Terry was still screaming obscenities at the sky when a young woman raced up and threw her arms around him. She was tall and quite strong, no doubt a testament to years on the farm, which meant that Terry was wholly unprepared when her assets were pressed and held firmly against his body. He was so stunned, in fact, that he still had a clenched fist raised to the sky. The shock had silenced his cursing, though.

“Thank you!” the young woman all but shouted into his ear. “You’re a hero! You saved us!”

Having never been what anyone would describe as suave, smooth, charming, or socially competent, Terry mostly just stood there, fist still raised in a mute, futile challenge to the powers that be. Not sure what else to do, he slowly lowered his fist, opened it, and patted the young woman on the back. Once. Twice. Three times. Then, he mumbled the only thing that came into his head.

“Sure.”

At that point, he started trying to think of ways to disentangle himself from the girl, who seemed like she was settling in for the long haul. Not that the experience was unpleasant, but he was worried that his body was going to decide to redirect blood in a direction that would turn things awkward. Thank God, or whoever was in charge of Chinese Period Drama Hell, that the girl’s father intervened.

“Let him breathe,” said the older man in a semi-chiding, semi-amused tone.

The girl obeyed the order, but not before giving Terry a final squeeze, and a quick look that he semi-confidently interpreted to mean that she knew exactly what she was doing. I am so not equipped for this hero bullshit, thought Terry.

“I want to thank you, young man,” said the girl’s father. “Without you, my whole family would have died out here.”

No shit, thought Terry. Begs the question of why you brought them all out here onto Bandit Murder Road.

As if the man could hear his thoughts, the father continued, “I wouldn’t have normally brought them along, but there have been shadewolves near the farm lately. The evil things will pass right through walls and kill everyone. I thought this would be safer.”

Of course, he just had to have a good reason, and now I feel like a tool for thinking the guy was acting like some kind of an NPC in a badly written video game, thought Terry. Son of a bitch. Thinking that he ought to make some kind of noise to indicate that he’d at least been listening, Terry chimed in.

“Sure.”

“My name is Trevane. Remdell Trevane. And you’ve already met my daughter, Mira. That young man over there is my son, Tovan,” said Remdell, gesturing toward where a boy was doing something to the three bodies down the road. “The standoffish one by the cart is Harena.”

It struck Terry that those names did not fit in with his idea of this as Chinese Period Drama Hell. He took a closer look at everyone and realized that they looked more European or American than Asian. Remdell was bald, but Mira had auburn hair, and Harena’s hair looked almost blonde. How did I miss that? Oh, right, I was probably distracted by all of that murdering. Noticing that everyone was giving him an expectant look, he realized that they were waiting for him to introduce himself.

“Terry Williams.”

That drew odd looks from Remdell and Mira. Harena, who he was pretty sure was too far away to hear them, simply glared at him like he’d put shattered safety glass into her cereal. Well, fuck you very much too, he thought. It’s not like I asked for any of this.

“Can’t say I’ve heard a name like that before,” said Trevane.

“I love it,” said Mira, smiling brightly at him.

Terry was saved from having to address that uncomfortable moment by the arrival of Tovan, who was dragging three swords he’d tied together with one hand, and clutching what looked like little pouches in the other. He came to a huffing stop.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Here you go!” the boy announced, thrusting all of it at Terry.

“What’s this?” asked Terry, fighting against his own grab reflex.

“You killed them, didn’t ya? You get their stuff,” said the boy.

That began what Terry was sure was a sitcom-worthy sketch of him trying to tie weapons to his body. He finally wound up with a sword on each hip, and one sticking up over each shoulder. He was just certain that he looked like the Chinese Period Drama Hell version of a paunchy, middle-aged, middle manager in a sports car. He was someone who was trying too hard. He finally opened up the pouches and found money. It turned out that the sum total value of four lives was exactly nine copper coins and one silver coin. He didn’t know what that was worth in this world, pausing briefly to shove back against the other-knowledge when it tried to tell him, but he suspected it wasn’t much.

“Are you a bounty hunter?” asked Remdell.

Terry looked up and frowned. He shook his head.

“No. I just sort of stumbled into all of this. I wasn’t looking for trouble.”

“Well, there’s usually bounties on bandits. Cultivators don’t normally bother with them, but it’s a way to earn some coin if you’ve got the skills for it. You can probably collect if you take them to the next big town.”

The thought of dragging four rotting corpses however the hell far that next big town was held zero appeal.

“It’s probably not worth taking the bodies that far.”

“All you really need are their heads,” admitted Remdell.

Before the image of himself hacking at the bodies could take root in his brain, Mira piped up.

“I can do it!”

Terry watched in stunned silence as the girl ran over to the cart, dug around, and came up with an axe. He’d assumed that life was probably cheap in this place. After all, someone had filled his head with skills that were quite obviously intended to relieve other living things from the burdens of continued metabolic function. Yet, watching a teenage girl dutifully chopping at the necks of those dead men drove that point home more definitively than any amount of other-knowledge. Life here was worth nothing. That was something that Terry realized he was going to have to get right with and damn quick, or he was not going to live long enough to have all the regrets he expected to stack up in this Darwinian hellhole.

Terry started assembling what he thought of as Rules to Survive By. Rule number one, avoid the stupidly pretty people. Rule number two, life has no intrinsic value here. He was busy trying to think up a third rule when Mira came jogging back over. While she’d been all forward and aggressive earlier, she suddenly seemed shy and even blushed a little when she held out a sack toward him. It was like she was giving some boy her first Valentine’s Card and not forking over a sack of severed human heads. For at least the hundredth time since he arrived, Terry thought, What the fuck? Not sure what else to do, he took the sack.

“I wish there was something else we could do thank you,” said Remdell.

“I don’t suppose you have any water in that cart?” asked Terry.

He was certain that he wasn’t going to be keeping any food down anytime soon. He had remembered hearing something about how human beings would die if they went more than three days without water. It might have just been one of those internet lies like saying dating apps work, but it seemed like a stupid thing to mess around with. Remdell brightened up and led Terry over to the cart, where he filled a cup with water several times as Terry greedily drank the liquid down. He’d become so used to the idea that tap water tasted like it had come out of someone’s pool that he didn’t quite know how to process water that tasted clean. He forced himself to stop after the third cup. He didn’t know how much water these people had for their trip. Plus, he suspected that water wasn’t going to be that hard to come by given the amount of greenery around them. Terry was about to walk away when he spotted something in the back of the cart. He pointed at it.

“I don’t suppose you have another one of those you’d be willing to part with?” asked Terry, his eyes fixed on the rice hat.

Remdell gave the blonde girl a positively smug smile and said, “A man of fine taste.”

“Or a thug without taste,” muttered the girl.

Terry had yet to pass a single word directly with Harena, and he was already done with her. Remdell ignored the comment. He plucked the hat from the cart and held it out to Terry.

“It’s the least I can do,” said the man.

Terry took the hat, plopped it on his head, and snugged the strings under his chin. Once it became clear that they were all headed in the same direction, Remdell suggested that they travel together. Harena looked at her father like the man had lost his very last marble, while Mira looked overjoyed. Tovan proved that little boys everywhere were the same by starting what would become an endless string of questions. Terry had the sneaking suspicion that Remdell wanted some muscle on hand in case some other bad thing happened, but that didn’t bother Terry. That was a motive he could understand. And these people had water. It’ll be a nice journey south, thought Terry. Just me, the farmers, and my blood-soaked sack of heads.