Finding the settlement was not difficult. It was where the map data said it would be, though the implant complained as I approached.

“Settlement feed signal expected but not detected. Is settlement within visual range?”

“Yes.”

“Is settlement system active?”

I paused in the act of getting free of the leather yoke.

“Unknown,” I said with a wide grin. There was no response from the voice as we temporarily switched roles.

I left the sled where it sat and checked over the weapons I had on. Two pistols, one a revolver, and the other semi automatic where in hand-crafted holsters.

I had the rifle on a home-made sling hanging down in front of me. The hatchet was in is own pocket sheath between my shoulder blades with the handle rising up over my shoulder and I held the crossbow.

None of the three guns used the same ammo, but with all the guns behind me I had several extra magazines.

The settlement looked abandoned.

The huge poles that I assumed held a watchtower of some sort were charred timbers reaching into the sky.

The main gate was closed, but there was a section of the wooden wall missing.

As I studied the hole I concluded it had likely been pulled down.

I was tired but not exhausted. Yet I realized now that once again I had failed to think things through.

I had considered there might be more people here, so much so that I was not going to remove my goggles or scarf. Or if I did remove my scarf I would not show my teeth. But that had been the extent of my planning.

I now realized the people here, if there were any, might shoot me on sight. Or the raiders could still be here.

I circled the settlement looking for tracks. I found several days’ old tracks that had been filled in by later snowfall, but only one of which looked even possible to be human.

I reached the sled and then circled back around following my own tracks until I reached the set of tracks that might be human and followed them towards the settlement. Then reached the wall then wandered down into a low ditch where the heaping snow hid them as they headed back across the barren field.

I entered Raven’s Rest through a hole in the fence.

I spent too long standing there, visible to anyone looking, as I studied the aftermath.

The dead were stripped of clothing, and most stripped of flesh. They were little more than lumps under snow unless they were iced over and visible.

The settlement had evidence of lots of gun fire.

Anything easily carted off had been. Tables and chairs and light bulbs were still there, but nothing else was. Dishes were missing from kitchens and clothing and curtains from bedrooms.

The jars of food I’d found scatted or hidden around the settlement were gone. The building that housed the settlement system, batteries, and breakers was mostly empty. Wires hung inside but the hardware was all missing. Outside the wires that ran from that building to the other buildings had been cut and taken.

Many of the solar panels were missing, but there were four that remained. Two on the top of a burned out building and two more on a hard to access roof.

I moved through all the buildings, just to make sure there were no nests, then I hauled the sled close and carried some of the blankets into a building that had an interior room with a door that would close.

In the day light I retrieved all four solar panels, though the two on the burned out building might not work. The forge had been cleaned out, but I did find a roll of the welding machine wire. I found two lighters and a hidden chest containing ammo and an old knife. Mostly I took the carpets and some of the larger chairs, the ones with the designs carved into them.

The next closest settlement was Ironwell. And it made a triangle with Raven’s Rest and my own settlement, but there was no road to follow to get to it from where I was.

As I collected loose wire from the various homes and several of the breaker boxes I wondered if Ironwell would have people.

I scouted Ironwell better, leaving the sled further away and circling the settlement looking for tracks.

There were two large vehicles that had burned out here. Lots more bodies, in the hundreds if I had to guess, and absolutely nothing left. Not even light bulbs or carpets. Even bits of scrap metal like hinges or door pins had been taken.

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

By the time I returned to Ed’s Eatery with the same sled I’d been pulling I was confused about the whole experience.

What had been the point?

And if I’d found people then what? Kill them? I couldn’t eat with them for fear of them seeing my teeth.

I could talk behind the scarf, but about what?

I asked the system how to install the solar panels I brought back and received a very complex answer.

I had to map the current wiring system out and examine hardware in the power building, to which I was informed the system was already ten percent over rated capacity.

I attempted to wire myself directly to the panels, but the fire inside had to build something under my skin to accommodate the different type of power. I didn’t understand what that meant, but two days later, when the fire was no longer centered on my hip everything seemed to work.

With the two panels wired together, and resting without motion, I could charge up five percent in a day.

It began raining occasionally, and then, for about fifteen days straight, there was nothing but rain.

I filled the meat room with geese when thousands++ of them landed in and around the settlement. I didn’t even collect them that first day, just loaded the crossbow and fired, over and over. Even when some flew away, I could target others and by the time I swung back, more had landed.

I had thirty four bolts and I had thirty kills. Though I only recovered twenty-seven of the bolts afterward.

It was another thing I should have known before learning it the hard way. If I shot from the rooftop down into a goose, the powerful crossbow drove the bolt down through the goose and into the muddy ground. That was fine when the goose carcass was directly over the bolt, but many of them moved, or bled out elsewhere making the bolt difficult to find.

I saw people while I was hunting. There were three of them. One with a bow and two others with long spears with no spear tips.

They smelled of blood, fever, and infection.

No one shot at me and so I didn’t shoot at them. I did go back the next day and try to follow their tracks, but after following them for half a day I realized they had likely left the area for good.

Again I wondered why I didn’t leave. It wasn’t as if I didn’t consider it. I could go back, tracing the parts of the map that were grayed out, presumably discovered by me, which I didn’t remember ever walking through.

I could look for a printer to complete Settlement Tasks. Or maybe find a trader for the same purpose.

One day, after I woke but before I had fully dressed, I realized an icon had shifted from gray to blue to indicate I had earned a skill level.

It must have happened while I slept as I reviewed any new levels and cleared the icon before I went to sleep each night.

[New Settlement Tasks added]

So it wasn’t always about skills.

The icon was dark after I read the small message.

The new tasks were highlighted at the top in red and listed as critical. They were also addressed directly to me.

Directed to the Founder, who happened to be me, anyway. Mostly they were questions that asked me how many families lived in the settlement, and how much land was set aside for farming, and what the water source was, and how the water was treated.

Once I was done with each question, new tasks were posted in the list depending on how I answered. The question that generated the most tasks was about water.

I’d answered that I got water from the rain.

Several of the water related tasks were red. They talked about filtration and testing for something called radiation. Other tasks spoke of boiling and distillation. Another about storage.

I learned what I could, which seemed to be that the rain water was bad and it was what made all the animals into mutants and killed people by making them poop too much.

The last one didn’t make much sense to me. If you drank a certain type of bad water you would begin to poop more and more and the poop would be closer and closer to liquid. Yet the medical treatment recommended was to give the patient more water or they would die of dehydration.

So the cure to bad water, was more water?

Sometimes the system made very little sense.

I was in the woods hunting when I heard the engines.

As had happened before I recognized and identified a sound without being able to recall any memories. The sounds were familiar and yet I didn’t know why.

The sled was piled with smaller mammals and birds.

While I was as armed as ever, I’d been practicing with the stones today.

The system had explained a sling to me, and also a sling shot. Yet having no schema for either it could not instruct me on their construction.

Not that I tried. The explanations didn’t make sense. You spun a sling suspending a stone at the end of a long loop. Yet with a slingshot you suspended the same stone at the end of a long loop but pulled the loop back.

What I’d taken from the long confusing conversation with the system was that stones could be used to kill smaller animals if they were moving fast enough.

It was obvious of course, but so was shitting through a hole in the floor instead of on the floor and that had taken me a long time to see.

There was even a skill associated with throwing stones, though there were several ways to throw. One was overhanded, one was from the side, another was a sort of looping underhanded method that I had yet to unlock.

Once I got anywhere close to a method and unlocked the skill the guidance took over and I could feel what was correct and what wasn’t. But I had to unlock that first.

I hauled the sled back toward the settlement until I could see movement on the wall. Then I stepped out of the sled’s yoke and walked forward.

I was watching a man on the wall. He held some sort of box up to his eyes as he looked somewhere to my left.

I glanced that way, saw nothing, and then continued forward.

To me the sound of the shot and the pain came at the same time.

According to the explanations in the system the animals in the forest were mutated, which meant they could have forms without function, like extra limbs growing off odd parts of their bodies. Sometimes the oddness had a function. I’d lost a fight to a large cat-thing that had paws larger than dinner plates. Like the sled it stayed on top of the snow while my heavy body had to plow through it.

Another time I came upon a deer with odd growths and discolorations along it’s ribs. Eventually I killed it and discovered that the bones of it’s chest and ribs had fused and warped and thickened. My javelins and hatchets hadn’t done much more than chip away at its natural armor.

It didn’t run when attacked though, instead charging me with those wide antlers.

It had caught me in the chest with two of the tines. They had stabbed deep and the impact had lifted and flung we backward.

The shot now did the same, slamming into my chest with enough force to throw me off my feet.

I didn’t really make any decisions after that.

Everything was reacting. I tried to breathe and couldn’t so I coughed up blood. I tried to move and couldn’t.

I didn’t even feel pain, just the white hot fire of healing converging toward my chest.