Soon after, I reached the bottom of the mountain trail and approached a parking lot with a few parked cars around. Just for the off chance that someone had forgotten to lock the car, I checked one door after another. I could have easily broken a window, but the whole point was to find a secure space to hide for the rest of the night. Not that it would be completely safe, but it certainly beats being out in the wild without any protection at all.

And I got lucky.

It seemed like today was a good day for me, after all. A Toyota Sienna was unlocked, and I was able to fold down the rear seats and create the most comfortable resting spot in a long time. I even found a half-emptied bottle of Coke, lukewarm and flat. But I didn’t care. I quaffed it immediately. And damn it was good.

In addition, a few trail-mixes were lying around. Probably for some kids, judging by the chaos on the rear seats. I was quite ravenous, so I devoured those as fast as I could. I urgently needed to bulk up, and I was going to try and stuff myself with any food I could find.

Despite the cushions and relative safety, sleep didn’t come easily. I couldn’t stop thinking. A whirlwind of emotions churned through me, doubts, regrets, elation, triumph… my mind replayed the events of the last few days. Frankly, it was almost surreal to be back in civilization, even though it was only a car in a trail-head parking lot. All those comfort things, like packaged food, soft upholstery, and sugary drinks that one takes for granted until they aren’t there any longer.

And what would I give to be able to drive this car out of the park, go to a hospital and have someone take care of me… see my parents, feel protected. And forget about all the deaths, pain, and suffering. But then my thoughts returned to my years in the wheelchair and, yet again, I realized that what I was going through was a small price to pay for the ability to walk, to be independent!

This at least, was a life worth living. Not that it was all bad being in a wheelchair. But still…

Since I couldn’t change what had happened anyway, I just shrugged my shoulders and began to meditate to calm myself down.

As I focused my mind on the mana cycle, my mind slowed down, and I gently drifted into a deep sleep.

----------------------------------------------------

Next thing I knew, the sun was shining straight into my eyes, and I had drool running from the corner of my mouth. I wiped my chin with my sleeve, grimacing at the smell that assaulted me.

I was positively reeking. The shirt I had pilfered from the first elf had changed its color to rust-red from all the blood and smelled accordingly. Sweat, dirt, and blood, all mixed together, creating an odor comparable to a bloody carcass left to rot in the hot sun for a couple of days.

And my breath wasn’t much better.

Maybe I could find some toothpaste or, failing that, some mentos.

At least I could do something about the smelly shirt right away. I opened my backpack and rummaged around the clothes I had taken from the dead hikers on the mountain and put on some functional wear that fit me reasonably well. Now I just needed some better pants and hiking boots, and I’d feel almost ready to brave the outside world again.

Speaking of…. it was getting hot in the car. Based on the position of the sun, it had to be late morning already. And I kind of needed to empty my bladder.

I was about ready to get out of the car when I noticed movement from the corner of my eyes – a man stumbled out of the bushes onto the parking lot, his jitteriness and frantic eyes betraying his anxiety.

And a moment later, the reason became clear – a group of grey-skinned, solidly built humanoids stepped out of the woods, hooting loudly when they spotted the man standing there, frozen in panic.

This was not good. Not good at all.

‘Move!’ I silently urged the man, but by then, it was already too late. The grey-skinned creatures, I dubbed them orcs due to their resemblance to the drawings I had seen in fantasy books, already had surrounded the human and I closed my eyes, expecting his imminent demise.

But it got worse.

Apparently, the orcs decided that it was time to have some fun. Rather than just kill the man, they began to torture him, laughing out loud whenever they managed to elicit a new scream from the raw throat of their prisoner. And while I had been hardened by the experience of the last few days, it was different when it was a fellow human being that suffered so.

I wanted to jump out and kill those fuckers, save the poor chap. But self-preservation prevailed. There was no way I could overwhelm ten orcs all by myself. Each orc was as tall as me and about one and a half times as wide, with thick, solid muscles, and a tough-looking skin. They were wearing what one could generously call leather armor but was, in fact, a random assortment of thick leather covering parts of their body, and a variety of weapons, ranging from spears to axes and swords. None of the weapons was of particularly high quality from what I could tell, but serviceable.

Was I a coward, staying hidden while someone suffered a gruesome fate? Perhaps. It certainly didn’t feel good, and the screams would give me nightmares for a long time to come. But I also wasn’t ready to throw my life away just to make a gesture, just to prove to myself that I was prepared to help anyone without considering the risk to myself.

But I would make those bastards pay.

While I wasn’t ready to face them in open fight, I’d harry them from the shadows, picking off stragglers, terrorizing them in the dark. They’d learn the feeling of fear.

I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt that strongly about it. Was it the need to prove to myself that I could and would take action, show myself that I was not a wimp, not a coward hiding from the danger? Or was it because there was a feeling of us against them, humanity against the rest? I had encountered now goblins, elves, and orcs, and all of them seemed to prey on humans. So it was time to turn the table and show them that they couldn’t just walk all over us.

Whatever the reason, I was gonna kill’em all.

---------------------------------------------------

“Sue, there are more of them coming down the road, get your ass up the tree,” Ben whispered just loud enough for Sue to be able to hear. “I will go down the road and warn the others. I’ll see you at camp. Stay safe!”

“Shit, I hope there aren’t too many of them,” Sue grumbled as she quickly scaled the oak tree a few yards off the road. The dense foliage made it a prime hiding spot from any of the gars, especially since they were surprisingly careless in scanning the surrounding. It was as if they had no worry in the world about monsters or humans for that matter. Perhaps that was because there were several hundred of them in their bloody camp.

At first, Sue and the others had not believed Betsy and Jimmy… another sapient race? Setting up camp in a field off of Algonquin mountain? But then they had found the tracks, and the bloody remains of Bob, hacked apart until he was hardly recognizable. No trace of John, but Sue feared the worst.

And, of course, they had started seeing patrols with five to ten gars each, roaming the areas. So far, none of them had discovered their little camp, but it was only a matter of time. Jimmy had pleaded for running away, cutting through the wilderness and getting back to Lake Placid from a different direction, hopefully warning the others before it was too late.

But Ben had decided that they first should find out more before taking off into the wilderness. The sheer number of gars implied that they posed a significant risk to Lake Placid if that was their destination. They needed to find out if the gars intended to move again, and if so in what direction. And some information about their habits, gear, and intelligence might come in handy as well.

No one had been excited about the decision, but Ben had said that he had read a book about military strategy once… so there was that. Sue wasn’t sure if she agreed with the approach because it put her at risk, but she was willing to trust Ben for now.

Which implied that she had to sit in a tree, hugging the trunk and hoping that the gars wouldn’t find her.

Sue stopped thinking about the events of the last twelve hours and turned her focus on the road coming from the Algonquin Peak trailhead.

And there they were. A group of gars, leisurely walking down the asphalt road, weapons casually resting on their shoulders.

Sue couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of the squat brutish creatures. They looked violent and utterly inhuman. And she wished that she could take a rifle and pick them off one by one. Or, better yet, a machine gun. It would be easy. They had no concept of camouflage, of stealth, probably because they didn’t need to. There was strength in numbers after all.

The gars passed her tree close enough that she could make out their grunting laughter, and a whiff of their smell drifted up to her position. As luck would have it, one of the gars decided that it needed to relieve itself at the roadside, only five yards from her tree.

Sue didn’t dare to make any noise. With clammy fingers, she grabbed the tree trunk, willing herself to disappear, or failing that, become one with the tree.

‘Please, don’t look up,’ she mentally prayed to herself, like a little mantra, again and again. It seemingly took forever, and the more time passed, the more nervous Sue got. All it took was one look up into the tree at the right spot. Or her having to sneeze…

Just when the gar was about done, a shadowy figure quickly slid closer from behind and a dark, blurry looking weapon darted forward, drawing a line across the throat of the unsuspecting gar. Gurgling, it briefly flailed around, clawing at his throat in apparent panic, only to drop to its knees and then fall face first into its own piss.

Sue stared down at the gar almost at the base of her tree, not believing her eyes. What had just happened?

And then the air flickered briefly, and the blurry figure came into focus as if shadows were peeling off his body, one after another in quick succession. It was a scrawny, painfully thin guy, early twenties from the looks of him, wearing a somewhat strange assortment of clothing, with partially torn shoes and pants, newish-looking functional wear on top, and a coat, utterly unbefitting the hot temperatures over his shoulders.

And his eyes… from the brief glimpse she got, it looked as if they were golden, with a hue of green, and brown. Or perhaps changing color? The short look she got was not enough to establish one or the other… but they certainly were mesmerizing.

Just when Sue was about to get her act together and call out to the guy, to warn him about the other gars and perhaps invite him to the safety, temporary as that might be, of their camp, he turned around and hurried after the remaining nine gars trotting down the road toward their massive tent-city.

--------------------------------------------------

One down, nine to go.

I couldn’t believe my luck when one of those orcs had foolishly stayed behind to take a piss. I mean, weren’t they concerned at all about predators? Either way, I wasn’t going to let myself be asked twice. I had sneaked up to the distracted orc and slit the damn creature’s throat.

Seeing the orc writhe on the ground, desperately trying to breathe, I felt… nothing. And that kind of worried me. Was I becoming a stone-cold killer? A butcher without empathy and remorse? But I had felt plenty of emotions when those orcs had tortured the human, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too worried.

It was us against them. Or perhaps just me against them.

Briefly, I worried about what had happened to Lake Placid. If orcs were running around this area, they might have already overrun the town.

Annie!

Fuck. I hadn’t really thought about her for the last couple of days. And now I was worried that something might have happened to her.

But that wasn’t something I had control over. Unlike the fate of those orcs. They were dead without knowing it.

With a last glance at the orc slowly suffocating in front of me, I turned around and hurried after the other orcs.

Once I got closer, I activated Shadow Skin once more and moved parallel to the street under the cover of some trees. It wasn’t perfect, but as long as the orcs didn’t know I was there, I figured that I had a good chance of escaping detection.

Soon enough, the group of orcs apparently realized that their comrade wasn’t coming back, and two of them split from the rest to check on their companion. Or they had a sudden urge to retrace their steps. I didn’t fucking care what the reason was, but it meant I had another opportunity beckoning.

Ambushing two at once wasn’t going to be as easy as a sneak attack on one, but it should be doable. After all, they had no inkling that I was around.

Keeping to the shadows, I kept pace with the two slow-moving orcs, careful to minimize the amount of noise I was causing. I wasn’t a woods person, so I probably left a rather obvious trail, but at least I avoided breaking too many twigs under my feet. What worked in my favor was that the orcs paid very little attention to their surrounding, grunting animatedly at each other, farting loudly, and burping.

Which, frankly, boggled my mind. I mean, one orc doesn’t show up, even though it should… wouldn’t you think that something is wrong? That, just maybe, there is something dangerous out there? But I wasn’t going to complain.