Chapter 4

Big pointy teeth

There were three bunnies around him now. Beth was occupied, and Janet was doing a little worse for the wear. It looked like she finally killed the one bunny, but the others had taken advantage of the situation and were taking little chunks out of her. I was closest to Tom, so I kicked two of the bunnies that were around him, and they exploded. The other one ran away, so I said fuck it and turned to Beth. She was the next closest.

There was a bunny jumping at her face. I ran over, grabbed it out of the air, and slammed it into the ground. Its spine broke, and the thing stopped moving. Beth was holding another one that was struggling in her hands, biting her arms. I grabbed it and slammed it into the ground, dead again, next. Beth looked at me with thankful eyes, then ran over to her father. I ran over to Janet, and in the time it took me to help Tom and Beth, Janet had really been the one to suffer.

She had almost lost her foot and was non-responsive on the ground, bleeding. I stomped down on the bunny that was still chewing on her foot, killing it instantly. I grabbed another of the two bunnies that were chewing on her arm. The other one ran away. I brought my fist into my hand, the hand I was holding the struggling bunny with, and fist met bunny, met palm in a bloody mess.

Another dead bunny. I grabbed Janet and threw her over my shoulder. I turned back towards Beth, and the bunny that had run away came back and attacked Tom. Beth was trying to fight it off the best she could, but the bunny was dodging her and taking bites out of Tom. I ran over with Janet on my shoulder and gave my best football field goal kick, and the bunny splattered against the wall. I bent down, picked up Tom, threw him over my other shoulder, and started climbing up the fire escape. Beth was right on my heels.

We got to the second level, and Beth jumped through the window. I passed Beth, her father, and then passed her Janet. I was really worried about Janet. She’d almost lost her foot, and that looked like a lot of blood on the ground where she had been lying. I really didn’t know if she was gonna make it. Once we were all inside, I closed the window as much as I could. Me and Beth started trying to treat Tom and Janet the best we could.

I pulled off my belt and used it as a tourniquet on Janet’s leg. It definitely slowed the bleeding and almost stopped it completely. Her breathing got a little deeper and slower after we did that. We hadn’t seen any really obvious wounds on Tom. His shirt was covered in blood, and he was close to passing out, but Janet had seemed far worse at first glance. Her foot was fucked up, and it was clear she had lost a lot of blood. so we thought Tom would be okay for a second. But Tom was wide-eyed. His breathing was shallow and rapid. His eyes were looking everywhere as if he couldn’t see anything. He was calling for Beth by the time we finished helping Janet.

Beth ran over and laid a hand on his chest when she realized how bad he was doing. His clothes were slowly soaking with blood. At that moment, he coughed, and a lot of blood shot out of his mouth and landed on his chest. We propped his head up and checked him over. He had a ton of small bites all over him, and one of the rabbits had torn an artery. We hadn’t realized it at first, but now it seemed like he might not make it.

Beth took the blanket from the floor next to her and tried to stop the bleeding. She looked at me, eyes pleading for help, but I just sat there. There was so much blood it was everywhere, and there were so many bites. Her eyes filled with rage and sadness. She was pleading with him to stay with her. An hour later, Beth came out of the office. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Beth, I’m sorry there was just… there was just nothing we could do.”

Her head snapped up at me, eyes burning. “Well, at least I tried. You just sat there.” I held her gaze for a few seconds, but it got too hard, and I looked away. Some part of me thought she was right, but another part told me it wouldn’t have changed anything.

We cleaned Janet's wounds with some of the alcohol and wrapped them in gauze. Janet was pretty lucky other than her foot being fucked. All the other injuries on her body were pretty much surface level, except the one on her arm. They had taken a good chunk out of it, so we treated that with alcohol and wrapped it too. Beth would work with me and help me wrap and treat Janet's wounds, but she wouldn’t talk to me. When we were done, she walked over and sat next to Janet. She didn’t give me a second look, just gave off that fuck you aura. So, I left them in the living room. I went into the master and started pulling the mattress off the bed. I managed to get it off fairly easily and pulled off the sheets that were torn and covered in dust. I brought the mattress out to the living room. Beth looked up when she noticed me, and she helped me get the mattress over next to Janet, and together we lifted her onto the mattress.

Beth lay next to her, and in 20 minutes, she was asleep. They must’ve been exhausted. Fighting for your life can really do that to you, at least in my experience… a relatively new experience. Out of nowhere, my belly rumbled. Guess it’s time to eat. I looked around and found a sharp piece of metal lying on the floor.

It was probably a piece of piping or something. I pulled out a can of chili and slammed my impromptu can opener into the top of the can, spun the can 180 degrees, and did it again, making two holes in the top of the can. It would be nice to have hot chili, but I don’t know how the fuck I’m gonna light a fire in here, and I’m hungry, that’s it, we’re eating this cold, so that’s what I did.

Beth woke up an hour later, and I gave her a can. She said, “Thanks.” But her eyes were cold. She didn’t look as mad at me anymore, just wrung out, like she’d just reached her breaking point and couldn’t really take it anymore. I think we all were going to get there at some point. Hopefully, I can hold it together for a little while longer before I have my freak-out. Sure, it was coming, but so far, I was doing okay, honestly. With all the adrenaline pumping through my system from what had just gone down, I was having some trouble falling asleep.

I just kept thinking about how I had destroyed those bunnies. I’m sure those other people who have been killed by the bunnies on the corner didn’t just let themselves die. I’m sure they’d fought back. I remembered my stats and my level…I guess I’m gonna have to get used to going up against terrifying monsters at some point.

I already have, but I realize I might actually be able to kill some of them. It’s very possible in the near future, I could punch a brick wall, and I might fuck up the bricks. That’s gonna be hard to get over, my idea of previous human limitations, that is. Then, that made me think about how I’d held Beth back from helping her father.

The first thought that had gone through my head had been, if we go down there, we’re gonna die. We’d just be throwing ourselves to the slaughter. That hadn’t been the case. I actually got down there and started fighting, whipped the shit out of those bunnies. The only thing is to work on that fear. Hopefully, it’ll start to go away the more I fight.

Fuck! I’m gonna have to fight more, kill more things, more monsters, and put myself in more dangerous situations. That was the only way I saw myself surviving. At some point, I fell asleep. It was hard to ignore the flashing exclamation mark in the corner of my vision, but I just didn’t have the energy to go through my notifications right then. I jerked awake as Beth touched my arm to wake me up. That was enough now to send my nerves spinning, especially from a dead sleep. She jumped back, and once I realized what was going on, I told her I was sorry. “My bad, Beth.”

“It’s okay, All good,” she said. She gave me a thumbs up in the international sign for all good, no danger. I smiled.

“What’s going on?" I asked her as I whipped my eyes clear of sleep.

“Not much. Janet seems to be getting a little better. She’s not as hot, and her breathing has been getting deeper and steadier.”

“Well, that’s good,” I told her.

“I got a notification,” She said.

“What?” I asked her if I was still waking up and had missed what she said.

“I got a notification about those bunnies. Says my temporary party killed savage ripper bunnies, but I didn’t kill anything. I looked at my Battle Log, and it just says something about forming a temporary party. Why did I get experience?”

I looked at her blankly for a second and blinked a couple of times before what she said registered. I popped open my stat sheet and checked out my Battle Log. Sure enough, at one point down the list, it read, You have formed a temporary party.

You will confirm this temporary party by default, but you may leave at any time. To make this an official party, open the party tab, now available as a tab on your stat sheet.

“Okay, I think I figured it out. We formed a temporary party by default, apparently. You probably share experience when you’re in a temporary party. How much experience did you get? Well, it looks like we formed the party after I killed those bunnies. You didn’t get experience for that, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Beth said.

“Maybe it’s because we fought together?”

“I don’t know.” Beth nodded.

"That’s what I’m starting to think.”

“Yeah, makes sense”, I said.

“So, wait, how much XP did you actually get?”

“I got 60”, Beth said. I checked my kill notifications, and I had killed seven of the bunnies.

“The savage ripper bunnies were Level 3, and I got 75 XP per kill. But the numbers didn’t add up. Looks like I only got 360 XP instead of 525, which is what I should’ve gotten for the seven bunnies. So yeah, we must have been cuz I definitely got less XP than I should have. If I add your XP to mine, it still doesn’t add up to what I should have gotten.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Janet must have gotten 100 XP or something around that number. That’s at least what I’m missing if I add your XP into the equation. She also punched that one bunny to death, so she probably got something for that, too.”

Beth nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense as much as anything makes sense.” I smiled at her timidly. And she softly chuckled.

The smile fell from my face. “Look, Beth, about your dad…” Her body language got chilly, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She stared off into the distance for a moment, and then another moment, and then she met my eyes. Tears were falling, and I don’t think she realized it.

“I don’t really blame you. There’s nothing you can do, nothing you could do, nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. I still think part of me hates you, though." I thought about that for a second, and Beth just stared at the floor.

“Honestly, I can live with that, I had fucked up. I really did. I let my fear get the better of me, and it got somebody killed.” Inside, I don’t think I wanted her to forgive me. I looked at Beth. “That’s fine, Beth. You can hate me. I think you should probably hate me. I don’t think I forgive myself yet.”

She looked at me with what seemed to be a little confusion on her face, but she didn’t say anything else about it, and we moved on from that topic. Janet started waking up about an hour after that. Me and Beth had been looking around the apartment for anything we could salvage, but there wasn't much that we could save. Shortly after Janet woke up, she started coughing.

We had drunk most of the water, but there was still one left of the four I’d started with. Janet drank deeply, spluttered a little, then drank a little more. She looked around a little bleary-eyed. I saw her register us and then try to talk, and I coughed, drank another sip of water, and managed to get out in a hoarse voice, "Where is Tom?” Beth’s eyes started to water, and I saw that as my cue to give them a moment to themselves.

A little bit later, Janet started crying. I think Beth must have told her to be quiet because she was muffling her sobs. Beth reached out, holding her. Janet cried for a little while but eventually stopped. Then she noticed her foot was in bad shape and started up all over again. At one point, while I was busying myself with my backpack, I overheard Janet say,

“I’m just dead weight! I’m basically dead already…just leave me here.” Her words and sobs started to get louder and more frantic. Beth looked over at me finally, she was looking like she needed some help calming Janet down.

I walked over to the two of them and crouched down next to the mattress. “Hey, hey, hey, Janet, get a hold of yourself. Stop, stop crying. I’m not gonna leave you behind. Me and Beth aren’t gonna leave you behind. And I consider you a valuable member of this team. Hell, I saw you punching that bunny in the fucking face. You’re a badass, Janet. We need you around.”

“You don’t need me. I was really useless in that fight”, Janet said, and looked like she was about to start crying again.

“That’s not true. Why don’t you check your stat sheet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Janet, just check your stats sheet. I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Janet looked at me for a second and then said, “Stat Sheet.” I saw her eyes tracking something I couldn’t see floating in the air. “Okay, you should have a tab near the top that says, “Battle Log.”

“Okay, I see it.”

“Great! Focus on it for a second.” The bridge of her nose scrunched up a little, and I could tell she was really concentrating. Then her eyebrows went up.

“Oh, it opened up a new page, and there’s a lot of entries, and a lot of these are about me punching the bunny in the face and dealing damage.”

“OK, cool, start looking down the list. Do you see anything that says, the temporary party joined?”

“One second, I’m so sorry, Travis. My head is killing me, and I can’t focus with this flashing exclamation mark in the corner of my vision.”

“Oh, right, you probably got a kill notification for that bunny you killed. Why don’t you focus on it? If you open them up, it’ll stop flashing.”

“Oh, thank God!” Janet said.

The bridge of her nose was scrunching up again. It says level up. I looked at Janet for a second. “Oh, how much experience did you get?”

“I don’t know. Where do I go to find that out? Can’t we just deal with the next notification first? And the wording of these props is vile.”

"I know, we’ll deal with that later. What’s your next notification?”

“It’s a kill notification, and that’s my last one.”

“Ewe, gross, those things were called savage ripper bunnies? That’s so creepy.” Janet had another sip of water and then said she needed to lie down a little longer. We checked on her bandages, and her foot was already healing up a little bit, which seemed weird, a little too fast. I decided to check my foot, and yeah, it was pretty much healed up, too. It looked like it had already been healing for 2 to 3 weeks.

“I guess there really is magic now,” I said out loud quietly. Beth was close enough to hear. “What are you talking about?” she said.

“Nothing much. I just noticed my foot that got fucked up yesterday already looks like it’s been healing for like 2 to 3 weeks.” Beth’s eyes opened a little bit,

“That’s kind of amazing.”

“Yeah, look at Janet’s foot. There’s already skin starting to regrow.” Beth did. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s way too quick. Good to know that if we get hurt, we might just take a couple of days rest to get back on your feet from an injury that would’ve put you down for a month or more, back a couple of days ago,” Beth said.

“True, my working theory right now is that it’s linked to Constitution in some way. Maybe the higher your Constitution, the faster you heal or something like that.”

Beth tilted her head to the side, “Maybe, at least it sounds plausible.” Turned out that she had played a couple of games in her youth. She thought it might be linked to your health pool's total size, but she had to admit that faster healing seemed to fall under similar boundaries. I think me and Beth both started to get a little bored waiting for Janet to get up again. We understood she needed to get some good rest, but it was fucking boring.

Beth started walking around the apartment and cleaning it up, well honestly, just piling most of the shit in one corner, so at least there was a little more livable space. While she was doing that, I decided to check out my stat sheet and smacked myself in the forehead. Beth looked over at me, but I waved her off. Beth had totally distracted me the last time I was looking at my stat sheet, and I had totally forgotten to spend my three stat points.

Travis Mullins

Level: 5

Race: Human

Experience needed to next Level: 1,560/1,970 XP till next Level.

Titles: Lucky Bastard (+2 to luck)

Strength: 16

Dexterity: 12

Intelligence: 14

Wisdom: 12

Constitution: 14

Luck: 11

Okay, let’s see what points I’m putting where today. Strength is always an excellent choice, but that idea about Constitution definitely sounded interesting, if it would heal my foot up faster. It had started to itch a little while ago, and I knew that meant it was healing, but fuck, it sucked. I was definitely a scab picker. Couldn’t stand that fucking itchy shit, so my foot had been sort of driving me crazy. I put 2 points in Constitution and 1 in Strength, so I’d test out my theory a little and add a little bit to my Strength because why the fuck not? That’s when I realized I never checked how much Health, Mana, and Stamina I had. Well, I remembered one way to do that. I thought status check. I thought about the words with intent.

A red, blue, and yellow bar populated in the upper left-hand corner of my vision. It said I was at 270/280 HP, Mana was 260/260, and Stamina was at 240/240. It disappeared after about two or three seconds. That was good to know. I feel like I’ve been caught up in so much craziness recently I didn’t have time for any of this shit. It was probably all really important to figure out sooner than later, too.

I close my stat sheet and wander over to help Beth. We worked for about another two hours, then split a can of chili. Around that time, Janet woke up, smelled the chili, and asked if she could have some. I told her it was cold, but she said she was too hungry to care.

I opened my last can of chili for her, and she scarfed it down. We were definitely gonna have to find more food soon. It was around noon, I figured. So, we had half a day left. We had spent two days here so far, and this was the start of our third day in this spot. We knew we were going to have to find a new spot sooner or later. It just wasn’t a place I wanted to make a home base. I really wanted to make it up to the hills and really get a good look at how fucked we all were. As it stands right now, we would probably need to try to head back to that grocery store to get food today. I mentioned it to Beth, and she was quite sure there was a grocery store closer than the one I had been to a few days earlier. She thought it was probably only two blocks away.

I liked her idea, and we made a plan to head out. Luckily, our trip to the grocery store was pretty uneventful. We took our time and were extra cautious so as not to draw any attention to ourselves. We had to hide several times due to packs of savage ripper bunnies wandering the streets. I had shown that I could fuck these bunnies up if I wanted, but getting overwhelmed by twenty of the fuckers was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

We had made it in, found some water, canned food, and some other supplies, and had gotten back to the apartment in what I thought was a good time. It probably took us two hours at most, but our nerves had been on ten the whole time. Beth looked wrung out again. I’m sure she was just emotionally exhausted. Janet had fallen asleep while we were out. When we got back, she woke up, ate some more food, and rehydrated. Beth pretty much passed out after that. Me and Janet stayed up for a little bit and I helped her allocate her stat points. She had started with…

Janet Katz Stat Sheet

Level: 2

Race: Human

Experience needed to next Level: 145/150XP till next Level.

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 12

Intelligence: 15

Wisdom: 13

Constitution: 9

Luck: 7

After that, she laid back down. She definitely had color returning to her face. She almost looked like she hadn’t just been attacked by Savage Ripper Bunnies two days before, so that was good. I was worried about Beth. She didn’t have many physical injuries, but her emotional state, I’m sure, was pretty fucked up right now. Since both girls were asleep, I pulled out my deck of cards and played a bunch of solitaire. I stayed up till about two in the morning and only knew that because Beth woke up around then and told me so.

She also said that she couldn’t sleep anymore. She didn’t say anything, but it seemed like she might be having bad dreams, nightmares, and stuff like that. We hadn’t officially decided to set up a watch schedule for the night and probably should’ve set one up before, but we were all so dead tired and emotionally drained after Tom died. I guess it was good that one of us would be up, at least. Maybe we’d get to see what monster was gonna eat us before it did.

I went to sleep a little easier, knowing that Beth was up. In the back of my head, there was a little voice that kept warning me not to fall asleep…she’s gonna cut your fucking dick off. Don’t do it, don’t pass out. She straight up told you that part of her hates you. Are you sure you’re cool? I mean, you just met this woman, and you don’t know what she’s like.

She could totally snap and cut my dick off. I like my dick. I like my dick a lot! I passed out finally and ended up dreaming that a monster bit my dick off, and I chased it around all over the place screaming, “Just give me my dick back. I promise I won’t kill you. Just give it back!” And the monster did, not, give, a fuck. It just kept running away from me, my dick in its mouth, hanging out the side, flapping in the wind.

I woke up to the smell of beans cooking…hot beans, like, not cold. My nose wiggled, and my eyes opened. “That smells good. How did you get a fire going?” "Morning Travis, I grabbed a pack of Sterno while we were at the grocery store and found a lighter in one of the registers, so I decided to heat up a can of beans for breakfast. Says they’ve got bacon in them too.”

“Amazing! Love me some bacon." I said. I got up and walked over. Beth looked at me and smiled,

“Who doesn’t love bacon?

I nodded sagely. “Very wise, young Beth. Wise you are beyond your years.” I said it in kind of like an Obi-Wan Kenobi voice. Beth let out a small laugh.

“Was that supposed to be like a Star Wars thing? You suck at that. You’re horrible at impressions.”

I continued talking to Beth while she finished up breakfast. Janet woke up when it was almost done, and she actually hobbled over to join us at our little impromptu dining table that Beth had set up. When breakfast was ready, we all had some bacon and beans on pieces of broken tile. Beth had decided to use them as plates.

After a little breakfast, the mood got a little more somber. We decided we were gonna have to head out before it got too late in the day if we were going to head out today. Beth didn’t want to leave her dad there, but we really couldn’t take him with us. We had a small memorial service. Beth and Janet both cried and talked about Tom for a little bit and then we headed out.