I sighed, turning my attention to the large, rounded entrance to the maze. There was a short bridge, an entrance about three times the size of the smaller portcullis entrances that peppered the way, with a raised, giant gate big enough to allow a pair of goblin dozers through side-by-side. It led to another, round courtyard with three exits. The walls shook as the monster sped by, but it didn’t appear to enter this courtyard area.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“The original plan was to gather as many people as we could and then storm the maze. We think it's shaped like a spiral. But nobody was coming, so they went looking for other exits. And that didn’t work out so well. Now it’s just us, and we can’t kill that thing. Nobody even knows what it is.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Even if we had free passage to the stairs…” I let it hang.
“I know, I know,” Brandon said. “But I just can’t leave them. I was hoping, maybe if we could get them all down to the second level, then we could do the same thing for the third level. And then they’d all get to choose a class and maybe they wouldn’t be, you know…”
“Useless?” Donut asked.
I nodded. I felt for the guy and the other three. Would I have stayed, continued with my duty? Even when it was so damn hopeless? What a nightmare. I thought I’d had it bad, but these guys… The world was over. There was no hope for these poor people they’d been in charge of protecting. This harsh environment wasn’t meant for the weak, the frail.
Yet to these four—Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani—the idea of giving up their duty wasn’t even a question.
I spent some time recounting our story, including our clash in the last safe room. I told them of our two encounters with neighborhood bosses.
“I can do something similar with this boss,” I said. “I think I can build a bomb that’ll go off on its own when the monster hits it, that way we don’t have to get locked in there to fight.”
“It won’t work,” Yolanda said, coming up to stand with us. “You know those little doors, the ones that let you see the monster? They’re protected somehow. I thought to try to hit it with my bow, but the arrow bounces right off. I poked at it with my finger, and it feels like thick clay. It even glows blue if you touch it. They look like entrances, but they ain’t. I think maybe you can go in that way if you push yourself really hard, but I wouldn’t try it. And I wouldn’t be pushing no bomb through that. The only way in is through this big gate here. And the monster doesn’t go into that first room. So you can’t hurt it without first getting locked in.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” Brandon added. “Once the gate closed, we couldn’t see in there at all. We couldn’t hear. We couldn’t talk using the party chat, not with the ones in there. It was like they’d been cut from the party.”
I sighed. We had two choices. We could leave these guys and hope to find another set of stairs somewhere. Or we could fight the borough boss here.
Neither choice was appealing. Whatever that thing was, it would be almost impossible to kill. I remembered that scene from the latest recap episode. It had been forty against one borough boss, and it had slaughtered them. We didn’t even know what the hell the monster was.
I looked at the clock. We had 40 hours. Geez. Had it really been that long since we’d run away from Frank and Maggie? There would be another show in 10 hours. We’d done nothing today except travel a hundred miles or so from where we started.
And speaking of Frank and Maggie. I had a terrible realization. “Your people, the ones who died while looking for more stairs. Which direction did they go?”
“Mostly west, toward Seattle. They would’ve been north of where you were. I remember where we killed the chilly goats. That was the farthest out my brother and I had gone. We separated from the group right around there and headed back here.”
“And how long ago did the last one disappear?”
“It was earlier today. Barely five or six hours ago.”
I looked down at Donut, thinking. It could’ve been them, Frank and Maggie. But that would mean they’d gotten to this area before us. That didn’t make sense. We were pretty far from where we’d last encountered them. Could there be another group of crawlers killing people off? Or was it a monster? Without finding their bodies, we’d never know.
Behind me, one of the elderly women started sobbing. Another, a man with a back so curved his chin rested against his own chest, scooted forward on his walker and patted her on the back. The hunch-backed man was wearing a veteran’s cap. He had been US Army Special Forces once upon a time.
If I’m gonna die, I might as well do it in the pursuit of a worthy cause.
“Are there any other rest areas around here?” I asked. “Ones that aren’t full?”
“Yeah, we know of two. One of them doesn’t have anything in it except a vending machine that hands out wrapped candies. They taste like piss but give you a +1 boost to your dexterity for ten minutes. The machine only works for you once a day. The next place is further down. It’s a Taco Bell from Peru and has full facilities, including coffee.” He leaned in. “And beer. Good beer.”
“What about the mobs near there?” I asked. “Also, how about training guilds?”
“We’ve cleared out the next two quadrants. Some of the other guys killed the first neighborhood boss. They said it was like a giant, demon man in a suit made of skin. We got the second boss. All of us here were in on that fight. That one was a floating crystal thing, but it shattered when I hit it with my hammer a few times. The next area after that, next to the Taco Bell, is still crawling with monsters. They’re lizard creatures. They jump and bite and poison you. I got hit once, and I thought I was going to die. The poison ran out on its own just before it killed me, and that was only because I kept taking health potions. We didn’t want to mess around in that neighborhood after that. But there are a couple training guilds in the area.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “This is what’s going to happen. Donut and I are going to spend the rest of today grinding. If you can manage to pry a pair of those rattle cans from Agatha over there, I’ll take them with us. I’m going to try to level up my skills as much as possible. You guys should do the same. Be wary of any other crawlers. Especially ones with the skulls by their names. We’re going to watch episode three, get some sleep, and then we’re going to come back here. And then all of us—Me, Donut, and you four—are going to go into there, and we’re going to fuck that boss up. We’re going to get your people down those stairs. Sound like a plan?”
“And how are we going to do that?” a new voice asked. It was Imani, speaking for the first time.
I grinned. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
23
“So, what’s this grand idea of yours?” Donut asked as we walked away. With her new skirt-like crupper combined with the butterfly talisman around her collar, she jingled when we walked. “How are we going to kill that thing?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I said. “But we need them to train. It’s our only choice. It took us a full day to find this set of stairs, and we are almost out of time. It’s better to face the enemy you know than the one you don’t.”
“We don’t know this enemy,” Donut said. “Wait, what are you doing?”
I’d come to the first of the spray-painted signs pointing toward the encampment. I took the can of red paint they’d given me, and I sprayed completely over it, covering it up.
“Did you see that Imani’s level?” I asked, standing to see if I could still read it. “She was level 10. And that was partially because of she’d been forced to kill all those people.”