that I had uttered.

“Right. Just ignore me. Thinking out loud. Go secure that vehicle. I’ll see what we got ourselves here.”