Chương 103: 100: No Names

It hurt. Honestly, I was surprised by how much it hurt. It didn't break my skin, so it's not like it was dangerous, but the impact was much more baseball at high speed than beanbag. Bear yelped and spun. The fucker had shot her, too. I did not respond well. Well, I ordered, "No hurting humans," before Bear could rip the fucker's throat out so maybe I responded okay. But then I yanked the gun out of his hand and threatened him with it, saying, "You want me to use this on you, shithead?

Good news, I'm not that stupid. Guns explode now, idiot." And then I hurled the gun into the trees. You would not believe how far the new me could throw a gun. It was a small gun, maybe even a. 22, but I am sure I beat every shot put record ever made, maybe even ever conceived of. I didn't actually know much about baseball, but I bet my throw was faster than the fastest pitch ever made. Just a guess. The gun flew through the air, spiraling like a whirligig, and disappeared beyond the trees on the horizon.

"Wow," I said, watching it go. And then I glared at the fucker who'd shot me.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" He whimpered.

"Monsters. I—monsters!" I glanced back at the rift.

"Oh, right." Rifts released monsters into the world. A person standing guard outside a rift to kill any monsters that emerged was objectively not doing a bad thing. Obviously, they should not be shooting any random person or animal who exited. But I probably shouldn't kill them for it.

"Fine," I said.

"Don't do it again. Hey, do you know anything about what happened to the enclave that was—" I consulted Wayfarer's Jacket, then pointed, "—somewhere off that way?"

"The one that disappeared yesterday?" The dude swallowed hard.

"Buncha people spilled out onto the street and man, were they pissed." He snorted and spit on the grass. Bear growled. He put his hands up defensively.

"Sorry, dog. Just clearing my throat, that's all. Y'all scared the shit outta me." I did a quick check to make sure she was okay. No signs of damage, no blood, and she wasn't acting like she was in pain. She was just pissed off. So was I. I glared at him.

"You shot me. You shot my dog!"

"Got told I gotta kill a monster." He nodded toward the rift.

"They's supposed to come outta there. Ain't supposed to be no people in there."

"Didn't anybody tell you that guns are exploding?"

"Ten percent chance, they're saying. I figure that means I got at least five safe shots."

"That's not how—" I stopped myself, pinching the bridge of my nose. This was just a headache in waiting. Can't save the world, I reminded myself. But I tapped [Analyze], and sighed. Unknown. I guess that wasn't a surprise.

"Dude, make a spear," I said to him.

"Get a knife, tie it to a long stick. Get a couple other people, and then go inside the rift and kill the monsters inside the rift. Bring some water, cause it's a desert in there. If it gets hard, back the hell right out. It doesn't lock once you're inside." And then I hesitated. I didn't think it locked.

"Chelsea?" She appeared in her pixie form, hovering above my shoulder. I just barely managed not to 'eep' in shock.

"No, wild rifts don't lock. A Rift Keeper can lock rifts they've claimed, however," she whispered in my ear before disappearing. Okay, I was not going to freak out about that. Did Texas have a Baker Act equivalent? I had no idea, having never been forcibly institutionalized in Texas, but hey, it was Texas. Probably they just ignored their crazy people.

"My girl can't come with me. Got a kid at home. And my best friend—he bit it, day one." I just looked at him. Unknown to the System. To me? Just a guy. Joe Average. Long hair, tied back, hadn't shaved in a week, a bit more of a belly than was probably good for him. But he had a kid at home. And a partner. And a best friend that he'd lost. While I, coincidentally, was searching for the best friend I truly hoped I hadn't lost.

"Oh my fucking God," I said to the sky.

"Seriously? I do not have time for this shit." He took a couple steps away. I pointed at him.

"Do not tell me your name. I don't want to know. But show me where the enclave was and I'll help you get your first level." He stared at me.

"You don't want to know, 'cause then you won't feel bad if I die? Yeah, I'm Cody. Blue dome was that way." He jerked his chin toward the left. I threw my hands into the air.

"Goddamn it, Cody, is it really that complicated for me not to invest in every fucking stranger I meet?"

"You took my gun. You threw it like a mile away. I'm never getting it back. You oughta at least pay me for that."

"You! I!" I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He'd shot me. He'd shot my dog. Bear was fine, but she might not have been. I was allowed to not save him, right? Right? Wrong. Obviously, I knew the answer was really yes. Theoretically. I couldn't save everyone. I could let this guy go. He might be fine. He was trying, at least. He wasn't sitting around waiting for someone to save him. He was out here shooting innocent women and dogs, but he didn't have a Murder Hobo title.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. All right, that was where I was drawing the line. No Murder Hobos.

"Lead the way, Cody." I gestured in the direction he'd indicated. He shot a wary glance at the dogs, not afraid, just cautious, and headed out across the grass. We all followed, Bear just a little sulky, but the other dogs fine with him. Okay, I'd also draw the line at anyone the dogs seemed to really dislike. If Zelda said no to a person, I wouldn't save them. Of course, Riley wouldn't ever say no to anyone. It just wasn't his style.

And Bear would automatically say no to almost everyone, because that was her style. We'd figure it out.

"So where did the people go?" I asked Cody after we'd walked in an uncomfortable silence for a couple of minutes. He kept shooting furtive glances at me and the dogs, and I was feeling like I was on the cop side of a perp walk. Not my favorite feeling.

"The people?"

"The ones that were in the enclave."

"Right, right." He shrugged.

"Most of 'em were headed back to the resort. They came from there to begin with. Guy running the dome was hitting up the guests, charging six figures for a spot."

"The resort? Is that what this is?"

"Cypress Crown." He gestured to the right.

"Two eighteen-hole courses, a nice little nine-hole natural grass course, three swimming pools, spa, and an outdoor theater with surround sound. Real pretty place to watch a movie. Five, six restaurants, too."

"Are they still open?" He scratched his beard.

"Yeah, mebbe not. But people gotta eat." He was relaxing, not warily checking on the dogs every three seconds.

"They was trying to get people to shelter in place, first few days, but some places got real ugly, real fast. Out by the old mall, the houses just… it's like they melted. You can still see what used to be there, but ain't nobody living in them now. And then down by Bluebonnet Park, it's a jungle. A real one. But the plants, they eat people. Well, they eat anything, but word is, if you get stuck, you ain't never getting free. You dissolve. Slow."

"That sounds extremely unpleasant." We would be avoiding Bluebonnet Park. Maybe my bougainvillea could take a jungle? But I didn't much want to try. Cody tipped his head back toward the rift I'd come out of.

"The shimmers, they're all over the place. There's folks hanging out by the ones that're supposed to be easy. Crowds of 'em. Got a couple downtown, one on a ranch outside a town. Rancher's charging admission, I hear. Twenty bucks a head to kill giant worm things."

"Giant worm things? Ick." I bet the loot from them was slimy. But—despite not being a huge fan of capitalism in general—it was sorta nice to see that it was still alive and well in Texas. Would twenty dollars be worth anything in a month? Given that fiat currency always required a shared willingness to accept the fiction that a piece of paper had value, maybe.

"Nobody saw what came outta this shimmer here, but whatever it was, it didn't do much damage. I figured it was worth a try. Save the twenty bucks." He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone, tapped at it, then shoved it at me. I looked. I didn't actually want to, but I did. His girl had tattoos, hair an absolutely artificial red, and a huge smile. Their kid was probably three, his hair that towheaded blond that wouldn't last, his smile just as huge as his mama's.

He took the phone back and looked at the picture himself.

"I didn't expect—it was only supposed to be monsters that came out of the shimmers. Nobody said jack shit about there being people or dogs inside 'em." It wasn't exactly an apology, but it might be the closest he could come. My sigh was probably not audible. Why the hell was the universe doing this to me?

"My dog's home with the kid. They say animals are all going crazy and ya' gotta get rid of pets, but fuck that. Patsy, hang on…" He fumbled with his phone a little more. Patsy was a pittie. And he really needed to cut back on the treats, because come on, it oughta be obvious that she should lose a few pounds. But her doggie grin was exemplary even while the towheaded toddler sat on her like she was a pony.

"The shimmers are rifts," I said, and then I started to give Cody the lecture. What I knew about rifts, monsters, levels, and I finished it off with that delightful Minor class and what it meant for kids. At the end of my speech, he was still Unknown to the System, but at least he had a solid grounding in the information he needed to survive. And hopefully keep his partner and kid alive, too.

While we'd been walking and I'd been talking, we'd exited the golf course through a gap in a stone wall, walked along several blocks of residential streets in varying states of damage, and finally arrived at the site of the former enclave. It had wiped out whatever sat on the land before it. Buildings, people, trees, whatever, they were all gone.

But now the enclave was gone, too, so instead of the blue dome or the shattered remains of buildings and churned-up foliage, there was bare ground, the pale tan of limestone-rich dirt. But everywhere there were traces of people; trash, abandoned belongings, junk. No bodies, though, living or dead.

"How do you know all that stuff?" Cody asked. I stared at the space while I said absently, "Luck. Timing. I don't know." How the hell was I going to find Jules? I put a hand on my jacket and concentrated. It worked to find rifts. Maybe it would work to find a person? But that intuitive sense that told me to turn left was silent.

"Who are you looking for?" Cody asked.

"My best friend and her kid," I replied without looking at him.

"They were here last night. They couldn't have gone too far."

"What's she look like?" he asked. I turned away from the empty field and pulled Jules' scrapbook out of my companion pouch.

"Whoa!" Cody recoiled.

"Where'd that came from?"

"Magic," I replied shortly, flipping it open. Typical of moms, there were at least ten photos of Toby for every shot with Jules in it, but there was a group photo from his last birthday party that included her. I'd marked the page when I'd been checking, so I found the spot easily and pointed her out to Cody. He stuck his finger on Toby, though.

"This kid was here."

"You recognize the kid but not the mom?" I said, skeptically. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd noticed Jules: we might be creeping up on middle-aged, but the average heterosexual male would still take note of her. What random guy pays attention to a little kid, though? He shook his head.

"Tandem e-bike. Nice one, basket on the back. He was getting his helmet on, but she was already wearing hers. I never saw her face. Some kind of argument happening with a guy. And then—" He frowned, then huffed out a laugh.

"Oh, yeah. Big fight started on the other side of the street. I skedaddled when they started throwing lightning around. Didn't see where your friend went."

"But she left on a bike. I wonder where she got it." I stuffed the scrapbook back in my pouch. Argument with a guy. As far as I knew, the only guy she knew in Texas was Derek, her ex. Nice enough guy, kind of a flake. More suited to pulling all-nighters for his really cool project than for his colicky newborn, but the divorce was amicable enough as those things go. And he was self-aware enough to put his child-support payments on auto-pay.

"You can rent 'em at the resort," Cody offered.

"Maybe she was headed back there." I kicked through some of the trash on the ground. People left behind the weirdest stuff. Dirty clothes, okay, I'd choose a few cans of food over my laundry any day. But who brought their golf clubs into an enclave and why hadn't they taken them with them when they'd moved on? I'd just started to walk away from the golf bag when I heard a familiar sound. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Seeds shaking in a pod, faster than humanly possible. Okay, faster than humanly possible before the System.

I stopped moving, stopped breathing, letting my eyes drift across the ground. I couldn't see it, but it had to be here, close enough for the distinctive rattle to be loud enough to hear. But where was it? I raised my eyes, started scanning wider, and nearly swore out loud when I finally saw it, perched on a boulder at the end of a driveway across the street, coiled, head and tail up, ready to strike. It wasn't that close: it was just huge.

Biggest rattler I'd ever seen, far enough away that it shouldn't be objecting to our presence. But it was glowing with a deep green mana light mingled with brown. Earth? Nature? Poison? I had no idea. I let my breath out slowly. Okay, we were going to have to do something about that.

"Pups, hold," I ordered.

"Cody, find something you can use as a weapon." I didn't use the hand signal for the dogs, but Riley promptly sat down several feet away where he'd been browsing through the debris himself. Zelda didn't sit but froze, one paw lifted, tail arched high above her back. And Bear… well, Bear didn't like snakes, never had. And her dislike of snakes was stronger than her willingness to take orders.