The third trip out into the surrounding area was a lot less stressful. The first time out with Tim I was still trying to figure out what to expect, then I was worried about having a woman as my backup. Now I’d seen Debbie react under pressure and wasn’t nearly as worried about safety. I was focused on finally getting some water and I let my guard down to focus on traveling. It was a mistake.

I stepped over a rock and heard the sound of the click just in time. One of those little crabadillo critters was lying in wait in the lee of the rock. If he’d kept his claw still just a moment longer I would have lost a foot to the ambushing bastard. As it was I jerked my foot up and away before he got me but I’d already committed to the step. I swung the axe as I stumbled, desperate to kill the thing before I ended up on my ass and vulnerable. Even without steady footing, it was a solid hit with the strength of panic in the blow. I even managed to backpedal far enough I didn’t quite go down. Debbie, who’d been following me, ran up with an arrow knocked to her jaw.

“It’s okay. I got it.”

“Seriously, you screamed like a little girl over a crabadillo?”

“It wasn’t a scream, it was a battle cry. I was trying to startle it.”

“Sounded awfully high pitched for a battle cry, Jack.”

“Well shit, I didn’t know there was a battle cry expert here to critique me or I would have worked on it with my vocal coach. I’ll try for something a little more impressive next time.”

She continued to bust my balls while I field dressed the crabadillo, but I noticed she was a lot more careful where she stepped when we continued on towards the water. We killed two more of them on the way. Both times at range using Debbie’s bow,, and on the second I walked her through the butchering process. She probably spent more time trying to clean her hands on some leaves than actually processing the animal which I thought was pretty funny.

My strange sense of humor aside, we made it to the creek without further incident. Both of us were hesitant to go down to the water’s edge. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing she was picturing the crocodile from earlier, waiting just below the surface. I chucked a rock into the water from a distance trying to get a feel for how deep it was.

“What was that for?”

“I like skipping rocks. Cover me with the bow, Pocohontas. I’m going in.”

I slid down the muddy embankment until I reached the water. Then I crouched down and dipped up some water and tasted it from my cupped hand. It was cold and wet and tasted amazing in my semi-dehydrated state. Even though I hadn’t treated it, I decided it was as good as I was likely to get and at least looked clean. I dropped my waterskin into the water and watched it start to fill from the current.

“Here, get mine too, would ya?”

I looked up just in time to catch the waterskin she tossed me before it could smack me in the face and shook my head.

“Running a buy one get one free deal at the XP shop?”

“You don’t go camping without a canteen, Jack, and I don’t want to have to borrow someone else’s. I don’t know what all this world has in store for us, but I’m going to be ready.”

I nodded at her but didn’t say anything, just focused on filling both waterskins. I tossed hers back up before I put my own into the messenger bag and scrambled back up the bank. When I’d made it to the top, I stopped to do a slow scan of the area trying to get my bearings.

“You wanna just follow the river over to where those other guys bumped into it and head back, or do you wanna try crossing it into unexplored territory?”

“You told Jeff we would follow the water. We probably ought to stick to that.”

I made an after you gesture with my hand and she kind of snorted at me but led the way. It was a nice view. I didn’t let it distract me though, focusing on our surroundings as we travelled, trying to beat her to spotting the crabadillos. Situational awareness wasn’t really necessary as it was extremely obvious when trouble found us.

“Run!”

I looked deeper into the woods to see who was yelling.

“Fucking go!”

I spotted him then. A tall skinny guy, bleeding from a gash in his forehead and heading toward us in a dead sprint. I squared off and raised my axe, trying to spot what was chasing him and I could feel Debbie next to me doing the same. It didn’t take long because he was moving. Half naked and barefoot, he was crashing through the woods like he didn’t give a damn, smashing through the smaller branches instead of taking the fraction of a second to dodge them. As he got closer I could tell he was being dive bombed by what looked like hummingbirds.

I heard the twang of Debbie’s bow releasing but before I could tell if she’d made a hit or not she called out.

“They’re too small and too fast.”

When I looked over I realized she was already gone, running back in the direction of camp. The stranger was almost to me and I realized this was surely going to suck. It was like that old joke; you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the slowest other hiker. I turned around and ran.

I was fresh and the tall skinny guy had already run I didn’t know how long. Apparently it wasn’t long enough because within a few minutes I heard a panted, “I’m sorry” as I saw him pass me. It was followed by a searing pain in the back of my head and I staggered as the first bird hit me.

They weren’t pecking or clawing. It was like the edges of their wings were razor sharp and as each tiny little buzz saw arrowed in and grazed me, it opened up another line of blood. Running away was a losing proposition and as soon as I made the decision I picked a nice full evergreen tree and charged into it. I felt pine needles go into my nose as I tried to duck my head and save my eyes, and I spun around as the branches crushed into me, putting my back to the trunk.

When I opened my eyes I was deep in the evergreen, with its branches all around me restricting the bird’s flight path. They were still coming and I whipped my axe up and down in front of me, making contact with a few. I took a half dozen cuts to the hand and arm holding the axe. One made it past my frantic defense and only a last second lucky grab with my left hand kept it from laying my throat open. It felt like my hand was on fire when I clamped down on the bird, but the bones were still fragile and it was a dead bird that dropped from my lacerated hand. I roared in rage and pain and frustration, but still the birds kept coming. Then I heard hysterical laughter.

The tall guy had circled around and come back with a tree branch in his hand. He was laying into the birds with wild abandon. If most of his swings missed, the occasional explosion of feathers was proof that not all of them did. As the pressure on me eased I came out of my tree, swinging the axe with two hands now so I had the control to change direction mid-swing and keep it unpredictable. The flock was smaller now, and they backed off higher up, just kind of hovering out of our reach. That kind of coordination was a little scary.

Then a dead bird dropped from the flock with an arrow through its body. The entire flock reoriented towards Debbie, but when another bird dropped the whole group zoomed off into the distance without a sound.

The tall guy quit laughing and groaned, and flopped down onto the ground. Debbie came up and stared at me, covered in blood.

“Holy shit, Jack. We need to stop that bleeding.”

I held up my left hand and looked at the palm. From the feel of it, it had been the worst cut and I watched the last of the flesh knit together right in front of my eyes. I thought back to dropping my points into health regen and shivered at the way things could have gone.

“It may sound hard to believe, but actually I think I’m okay. How about you, stretch? You okay? Where’d you find the hummingbirds of death?”

“Hummingbirds of death?”

“You’ll have to forgive Jack. He gives stupid names to shit.”

“I told you. Tim named the crabadillos. What’s wrong with hummingbirds of death. Look at these little bastards.”

I crouched down and picked up one of the feathered corpses to follow my own advice. It was a little bigger than I’d thought, somewhere between a robin and a woodpecker maybe. The shape was wrong for either. It didn’t really have a beak, just kind of a lipless mouth like a frog or something. The feathers were the main difference though. The individual hair like thing that came out of the spine of the feather was stiff, almost like the bristle on a wire brush. You could press them down but if you rubbed against the grain they locked together like running your hand on a file. I had plucked a feather and was playing with it. Trying to figure out if it was sturdy enough to use as a tool when the skinny guy spoke.

“Jeri called them knifewings.”

“Who’s Jerry?”

Debbie gave me a dirty look when I asked that, and the way the guy’s face fell I guess maybe it was a little insensitive.

“She was my exploring partner. We found the knifewings together, but, she didn’t make it. They would have got me too if I hadn’t run into you guys. Thanks. I’m Hunter by the way.”

Debbie put a hand on his shoulder.

“We respawn here, just like in the loading scene. Jeri’s probably already back at camp.”

It was probably all kinds of touching, but I didn’t have time for that crap.

“Grab a corpse, let’s pack these things up and head back to camp.”

I started shoving dead birds into my messenger bag, and there were more of them than I’d realized. I didn’t realize how many I’d shoved in there until I reached down to shove one more body inside and my hand slid off the outside of the bag. It was like trying to push two opposing magnets together. I could stick my empty hand into the bag and take something out, and even though the bag felt pretty empty nothing I could do would let me slide one more of the tiny bodies into it. When I quit playing with it and looked at the others it was apparent Debbie had had the same issue with her fanny pack. In a rather brutal work around she’d taken one of her arrows and had a dozen of the bodies impaled on it as a convenient carry rack. Hunter had the pockets of his cargo shorts full, and a pile of them in his arms.

“I think that’s as many as we’re going to get. Let’s head back to camp.”

Hunter looked down like he was embarrassed.

“Uh, I was running from those things for a while. I’m not really sure which direction the door is.”

Debbie pointed back in the right direction and we set out together, nobody really talking much. We saw a couple of crabadillos on the way back, but nobody felt like killing them. The sun had already sunken into an orange glow on the horizon and it was getting dark underneath the trees. Without saying a word all three of us were focused on getting back as soon as possible.

I could smell the camp before I saw anything. That distinctive woodsmoke of a campfire brought back a wave of memories from better times and I smiled. Within a few minutes, we could see the glow and I heard voices ahead.