Chương 21: Surprises

Jack killed it. He had called dibs, after all. I'd expected the goblin to see better in the dark than we could. Didn't goblins live underground? But without trees overhead, the clearing had enough light to make out the short—and oblivious—shadow standing in the middle, even without its floating name tag. One fireball later, it was a tube of something. Jack picked it up, held it up to the sky to try to see it better, and said, doubtfully, "Moisturizer?"

"Pass it over," I told him, hand outstretched. I focused on it through the glasses until the tooltip appeared: [Goblin Glow Perfecting Primer].

"It's… primer," I said, managing to sound even more doubtful than he had. I stayed focused on it until the extended tooltip appeared. And then I laughed.

"Primer?" he asked.

"Like makeup? That kind of primer?" Emma said, joining us in the center of the clearing with a bow in her hand, a quiver slung over her shoulder. She'd hesitated on arriving at the clearing, then went straight to a tree on the right side, while Jack took care of the goblin.

"More or less." I read the tooltip aloud for them. Name: Goblin Glow Perfecting Primer Type: Consumable Attribute: +5 to Stealth for 6 hours Description: Because nothing says radiant beauty like not being seen at all. Jack barked out a laugh, but Emma said, "Oh, wow. We found a lot of loot like that, but none of us knew what it was. We should look around, see if any of it's still here."

"Loot like primer?" I asked. She shrugged.

"No, but random crap. Like I got a package of paper napkins and some lip balm. Matt found a can of spray paint. Ari got a picnic basket, the wicker kind. She was so annoyed." Her smile was wry.

"But she used it to stash the weird stuff we found. It might still be here somewhere." She looked around the clearing, her smile dropping away from her face.

"We didn't have anything to build a fire with, but we were pretty tired. When it started getting dark, we decided to spend the night here. We figured somebody could stand watch for the hourly goblin, and that was better than being in a place where we didn't know what to expect." She gestured toward the trees on the right.

"That side is the endless forest and the other way leads to the goblin stronghold. We didn't want to get too close to the heavy-duty goblins. And we didn't realize the lizard would be nearby." I slowly scanned the ground, watching for the tooltips to pop up. Zelda was pawing at something off to the edge of the clearing, so I walked over to her. She'd found the picnic basket and was nudging at the top with her nose, trying to open it. I crouched next to her to investigate.

"It's latched, Z," I said, finding the hook that was holding the lid closed, and opening it for her. She promptly stuck her nose in and, with a triumphant little snort, pulled it out again, a Publix roast beef sub clamped in her jaws. Okay, I was guessing on the Publix part and the roast beef part, but it was the same familiar white wrapping paper, perfectly folded, neatly taped. I hadn't seen one since before my dad died, but when he was alive, it was our Saturday lunch tradition.

Roast beef, cheddar cheese, tomato, oil and vinegar, absolutely no lettuce, onion, or mayo.

"Hey, hey, hey," I said to her as half her body went into spasms of tail-wagging delight.

"What is that? Not yours!" Mine, she said with satisfaction. Mine. Give? I took it away from her and unfolded the paper, then stared at it in disbelief. I'm not sure why a roast beef sandwich was more shocking than an acid-spitting lizard, but it was.

"What is that?" Emma demanded. She and Jack had both come over to see what we were looking at.

"That wasn't in there before. I know it wasn't."

"It's a Pub sub," I said with a weak little laugh.

"Florida tradition. Um…" The lump in my throat was blocking my airway.

"It's…" Mine! Zelda said, putting her paws on my knee. Mine! Favorite!

"Apparently Zelda's favorite." I pressed the back of my knuckle against the corner of my eye. Okay, against my tear duct. I was not going to let the tears that wanted to well up fall, even if it took physical pressure to stop them.

"My dad used to share his with her. He's been gone for a couple years now, but…" I let the lid to the picnic basket drop.

"Can you share, Z?" Her tail drooped a little, but she sighed in agreement. Share. Okay, share. Not Bear, though.

"Not with Bear, no." I laughed. I handed half the sub to Emma.

"You want to split that half with Jack, and I'll share this part with Z?"

"I want to know what else is in the basket," Emma said, although she took the sandwich willingly enough.

"Me, too," Jack agreed. He picked the basket up and peered inside.

"What do your glasses say?"

"Oh, right." I was ripping pieces of sandwich off for Zelda, but I stared at the basket long enough for the label to go from [Wicker Picnic Basket] to: Name: Glinda's Picnic Basket Type: Spatial storage Grade: Legendary Condition: Very slightly used Attributes: Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Create picnic: Produces a picnic-appropriate food or drink item upon request, limited by the user's imagination and their mental image of a picnic.

Uses: 99/100 remaining. Recharges one use per day. Weight Reduction: 80% Dimensional Storage: 1 cubic units (manual access only)"Oh, my God." I fell out of my squat, landing on my butt. I stared at it, shaking my head.

"Oh, my God." I repeated myself.

"What is it?" I could hear the grin in Jack's voice, even though I couldn't see his face.

"Legendary," I said with a squeak. I handed the rest of our half of the sandwich to Zelda and pushed myself to a standing position.

"Legendary?" Jack and Emma said in unison.

"It was empty!" Emma objected. Her hand hovered over the picnic basket's handle, as if she wanted to yank it away from Jack to prove her point.

"I put my napkins in there!"

"Maybe that was a clue," I said, laughing.

"It's a legendary picnic basket. Glinda's picnic basket, specifically."

"As in the good witch?" Jack asked, trading the basket to Emma for the sandwich half. He took a bite.

"God, that's good. So much better than a protein bar." Emma looked inside, then pulled out her package of napkins triumphantly.

"See? Our other stuff's in there, too."

"Okay, but now reach inside and think about a food or drink that you'd eat at a picnic. It has to be a picnic food." Emma reached inside the basket. Even in the dim light, I could see how her eyes widened as she pulled out a bottle of wine.

"Wine, really?" I asked. I wasn't gonna mix alcohol with fighting for my life anytime soon, but okay, whatever worked for her. She tucked it against her chest possessively.

"The last picnic I went on was in Central Park. I was with my ex and we were still in the wine-and-flowers stage. It was the first thing that came to mind." She sighed.

"I wonder what's happening in New York right now."

"My turn," Jack said, not waiting for Emma to finish reminiscing. Still holding part of Z's sub in one hand, he closed his eyes and reached into the basket. A few seconds passed, and then a few more, before he sighed.

"All right, pizza is apparently not a picnic food. Ooh, but cupcakes are." He pulled out a plastic carrier with half a dozen iced cupcakes inside.

"We should sit down and take our time," I said.

"It's got 99 uses—well, 97 now—so we can go wild."

"We shouldn't stay here for long, though." Jack glanced over his shoulder.

"That lizard's probably on its way and I don't think we want to share."

"Yeah, we need to decide what we're doing," I agreed.

"I think we should be avoiding these clearings. Between goblins and the lizard and…" I hesitated, then went on, saying what I was thinking, even though I felt uncomfortable about it, "… and participant number four, I think these open spaces make us sitting ducks."

"You think the last participant is a PKer?" Jack asked. I refrained from sighing.

"I speak English, not gamer, remember?"

"Player Killer," Emma supplied.

"Someone who's killing other participants." I shrugged.

"No idea. They could be an unlucky saint, whose clearing buddy died to the lizard in the first ten minutes and who's been looking for someone to team up with ever since. But to be real? It's not a risk I want to take. If they're another Sam, I don't want to make it easy for them. And hanging out in the open is making it easy."

"All right." Emma tucked her bottle of wine under her arm.

"But where exactly are we going? I mean, away from the starting zones, obviously, but…" She gestured vaguely at the darkness around us.

"I haven't spotted any convenient caves with room service."

"It would be good to see the goblin stronghold, figure out what we're up against, but we probably don't want to get too close." Jack took another bite of sandwich. I stared out into the darkness surrounding us, trying to think through our options. We couldn't stay here, but there were no safe places to retreat to. Fortunately, no one seemed to be dying from sleep deprivation, but the lack of light truly was limiting.

If I had a choice of magical abilities anytime soon, seeing in the dark was moving to the top of my list. Okay, maybe not before healing my dogs. But right next to it. We needed info, but we also needed to stay alive long enough to use it. Spying on a stronghold full of hostile goblins seemed like Jack's kind of plan. The kind that seemed reasonable right up until you were dead. But maybe there was a way to make our own safety. I had a thought. It was kind of a crazy thought.

"Hunters make blinds, right? Like, spots where they can spy on the thing they're wanting to hunt?" I was not a hunter. I knew a few, but only from a distance, folks I might chat with when running errands or putting gas in my car. Not people with whom I had in-depth conversations about the practices of their archaic hobby. (Would a hunter want me to call it a sport? Somehow killing things for fun just didn't seem very sporty to me.) Jack swallowed his bite before answering.

"Or stands, yeah. Are you thinking we could build something like that?" I reached into my pouch and thought, duct tape, then pulled it out.

"It's an endless roll of duct tape. I'm thinking we find a nice cluster of trees and build ourselves a den."

"In the dark?" Emma questioned. I shrugged.

"We'll keep it really simple, just a temporary shelter of duct tape and loose branches. It's an improvised defense, so Wild Sanctuary will kick in, and we'll get some thorns up. I'll try to skip the glowing roses this time so no one sees us."

"I was so grateful to see those roses." Emma sounded wistful. I smiled at her.

"We're glad you did, too. We'd probably be lizard food by now if you hadn't. But there's not a ton we can do in the dark. So I say we get away from the danger zone, build ourselves a hiding place, and have a picnic. Sound good?"

"Yeah, sounds good." Emma nodded.

"But…" She hesitated.

"What?"

"You think maybe we can have a cupcake first? Because I didn't know I was hungry until I saw those cupcakes and now I'm dying."

"Yeah, I think we can manage that." Jack held up the remnants of his half of the roast beef sub.

"Still got some sandwich left, too. Although I think I ate more than my fair share." He sounded sheepish as he added an apology.

"Sorry." I looked down at Zelda. She'd gobbled down her own entirely unnecessary sandwich, tomato and all. Given the chicken, treats, and kibble she'd already accumulated from goblin loot, she was eating better than the rest of us. She eagerly wagged her tail, though, tilting her head to make her literal best puppy-dog eyes at me. More? Mine? I shook my head at her.

"You don't need any more. Let Jack finish that one, and Emma and I can have our own later." Jack handed around the box, and we all helped ourselves to a cupcake. And in a day filled with odd moments, licking icing off my (still-filthy) fingers while standing in a dark clearing, wondering what might be lurking just out of view, was... not the oddest. But it definitely had a bizarre horror movie vibe.

I finished the last bite and wiped my hands on my equally filthy jeans—the apocalypse was apparently not going to be a clean kind of experience—and looked around the clearing one more time. We'd been so focused on the magical picnic basket that we might have missed other useful junk scattered around. It was worth the effort. I found an [Umbrella], which we kept; [MRE packaging], which we didn't; and—joy of joys of absolute joys! —a vial of [Hand Sanitizer].

I couldn't believe Emma hadn't told me it might be out there somewhere until after we'd eaten our cupcakes, but apparently it was one of Matt's loots and she hadn't known about it either. Then we headed off into the darkness. It was exactly as fun as it had been the first time around, which was to say, not fun at all. If digging the hole had been my favorite scenario experience, hiking through the dark with only the little floating System labels in view was definitely in the bottom five. Okay, maybe bottom ten.

Emma led the way again, and we stumbled through the woods for what felt like forever and what was actually less than an hour before she finally called a halt. In a whisper, she said, "If we go much farther, we'll start running into goblin trails, I think. I can see a ton of red dots about half a mile ahead of us. Pretty sure that's the stronghold." Ever set up a tent at a campground in the dark with only a flashlight? Imagine that, but worse in every possible way.

I kept misjudging distances and taping myself to trees, Emma offered endless helpful commentary like, 'that's not going to hold' and 'are you sure that will stay up?' and Jack kept tripping over branches. Zelda, of course, was a perfect angel, except somehow she was always there when Jack was tripping over branches. I suspected she might harbor a grudge about the other half of her Pub sub.

But after we'd stumbled around from tree to tree, weaving walls of duct tape and pasting every loose branch we could find onto them, with me doing my best to manifest [Wild Sanctuary] with every step, it felt pretty amazing to sit down and open up that picnic basket.