Chapter 21
Roses are red, and betrayal is bloody
I immediately activated Pinpoint, and that hyper-focused state filled my brain. I looked out past the crowd to the walls. I couldn’t make out the shooter, but then there was a glint of something, a reflection, and I was off. My stats were crazy now, and I made the hundred-yard dash to the wall in about ten seconds. When I was about ten feet from the wall, I jumped and landed on the ramparts. I looked out at the foliage beyond the wall, and about forty feet out, two figures were running at a full sprint. I, however, had been practicing throwing spears a lot recently, so I pulled a spear from my bag of holding, cocked back my arm, and launched it at one of the silhouettes.
With Pinpoint active and my stats being what they were, I hit my target dead on in the center of its back, and the figure dropped, not moving. I pulled a second spear from my bag and let it fly at the other silhouette still running. It was gonna be close, but yes, there it was. I didn’t hit the figure like the first, but it did look like I got the person. The silhouette had fallen but had got back up and tried to hobble away.
I jumped down from the top of the wall and made my way over to where the silhouettes had fallen, and sure enough, I knew them or, well, one of them for sure. The person who had taken the spear to the back and had died immediately was some guy in military fatigues, and about twenty feet beyond him was Rose. The spear I had hit her with had landed in the back of her upper thigh. It looked like she had pulled the spear free of her leg, but that might have fucked her.
She was crawling across the grass, dragging her leg behind her. I could hear that every moment was causing her great pain, but she still was trying to get away. I walked over to where she was struggling on the ground, and when I got beside her, she looked up at me. Tears were falling from her face, and she was starting to go pale from the blood loss. Rose still managed to spit at me.
“You know he’s dead? Once you shattered his hand, he never truly recovered. We were attacked by monsters a few days after we left, and Brad was killed. Are you fucking happy now you fucking killed him. That’s what you did, you fucking monster.” I let Rose finish what she had to say.
Then Rose started screaming profanity at me. Before I let myself think about it too much, I swiped my Teremnocal down, and her head was freed from her body.
I took my time walking back to the walls. When I reached the wall, I walked alongside it till I came to one of the two gates. As I reached the gate, a guard atop the wall opened it. When I returned to where the ceremony was being held, I saw that the housing building was up, and most people were checking out their new homes. Beth and Janet were waiting outside for me when I walked up.
“Beth, you good?” I asked her.
“Yeah, didn’t even puncture my new armor. It just knocked me down. I’m okay. Did you figure out who shot at us?”
“Yeah, it was fucking Rose and another guy I recognized from the people who left with her. They’re both dead now.” I told the ladies.
“That fucking bitch, buut no Brad?” Janet said.
"Apparently, Brad died shortly after they left us," I told the two of them.
"Fuck! Well, good riddance," said Janet.
"Janet! We may not have liked the man, but a monster still killed him. That's no way to go, even for him," Beth said. Janet looked a little abashed now. Beth slapped Janet’s arm lightly, and then she nodded at me.
“Good work, Travis. Thanks again for reacting so fast, people started freaking out for a second there, but when you ran off to deal with it personally, most people calmed down. They have almost too much faith in us. It’s definitely a strange feeling. All I did was stand back up and dust myself off. Then I told them that you were going to deal with the problem. That seemed to calm everyone down. Then we put the building up, and everyone got their keys. Most of the citizens are checking out their new homes.” Beth said.
“Do you think we’ll get more trouble from Roses and Brad's Group now that they're both dead?” Janet asked.
“Honestly, I really don’t think so. This would have been a more serious altercation if Brad had also been here, as well as the rest of their people. Now, I’m not saying killing every last one of them wouldn’t be a piece of cake cuz it for sure would be. I don’t think they would have let her take this mission alone if she still had their support. I don’t know. Whatever that was, it’s over now, so I say let the party begin.” I answered Janet.
“Fuck yeah, now that’s what I’m talking about! Let’s get radically drunk!” Janet said. Beth and I laughed at Janet, but she did have the right attitude. Janet must be prophetic because that’s pretty much exactly how the night went down. The party actually ended early for most people.
The people of Tree House Village were tired. They had pushed hard these last three weeks. They got good and drunk then, knowing they had a super nice bed to sleep in for the first time since the integration when to get a good night’s sleep. This was also the first most people had felt safe since the integration. Not everyone, however, was willing to call it an early night. Most of the fighters and a few of the non-combatants were still trying to get fucked up. It seemed to me most of the people looking to get fucked up were dealing with some inner demons, and sleep wouldn’t be an escape. The generally agreed-upon practice for dealing with said demons was to drown one’s selves in liquor till unconsciousness, and most looked like they were doing just that.
The funniest thing was that when we started drinking, we only had so many bottles, but as the night went on and bottles emptied, more seemed to just appear, as if out of nowhere. So, people were holding liquor hu? Yeah, I couldn’t blame them. I still had a case of Tito’s in my bag of holding, but I was going through it faster than I would have liked.
Three days had passed since the incident with Rose when a runner from the wall found Janet, Beth, and myself eating lunch. She explained that a large group was heading towards the compound and that she thought it might be some of the people who had left with Brad and Rose. We made our way to the wall and climbed up onto the ramparts. By the time we were standing on the ramparts, the group was about a hundred yards out.
Thanks to my stats, I could tell who the group was even from that distance. It was the group that had left with Brad and Rose. They seemed a little worse for the wear, but it was hard to tell from a distance. They were missing a fair amount of people from when they’d left, and everyone looked like they had been beaten to shit.
As the group made their way closer to us, I could see that every person in the group’s clothing was torn and blood-soaked, their eyes hollow and gaunt.
“Shit,” I hear Beth say.
“You see it too?” I asked Beth at her exclamation.
“Yeah, looks like Brad and Roses's people, but there’s a lot less of them than when they left, and they look like someone or some things beat the living shit out of them,” Beth said.
“That’s hard to do in our new reality with healing being as fast as it is, you would think…” I commented.
“Yeah, I know, true. What the fuck are we going to do about this? They’re all probably still at low levels, and raising even more people up might kill us all. We haven’t had to face any major threats to the village, which might be a good thing, but it also might be dangerous. If our fighters are untested and don’t have the levels, we may get overrun by the first powerful monster or a swarm that comes for us. We could likely survive a situation like that, but everyone else would be dead meat.” I finished leaving Beth and Janet to think about what I’d said.
“Well, for now, let’s welcome them in and give them some shelter for the night. It might be the only thing we end up doing for these people. We’ll have to talk to them and suss out the situation.” Beth said and then started heading towards the gate.
“This is going to get messy. I just have that feeling,” I said to Janet as we started following Beth down from the wall. What was left of Brad and Roses's people looked even worse up close, and their eyes were hollow and cold. “What the fuck happened?” I said under my breath to no one in particular. I wasn’t expecting an answer when a man who had walked up near me answered my quarry.
“And we’re the lucky ones. The others stayed behind to give us time to run, but no one from that group made it. I didn’t even see the thing. They just said run, and we ran. It was only about five minutes into our escape that something… I don’t know. I passed out, I think, but there was pain, so much pain. I don’t know how long the pain lasted, but it felt like hours had passed, and then I woke up. I don’t know why they left us alive or how we all ended up beaten to shit. Most were like me, fucked up, but some, some were dead, and there was blood coming from everywhere, man. The blood was coming out of their eyes, mouths, ears every were.”
The next thing I knew, the man was grabbing at my shirt. “Please, we need to run. We need to get away, far away. We came to warn you. Everyone must run from here as fast as they can. It’s coming, I don’t know what, but it’s coming!” By the end, the man was screaming, and his eyes looked panicked. I had to hit the man on the back of the neck, not hard, but just enough to knock him out. The people around us looked scared for a second, thinking I might have just killed one of them, but after they heard the man snoring, things calmed down.
Beth had been standing close and had heard the man’s words. “Sounds like a mental attack or some kind of invasive telepathy, but that wouldn’t explain the beating. This might be… well, let’s just go with not good, Travis.” Beth told me as Janet had a look of concern on her face.
“We should find out how far away they set up camp after leaving us,” I said. Beth and Janet both nodded and then I hosted the man I had just knocked out over my shoulder. I continued to help get our new residents settled. We had decided that, for now, we would set up a makeshift camp for the newcomers in the area we had used for sleeping before we bought the new housing.
Things went well. None of them had the will or strength to fight us as we got them situated. They were just letting us help them find a place to rest, and then they ate and drank what we gave them without complaint. I had a feeling that would change after they started recovering, but they were pretty docile for now. We set up a guard rotation to watch them. Then, just let them sleep. Then we were off to bed.
Beth had to handle some town stuff the following day, so Janet and I decided to go check on our new people. Janet and I had been helping pass out breakfast when I saw Janet having a conversation with an attractive young woman. When I walked over, Janet had her hand on the woman’s arm and was in the middle of what looked to be a deep conversation.
I watched Janet slip the woman a small glass bottle of what looked like vodka, then place her hand back on the woman’s leg. At that point, Janet looked up and noticed I was walking over to the two of them. Janet smiled at me. As I reached the two of them, Janet introduced me to the woman she was talking to. Her name was Trish.
Trish was a cute strawberry blond with a lean body and almost rock climber-type muscles. She looked like she would be 5’7” if she stood up. Trish had a soft smile that was slow to show itself, and after all the recent trauma she’d been through, I could understand why. At least Trish seemed like one of the ones who hadn’t lost all hope. Some of the others in her group looked like they were dead but just didn’t know it yet.
Janet said goodbye to her new friend, and we continued helping our new citizens. Around lunchtime, Janet, Beth, Frank, Devin, Tess, Brianna, and Rich sat down for our daily meeting. We started implementing them after a miscommunication about a room, and Beth was left to deal with two angry families yelling at her. She had put her foot down and set a daily meeting to avoid future incidents.
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We had all agreed, and the council of Three House Village now had regular meetings. This meeting was about what we were going to do with the new members of the village. Brianna was pissed at them. Right off the bat, she clearly let everyone in the meeting know her feelings on the issue.
“Fuck them! Who the fuck do they think they are! They basically told us to go fuck off ourselves when they left. Now when they’re all fucked up and in trouble, they come crawling back begging for help! Like I said, fuck them! They probably led the fucking thing that fucked them up right back here. I say we just kick them out and say tough shit, figure it out.”
Brianna then crossed her arms and looked at us as if daring us to argue the point. I looked around the small room, and it looked like everyone was thinking about what Brianna had just said.
“I agree with Brianna,” I said to the room. Everyone turned and looked at me.
“Not for the same reasons. I’m less petty than Brianna, I think.” Brianna flicked me off.
“My first issue is that they are all low level and well, I don’t trust them. Almost everyone in Tree House Village is level five except for some non-combatants, but even most of them were level four. In my opinion, we’ve been fortunate so far that our little town hasn’t been attacked by any monsters with levels we couldn’t deal with. If we don’t get more people to level ten, get them classes, and get them battle-ready, I fear we will end up in that very position. Overrun and dead.” I said
“What’s your point, Travis?” Rich asked me, looking slightly confused.
“I think we need to get rid of them. Not just kick them out because that will bring enmity toward us. Now, this may be an unpopular option, but I think we should ask them to leave and then kill them all once they are out of sight of the walls. I will personally deal with the issue myself.” I said.
Silence filled the room as everyone thought about the implications of my words. Janet just stared at me with a blank look on her face as I turned to Rich, Brianna, Devin, Tess, and Frank. I know these people were once part of your force before the split. Do any of you have a problem with my plan?” I asked them.
“I don’t give a fuck,” said Brianna.
“You’re asking if we have a problem with you massacring nearly twenty-five people?” Frank asked me questioningly. I met Franks’s eyes and just said,
“Yes, I am.” Frank had a deep frown on his face, and it looked like he was thinking hard. Then, out of nowhere, Frank stood up.
“I don’t think I can do this, these big decisions, talking about who lives who dies. It’s just not for me. I just want to take care of my kid. I never signed up for this, and I don’t want it. I don’t want the power. I won’t tell anyone about your plans, and I won’t cause trouble. I just can’t do it.” Rich and Devin tried to placate the man. Try to stop him from leaving. Frank just said it was okay, pushed past them, and walked out of the room.
“Well fuck. Is this what we’re doing then?” Brianna said without a sense of remorse. “We didn’t vote on anything yet, and I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable just killing them. Travis, don’t you think that’s a bit of an overreaction,” asked Tess.
“Not really, I think…” I didn’t get to finish my thought as Beth cut me off.
“Let’s calm down a second. I would like to consider all our options before we, as Frank put it, just massacre approximately twenty-five people,” Beth stated to the council.
“Look, I understand Travis’s point, and kicking them out would certainly breed hostility between our two groups. I don’t see that going well, especially since they’ve seen what we have built here. So, I think the decision is between letting them stay and become a part of Tree House Village or, and I hate to say this, we can’t go with Travis’s idea.” Devin said to the group.
Everyone was silent until Beth said, “Let’s see how the rest of today goes. Once they have the strength to cause trouble, we’ll see if they do and go from there. I would prefer they join us and we all become one big happy family, but I know some people in that group won’t make it that easy. We might determine that some should be asked to leave and some allowed to stay. Giving these people time to show their true colors will help us make that decision.
Brianna rolled her eyes but then caught Beth's gaze and nodded at her. Everyone seemed to agree with Beth’s assessment of the situation, and we moved on to other topics. I knew even though we had moved on from the topic. Everyone was still thinking about the decisions that would have to be made sooner than later. We didn’t have to wait long, either.
After about three days, Rich found and stopped about ten people trying to steal food from our storehouse. Well, it wasn’t an actual storage building that cost build points, and those were too precious at the moment to use on a storage shed, or at least that was the decision made by the council. I felt it definitely had its advantages, for example, prolonging the life of goods stored within, but the rest of the council didn’t see it as a priority. I wasn’t going to push the issue. There were far more important things to worry about.
The ten people Rich found were asked to gather their belongings, if they had any, and leave Tree House Village as soon as possible. The thieves were given a supervised moment to say goodbye to their friends, at which most of Roses’s people joined the forced exodus in solidarity. All told, another seventeen people joined the group and left. Janet’s friend Trish was not among them. Trish was part of a small group of only ten people that stayed with us. I think they had decided that Tree House Village was the safest place they would find, and safety for these people overruled group mentality.
Beth shot me a look as the twenty-seven people passed through the gate, and I slipped away unnoticed. I made it over the wall without anyone seeing me. We would have to increase our patrol, and I followed the group from a safe, unseen distance as they headed down the road away from our compound and in the opposite direction they had come from. I let them walk for about thirty minutes, and then I began disappearing people from the back of the group one by one.
I had killed six people before anyone noticed people were going missing, but once that happened, the group started to panic. They must have thought they were being stocked by a monster or something because the group huddled up and had someone watching in every direction after that as they continued on. It definitely slowed their paste down quite a bit. There was no way to pick them off one at a time now. I would have to use some of my abilities to end this quickly.
I made my way around the group and climbed onto the roof of a building I knew the group would walk past. I stood there and waited. As I stood there waiting, I started thinking about what I was about to do. I knew this was for the safety of the village, hell this was my fucking idea, but actually, being here at this moment was terrible. I felt like I had to take a shit really bad, and II was sweating so much II kept wiping my hands on my pants.
They were getting closer now, and I was rapidly approaching the point of no return. I thought about everyone who was counting on me, the people who had suffered under the hands of those mad max assholes, and all the people that still need our help and need Treehouse to stay a safe place. Even if this seems like cruel and brutal cold-blooded murder, I couldn’t lose my nerve. Beth and Janet were counting on me to keep the village safe. If I have to tarnish my sole to do so, then so be it. Better me than them. I shook my head to ready myself because the group was almost in the target zone.
When they were directly beneath me, I activated Pinpoint and dropped off the roof. I felt super badass and, at the same time, awful for thinking so, as I just stepped off the roof. I dropped and landed with an easy bend of the knees in the center of the group. As I landed, I activated Step Lightly and Quick Strike simultaneously. I made a quick circuit of the group, and as I returned to where I started, every last member of the group fell to the ground, dead.
There had been a teenager with the group. About half of the group had been women, but there was no time for remorse. If I focused too long on what I’d just done, I’d probably cry and lose my shit, but after everything I had experienced in this new world of ours, there just wasn’t room for those thoughts. The world was a hard place now, and that was just the way it was.
We would all have to get used to our new world together, but this, this day, the ones I killed here, that would be my burden to carry, and I would gladly carry it for the people I have to protect, for the people of Tree House Village. When I returned to the village, I found Beth and told her it was done. All she said was thank you. That was the last we spoke of it.
The next three weeks were pretty much what had become the usual routine. Keep pushing people through the dungeon, having lunch meetings with the council, and spending most nights with Janet. On the first day of the third week, since I had executed Roses people. I had been going about my day as usual, but I started looking for Janet when the evening came. I felt like I hadn’t seen her all day and then realized It had been a week or so since we had sex.
It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t like we were dating or anything. I hadn’t even realized I’d been so busy recently. I hoped everything was okay. I decided that I should go and surprise Janet with something special. I had found a bottle of champagne on a scavenging trip and was saving it so Janet and I could enjoy it together. I grabbed the bottle and headed over to Janet’s apartment. We decided not to share a place cuz Janet and I weren’t officially anything, and we both agreed that we would like to have our own space even though we slept in the same bed most nights.
I got to Janet’s door and knocked. I thought I heard voices from inside, so I figured she was probably talking to someone and must have missed my knock. I turned the doorknob, and the door was unlocked, so I let myself in. I walked in, and there was Janet on the couch naked. Trish was there as well, also naked, and let’s just say they weren’t playing Twister.
I could feel my face turning red, and then I realized I was just standing there staring, so I turned, walked out, and closed the door behind me. I heard the sound of rapid movement from behind the door, but I had already started walking down the hallway back to my room. I didn’t comprehend what I had just walked in on, but my brain was slowly catching up.
Fuck, Janet and Trish? Go figure, I didn’t know Janet liked girls, too. I only made it about fifteen feet down the hallway before Janet’s door opened. Janet popped out in shorts and a T-shirt. She saw me and kind of ran/walked down the hallway towards me. I stopped after I saw she was moving my way.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said back.
“So, you and Trish,” I asked her.
“Well, yeah, I guess. It kind of just happened, you know. We’re not exclusive, so I figured, well, I don’t know, I just… we just started, and I mean, I should have told you Travis.” Janet said. She looked like she thought I would be mad about it, and when I saw her face, I had to think about what I was feeling.
Was I jealous? Maybe a little, but as I thought about what I felt, I realized I was just sad that she didn’t tell me due to fear of my reaction.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m just hurt you were too scared of my reaction to tell me. Even though it’s really none of my business. Honestly, you and I were never a couple. We both needed someone. I care about you, Janet. I won't get in the way if you want to be with someone else. I care about you as a friend, Janet. So you know, if you ever have girl troubles, I’m down to talk it out.” I said.
Janet looked visibly relieved, “Good, okay, but you know I care about you too, Travis. Just know that I really do. You’re probably my best friend, so I don’t want to hurt you. I think that’s probably why I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry,” Janet said.
“All good, Janet. So, are you a lesbian now?” I asked her.
“Fuck you, Travis!” Janet said with a smile on her face. “I can fuck whoever I want. It’s the end of the fucking world,” she added, and we both laughed at that.
“Well, if you two ever want to have a threesome, I’m in,” I said, and I winked at her. Janet blushed a little, then said,
“How about now? You in? Trish already told me she thinks you’re cute.” Janet said with a challenging smile as if saying,
“Bring it on if you think you can handle it.” I gulped but couldn’t back down now, even if I was just messing with her at first.
“Hey, if you’re both into it, I’m down. Should we show Trish what stamina and strength stats do for sex, or have you been teaching her?” Janet blushed hard at that, then threw it right back at me.
“Oh, I think we should show her,” Janet said, then gave me a devilish smile. That night was fun and definitely a bit awkward at first, but Trish, Janet, and I figured it out and had a great time. That’s when I should have known that the shit was gonna hit the fan sooner than later.
The day started just like any other. I woke up early as usual and went to walk the ramparts. It had become one of my daily rituals. I was level fourteen now, but gaining levels was getting harder and harder. For the most part, I had stopped running people through the dungeon, so my days were much more open now, and I had dedicated most of my free time to training. I was getting much better at using my abilities effectively and in combination.
My skill with my abilities was getting better and better until even with Rich, Brianna, and Devin attacking me simultaneously, I could still win in a fight. Rich, Brianna, and Devin had taken over almost all of the dungeon runs, so they weren’t around to train with me as much as I’d like. They were all close to obtaining level ten, so hopefully, our training bouts would become more exciting again.
I was almost done with my walk when I noticed someone headed down the road towards the village. I activated Pinpoint to get a better look, and it turned out it was only one person walking at a leisurely pace. I stood on the walls, watching as the man approached the village walls. As I said, he was going at a leisurely pace, so it took the man about fifteen minutes to make it up to the gate, at which point he took some deep breaths and dusted off his shirt and pants.
The man looked as if he was in his mid-forties. He was dressed in clean yet road-worn clothing and kind of just looked like a regular guy you would have found walking in any city pre-integration. It didn’t seem like he was in any rush, so I let him finish what he was doing. When the man was just standing there, seemingly waiting for something to happen, I dropped down from the top of the wall and landed in front of him. The man didn’t look shocked as I appeared as if this was the moment he had been waiting for.
“Hello,” the man said.
“Um…Hello, what brings you to Tree House Village?” I asked him.
“Ah, an odd name for a town, but yes, why am I here? Straight to it then? Best way if you ask me.” He said with a rather disarming smile on his face.
“I would tend to agree and don’t worry about the name of our village,” I said, and I was not smiling.
“Well. Here’s the thing. My master, The master, is such a benevolent soul. He has agreed that if you surrender now and completely, he will only use half of you as sustenance, and the other half will live as I do. To provide for the great master and spread his glory. It may seem like an unfair choice now, but as you live for The Master, The Master lives for you. You will gain power and safety from the cruel world we have found ourselves in. Otherwise, The Master will come and use your entire settlement as nourishment. What do you say? Will you join us?”