Chương 74: 72: Better Choices

It was full dark in the Thorn's Edge rift, but my mana sight made it easy to walk to the gas station. I had no idea what time it was, but I'd lost track of how many hours I'd been awake. Thirty-six? Forty? Too many for someone with bipolar disorder, I knew.

"Maintaining consistent daily routines to regulate mood cycles" was the core principle of IPSRT, the therapy that kept me off meds. Staying up all night was a fast path to a manic episode. That said, I felt fine. Definitely not manic and not overwhelmed by the darkness either. Bummed about Jules and Toby, of course, but despite not finding them, my trip to San Celeste felt like a glimmer of hope. The Mercers could survive this, and the Sarathi would help. But I couldn't bring Pen to San Celeste.

That crowded elementary school, with no animals allowed, felt like the wrong place. And the Mercers' home wouldn't work either. So what was I going to do with her? She couldn't live in the rift forever.

And then there were all the other things I needed to worry about: how to defend my house; what Pen's brothers were doing; how to use my new mysterious abilities in ways that kept me alive and safe, instead of needing to be rescued by my dog; and, oh, yeah, that ridiculous idea that I was currently the highest-level person on the planet. What the fuck were my fellow earthlings doing? I took a deep breath and then exhaled as slowly as I could. I didn't need to worry about that. It was a momentary thing, I was sure.

Any minute now someone else would take over that… was it a role? A position? An honor? A target painted in big, bright letters over my head? I really hoped not the latter, but you know, I knew my fellow earthlings. It was a target, no question. At this very second, there were probably hundreds of arrogant assholes gunning for the position themselves, taking out whoever they could to launch themselves into an imaginary first place on an imaginary scoreboard.

Jack had said it: the earlier you level up, the more powerful you can become. All those guys who thought that way were out there, doing everything they could to be the big winner. And killing me would be the big win. How much XP would I be worth? Still, before they could get that XP, they'd have to kill me. I had Warden's Edge, [Verdant Sanctuary], [Uncanny Insight]… I wasn't defenseless. Plus, I had Zelda, Riley, and Bear.

At Level 19, Zelda had to be one of the second highest-level creatures on the planet, with a skill that could rewind my death. And Bear and Riley were no slackers themselves. At Levels 10 and 11, they were higher level than anyone I'd seen in San Celeste, including the actual aliens. By the time I reached the gas station, I felt much better. Yeah, maybe the achievement turned me into a target, but the fear that came with that idea belonged to a person who was used to being vulnerable.

Someone who'd spent her whole life calculating violence from the losing side. I wasn't going to start randomly killing people—Murder Hobo was not in my future—but self-defense didn't mean what it had a week ago. Five days ago. Assuming it was past midnight. A quiet woof out of the darkness sounded like Riley. I couldn't see him until we got closer, but he was sitting up, outside the door to the office, alert in the darkness.

Zelda bounded up to him with the eager energy of a dog returning home, the nose touch that said, hello, friend, hello, packmate. I felt that twang in my heart again. Okay, 7. 9 billion people might die. But five days ago, my girl had been elderly and today she was… not. Could I honestly be evil enough to say it might be worth it? It might be worth it. Yeah, okay, I am obviously not a good person. Sorry. I gave Riley's ears a rub and in a quiet voice, said, "All good?" He rippled his fur.

Not the hackles rising, but a fluff and flow through the neck and down the body. It meant that they'd fought monsters and won easily, and that the ward they were guarding rested peacefully inside.

"Good boy." I sat down on the ground next to him and looked out into the night, dropping my arm across his shoulders. Dogs aren't big fans of being hugged; that's a monkey behavior, not canine. But they like closeness and warmth just as much as primates do. And the night was sort of weirdly beautiful. Okay, yeah, I was sitting on the ground at a gas station, and the objects in view were gas pumps and a small-town donut shop. It wasn't anyone's idea of glamour.

But my mana sight gave everything an appealing glow, a softness around the edges that felt, well, magical.

"Olivia? Is that you?" The question came from behind the closed door, in a soft, breathless voice.

"It is, yes," I responded promptly, in a much stronger voice.

"Sorry for scaring you."

"I wasn't…" The door opened behind me. I looked up at Pen, rumpled and sleepy.

"Okay, yes, I was," she admitted. She dropped to the ground on the other side of Riley.

"Sorry. I just woke up and wasn't sure what I'd heard."

"I'm glad you got some sleep," I said.

"Everything okay?"

"Oh, yes." She tipped her head back toward the door, just as Bear showed up and stuffed her nose down my shirt.

"Ah!" I jumped. Wet nose on back of neck is always startling. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Gus stalked out, too. What is happening? Pen folded her legs open so he could sit in her lap and he accepted the invitation with alacrity. Bear's tail was wagging at sixty beats per minute, minimum, as she tried to tell me about all the bugs they'd killed.

"Good girl," I praised her, reaching up to scratch her chest.

"Good job. Well done." The stoop of the office door was getting seriously over-crowded." How did it go?" Pen asked, sounding tentative. I hesitated, torn between competing urges. Some part of me wanted to shelter Pen from the chaos, to treat her like the innocent princess she looked like. But it would be the same sort of false kindness as keeping my dogs safe inside.

"I couldn't find my friend."

"You couldn't find her or she was dead?" Pen asked. I shot her a surprised glance while my arm tightened on Riley.

"We don't have a television. Devil's work. But we have a radio. No music, that's devil's work, too, but I been listening to the preachers argue about the end times and the voices people're hearing for the past four days. They're saying no one's been uplifted, so it ain't the Rapture." She paused, one hand stroking Gus gently.

"Yeah, I don't think anyone's making it into heaven from here," I said, and then grimaced. Shit. Had I just implied that her father wasn't headed toward heaven? I didn't think he was, to be honest, but I'd borne a permanent grudge against her father for saying as much to me.

"My daddy, well, he started out arguing that it was all demonic influence, but then he changed his tune and decided it was God's work, and we were meant to cleanse the world. Me, I don't know. I don't know what I think. But I know a lot of people are dead already and more dying every day. And monsters don't seem like God's will to me." I kept my sigh of relief internal. If she'd taken offense, I would have apologized, but she didn't seem to have noticed.

"No, not to me, either." We both fell silent. For a moment, I tried to appreciate the quiet night, the luxury of being here in safety with the animals all around us. Then Pen continued.

"So was your friend dead?"

"Not as far as I know. It looked like she wasn't home when it started."

"So what now?" Pen sounded pragmatic, but a hint of a quiver in her voice told me she wasn't taking all this as calmly as she pretended.

"For tonight, we can go back to my house. I've got a spare bed, and an ability that'll let me set up defenses around the yard to warn us if trouble's near." If I spent the next hour twisting wire around fence posts in the dark, [Wild Sanctuary] would give us ten hours of safety. Or at least a warning system. We could sleep in peace. In the morning, I could decide what my next plan should be. Had Jack gotten an enclave?

I'd told Chelsea back in the scenario that Jack and Emma deserved rewards, too, and she'd said something like they'd take it into consideration. If he had an enclave, I'm sure he'd welcome Pen. Anyone would, really. A beautiful young healer class? She was a shoo-in for enclave value. It had to be the right enclave, though. That creep in Colorado or wherever he'd been—the one holding spaces only for girls between 14 and 20—he'd kick someone else out for her in a heartbeat.

But the only way she was going there was if I killed him first. Which, you know, I'd do, except killing an enclave owner apparently made the enclave collapse, so what would be the point? And I had just mentally committed to killing a human being who was no threat to me. Ugh. I needed food, a shower, and sleep, preferably in that order.

"Do you think my brothers…" Pen started, then stopped.

"Are searching for you?" I finished for her.

"I think that we shouldn't worry about what they're doing. I'll keep you safe and with any luck, they'll be fine, too." We didn't get that lucky. We left the rift, all of us, and went in through the French doors in the back. I sent Pen upstairs to get some sleep in the guest bedroom, after being such a lousy hostess that I told her to grab fresh sheets out of the linen closet or sleep on the bed as it was, whichever she preferred. It's not like the sheets weren't clean. But they'd been on the bed since…

well, since my dad's memorial service, so for the past two years. I hadn't exactly been hosting crowds. Then I took the dogs out front to start working on my improvised defenses for [Wild Sanctuary]. Something bad had happened while we were gone. I could smell it. Not in a nice, vague, woo-woo sort of way. This wasn't intuition at work or even [Uncanny Insight], although [Senses Beyond Sight] might be working overtime. But I smelled blood and shit.

For a minute, maybe two, I tried to convince myself that it was the rotting squirrels, but they were four days old and this was Florida—whatever smell they'd been giving off was gone, lost to vultures and dehydration and probably carrion beetles and maggots. In other parts of the world, carcasses might take their time decomposing, but not here. The blood, the shit, and the faint whiff of gasoline were fresh. For some reason, the dogs were just doing their thing, in the way that dogs do.

Not a single one of them acted as if the odor was a problem. Maybe they'd been killing too many bugs and the smell of blood had become normal. For a moment, I paused and tried to remember whether I'd noticed the smell of the bugs' blood. I hadn't. But then I took a slow walk from the front porch down the driveway, braced for what I'd see. It could just be Reverend Barrow, right? Except I was 90% sure that his sons had carried his body away. Maybe it was the pieces of his brain?

I was sure they hadn't collected all of them. I wanted to throw up. It was entirely mental, though. My body didn't actually care at all. Was that Endurance at work? The smell of gasoline was coming from a gas can, overturned at the end of the driveway. The contents had probably already seeped into the ground because the smell was faint. The smell of blood overpowered it. It came from the pool of blood next to the can. It wasn't a splash, it wasn't a puddle, it was a pool. How much blood did the human body hold?

Apparently enough that a completely exsanguinated body, left hanging to drip, made a trail about six feet long. Okay, yeah, I was guessing. But it was a lot of blood. As for the smell of shit, that was coming from the dead guy impaled on the bougainvillea. The Barrows had collected their father's remains. But they'd left a brother behind. Fuck. Honestly, I could understand their rationale. I didn't want to get anywhere near those bougainvillea thorns either, and they were my defense mechanism. But…

I couldn't leave him here. I couldn't let Pen wake up to her dead brother crucified on my bougainvillea. What would she think? Worst-case scenario, she'd decide he was a Christ figure and therefore his beliefs were what she should believe. And although I wasn't one hundred percent sure, I kinda thought he might be the one I'd labeled a fundie incel on first sight. I had a shovel. I had a really good shovel, in fact. But fuck it. I was not digging a grave for this asshole.

I went back to the shed, got out the wheelbarrow—which I had literally never used before—wheeled it down to the end of the driveway, yanked the Barrow brother off the bougainvillea, and trundled the body back up to the rift. I walked into the shimmer, wheelbarrow ahead of me, and dumped the body at the beginning of the road. If I was right, a body wouldn't keep an instance open. This time tomorrow, the instance would be gone, the body with it. I looked at the remains after I'd dumped them out of the wheelbarrow.

Should I say something? If his god existed, then he'd abandoned us to the System. And more than that, if his god existed, then somehow that god's words had led this asshole to my house with a can of gasoline. No way was that a friendly gesture. His brothers hadn't cared about him enough to fight for his body. And his sister… well, she was probably better off without him. I took a deep breath.

"I hope you get another life," I said to the dead thing that I'd dropped on the ground.

"And I hope you make better choices with it. Maybe you'll get better parents, or a better world, or… yeah, I don't know. But your sister is cool and I'm going to do my best to take care of her, and if you do have a spirit and it's lingering here, I hope you can figure out a way to find peace." And then I walked out of the shimmer, collected my dogs, and went to bed.