Chapter 25
We had been walking for hours now and had avoided most monsters we encountered, but we were forced to deal with some. Nothing had given us too much trouble, so we took our time. As long as we didn’t make too much noise, it seemed to be working out for us. We were taking a break, sitting on a bench in a small neighborhood park, drinking some water. When a small pack of what looked like sheep before the integration, but now they had mutated. They each had a large set of horns, and electricity seemed to play between them. Oh yeah, they were about eight feet tall and had a mustard coloring to their wool.
They looked really soft, and they didn’t seem to be aggressive. At one point, when Janet and I were just watching them graze, Janet started walking towards the closet sheep. It looked over at her but didn’t seem to care and kept grazing. When she was about four feet away, the sheep lifted its head and glanced at her. It just stared at her like, what’s up? In my personal space now. Do you need something?
Janet then proceeded to hold out a hand full of popcorn. She held it out as if to say, here, take it. The sheep looked at the handful of popcorn, sniffed it, and then looked at Janet. It stared at her for another second, then returned to the popcorn, sniffed it again, and ate some pieces. It chewed and looked like it liked the popcorn okay because it went back for seconds.
After it finished, the first-hand full, Janet pulled more from her bag of holding, and the sheep seemed all for it. After about ten minutes, Janet had a crowd around her, demanding more popcorn. I had stepped in and started helping her out after the fourth sheep had come over, and it had just grown from there. It was about another five minutes before Janet said softly,
“So, just a heads up, I’m about to try and get on the back of this guy here, and I’m just letting you know so that if he freaks out, you’re not caught off guard, okay?” Janet said and looked at me from the corner of her eye. I didn’t know exactly what to say, so I just nodded. She nodded back. Another minute passed, and Janet was just feeding the sheep super chill, then all of a sudden. Janet stood up and looked the sheep she was feeding right in the eyes.
“I’m gonna get on your back now. Don’t be alarmed. I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s be friends, okay?” Janet said to the sheep, then gave it some more popcorn and walked alongside the larger sheep. The Sheep were being extremely gentle right now, but that might all change in a second if they felt threatened. I held my breath and waited to see what would happen next. Janet bent her knees and hopped gently onto the sheep’s back. It seemed to roll its shoulders a bit, and then it shook like it was trying to get comfortable or like it was trying to get Janet off. I was nervous for a second, for sure.
In the end, I had nothing to worry about. The sheep dude was super cool with Janet on its back and didn’t seem to care. She told me to give it a shot. I tried to emulate Janet in the way she had gone about things. Sure enough, the sheep was super chill and didn’t care that I had decided to take a joy ride. Now that we were on the backs of the sheep, what now? “So how do we ride these things? I mean, like make them go and turn and shit,” I asked Janet.
She thought about it briefly, then looked at me and said, “I was just thinking kick in your heels to go, steer with the wool, and pull on the wool to stop. You think that will work?”
“I mean, better than anything I can think of. Let’s give it a shot.” In the next two hours, we got the sheep to start, stop, turn right, and leave. Now, they didn’t always listen to the pull on their wool, but they seemed to be getting the hang of what we were going for and seemed to be down with it or at least not against it. With that accomplished, it felt like we could use them in our travels, and sure enough, they left with us fine, and we were back on the road. Three other sheep wouldn’t leave us alone, so we just let them follow us.
Hell, if we did find some survivors, they might be able to ride a sheep back to the village. We could also have one drag a sled or something of the sort if we could rig up a harness. The sheep were fast. When they were moving, giving the signal to turn took a bit of practice. We were getting better. I also felt more in tune with the sheep I was riding as time passed. Janet and I and our new companions made a good time. When we stopped to have lunch, we had almost made it to downtown Oakland near the hospital, close to where I had first seen those wolf creatures.
We had started heading towards the hospital after we got our new mounts. When we saw the speed at which the sheep were able to run. We figured making it to the hospital would be easy and probably a good place to find survivors. As we got closer to downtown, we started seeing signs of scavenging and figured there must be some groups around here. We had stopped at a park, an empty lot, really. It was across the street from the hospital, and fucked up buildings were all around us.
The hospital itself was super fucked up. The roof had fallen in and crushed many of the upper floors, but the front was boarded up, and as we approached, a bullet hit the ground in front of us, and we stopped. We had dismounted the sheep and tied them up in the park. We had ridged some temporary harnesses for the sheep. The more we used them throughout the day, the more we realized they were a resource. We couldn’t be dumb enough to let them just walk off. So, we made some makeshift harnesses and linked them all together, then tied them to a tree with enough lead to eat some grass.
The sheep looked content to just chill, and when the shot rang out, they hadn’t even noticed. As we were standing there waiting for whoever had shot at us to say something, I don’t know, maybe, go away or who the fuck are you. You know shit like that, but there was nothing. I took another step, and another shot rang out, and a bullet struck the ground in front of me. This time, however, a voice did follow, assisted by the help of a megaphone.
“Leave now. Don’t come any closer. Any forward movement will be seen as an act of aggression and will be answered with an appropriate response. Please turn around and leave.” The voice went quiet. It sounded like the voice was coming from somewhere on the second floor. I activated Pinpoint and looked at where I thought the voice had been coming from. Sure enough, I could just barely make out a man with a megaphone and another person with a sniper rifle. Both men were tucked behind debris, but I could still partially make them out.
I took out a spear and lined up a throw. Janet chuckled and shook her head at what I was doing, but it didn’t stop me. I pulled back and then let fly. My spear traveled through the air and landed hard between the two men. Hopefully, I just showed them that, yes, I knew where they were, and yes, I could have just killed them but had chosen not to. There was quiet for a few seconds. You could have cut the tension with a knife. Then, I decided to break the peace.
“So, you want to talk? We’re not here to cause trouble. We just want to talk. We will wait for an hour. Let us know what you decide.” I said, and then I walked back to the park, Janet in toe. I pulled a blanket from my bag of holding when we got to the park and sat down. I then pulled out a sandwich and started eating. Janet just copied me, and we enjoyed a nice meal. I’m sure our new friends were probably freaking out.
When we ate, we got up and returned to the hospital. No one had come out to talk to us yet, so it was time to check back in with these people. “Hey Guys, so, anything? Are you gonna talk to us, or should we just fuck off like you said? We’ve got water and food? Enough to share, but it’s up to you?” I told them and waited for a response. After two minutes, the doors that were blockaded shut began to open.
It was an involved process of things being pulled aside and other things being raised until the way was clear. When a small passage was free, six people moved out to stand in front of the building. Two looked to be doctor types, a man and a woman. One guy looked like a regular Joe of the street, except he was holding a shotgun pointed at us. The last three looked like police or something, and they were carrying rifles pointed at us.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I looked at Janet, and she looked at me, then gave me a shrug as if to say I don’t know how to deal with a situation like this. You figure it out. I rolled my eyes at her, but I took the lead. I started walking towards the group. They didn’t seem to like that much. I could see they were all tense as fuck, and I was just praying this encounter didn’t go to shit. When Janet and I were about twenty feet from the small group, one of the police-looking guys called out.
“That’s far enough. Why are you here? We don’t have much to trade, but if you have food and water to share, we can talk.” The man said. I looked at Janet like fuck, here we go. I waved at them, then said, “Hey, I’m Travis, and this is Janet.” I pointed at myself to Janet, in turn, and continued. “We’ve got a small village not far from her, and we were just out looking for survivors—people who either need a safe place or other new settlements looking to trade information and goods. If you need food and water, we have some to share. Not a ton, but enough for a while, I think. We’d be willing to help you out. You know, as fellow services of the apocalypse. Does that sound okay?”
I finished my little speech. Then, as a gesture of goodwill, I pulled a couple sacks of flowers, sugar, and a carton of eggs out of my bag of holding. It seemed that food magically appearing out of nowhere was almost too much for these people. They raised their guns at me, and someone even let off a shot. It hit me in the leg and didn’t do anything. It just stung a little. They all turned to the guy who shot at me, and I couldn’t hear too much of the conversation, but it seemed like they were pretty pissed at the dude.
After a few more moments of talking amongst themselves, they turned back to us. The guy who seemed like the leader of the small group asked me if I was okay. It was pretty clear that he felt bad that I had gotten shot. When I showed him, I was fine. Well, I think his brains just told him that he must have made a mistake, and the bullet must have missed me. They seemed to warm up to us a bit more after that. I think the fact we were so chill after getting shot at helped a bit.
They brought a cart, and we helped them load it up with some of the supplies we’d brought. We gave them two small bags of holding five slots each, water rations and one with some food. Then, we showed them how to use the bags. They were blown away. One of the doctors kept putting a bag of sugar a bag, then he’d summon it out, and he was doing it over and over. We let him go at it for a minute, and then we had to stop him so we could put the supplies back in our bags. Janet and I apologized for not thinking about the bags before they had brought out and loaded the cart.
They said they didn’t mind, and after that, we were done, and we walked inside. It was gnarly inside, let me tell you. The first thing that hit you was the smell. I mean, what a fucking smell. It was like a mix of sweat, piss, shit, and rotating garbage. It was rough. Some people looked sick, there were people with open wounds, and there were people, so many fucking people. Holly shit, there must have been a thousand people in the hospital. They looked like they needed help. We were taken to the supply room, where we placed the food and supplies inside.
They brought Janet and me to a command center-like area next. They told us they had a fighting force mostly made of police officers and private citizens with arms willing to fight. Apparently, they had been hit hard by some monster attacks and had lost a lot of people already. It turned out they were in desperate need of assistance. We told them about Treehouse Village.
We told them we were trying to make a safe haven for survivors and that they were welcome to join us. They were unsure about the whole thing and said they would have to scoop it out first. Then, if they decided to join us, we could start the process of moving the residences. At one point, I asked them what their highest level was. They told me they hadn’t considered it much and that nobody was really paying attention to that kind of stuff. They explained with people dying and food and water getting scarcer, it wasn’t their top priority.
The leader guy’s name turned out to be Edwin, and I told him to tell me what was on his stat sheet. I had to remind him how to call it forth, but when he did, he informed me he was a level three human with nine free stat points to distribute. Level three! Shit, that was fucking low. He hadn’t even distributed any of his stats points? fuck. These guys were in more trouble than I thought. I looked over at Janet, and she had a look of shock on her face like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
After our short meeting with the leadership, we handed out some healing smoothies to the people in the worst shape, then gave out some Beans, and some Mana kissed water. We asked a couple of people about their level, and almost every single person we asked was level one, and if they weren’t level one, they were level two and had paid dearly for it. We decided we could make it back to Treehouse Village today if we left soon. We told Edwin as much, and Edwin, along with two of his men, decided they would come with us to check out the village.
We had four extra sheep, so we told them they could bring one more person. Edwin thought about it, and after about a few minutes, he came back with their fourth, a woman by the name of Tatiana. She was a doctor at the hospital and had been on call when the integration occurred. She wanted to see Treehouse Village for herself, and nobody had a problem with that. With the small group decided, we took our leave.
It took a little while for everyone to come to terms with our mode of transportation, but eventually, everyone was on, and we were on our way. We kept the sheep, our new friends we were riding, tied to our own for the ride home. We didn’t want them to have to worry about steering. Janet and I also didn’t want to take the time to teach them. We had an easy time returning to Treehouse Village and had no significant problems. The only minor incident was that we ran into a small pack of savage ripper bunnies, but our new sheep friends took care of them without much trouble.
We got to see them use their lighting horns as well, which was super cool, not gonna lie. Instant deep-fried bunny. When we reached the walls and got off the sheep at the gates to the village, Edwin and his people were shocked at what we had built. As we showed them around the village, they were doing that thing that people do in a new place sometimes where they try to look everywhere at once. I was afraid someone was gonna break their neck. We finally got to the center of the town. Someone must have run ahead of us and gotten Beth because Beth was waiting for us in front of the town hall with Devin, Tess, and Brianna. A few moments later, we made it over to them.
“Edwin and friends, this is Beth, Devin, Tess, And Brianna, the other members of the Treehouse Village council, along with Janet and me.”
We all went to the council meeting room and settled in for a talk with Edwin and his people. Refreshments were passed around along with some light snakes, and by this point, the looks on the faces of Edwin’s guys almost screamed they were gonna join us. The talks took longer than I thought, but everything was figured out. We told Edwin we needed a week to get enough build points for a new housing unit. We also told him that we would require additional time after that to supply the rest of the housing for all the new people.
Adding all those new people, even at their low levels, would make getting enough housing go fast. With the plan laid out, we started packing up provisions for about a week. We were going back to the hospital tomorrow. It was too late at this point to make the trip back. When we offered Edwin and his people a place to stay for the night, they agreed rather quickly. We put them up in some spare rooms, and they couldn’t believe the quality of the rooms. We left them to relax as the council reconvened.
“There are guards on their doors, right?” Devin asked Beth once we were all seated at the table again.
“Yep, they’re watching from the rooms across from them. I didn’t want them to think we didn’t trust them. I just can’t let them wander freely yet,” Beth said, affirming Devin’s query.
“So, what are we gonna do with all these low-level people joining us? I mean, the last time people tried to join us, we just killed them, or did you forget?” Tess asked the group. Meeting my eyes as she spoke.
“Well, as I see it, they tried to steal from us, and I killed them so they would come back and try to kill us or tell others of our weakness. This group is different. They are not actively aggressive towards us, or at least not yet, and they are so low-level. They really won’t pose a threat. At least, that’s the way I’m leaning. If we encounter troublemakers, we will simply ask them to leave and kill them once they are out of sight of the village. Unless you want to build a prison and start having trials and shit? I’m really more of the mind to just kill troublemakers. There’s just no room for that shit in this new world.”
I finished my thought, and everyone had a think about what I’d said before Brianna broke the silence. “Well, that sounds like a plan to me. Let’s just get them moved over here, and then we can figure all that other shit out as we go. That work, for now?” That seemed to be what most of us were thinking, so we adjourned the council for the evening and split up to get some sleep. Tomorrow was sure to be a busy day.