Kim and his crew finally made it back to camp. While Evan tried to claim the change in tax rates ought to effect our original deal, Haley and Kim shut him up. They paid off the village to use the XP store and delivered our TP, dress, and waterskin. The waterskin looked canvas instead of leather, but it held liquid when I poured a little in there and was about the same size so I didn’t bitch. Kim told me he’d have to run buying anymore furs off me through the village council since I wasn’t a member anymore. It sounded like bullshit to me, but I just nodded. If nothing else a trade embargo would just create a black market and I’d make even more on the deals. I wasn’t worried about going toe to toe in a fiscal war with people who thought communism was a good deal.

At this point everyone who was going had their gear packed and last minute purchases made, so we made our goodbyes and trooped out of the village. Hunter and I carried my boat, while Debbie kept watch with her bow and Jeri handled Hunter’s spear in the original meaning of the phrase. John and Steve carried a canoe that must have been at least twenty feet long and looked like it was made of wicker between them, and some chick named Allison who I’d never met was packing a bright orange plastic kayak.

We must have made enough noise to lure every monster for miles around hauling this shit through the forest, but apparently it was a weird enough sight the critters couldn’t stop laughing long enough to attack us. We made it to the water without incident. After everybody had sat down their loads, without thinking about it I stuck my hand up in the air and made a flapping mouth gesture with my hands and called out, “Tactical Clusterfuck.”

Everyone just stared at me and I cleared my throat. “Sorry, bad habit. It means everybody gather round cause we need to have a short talk.”

There was a little bit of griping and I’m pretty sure I heard Allison’s voice ask someone, “Who put him in charge?” and the bitch of it was, I didn’t want to be in charge. On the other hand, I damn sure wasn’t willing to follow anyone I considered less competent than me, which at this point was pretty much everyone. I’d given it a lot of thought the last couple of hours while everyone was getting their shit together and I’d come up with a plan, sort of. I sighed and said what I’d rehearsed.

“Here’s the deal. I left the village cause I figure the best person to be responsible for me is me. I figure you’re all here mostly for the same reason. If ya’ll wanna join up for the common defense or whatever, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine too. I don’t really give a shit either way. If you are coming with, we need to set some ground rules first.”

John and Steve stayed quiet, which I figured. What I didn’t figure on was Debbie shushing the rest of them and giving me a get on with it gesture. I shrugged and started talking again.

“I figure to head upstream. If shit gets scary and we wanna run back here, downstream will make that faster. Put the boats in the water and travel till we see some place that makes sense to stop. Everybody is responsible for their own food and whatnot, so I hope ya’ll were smart enough to provision accordingly. If something attacks us as a group we all pile on and we all take turns standing watch at night. For everything else use common sense. That works?”

I got a host of sures and whatevers before Debbie took over. She cleared her throat and started to talk at about half the volume that I had so everyone had to lean forward to hear her. It was a neat trick and I resolved to remember it.

“We talked a little bit about this before we all left the camp, Jack. Nobody objects to the rules you’ve laid out, but for clarity, we have established as a group. We pooled XP to purchase a canoe with an obscene amount of cargo capacity, as well as gear to establish a self sufficient base. Our plan is to harvest resources and ship them back to the village to sell. Think of us as a modern day Hudson Bay company, and I’m the CEO. We’re piggybacking on your trip to make our first run, and we will cut you in for a portion of the profit on our first trip. If you’d like a different arrangement we might be able to negotiate something.l.”

I made a show of counting heads, looking at each of them as I raised a finger on my hand. When all five were up I grinned. “Well gosh, miss CEO, I count five of you and only seats for 3 in the canoe and a single person kayak. If the other two don’t want to swim I could probably rent ‘em a seat in my pontoon for let’s say a sixth of you company stock. If you’d like a different arrangement we might be able to negotiate something.”

Debbie grinned right back at me and I was pleased to find someone who appreciated the finer points of mercenary actions like I did. We ended up haggling for a while but eventually ended up on the water headed upstream. Jeri and Debbie rode in my boat, Allison was solo in her kayak, while the three guys paddled in their canoe. It became obvious fairly quickly that there was going to be an issue with traveling together. My little trolling motor was able to overcome the current if just barely, and the canoe passed us up even if they half assed it on the paddles. The kayak whipped around like the rest of us were standing still. She kept going past us and stopping and riding the current back.

We ended up making a virtue of necessity, sending Allison out front to scout while the rest of us moseyed along. I don’t know about the canoe goers, but it was pretty relaxing to just putter along in my boat. I ended up trading out the tiller to Debbie so I could have my hands free to work on my wolf skin. I was still trying to work some flexibility into the leather, but it was slow going and I considered looking for acorns a little more seriously. Working the hide kept my hands busy but it was boring and I looked around trying to figure out a little more about the the people around me.

Hunter had his spear strapped to his back, useless in a fight but pretty handy for keeping it out of the way of his oars in the boat. John had a couple of hatchets strapped to his waist, nothing fancy, the kind of thing you’d see a farmer lop off the head of a chicken with. Allison had a machete strapped across her shoulders that seemed kind of poser, but handled the recurve bow she carried like she was comfortable with it. Steve appeared to be unarmed, which worried me a little, and so did Jeri. That didn’t match up with a couple of things Hunter or Jeri had said so I was a little confused at first.

It all made sense after we spotted a group of wolves along one shore line. Without saying anything about it, we all adjusted course to track the far shore line. Jeri straightened out from her position in the bow and did something with her hands. One of the wolves yelped and dodged back and I couldn’t help but ask.

“What the hell was that?”

“Pocket rocket.”

“Huh?”

She held up what looked kind of like a little back funnel and mimed pulling back on the narrow end.

“It’s a type of sling shot. It takes a while to get the hang of, but I had one when I was a teenager. I’ve never shot a bow so this made more sense. It throws rocks scary hard and if you shoot the little metal ball bearing thingies it’s got similar ballistics to a handgun.”

“How much XP was it?”

She shrugged at me. “I don’t know. After I’d talked to him about getting one, Hunter bought it for me. I lost most of my XP when I died.” She shuddered and then continued on like there hadn’t been a pause. “Since Hunter and I had gone out together on that trip, he split the points he picked up with me.”

I just nodded at her. I didn’t really care how she’d gotten the thing, I was just wondering at the number so I could maybe buy my own. The conversation kind of died then, and I focused back on my work. It didn’t last long until something else broke my concentration. John had taken a break from paddling, and was trailing one hand through the water as the canoe drifted upstream. He whipped his hand out in a spray of blood, cussing his head off. Everyone else brandished weapons, trying to spot the threat. Finally John calmed down enough to explain what happened. Piranha, snapping turtle, or maybe just a really vicious perch had come up and nipped at his hand. At least he called it a nip, but it looked like he’d lost the tip of his little finger right up to the edge of his nail bed. Everyone looked at the water around us warily, the level of risk to capsizing one of the boats had just gone up markedly. In the end we traveled on though, this entire world was full of risk.

The point became clear when Allison came back to report she’d found the perfect spot for a camp. In her defense, it looked like a good setup. There was a small island in the middle of the river, maybe double the size of a city lot and easily defensible. The only problem was when we got close, Debbie and I recognized the local plant life.

“Stop, don’t get out of the boat.”

Debbie’s call locked down the guys in the canoe, but Allison hesitated, feathering her oars to stay in close to the shore until Debbie explained.

“Venus Man Trap, Jack and I have seen them before. The vines in the top come down and tear you up. That whole island is covered in them. The place is a death trap.”

Allison still looked doubtful so I called out.

“Hey, if you go on the island, can I have your kayak? Who wants dibs on her bow?”

Debbie smacked me and told me everyone had agreed to hold a person’s gear for them if they respawned, but my comment had broken the deadlock and Allison had paddled back out into midstream. We started traveling again, but not everything on the trip was negative. We saw some beautiful scenery, and more importantly, we found some berries. They grew close enough to the water’s edge everyone got out of the boats to check them out after Allison spotted them. They ranged in color from pink to a dark purple and were about the size of a grape even though they grew on a cane like a blackberry. I smashed one in my hand and the juice smelled like cinnamon, but Hunter was the one of us dumb enough to pop one in his mouth. According to him it tasted a little bit like chocolate. Even with that news Jeri was still pissed he’d taken the risk. We waited 20 minutes or so and when he didn’t shit his guts out or report any other ill effects most of the rest of us decided it was probably safe. Even so we set up camp there because it was already winding down towards dark, and we didn’t want to mess with a medical emergency while traveling.

It was a long night, and folks on watch killed a couple of crabadillos. I’m pretty sure I spotted something bigger moving around in the distance but nothing tried our campfire. When Hunter woke up alive and without intestinal distress, everybody else ate a couple of the berries. They really did taste like chocolate, not the good kind, but the cheap kind of chalky stuff you get at a discount around holidays. That was weird when I thought about it, because they were full of juice and how do you describe a juice as chalky? All I know is that was what it tasted like, and I filled my bucket full and even dug up one of the smaller canes to take with us and replant. Hunter named them chocoberries and I was just happy to have something besides meat to choose from. We sat out the second day with Hunter and Jeri switching spots. The solar powered trolling motor wasn’t down for another day straight of pushing against the current, so Hunter and I took to the oars instead. Traveling this way was a lot more work, but it made a lot better time and was still easier than hoofing it. We’d sat out at dawn and, except for a brief stop for a lunch of jerky and berries, kept a fairly steady pace. I couldn’t tell you the total number of miles we went but it was still daylight when we hit the end of the line.