Seeing the blood dripping from Ellie’s bat, I desperately wanted to follow Teddy and Wood out the door. Hell, I would’ve rather been almost anywhere right about then.

“So,” I said, “the end of the world, huh?”

She shook her head, and kind of rolled her eyes at me. It was a familiar gesture, but the fact that she didn’t answer, not even in a jab or funny quip, that was unfamiliar.

I decided not to go any further into that. “So, this is your home-base?”

Ellie just glared at me, but by then Wood and Teddy came back in. I guess they didn’t go very far to dispose of the body.

“Yeah,” Teddy said. I guessed he’d heard my question. “Our house was demolished, and you saw what happened to yours. Plus … well, you were…” He shook his head. “Ellie’s place and the pizzeria were untouched, pretty much.”

I didn’t see any electric being used.

“The electrics out?” I asked.

Finally, Ellie nodded. “The gas is still running, so we have the pizza ovens, and hot water here, and in my house.”

I nodded.

“We pretty much just keep making pizza,” Teddy said.

Huh… “The freezer is still working?” I asked. Because, if I was dead for two weeks, the freezer would’ve been warm in only a couple days. I think.

“Aren’t you a little ball of questions,” Wood said. He really did sound pissed off at me.

“He’s just curious,” Teddy said, chucking his brother in the shoulder with a punch. “He’s probably trying to think of anything other than what’s happened to him.”

Yeah, I thought, Teddy really did know me.

That was familiar, Teddy, knowing me. And Ellie being cold and distant to me ever since she broke up with me. Though I was surprised how much that still kind of hurt, and in the same place it used to—kind of like the middle of my chest.

Wood being pissed with me, though, that was a complete surprise. I wondered what the hell that was about.

“We have these inventories…” Ellie said, “like in a game.”

“Exactly like in a game,” Teddy said, I saw him lean down and grab a quarter sized gemstone from the ground. WTH?

“So,” she continued, “when we figured out things didn’t degrade when they were put into one of our inventories, I started putting everything I could get my hands on into it. Now, when we need to make some pizza, I just pull the ingredients out of my inventory.”

“She uses the inventory,” Teddy said, irritated. “But she won’t use the stats box.”

I had to smile. That didn’t make any sense, but it was a totally Ellie thing for her to do.

So, Ellie wouldn’t use any part of the game, except the inventory, because it was made by the aliens who attacked and destroyed our world. Super valid point. But we’re stuck in this game, from all accounts, and they’ve given us gaming abilities and rules. It only makes sense that we would have to play the game.

I looked up to realize that everyone was staring at me. Yeah, I probably looked a lot different.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Why is his beard pink?” Ellie asked.

Oh, yeah. That.

“It’s blood,” Teddy said, walking over to me and picking me up like I was… like I was a small child, or a gnome.

“What are you doing?” I yelped, wiggling around in his grasp.

“We need to scrub that shit off your beard, dude,” he said, taking me back into the kitchen area of the pizzeria.

“There’s a shower here?”

“No, but there is a dishwashing area where we can spray off the pans before we scrub them. It’s a sink. I think that will be good enough for right now.”

In seconds we were in the kitchen and he set me down inside one of the stainless steel sinks. He turned on the water, let it run for a few seconds and tested it. That was thoughtful of him. He looked at me and frowned. “Do your clothes come off or are they just part of you?”

I reached up and tried to pull on the brightly painted clothing, but they were made out of the same thing I was, and they weren’t going anywhere.

I shook my head. “They don’t come off.”

Teddy nodded, “You ready?”

I tried once again to nod my head, and nothing happened. That may be the most annoying part of this… so far. “Yeah,” I said, “let it rip.”

He started spraying me with the sprayer nozzle. I barely felt it, and I really didn’t feel the temperature of the water either. He sprayed and sprayed, and then he had me put my hands out and he put some dish detergent in them and said, “Go ahead and wash off your beard. There’s parts that aren’t coming off under the spray.”

So I did what he said, and lathered up. One more rinse and he said I was done. I didn’t have skin to dry, so we just let me drip dry.

“We’ll be making pizza in about an hour,” Teddy said, and then looked uncomfortable. “If you’re hungry.”

I wondered if I could get hungry. If I was just a gnome now, and if my clothes were any example, then I probably couldn’t eat either.

That would frigging suck balls. Here’s hoping that I was hungry in an hour.

I blinked and looked at Teddy. “Do I have a mouth hole?”

He blinked. “Well, not really. It’s more… well, more painted on. It opens, and you see either teeth, or black, or sometimes the hint of a tongue—but it’s not like 3D.” He squinted at me sagely. “Definitely 2D.”

I reached up and put my hand on my mouth and tried to stick my fingers in there. And there was no place for me to stick them in.

“I guess I don’t eat,” I said.

Teddy nodded, and I just kind of leaned against the wall for a second.

This was a lot. This was a hell of a lot.

“So where are the aliens now?” I asked.

“Well,” Teddy said, “I remember seeing their spaceships when they were attacking. We weren’t outside that much because they were bombarding us, really trying to destroy everything. When the monsters came, the ships disappeared.” He had a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke. “So, maybe the monsters are the aliens, but if so, they’re killable. And a lot of the monsters seem like monsters from, like, fairytales and folklore and that shit.”

Ellie and Wood came into the kitchen area and unceremoniously hefted the dead body of the other monster out of the room. How hadn't I noticed that thing lying on the floor? I tried not to lose my shit, but damn.

“So,” I said, trying to sound normal and not freaked out. “We were attacked by aliens, but we haven’t seen the aliens?”

Teddy shrugged. “Pretty much. It’s not just the monsters, though. We have these inventories, and some of the weapons we find have properties to them. Like my bow here.” He held it up. “Improves my shooting ability, and that ability gets better the more I use it. Plus, the bow’s ability to drive arrows through things is improving. It’s getting stronger.” He bit his lip. “Makes me wonder what I’ll be able to do later down the road. And Ellie’s bat. You saw it glow, right?”

I laughed nervously, looking towards the door that led back here. “Yeah, that thing is nasty. Straight off The Walking Dead.”

“It was Ellie’s bat from her little league days. She just strapped on some barbed wire when everything happened. Then it started to glow just a little bit while she was using it. It causes a lot more damage now.”

Huh… “So she does use certain things that have to do with the game, like her inventory for food, and the baseball bat for bashing things, but she refuses other parts, is that it?”

Teddy shrugged. “She’s stubborn. And she took losing her dad harder than you would think. I mean, he wasn’t around much, and he wasn’t father of the year material, either. But she was pretty broken up.”

Ellie’s dad had worked hard at the Drumund Textile Plant, like over half of the town did, but drank most of his paycheck away each week. That left Ellie to fend for herself. That’s why she’d been working at the pizza parlor since we were in middle school.

I wanted to ask if he had been killed like my mom.

“It looked like my mom was stepped on by a giant,” I said.

Teddy nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. The giants, they like to smash things. But after a while, they got bored and wandered off. But the other monsters, they’re here to stay. They’re hungry.”

Hungry.

Well, at least somebody was.