Since it was a day off, notionally at least, John didn’t wake anybody at sunrise. My body had gotten so used to it I woke up pretty close to it anyway and joined him for a little bit of jerky around the fire. I nodded when he suggested waiting for everyone else to wake up before checking the pottery, but just sitting around staring at a fire with the farmer didn’t sound real appealing either. I headed down to start working on my place instead.

It was kind of ambitious, but I was planning on a second story, sort of. I was laying logs into place on top of the gabions, but with the slope of the hill that would have left my roof level with the hilltop. Instead I planned to cut logs and start framing out a traditional cabin on top of the existing structure. It would be a little shorter than was usual,, it’d be cramped if you tried to stand upright in the loft. I figured it would almost double my floor space without doubling the amount of effort, and could help with security. I intentionally trimmed the logs for the floor longer than I needed so they would hang out a couple feet over the front door. I’d put in a good old fashioned murder hole right on the approach. By midday I had my loft floor in place, and a couple logs trimmed to start framing the walls. I was planning on using bigger stuff for the back wall, because folks could reach that, but the side walls were up high enough I used smaller stuff and even put some open windows in.

I headed back up to the keep in hopes that there was rice to be had, but it was bear steaks and roast not-onions. I don’t recommend the combo. Debbie scolded me for heading out without backup, because the hell moose was still out there, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it. I made noncommittal grunts and checked out the pottery. Some of the stuff had cracked but a surprising amount of it was in serviceable condition. John and Steve were fishing again, while Jeri and Hunter worked on their tree-house. According to Hunter they’d have it ready by tonight, but wouldn’t move into it until the following day. Allison had been trying to recreate a traditional English longbow without much luck. When I looked at her failed attempts I could tell part of where she got off.

“I think this side has to be flat when there isn’t tension on it yet. If you start with something way bigger around you trim down into a stave I think it would be easier. I’ve never made one but I’ve used a bunch of ‘em, Indian longbows anyway, probably the same as English. They look flatter here, with a thicker chunk right here and right there.”

She nodded along and took the stave back from me, talking about heartwood versus sapwood. I was lost about halfway in and shrugged. She gave up on discussing it with me but went back to carving her current piece with heavy enthusiasm. When I asked Debbie what she’d been up to, I got an earful.

“I’ve been busy but mostly I’ve been thinking. Did you ever play any open world type video games back in the real world?”

“Back when I was a kid I’d whoop that ass in Mortal Kombat, and I played a shit ton of Call of Duty once upon a time. Other than that not so much.”

“My brother played all the time, and I’ve done a little bit. There are usually different paths you can take. Leveling up by killing monsters is the most common, but you also got points for exploring the map, or crafting items, building buildings, all kinds of stuff.”

“Sounds good to me, Debbie. Like we can expect to clean up from everything we’ve done up here.”

“Maybe, but we don’t know if this game works like that, and we might be in trouble. In the beginning, we killed that cave bear and I’m betting from the return we got on wolves in the beginning that’s worth a pretty penny, but what monsters have we taken down since then? A couple dozen crabadillos in the traps, and I’m not even sure who gets the XP for those. The one who set the trap or the one who checks the trapline and retrieves the body? Do we even get XP if we don’t kill them in person?”

“We’ve still got trade goods though.”

“Trade goods we have no way to establish the value of. If it’s a straight kills for XP system and the entire village has been out grinding wolves and crabadillos while we were crafting, we’re going to be at a huge disadvantage. I think we should do something to try and catch up just in case.”

“Like what?”

“Wanna go hunt a hell moose?”

“Fuck. Okay, sounds like fun.”

I left my axe in the messenger bag and grabbed an eight foot spear with a fired clay point to carry instead. With the reach of the thing’s antlers I didn’t want to end up close enough to use anything else. Debbie had her bow and the plan was I’d keep it off us with the point and she would fill it with arrows. In hindsight I don’t know if I should call us naive or just overly optimistic.

I led the way towards the nascent farm where we had last run into the hell moose. I kept the spear in something kind of like a low ready so I could get it up into action fast, but I was relaxed. I tried starting a conversation on the way.

“So aside from the business stuff, what are you planning on spending XP on?”

“We’re on a hunting trip, Jack. Shouldn’t we be trying to be stealthy or something?”

“Nah, not really. Moose don’t eat people, and I figure neither does the hell moose. I reckon it attacked us because it's territorial. It hears us talking and odds are it’ll come looking for us instead of us trying to stalk it.”

She gave an exaggerated look over her shoulders like she expected the hell moose to be crouched in a tree ninja style ready to ambush us. I snorted and she smacked me on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Don’t be a jackass. I’m not sure. Jeans and a shirt instead of a dress, I could use a whole wardrobe to be honest. Shampoo and conditioner instead of just soap. Real bedding, oh my God, I would kill to have a real bed.”

“Shit, comfort items? Here I was thinking you were the most practical out of this bunch, Debbie.”

“It’s not comfort, it’s standard of living. Who knows how long we’re stuck in this game? It’s why I ditched the village. If we’re starting over here forever, you have to consider the long game. Not just surviving here, but living.”

“Over there is where it ran back into the woods. Allison got at least one arrow in it, keep an eye out for blood spore.”

“Spore?”

“Drops and stuff where blood splattered. It’s what the guy who taught me to track called it, so I think it’s the right word. Just, keep an eye out, okay?”

“Yes, bwana. That’s a word from Tarzan, the Johny Weismuller one not the animated one, in case you were wondering. If you’re all about the practical, what are you spending your XP on, Jack?”

“Smart ass. I’ve been building that house and it would go a hell of a lot easier with more hand tools. You can do a lot with an axe and some chisels if you’ve got the time, but a hand drill and a plane would make things a hell of a lot easier. Shit, maybe I’ll have enough for power tools.”

“Power tools, huh? I think we need to think bigger. We’ve got the falls here, so what would it take to set up a power plant? I think most of Nevada is still on hydro. How much infrastructure do we need for indoor plumbing? At a minimum I want the same standard of living we had back home, but we ought to be able to shortcut some of the buildup with the lessons of the past to guide us and access to the XP store.”

“Shit, I actually know a little about that kind of thing, Debbie. It ain’t as easy as it sounds bringing the third world up to US standard. Let’s say we bought turbines and a big honking generator. You’re still talking about miles of wire to lay, factories to make light bulbs, fuses, voltage regulators, a whole shit ton of stuff that you can’t just buy in bulk from the Chinese just to get lights on. Hell we don’t even have the population level you’d need to work the factories if they were just sitting here empty.”

“So what, you want to stay with feudal technology?”

“Nope, probably need to do point source power generation though. Maybe solar panels or a windmill on each house and let each person take care of their own power needs. It’d split the infrastructure price down to where one group doesn’t have to foot the bill. I don’t know, maybe magic instead of science as an alternative. Some kind of mana powered generator in each house?”

“Is that even possible, Jack?”

“Oh hell yeah, Debbie. I’m definitely qualified to answer questions about how magic works in this fucked up game. Ask me all kinds of stuff cause I’ve got this shit figured out.”

“Not knowing shit doesn’t seem to be limiting your opinion on anything else, Jack. I take your point though. Check that out.”

She pointed out a downed tree and as I moved in that direction I couldn’t help but let out a low whistle under my breath. It looked like the aftermath of a real shitstorm. The focal point was a tree with probably a 3 or 4 inch diameter trunk that had been splintered, but there was trampled brush and big ruts in the earth all around it. There was also a ton of black spattered all over everything and I rubbed a bit between my fingers just to confirm it was blood. I’ll admit I was spooked, and I clutched that spear like somebody might try and take it from me. I looked back up and caught Debbie’s eye.

“Ain’t anything losing that much blood and walking away. You smell a body?”

She did an exaggerated sniff of the air, took a half step closer and did it again before she shook her head. “Not really. It just smells like woods. You think the hell moose bled out from that arrow?”

“Maybe, it looks a couple days old so that lines up, but…” I shrugged at her. “Where’s the body? It was a huge fucking animal. If there’s something around that’d eat that many pounds of moose in this amount of time, we don’t want to meet it. I guaran-fucking-tee you that.”

“You think we should get out of here then?”

“Probably too late. We were making plenty of noise to attract the moose remember? If there’s a big predator around here, we’ve already rung the dinner bell. Maybe it bled out and a couple packs of wolves scavenged it? Let’s look around a bit, see if we can gather some intel.”

“Is that safe?”

“Hell no.” I grinned at her as I answered, but went deeper into the disturbed area of the brush anyway. I was looking for some kind of pattern but the scale of the thing was so large it took a minute for it to click. I moved to the center of the trampled area and made a round and round gesture with my hand.

“I’m pretty sure from the spray it started here. Something big came through there, probably the hell moose, and took a pretty nasty hit. I’m guessing on the hamstring or somewhere on the ass-end cause it started chasing its tail. All this circular damage is from some kind of rodeo shit, trying to dislodge whatever was on it. I’m guessing the horns caught up on that, which is what took down the tree. Then another spray of blood, I’m guessing something arterial got ripped, and it looked like the body got pulled that way.”

“So what killed them, Jack?”

“I don’t know. I’m just guessing on most of this shit. C’mon.”

I followed the trail deeper into the woods until I saw it. Those giant antlers were the only reason it was still here. They must have snagged on the root of a good sized tree, and when it didn’t pull free, whatever it was had just chewed the damn thing’s head off. I knelt down and tilted the head to show a vertebrae that had literally been crushed between teeth. Debbie nudged me in the back with her knee.

“Not screwing around this time, Jack. I think finding what did that is a damn bad idea. I was up to hunt the hell moose, but we should get a few more people if we’re going after what did this.”

I had my knife out, cutting into the head when she spoke, and I took a minute to rap the blade on one of the antlers so she could hear the ting.

“I don’t know what its antlers are made of, but John’s hatchets bounced right off them, they’re light as hell, and damn near razor sharp on the inside curve. If whatever killed it isn’t gonna keep them, I damn sure will. That’s two badass swords right here, don’t you want one?”

She didn’t say anything else so I kept working, but the way she was tapping her foot I could tell she was anything but calm. I finished scalping the head to show where the antler entered into a thick mass of spongy bone. It was meant to absorb the impact against the antlers so the moose wouldn’t concuss itself every time it hit something, but it wasn’t dense enough to offer much protection directly. I slammed the point of my knife into it overhand, gouging out a splinter of bone. It was successful enough I kept going, and after a minute or so of rhythmic hacking I’d broken the first antler free. I was starting on the second when Debbie spoke.

“I think I saw something move over there.”

I stood up, new antler sword in one hand, to look in the direction she’d indicated. “I don’t see anything. ..” I was answering her when something burst out of the tree line and charged me. It was scaled and bipedal with an oversized snout, kind of like a two foot tall T-Rex. Despite its speed, it also took an arrow to the skull before it was completely clear of the brush. That was lucky because I was already responding to the second who’d come at us at a 90 angle from the first. Debbie was facing the wrong way to see it, and I lunged in past her and swung the antler. It sunk into the creature at an angle, going in around the collar bone and lodging in the middle of its rib cage. Something took my leg out from under me before I could recover from the lunge and I hit the ground. I looked down and saw the first with his jaws wrapped around my leg just below my knee. It didn’t hurt yet, but I figured that was just shock. My antler was struck into the corpse of the second so I dropped it and grabbed the arrow sticking out of the head of the one latched to my leg. I yanked it back and forth fishing for brain and it made a squealing sound and jerked away before going limp.

Debbie screamed and I looked up to see her backpedalling as she fired at a third reptile coming from the far side. I tried to scramble to my feet but it turned into a lurching fall. From the corner of my eye I could see my boot sticking out of the mouth of the first monster, it hadn’t moved when I had. I felt a cold rush of fear and then the pain started. It felt like someone was holding a blow torch to my shin just below my knee. Another arrow flashed past me and I drug myself forward trying to intercept the last reptile. It swerved wide around me, focused on the greater threat of a ranged weapon I guess. It misjudged my speed because I managed to lay out and catch hold of its tail at the last moment.

It was a bit like water skiing. There was a shock to both shoulders as it jerked against my body weight and it was all I could do to hold on. The thing was fast but was probably under 75 pounds and I was enough to stop it. It spun around and lunged at me, and it would have ended in a respawn if one of Debbie’s arrows hadn’t made a thousand to one shot. It tore through the thing’s throat and embedded into the same tree that had caught the antler earlier. The reptile continued to thrash and snap at me just inches away as another half dozen arrows slammed home.

I rolled away to put some distance from the fetid breath of its death throws. The shock was wearing off and the pain in my leg was getting worse. I sat up and grabbed my thigh. Debbie was saying something but I tuned it out as I stared. My lower leg was nothing but a mass of bloody shredded denim. I pressed my fist into the pressure point on my inner thigh to try and slow the flow of blood while I peeled back what was left of my pants leg. The pain was intense, but the sight was worse. My leg was just gone. Thanks to all the points I’d dumped into health regeneration, the stump had already scabbed over, but it was just that, a stump. Debbie knelt down next to me and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Jack, are you okay?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m fucked.”

I sat there in a pool of my own blood, wondering if you got a limb back when you respawned. Suicide had never been an attractive option before, but when death was only temporary would it be worth the risk? Debbie seemed to be reading my mind in the way women sometimes did.

“Only one more day until we head back to the village. Before you try anything drastic, you should probably use up your accrued XP points. Let me grab you a crutch.”

Before I could answer her she was off, and I was left sitting there clutching what was left of my leg. The pain had shifted to a steady throb that seemed to beat with my pulse. I focused on dragging myself over to the hell moose skull to try and free the last antler. I called out to Debbie while we worked.

“I’m calling the lizard things a t-Rex.”

“A tyrannosaurus rex is huge, Jack. Those things were the size of a dog.”

“No, these are a tiny saurus rex. Lower cased t-rex, Debbie.”

She came back carrying a rough crutch. “That is just asinine, Jack. We’re not calling them that.”

“Well your ass is a ten, since we’re judging. And we are too calling them that. They eat your leg and you can rename them, but for now I got dibs.”

She tossed me the crutch and shook her head. “If you’ll quit laying around doing nothing, we’ve got a long way back to the camp. I want my arrows back.”

She moved around cutting her arrows free from the t-rex bodies, while I started shoving stuff into my messenger bag. I took both antlers, my boot and sock, and two of the big reptile corpses. The third was hacked up bad enough I didn’t want to try and skin it when we got back to camp. Moving around on the crutch was surprisingly easy. The top dug into my armpit a little, and I’m sure after a mile or so the strain on seldom used muscles would be brutal, but for now it wasn’t bad. The dull throb in my stump was still present, but more as a background pain and I started to think that maybe this would be doable. Debbie led the way back, arrow nocked and ready for trouble while I hobbled after her, trying to keep up and maintain my balance.