Ashe carried Jirel along to meet up with Dunwich and Harris. The sniper didn't shoot at them while they were in the trees. That didn't mean anything. The guy might be circling around for a better shot.

Once they were where their phones worked, they could call for help for the wounded members of their group. That was what mattered.

“What do you think this is all about?,” asked Dunwich. “Why would someone start shooting at us?”

“Maybe he thought we were someone else,” said Harris. “This hurts a lot.”

“We won't know unless he starts to talk to us,” said Jirel. “I don't think he's going to do that until he's ready to get close enough to talk to us face to face.”

Lights from windows glowed in the distance. The professors were able to make out yellow tags in the fading light. They floated in the air between the trees.

Ashe picked up a limb and threw it at the nearest set of tags. He noted the tags moved as the limb rebounded from something between them.

“Looks like an fence,” Ashe said.

“Do you hear that noise,” said Jirel.

Dunwich took a coin from his pocket and threw it at the fence. It sparked before rebounding.

“Looks like it's electrified,” said Dunwich. “If we climb that, we'll be toast.”

“We're fenced in with that nut?,” said Harris. “No way.”

“This is looking like some kind of trap,” said Jirel. “We need a way to get through here so we can call for help. And we need to do it before the guy starts shooting at us again.”

“If we had insulated cutters, we could just cut the third line,” said Dunwich. He looked up and down the line. “We could drop wood on the top of the fence and hope to create a gap. It looks like it's just strands strung up. We might be able to pull some of it loose.”

Ashe put Jirel down behind a tree. The cover should keep the history teacher safe for a little bit longer than the rest of them if the shooter caught up enough to range them.

Dunwich did the same for Harris. He chose a different tree. If the guy shot Jirel, he might miss Harris behind another tree further down.

“Just lean the wood on the wire,” said Dunwich. “That's the best we can do at the moment. Hopefully we can pull the strands loose and give us space to step over without frying ourselves.”

Ashe didn't comment as he leaned the biggest limbs he could find on the top wire. He thought the electrified fence was the shooter's second line of attack. If they hadn't been looking for it, they could have run into the fence and shocked themselves out of the fight. All the guy had to do then was walk up and shoot them while they were helpless.

Ashe checked the trees behind them. He hated being forced to protect others when the guy hunting them was getting closer with every minute.

The wires dropped down to the ground. The weight of the limbs had removed them as an obstacle. They just had to cross and get to cover.

“Go across first,” said Ashe. “I'll help Harris and Jirel across. Then I'll cross. We'll kick the limbs off to slow down the guy.”

“Right,” said Dunwich. He stepped over the wire next to the pile of limbs. He turned and held out his arms. Harris and Jirel went over, hopping on their whole legs. Dunwich helped them to cover. Ashe crossed last. He kicked the limbs off the wire. The fence didn't resume its shape, but it didn't hug the ground.

“Let's take a minute,” said Ashe. He checked his phone. He didn't have any bars. “As soon as you guys are ready, we should try to make the house and see if there is a phone there.”

“We should talk to Boote about this,” said Dunwich. “He sent us out here to a house with nothing in it. It smells of collusion with the shooter.”

“It looks bad,” said Jirel. “But he might not have anything to do with this.”

Ashe kept his opinion to himself. They didn't have anything to prove Boote set them up, and he was out of reach. It was better to reach the house and call for help to get their wounded to the hospital.

“Maybe we should look into the property when we're not threatening to bleed to death,” said Harris. “Maybe there's something going on that Boote didn't know about when he asked us to come out here.”

“We don't know what's going on but we have three questions,” said Jirel. “What does Boote know? What's important about the property if anything since it was abandoned? And why did the sniper start shooting at us? Does that cover everything we need to know?”

“Knowing who is shooting at us would be good in my opinion,” said Dunwich.

“It might tell us why he was shooting at us,” said Ashe. “This might be personal against only one of us. The rest are collateral.”

“We'll need a whiteboard of suspects if we get through this without getting shot,” said Harris.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“The police can handle it,” said Dunwich. “I just want to get back to my lab.”

“I can't believe you said that with a straight face,” said Quin. She laughed. “The police will handle some psycho in the woods. That never happens.”

“I know,” said Howie. “My guy is the non-adventurer type. Of course he thinks the police will do some CSI bull and figure out who it is before we can.”

“If the house has a phone, maybe we can get them out to the spot to give us cover,” said Wade. “We need to get Jirel and Harris to the hospital before their wounds start bleeding again. First aid is only going to carry them so far.”

“I agree with that,” said Clark.

Ashe and Dunwich carried their burdens to the house. They paused to take it in before either one of them rang the doorbell.

The house was a rectangle with a garage at one end. A side door was at the other end. It had six windows they could see. A concrete porch with a set of brick steps allowed access to the front door. Dunwich and Harris noted an electric cable hooked to one end of the house. The other end of the cable went to a pole near the driveway heading for the road. Connecting cables were hidden in the dark. A satellite dish had been mounted on the opposite side of the house from the cable connector.

Ashe made sure to place Harris and Jirel where they couldn't be seen from the woods. If the shooter came at them, he would have to shoot through the wooden and brick supports for the porch.

Any penality to an enemy's good shot was a a good penality in his opinion.

Dunwich pushed the doorbell. He had noted where Ashe had placed their wounded and had decided he should do the same with his body.

“Who is it?,” asked a queroulous voice from the other side of the door.

“Doctor Phillip Dunwich,” said Dunwich. “We have had some car trouble, and were hoping to use the phone.”

The door opened to reveal a stooped thin man with thin glasses. He wore a cap to hide the loss of most of his hair. He grimaced at the two wounded people on his porch.

“What kind of car trouble?,” he asked.

“The engine caught fire,” said Dunwich. “We were hoping to call the fire department to put it out.”

“I don't see no car,” said the old man.

“It's over at the abandoned property on the other side of your fence,” said Dunwich.

“That place?,” said the neighbor. “Why would you go there? Everyone knows it's haunted.”

“We didn't,” said Dunwich. “Can we use your phone? Our cells aren't working.”

“Those things never do,” said the neighbor. “Come inside.”

“What do you mean they never do?,” asked Dunwich.

Dunwich and Ashe helped Jirel and Harris into the house. They looked around and found a couch to drop their comrades on. Ashe pulled the curtains to block anyone from shooting inside the house with any accuracy.

“Cell phones don't work in this neck of the woods,” said the neighbor. “The technicians don't know why. Land lines like mine work fine though.”

“I wonder why,” said Dunwich.

“They never figured it out,” said the neighbor. He pointed to an old rotary dial phone on a stand. “Go ahead and make your call. The game is going to be coming on in a few, and I would like to watch it without a bunch of talking going on.”

“Who's playing?,” asked Dunwich. He dialled nine one one and waited for someone to pick up.

“Askashic and Starbound,” said the old timer. “Starbound is going to win.”

“What makes you say that?,” asked Dunwich.

“Moravian County Emergency Services,” said an operator in Dunwich's ear.

“Askashic's team couldn't shoot basketballs to save their lives,” said the old man. He waved his hand in dismissal.

“I need an ambulance for two victims of gun shots, and the fire department to put out a car fire,” said Dunwich. He gave the addresses to the emergency operator.

“I thought you said you had car problems,” said the neighbor.

“The car is on fire,” said Dunwich. “It might still be burning in your neighbor's yard since I didn't hear an explosion.”

“Gun shots?,” asked the neighbor.

“Somebody shot at us,” said Dunwich. He gestured at his wounded comrades.

“Looks like he hit you too,” said the old man. “Should have run faster.”

“Can I reach this guy?,” asked Quin. “I would like to strangle him.”

“He's across the room in his recliner,” said Ivan. “He can probably run faster than you can right now.”

“When my leg is healed up, I'm coming back to bust him one,” said Quin.

“I'll write it down,” said Ivan.

The Moravian County Sheriff's Deparment arrived in their grey and gold cars first. Then an ambulance. Then a fire department pump truck rolled down the long driveway to the still burning car. Volunteer firefighters arrived in their personal vehicles to help put the burning car out.

The house never caught from the looks of things.

Everyone told the deputies what had happened. Bullet holes in the car and the door to the house had been found after the fire department was done to back up their statements.

“I'm not telling them about the papers I found,” said Wade. “I would like Dunwich and Harris to look at them when this has cooled down some. I would also like to know what Boote has to say about sending us into a killing zone.”

“Are we thinking he has something to do with this?,” asked Clark.

“Our characters don't know either way, and my character would at least like to know what he says so I can check on it,” said Wade. “We might have to talk to him in private when we're all fighting fit. I can see doing a Batman style questioning to see how much we can shake out of him.”

“If he doesn't have anything to do with anything, we're pissing off the guy who can fire our characters for poor work skills,” said Howie. “I want to make sure we can bury him somewhere he won't be found first.”

“And we're going to have police checking on us to make sure we aren't gangsters,” said Quin.

“I can see waiting for a bit before we take him for a ride,” said Clark. “Let him think he got away with it.”

“All right,” said Wade. “We're going to go to the hospital and get checked out. Do the therapy for you guys. While you guys are doing that, Dunwich and Ashe will try to figure out what the papers hidden in the gas line mean so we can see if they're what caused this.”

“So we're doing a montage?,” said Howie.

“I don't see why not,” said Ivan. “It looks like you guys beat the first quest card.”

“That's what I'm talking about,” said Howie.