To my relief, Nolan was king of the frugal shop, having our surprisingly large shop come in at a little under eighty bucks including toiletries and an umbrella.

With that being said, having twenty dollars to my name wasn’t exactly comforting given that I was supposed to be saving up a few grand to get Monster Mash in shiny condition, but I was confident the hunt and Andy’s job would get me back in a more comfortable position in no time.

Being broke acted as a good distraction as well, gave me something to think about on my way to the unofficial dirt road that would lead me to the Reformed without questioning whether or not getting involved with Ghouls was a good idea.

There weren’t any signs as I pulled off the main road, save a simple square tin cutout with an arrow painted on it strung from a branch, and it became clearer and clearer as I drove that the Ghouls had built the messy path themselves.

Not only did it lack any sort of railing or ditch, but it was also far from flat and, in several places, had been partially retaken by the forest.

Once again, I found myself too distracted to care about my destination, instead devoting all my energy to listening out for any signs of trouble from the engine and feeling for shifts in the road.

Credit where credit’s due, the Ghouls had made a long road with next to nothing.

In fact, cruising along at a steady twenty had me on the butt-clenchingly uneven road for a solid five minutes before the Jurassic Park-like gate came into view.

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s not foreboding at all…” I murmured to myself as I pulled up to the gate and parked, half-expecting a John Williams orchestral piece to rock the forest as I climbed out.

There wasn’t an obvious way to communicate with the Reformed and I sincerely doubted I’d be able knock on the gate loud enough for anyone to hear.

I briefly considered walking into the forest and seeing if the tall palisades that came off the gate would open up anywhere, but that felt like more of a risk than necessary.

“Hello?” I called out, “Here with a delivery!”

There was a long wait after that, a painfully long wait, but eventually the gate creeped open, prompting me to take a few steps back towards the van.

“You here alone?” a gravelly, tired voice asked.

“Yep.” I replied coolly, regretting that I was.

“Good,” the voice said as the source stepped through the barely ajar gate, “I trust you’re unarmed?”

“I am,” I said, feeling yet another twang of regret as the gatekeeper came into full view, “thought it’d cause more trouble than it could prevent.”

“You thought right.” the Ghoul replied with a nod, his hands crossed behind his back.

He was wearing a black zip up jacket and a pair of gray slacks, which was a bit like seeing a chimp in a tuxedo for me at that time.

A good deal of his ears and nose had grown back as well, and he had a decent amount of meat on his bones which meant he’d been a Ghoul long enough to get past level fifty, a borderline impossible feat as far as most were concerned.

“This is the way it’s going to go down,” the Ghoul said once I was done sizing him up, almost as if he’d been waiting for me to finish, “you’re going to open your van, three men are going to collect the delivery, then you’ll be paid and you’ll go home. Understood?”

“Seems straight forward enough,” I replied with a nod, making my way around Monster Mash, “you’re sure you don’t want me to bring it in for you?”

“That won’t be necessary.” the Ghoul sighed, evidently irritated by me slowing down the process.

“It’s your call.” I said coolly before opening the van’s sliding door and taking a few steps back.

The Ghoul cleared his throat once I was clear, signaling for his three spindly, high-visibility jacket-wearing subordinates to come out and move towards the van.

My gut told me to go for my gun as quickly as possible, the three Ghouls noticeably more, for lack of a better word, ghoulish than the level-headed, monotonous gatekeeper.

Thankfully, I was able to control my fear.

In fact, I even went as far as to smile at the twitchy monsters as they did their best to stay upright on their way to and from the van, clearing it out in under a minute while their handler kept his sullen, tired eyes on me.

“That’s everything,” I said as the worker Ghouls disappeared through the gate with the last of the supplies, “pleasure doing business with you.”

“Mmhm.” the gatekeeper grumbled, having already pulled out his phone in preparation for my bill.

Figuring it’d be in my best interests not to keep him waiting, I grabbed my phone out and sent the invoice to the only other device in range.

Almost as soon as I’d sent it, a relief-inducing ‘+$200’ popped up in my feed, my joy at being in the triple digits again impossible to hide as I looked up and nodded at the gatekeeper.

“Try not to get stuck,” the tired Ghoul warned after making his way back inside, “no one’s coming here to tow you out.”

I wanted to stop him and see if there was some trick to making sure I didn’t back into a particularly soft section of the road, but the gate had already been dragged shut by the time I opened my mouth.

“Right…” I trailed off before sucking my teeth and doing a quick stomp around Monster Mash, finding a few seemingly hollow sections as I did my best to mentally map out and visualize a safe maneuver.

I was distracted though, partially by how much of the day had escaped, mostly by the fact that my first run-in with the Reformed hadn’t been some half-decomposed hippie trying to sell me mushrooms.

It wasn’t enough to have me accidentally back into one of the soft patches or anything, sure, but as I drove away from their compound I was constantly catching myself from drifting off the road as I thought over what was going on beyond those walls.

There was no denying I’d been misled, I just didn’t know by how much, or if it had been deliberate.

‘Alright, pull the reins there a bit, buddy,’ the more reasonable part of my brain said, ‘like Andy said, they’ve got a mine, there’s no grand conspiracy.’

‘Hm, yes, but what about a little conspiracy?’ the curious part of me suggested.

‘Stop it,’ my self-doubt scoffed, ‘you’re being ridiculous.’

‘Are we sure we’re not low-key schizophrenic?’ my paranoia asked timidly.

‘Shut up.’ the others replied in unison.

Sometimes my brain’s a bit like an amusement park that I’m not allowed to leave no matter how much I throw up and cry.