The second critical task was one that mattered.

Once I cleared snow and ice off the solar panels, which were mapped out for me on various rooftops, the power provided by the lamp wires didn’t die away completely at night any more. I didn’t know how the power system worked, but it was clear enough after cleaning them, that the solar panels were a huge part of it.

The female voice answered questions as best it could, though mostly it was hung up on not knowing this particular system. When I asked how it could know the system better I ended up surveying it. Following wires from the solar panel back to a building with thick metal doors.

It ended up being easier to go through the wall with the pick-ax I found than going through the heavily secured metal door.

There was a body inside. It had two guns, with ammunition I had used up long before I’d worked out the capability to plan and hold materials back for times of greater need.

I examined the body. A wound to the abdomen that hadn’t healed up in time, though it was only a small finger-sized wound.

When I cracked the skull open I found another implant. This one in a black semi-dried goo of desiccated brain matter.

I ate it anyway as I still had a craving for them.

The room itself housed many wires and metal boxes. I looked at everything first, then talked to the voice.

Then I followed wires and eventually found a cabinet with large heavy devices labeled batteries. The cabinet was heated and when I asked why I was informed the cooler temperatures could damage the batteries.

As I grew to understand the power system I first moved around town, turning lights off, first by unscrewing bulbs and then by flipping wall switches when I learned about them.

A week or so later I learned about circuit breakers and disabled power to the whole settlement from the main breaker panel.

By that time I’d repaired the wall and insulated it as best I could with sheet metal roof panels and other material. The door, once the inner bar had been removed, was a much better way into and out of the small building.

I cleaned the solar panels every other day unless there was a heavy deposit of snow that required immediate attention.

I learned the system had default credit values assigned to various items. I still hadn’t found a way to use currency, but I could now evaluate things to determine which was worth more.

Why a neon sign would be worth far more than a kitchen knife I had no idea. The knife had many uses, while the sign did nothing but use up power that could be better used to feed me, or provide heat by cracking the battery cabinet doors open.

The need for power suddenly died away, almost to nothing. It happened suddenly, without warning. One day my hunger for it stopped. I still plugged wires into my hip but I didn’t feel a burning need for it any longer.

Unless I was injured.

While collecting items the system said were valuable a building collapsed. I was able to extract myself from the debris, but my right arm had been broken and the flesh cut and smashed.

I ate until I was full, sipped water, and began to hunger for power for the first time in four days.

The healing fires moved quickly.

First my arm straightened and aligned as the fires focused on my bones. Then black spider webbing rose up from inside and the flesh was pulled together and began to knit.

The black eventually receded and all that was left was the damage to the clothing I was wearing and a scab that revealed healthy skin beneath by the time it dried and flaked away.

I had a hunger for power for only an hour or so more, and then that too dropped away.

There were indications for the level of power contained in the batteries and while it had never broken twenty percent once I began noticing it, it now began to steadily climb.

Even thought the winter days were short, neither I or the settlement was drawing power allowing the batteries to store more than was being discharged.

A new critical task appeared one day having to do with the power system. It was to repair the batteries.

When I sought more information I learned that I had little to do. I only isolated a battery by turning some switches and then indicated on the battery itself that it should go into repair mode by pressing and holding a button.

This consumed a lot of energy over the course of four days. But the battery reported it was within ninety-four percent of factory specs when completed. It estimated it would last an additional twenty-three years before it's integrity fell below ninety percent capacity.

Eventually when the system stored enough power I was given the same task again, for a different battery.

Eventually all sixteen batteries went through a repair cycle.

One of the green system tasks was to [expand the power systems.] of the settlement. When I asked for help I learned about printers.

“Obtain material from system printers, traders with access to printers, or discarded printed components no longer in use.”

Eventually a correctly worded question got me better answers.

“Where is the last system printer I've encountered.”

“Rose Garden Settlement is the last confirmed printer you’ve encountered,” the voice said in my head.

I paused as I was lining up my throw.

One of the icons changed color as the small spear, what the system called a javelin, struck the animal in the side.

I pushed up from the ground and sprinted forward.

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I slipped and went down from time to time but that didn’t matter, I could get up and follow faster than it could get away.

Eventually the large treble hook on the end of the javelin caught on a smaller tree. The barbs in the flesh held for just a moment, and then gave way.

Blood poured from the large wound as the animal staggered through the forest.

It wasn’t stagging because of anything I did. Not yet at least. Two of the five legs that it seemed to be standing on were shorter than the others. Another leg rose from the back and tangled in branches from time to time.

Eventually the blood loss began to cause the creature to slow. It’s breath coming out in long blasts of fog in the cold air.

It turned a bit, two of the three eyes on this side of it’s head were looking at me.

It huffed and grunted as it rotated slowly around. I’d been charged before, and it wasn’t pleasant. I circled with it, having to move faster to stay on it’s side but having no problem doing so.

Eventually it began to slump, it’s breathing still ragged, the steam still rising from the massive gash in it’s side, the snow red with blood and trampled mud under it.

When it stumbled to a knee, I knelt as well. No need to keep the animal panicking. I was happy to wait it out.

Eventually the labored breathing stopped.

I began counting.

That too was a lesson I’d learned the hard way. Even though it was dead, it didn’t mean it was no longer a threat. At least for a time.

I approached slowly, the other version three javelin in hand ready to throw.

The first version had been based on what the voice could tell me of javelins, the second version had included a treble hook, whose design I’d found in a paper book on fishing lures.

This third version was better. The back two thirds of the javelin was a piece of wood that slid forward or back around the central metal shaft.

I used rebar as there was plenty of it in the walls of the partially destroyed buildings.

A hinge and pin kept the three metal hooks folded into the shaft.

When the shaft stuck flesh the wooden sheath continued forward as the central shaft halted. That movement pulled the pins and cause the three metal hooks to fold out, ready to catch on trees or vines. The large barbs at the other end would rip and rend flesh leaving massive wounds that would bleed out an animal much faster than a simple spearhead would.

The design was in the same book on fishing lures. This kind was meant to be pulled through thick seaweed and only deploy the hooks once the fill pulled back on the lure.

Hunting after I’d run out of bullets was particularly difficult. Some of the animals had multiple hearts, and occasionally multiple heads. They all needed blood to stay inside though. So if you could would them badly enough they would eventually fall.

I freed up the hatchet when I got close enough and set to work on the upper spine. The animal never reacted as I hacked into the base of it’s skull.

Still it was better safe than sorry. These larger animals could do a lot of damage.

I went back for the javelin and the sled, then spent several hours butchering the moose and loading the sled up with the still steaming flesh.

The system had recommendations on how to level my Butchering skill, but they all involved stringing the animal up from some branches, and that was a lot of work, let alone a lot of time. For an animal this size it was impossible, it simply weighed too much.

I worked as the howls approached, even as the first animal began circling. Only when there were enough of them for the yapping to start did I stop working.

I tossed the last of the meat onto the sled, pulled the tarp over it and lashed it down quickly.

These animals, a wolf-dog, or coyote-dog, or whatever they were or had once been, they were cowardly pack animals. None of them would attack before they had overwhelming numbers on their side. But once they did, they attacked and didn’t stop until the whole pack was dead.

I’d grown used to them surrounding me, then the yapping, but they never attacked, so I always continued to work. Eventually I left them the carcass.

Then one day they did attack, they wouldn’t stop no matter how many of their small bodies I crushed, broke, or split open.

I had to kill the whole pack.

They didn’t do much damage, but with enough of them I almost bled out before getting back to the settlement. It took me three days to heal and almost all the power the batteries had stored up.

The good news was once they started eating, no matter how many continued to circle me, the rest would be drawn to the easy food.

They never so much as looked at me, let alone followed me back to the settlement if they had food.

I strained against the makeshift yoke of the sled, as such I was angled sharply forward, mostly looking down at the ground in front of me.

From time to time I’d look up, but mostly I didn’t need to as I could just follow my own tracks in the snow to return.

“Hold up!” someone called.

I was confused. Mostly because the voice was clearly a man, and partially because it came not from inside my head, but from without.

I looked up to see three humanoids in bulky cold weather gear. Two of which had weapons pointed at me.

“Whoa there!” on of them called. The one on the right apparently from the steam that pressed out of his mask.

His mask looked far more comfortable than the curtain I had ripped and re-purposed as a scarf.

“Easy now. Peace be upon you,” the man continued as I straightened up.

Until this moment it had never occurred to me that other people could exist. I could see the error in that logic now of course. The people that had fled, the dead people in the streets, they all had to come from some where. The traders that would bring printed items to complete the settlement tasks had to come from some place that had printers.

I just-

I just had never thought about it. Not once.

“Whoa now brother,” the man continued, “what you got there?”

“Meat,” I said speaking around the metal tube in my mouth. The steam of my breath pressing out of the scarf and fogging the thick goggles I wore.

As I spoke I stepped back and out of the strap letting it fall on the ground in front of me.

Mostly I breathed into and out of the bent plasteel tube to avoid fog on the goggles and ice on the scarf. Though I’m sure steam pluming from beneath my chin had to look odd to them.

“What’s that?”

“Meat!” I said louder, trying to speak around the tube more clearly.

“Meat? That’s a burning big pile of it.”

“Yes.”

The heads glanced at each other and then the rifle and the- cross bow, I was guessing the wooden and metal weapon was called, lowered.

“Well we saw the damage in town, noticed the settlement name change and these here tracks.”

“We saw your collection of trade goods and-”

“We didn’t touch ‘em” the man with the rifle added quickly.

“Saw them,” the other man repeated, “then saw the tracks, and came out to find you. To trade. Peaceful like. Lot a loot there, a whole settlement worth looks like.”

“Not that we’re accusing you of nothing,” the third man chimed in.

“No sir,” the first said, “Plenty of settlements defend themselves and die to their wounds. Or happen to have a wanderer stumble in afterward.”

“You stumble in afterward? Town half looted, and just decide to stay?”

“I came,” I said slowly trying to remember how it happened, “Killed a lot of them, and the rest left. Some didn’t want to stop looting, but the ones with the vehicle did and they took the others.”

“Scared a whole raiding party off by yourself did ya?” the second man asked.

“Not that we don’t believe it,” the first added quickly, “Biggest man I’ve seen outside the fighting pits.”

“Name’s Thad,” the first one said. He reached a mitten out. I stepped over the leather strap and shook it. Then the other two hands when they made their introductions. There was a pause and I realized they were waiting for me.

My name titled one of the display pages. I’d found it as I explored the system.

“Pete,” I said opting to give them only my first name, as that is what they had done.

One of the men did something with his hands, touching his chest, then goggles then mouth while another said, “Fires man. We that far out from civilization they named you after one of the twelve?”

“The twelve?” I asked.

The other man did the gesture again moving his hands over chest head and mouth.

“Let’s get back before the night finds a way to stop us,” the first man suggested.

“Let me help you with that,” the unarmed man said as he tried to get under the leather strap to pull the sled.

“Holy fires,” he said as he strained, “how in the hells did you haul this.”

“Just push harder,” I said.

That got a brief laugh from Thad but he cut it short.

“Let’s get back to the warm yeah?”

I got under the strap, but even I had to rock the sled pressing into it hard then letting off a few times before I got it moving.

“Push from the back,” Thad said and the other two disappeared. The load did get easier to pull a moment later.

“What was it,” Thad asked.

“Moose,” I grunted out, the metal tube making the words echo a bit.

“It’s a fucking monster is what it was,” one of the others said.