Waking up next to Debbie was a new experience, but a pleasant one. We eventually got around to getting ready to start the day. Debbie broke out her little campfire coffee pot for her morning fix while I started putting on my armor. Yesterday I had decided it was the go to outfit when I got ready for exploring. While her drink was percolating on top of my new stove, Debbie started packing her stuff back into the little red wagon. I stopped what I was doing and went to sit on the edge of my bed.

I watched her as she worked, and finally decided to take a chance. “Hey, Debs.”

“Oooh, I hate that. Don’t call me Debs, please.”

“Well shit, I need a pet name, can’t call you Debbie all the time.”

“Debs is off the list, and that is not negotiable. Pick anything else.”

“Allright, hey, sugartits.”

She laughed and gave me the finger. “Oh my God, do you suck at naming things. If you’ve got to have a pet name for me, how about honey, or sweetheart, or something?”

“Damnit, woman, I’m trying to have a serious conversation here. This is the last time I’m starting it. Hey, snooky-ookums.”

She sighed and mouthed the words ‘snooky-ookums’ at me, then rolled her eyes. Apparently the serious conversation part hooked her though, so she put up with it. “Hey, what, Jack?”

“I know we had that conversation on our first date and I been thinking. It’s kind of soon so no problem if you think it’s a bad idea or anything. I’m really not trying to put pressure on you in any way here.”

“Will you spit it the fuck out, Jack? I’m on pins and needles here.”

“Yes,my fluffy little turtledove of desire. I’m getting there.”

“Jack.”

“Sorry. What I’m trying to say is you’ve been spending a lot of time over here and it doesn’t make much sense to have you pack up your shit every morning, or haul stuff back and forth to the keep. Your greenhouse is right next door, what do you think about just moving in?”

She thought about it for a second. I was kind of glad to see she was taking it seriously, and also apprehensive that she hadn’t immediately said yes. Finally she shook her shoulders like she’d come to a decision. “And if I do move in, are you going to stop with these ridiculous pet names?”

I’m pretty sure she was joking, but I played it straight because I had a point I needed to make.

“Not hardly, pooh bear. Move in if you like what we’ve got going and want to spend more time with me. I’m too fucking stubborn to change and I’m betting you are too. If there’s going to be an us, this is what it’s like. I’m an ass and you’re occasionally a little on the bitchy side. Move in with me.”

“That’s kind of sweet in a ‘he’s trying but he lacks social skills’ kind of way. I’m in. There’ll be curtains up over your arrow slots and doilies on the coffee table as soon as we manage to build one. Want some coffee, Jack?”

“Never developed the taste for it.”

“I have.” She poured some into her cup and sat it carefully on the edge of the shelf and turned back to me. “How bout you give me some sugar then?”

I looked questioningly over at the shelf I used as a pantry before I caught her laughter and realized my mistake. We ended up late for breakfast.

When we got there I handed Steve a clay pot filled with the pancake mix I’d bought and a couple of potatoes. I was running through those pretty quick and hoped John’s prediction for his farm was accurate. Buying enough food from the XP store to keep us fed if we couldn’t hit self sufficiency would really inhibit growth. Debbie kicked in a sack of flour and a big bag of rice. I was guessing she was the one behind our only source of carbs in the early days. Everyone else had already donated and the shelves in the keep were fairly full. Folks were cleaning bowls that looked like they’d had oatmeal and I briefly regretted missing it. Then I thought about why I was late and a grin wiped that thought away. Folks started heading out for company business and Debbie gave me a peck on the cheek goodbye before heading out to get a jump on the lumber mill.

Allison waved me to the picnic table and I followed her over. She had a big sheet of parchment or paper or something spread out on the table taking up most of the space, the edges held down with the weight of a few arrows from her quiver. I was curious and moved around her to try and get a better view. It was actually a pale leather that looked like it had been bleached, covered with writing in charcoal. She’d taken the time to recopy the map from Tim’s book on a much larger scale. It was done in a lot neater hand, and stuff we’d discovered on our travels were in place. There was a surprisingly accurate sketch of a spider in the area across the river, and a shaded bunch of berries where the chocoberry stand had been. I gestured at the map.

“That’s damn impressive. You make this?”

“Sam helped with the scaling, but I did most of the drawing, yeah. We’re looking to build an accurate representation of the resources in the area. Before we get started this morning, can you see anything we missed or got wrong?”

I peered at the map, checking through the spots I was definitely sure of first, and then spreading out and looking at the rest. It was more impressive once I’d gotten into the details.

“Looks good to me. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

She looked inordinately pleased by my comment, but went on as if nothing had happened. “I think I’d like to pass on checking out any of the other predator markings for today. I’m kind of interested in what’s right here.”

She tapped a spot on the big map, almost straight North from us maybe a couple of hours walk from the keep. “There’s nothing there.”

“Not on this one, yet. One of Tim’s more cryptic notes was on the original. Something about terrain features and useful vegetation. I’ve left the main map blank until we figured it out. I already told the others we might be back a little later than usual. It ought to be easier than yesterday, and I could use some easy.”

“Easy sounds good. Just follow the cliff face until we find something interesting, and see what we see, I’m in.”

Allison nodded and rolled the map up. I went over and leaned on the fence rail to pet the goat until she got back. Jeri rolled her eyes at me. “Quit messing with Elwood. I’m trying to train these animals, and I don’t need their impressionable minds hanging out with undesirables.”

“Very funny, Jeri. You named the goat Elwood, and I’m the guy who sucks at naming things? Sure you shouldn’t have gone with Falafel or maybe Jerky? You do know what these goats are for right?”

“Bite your tongue you psycho. How dare you say such things right in front of him? The goats are for milk and cheese. Elwood is here to father the dairy industry in this world and nothing else.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Jeri. He looks a little too tasty for that kind of patience. We ought to snack on him before one of the critters around here do.”

She held up her pocket rocket. “This is for taking care of any predator that happens to think that. Any predator, Jack.”

Allison’s voice came from behind me. “Is Jack being an asshole again, Jeri?”

“Yep.”

“You should get Debbie on that. I bet she whips him into shape.” She made a whi-chaw gesture with her hand while mimicking the noise.

“Ladies, you’re level of shit talkery has reached new lows. I refuse a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, and will continue this once you’ve had some more practice.”

Jeri snorted, “Llama shit, Jack. That was weak, try something else.”

Allison clicked her tongue. “Let him be, Jeri. He tried and we should take it easy on people who got here on the short bus. Let’s go, Jack.”

I shook my head but let it drop. I was outnumbered and a tactical advance to the rear seemed like the best option. Allison and I headed north, hopping the fence so we wouldn’t have to walk all the way around the pens. We kept on along the face, but my defensive wall was steep enough going down that it was easier to take the break in it we’d left for the ore. We passed the spot in the cliff where Sam was up top, digging into the rock. Allison paused for a moment, I think to see if he came to edge of the chimney so they could talk. While we could hear the occasional thunk of a pick he didn’t show and we continued on.

I set a steady pace, a little more than a walk at first, until she complained it would take forever and started to speed up. I had to stop thinking of Allison as just some girl, because she moved into a loose route step that would eat up the miles and put a lot of the guys I’d served with to shame. It occured to me with the inventory bags and no need to carry a hundred pounds or more worth of gear, a woman’s endurance might make them more effective pack mules than a man’s upper body strength. We focused on covering ground while we were in the relative clear area near the cliff’s face. I still remembered the GTSA’s ambush from the other day, and insisted we maintain some separation even though there wasn’t much indication of danger. It made conversation difficult, and a couple of hours of silence passed while we focused on making tracks. After a couple of hours the trees to the East started to thin out, and I closed up the distance a little.

“Looks like it’s opening up to straight prairie here. Nothing but this tall grass as far as I can see.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. We should mark the edge of the forest on our map when we get back.”

“Not where I was headed with that, Allison, but sure. The point is you said useful vegetation and terrain features straight North of us.” I made a take all that in gesture with a wave of my hand. “Ta-da, I present to you dick all. Nothing but grass and flat land. Tim’s map was wrong. He’s human, it happens.”

She shook her head at me. “Judging from the scale of his map, we’ve got at least another hour or so until we get there.”

“Valid point if we couldn’t actually see what was an hour away from right here.”

“So in a world of magic and all kinds of miraculous creatures that shouldn’t exist in nature, the idea of a mirage or some kind of camouflage just seems impossible to you.”

“Well shit, since you put it that way I guess we have to keep walking. You couldn’t have just let us turn back and call it quits early. Sam probably could have used some help in his mine, I bet it gets lonely up there.”

“Don’t go there.”

“What, I’m sure he wants to show you his shaft. Don’t you want to see his shaft, Allison?”

“I swear to God that I will put an arrow in your skull if you don’t drop it right now. I never should have opened my stupid mouth.”

“I haven’t told anybody but Sam. I promise.”

“No, Jack. Tell me you didn’t.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t tell him. I did tell him. I lie a lot. Pick what you want to believe.”

“I believe you are an asshole, Jack.”

“It’s a possibility.”

We dropped the conversation and kept heading North. I resolved not to bitch about the wasted walk into nothing, and had to repeat the resolution a half dozen times as we continued on. In the end I was glad of my restraint, because there was something out there. The grass gave way without warning to a deep crevice in the earth. It was invisible from a distance, a giant crack in the grassland you couldn’t spot until you were almost on top of it. Maybe 50 feet wide and at least twice that long.

“Holy shit, there could be miles worth of this throughout these plains. We would never have spotted it without the map.”

“Told you so, Jack.”

I grunted a non-response and moved forward cautiously, easing up towards the edge, testing the firmness of the ground as I went so it wouldn’t crumble beneath me. Grass grew right up to the edge, and I don’t know if it was the roots that were holding everything together, or if there was a layer of solid rock under the soil, but everything seemed stable. I knelt on the edge and leaned forward cautiously to look down and get an idea of the scale of the canyon. Looking down into the gap I saw a layer of green at least a hundred feet or more beneath us.

“Check this out, Allison. I think we found your terrain feature and vegetation.”

She strolled right up to the edge without a hint of caution and leaned a lot further over than I felt comfortable with.

“We’re going to have to go down there to check this out.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a blackhawk on standby back at the keep. We’ll whistle the pilot up and get a ride down in a jiffy.”

“Aren’t you just hilarious.” She pulled her knapsack off her back and started to rummage through it. “How do you think Sam and I got up that cliff face to locate the metal ore in the first place?” She pulled a large coil of bright orange rope from the bag, the mass of the line larger than the knapsack itself and shook it at me. It had the smooth tightly woven look of professional climbing gear and there was the tangle of a harness and a bunch of D rings hanging from one end.

“You want to what, rappel down into the chasm? What the hell is there to tie off to up here? You don’t think I’m gonna hold it while you drop that far?”

“Try and keep up, Jack. I’m not an amateur. I’ve got some anchors we can screw in along the ground up here, and while I’ve only got one real harness, I’ve got the line we used for Sam’s swiss seat and plenty of rings and a figure eight. We both go down. The hard part will be making it back up the rope later if there isn’t a way to free climb the wall. If I didn’t have a friction brake so we could stop and rest if we need to, I wouldn’t try it. I doubt I’ve got the upper body strength for that much distance in a single go.”

She sounded like she knew what she was doing. I’d done some rope work in the military, it was required if you wanted to go air assault, but I’d never been unbalanced enough that it sounded like a fun off hours pursuit like it did to some of the others. Fast roping down 30 or 40 feet to get into a firefight was a lot different than this kind of wilderness work and I realized Allison was probably a lot better trained for this than I was.

“You think this is a good idea? If you get me killed out here I’m going to be pissed.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m going to sink in a couple of anchors, will you come along behind and make sure they’re set firm?”

I did as she suggested, and I put a hell of a lot more force in trying to tug them around than was probably required. I definitely didn’t want any surprises when we were suspended over the crevice. She fed stuff through the anchors and then slid a ratcheting pulley looking thing on the lines hooking two of them together. I tried looking it over but she dropped it on the ground and said, “It’s a safety device, quit screwing around.” then walked over and tossed the main mass of rope down into the chasm.

I watched the line spin out into the abyss and shook my head. This seemed like a bad idea. She started clipping the lines into the harness she was wearing and looked at me. “You know how to rappel at least, right, Jack? Hand up to slide, down to brake, all that jazz.”

“Don’t patronize me, girl scout. I’ve got this.”

“If having this means looking like you’re about to puke, then sure. You’re kind of a sissy, Jack.”

She jogged forward to the lip and kind of just dove forward without warning, almost looking like the Aussie special forces guys when they did their abseiling stuff. The line was giving off a low hum and I scrambled forward to the edge to check on her. Could I even stop the descent and belay her from up here? I heard her voice yell out a “whoo hoo” from the chasm as I saw her slow down and shift over into a more controlled fall. It looked like she was going straight down without bouncing from the wall like a rappel and I realized the wall must be recessed quite a bit from the opening at ground level. She shrank down as she got further away and eventually disappeared underneath the greenery at the bottom.

I waited a minute and gave the line an experimental tug. It moved easily in my hand, no tension on the far end. She must have already detached so I could go down, and I clipped the lines into my own carabiner. I sat on the edge of the lip and let my feet dangle while I took a couple of deep breaths. This was a shit idea. What if something came along and unhooked the ropes up top? What if we got lost and couldn’t find the ends again, or if they stopped well short of ground level? I didn’t have a choice since my partner was already down and I started down cautiously. My knuckles were white on the brake as I slid down as slowly as humanly possible, my body starting a natural turn as the dangling rope rotated under my uneven weight. It gave me an amazing 360 view of the cavern as I went.

The walls dropped back from the opening like it was a huge dome. The roof seemed to be a solid gray rock, but the walls were some kind of geode. It caught the sunlight from the crack in the ceiling and scattered it back out in a thousand different directions. The air was warmer here and I felt a slight updraft as I descended and I could make out a faint mist around the top of the trees now. I had no idea where the heat was coming from, or the water, but it seemed almost like jungle conditions as I finished my journey. There was no break in the foliage where the rope passed into the canopy, but I kept dropping down, easily able to kick away the thin branches that crossed my path until I lost sight of the sky above me. The growth got thicker but I still managed to work my way through it until I heard a voice.

“Oh my God, you’re taking forever. I half thought you had gone back to the village.”

Allison was standing there, another 10 feet below me, on a tree branch the size of a city bus. I finally let completely off the brake and dropped down the rest of the way in a sudden rush.

“Tortoise and the hare, outdoor barbie. I’m determined to get there, but there ain’t no rush.”

“Uh-huh, it has nothing to do with being pee-your-pants scared of heights. Your secret is safe with me, Jack. What do you think about these trees? Like a redwood but even bigger. I tried a couple chops with my machete, the bark is at least a foot thick.”

I unbuckled from the harness and took a few careful steps away from the rope. “Hacking at the branch we’re standing on didn’t seem a tad risky to you?”

She jumped up and down and smiled at the look on my face. “Didn’t even shake it, Jack. C’mon, think logically. This branch might as well be a road. There’s a network of even thicker stuff over the edge.”

I cautiously approached the edge and confirmed her claim, then backed away. “Okay, Tim’s useful vegetation claim didn’t exactly pan out. There’s enough firewood for a dozen villages in one of these trees but it doesn’t seem real practical. Damn, it’s humid down here isn’t it?”

“I’m guessing there are hot springs or geysers or something down here. It’s set up a tropical micro-climate completely separate from ground level. We could probably make our way down to the understory. There ought to be plenty of more reasonably sized plants to examine.”

“You're not considering the scale of things.” I tapped the branch we were standing on with my foot to illustrate my point. “From what you can see from the edge it might be another couple hundred feet down. You got another set of ropes in your bag?”

“No, but we could probably just climb it without safety gear.”

“Uh-huh, maybe we could. You think that’s a smart risk to take?”

“Probably not.” She sighed and shook her head. “I know something is wrong when I start agreeing with you, Jack. You want to just take a look around on this level? We’re already here, we might as well see if we can find something.”

“Sure, but blaze a clear trail. We don’t make it back to the rope and we are screwed.”

She nodded and started off down the branch. I followed, stopping occasionally to hack an arrow in the bark with my knife. The branch ran into another and the two seemed to graft together with a swirl of bark along the seam. It was like a giant interconnected web of trees that seemed to run on for miles. Allison came across a patch of fungus growing in the space between some channels in the bark.

“You think this is edible, Jack?”

“No, clue. Can’t think of any yellow mushrooms in the grocery stores back home, but I ain’t exactly an epicure.”

“Oooh, big word, Jack. I’m impressed.”

“How bout you eat some of the mushroom and impress me with your bravery, Allison?”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to bring some back though to see if anybody can recognize it. Maybe cut some bark to keep it alive so we can grow it back home if we need to.”

“Knock yourself out, I’m sure a block of mustard colored fungus is well worth this trip. I think there’s a little more daylight over that way, so I’m headed in that direction. Holler if you need me.”

I cut another blaze in the bark at my feet before drifting off. With the number of switchbacks and general confusion of trunks and limbs running in a thousand different directions, my normal sense of direction was a little iffy and I’d need to follow the arrows to get back to the rope. As long as I didn’t change tack without indicating it though, we ought to be fine. I was careful to keep Allison in sight as I moved toward the light, because even with a marked trail I didn’t want to get separated. There was definitely more light reaching this layer of the forest over here, and pretty soon I had figured out why. The bark was scorched and branches devoid of leaves. I realized a fire had burned through this section of the jungle. Allison caught up and joined me while I was testing some of the dead branches to make sure they would still support our weight.

“What do you think caused this, Jack?”

“Lightning strike, someone playing with matches? How the hell should I know, but it must have been one hell of a fire. You know how fast shit grows back up top, how big would it have had to be to leave this kind of hole in the canopy? You can see the sky in another 10 or 15 yards I bet.”

“Check that out.”

She was looking down instead of up, and I realized the fire had caused a break in the level we had been walking in, and I moved forward to see how far off the ground we were. It turns out there was another network of interconnected trees below us, but what was interesting was the exact middle of the hollowed out area. It looked like the trunk of one of those monster trees had burned off level about 20 feet or so down. The ash and dead leaves that had fallen into place after had created something close enough to soil that there was a little patch of grass and some regular sized trees growing on the stump, about half the size of a city block.

“It looks like a little park doesn’t it? We should go check it out.”

“Strike you funny when we were hanging out with the GTSA I was the let’s explore and you were the we should turn back one? I learned my lesson but it seems like you lost some common sense.”

“You see any spider webs around here, Jack? We’ve seen zero animals so far, not even a crabadillo. I don’t think there are monsters in the trees.”

“Well now we’re fucked. If that didn’t jinx us I’ll be dipped in shit. Why would you say something like that?”

“Cause I’m not superstitious. Look, we could cut some handholds into that trunk over there and probably go straight down to the lower level like a ladder. If we can’t get across to the little grass island park on the stump, we could even drop another level and come up from the bottom.”

“Sounds like a shit ton of climbing to check out some random plants. Look around, we’re in the canopy of a literally giant jungle. You really need to go out of you way to see those particular plants?”

“Think about it. Fire’s can’t be all that common as wet as it is around here. That stump might be the only one like it for miles. Rare conditions, a map that says useful vegetation, have you never played a video game before? I’ll tell you what, let’s check this out and call it quits. I’ll be ready to leave once we’ve checked the stump plateau.”

I sighed and held up my axe. “Okay, I’ll go start chopping some handholds into the tree, we’ll be here all day with your little machete.”

“I knew there was a reason I brought you.”

I flipped her the bird over my shoulder but stayed focused on my footing. I wanted a nice safe place to stand if I was going to be swinging my axe over a dropoff. The tree she’d picked out for our descent was probably a little smaller than some of the others. The trunk was only 20 feet thick or so, and with the bark all scorched up on this side it almost looked like a different species. I lined up and swung the axe for my first notch at about knee height, and almost overbalanced when it slammed home. The bark wasn’t rock solid like most of the rest I’d carved arrows in. Maybe the fire had weakened it, but the side of the tree was like paper mache when I hit it, and a big section of bark just flaked off when I levered my axe back out.

“Hey, Allison. This tree might be two jacked up to climb.”

“Cut deeper, Jack. There ought to be solid heartwood underneath. The thing is huge.”

I shrugged, it couldn’t hurt to try. I swung again and while there was some resistance to the impact this time, my axe put a hole into the outside of the tree and exposed a hollow area. A rattling clicking noise immediately started emanating from the hole and I took a step back.

“Umm, outdoor barbie, you got any clue what that means?”

“Well, micropenis Joe, I’d say there is something alive inside that tree.”

I thought the nickname thing was getting out of hand, but before I had a chance to respond an 18 inch antennae popped out of the hole as the side of a mandible clamped onto the edge. Allison made a sound I didn’t realize humans were capable of. It was like a gasp of shock and a scream of outrage all at the same time, combining into something like “Oy.” I spared a quick glance over at her when I heard it, and her face was a study in disgust. Her arm was rock steady on that bow though and she fired an arrow into the hole.

It shot right through the center of the opening, and except for a little increase in the rattling sounds coming from the interior didn’t seem to change anything. The mouth clamped on the edge ripped a strip of wood from the side of the hole and a beetle the size of a terrier started to emerge. I stepped forward and pulped its body against the tree with a massive overhand blow, but another set of mandibles was already working to widen the hole and a third beetle was wriggling through the opening. The rattle and buzz was loud enough I knew we were in a world of hurt and I backed up. “We need to get the fuck out of here. Too many of them in there. We’ll get swarmed.”

She fired another arrow, pinning one of the bugs in place and took a couple of big steps backward still facing the hole. Another chunk of wood was ripped away and the egress was big enough for two at once. Still others were working at the edges to widen it further and Allison nodded. She turned and took off at steady jog, and with a quick look over my shoulder at the beetles I followed her.

We moved along the network of branches at a speed I wouldn’t have been comfortable with in other circumstances. The wave of chittering foot long insects behind me kept my mind off falling and focused my attention on speed admirably. I caught sight of one of the blazes I’d carved on a branch and hollered out, “Left Allison, you missed a turn.”

The twisted path we’d traveled meant we had to retrace our steps exactly if we wanted to make it back to the rope. I turned and Allison shifted over on an intercept course with where I was headed. She was far enough ahead that she paused and turned around to fire another arrow into the mass behind us.

“There’s hundreds of them, Jack. We’ve got to move faster.”

I had put my axe back in my bag and was focused on running. We were outdistancing the insects if just barely. They jumped in the air and fluttered hard wings that looked like split halves of the carapace. It was what was causing the rattle, and they could fly faster than we could run. It gave them short bursts of speed, but luckily they didn’t seem to be able to fly very far. They swarmed the tree in bursts of flight and slower scuttling afterwards. The wave of bugs was spreading out, not heading for us directly but seemingly swarming the entire forest in random directions. There were sounds almost like human screaming coming back from the other direction and I assumed the colony had bumped into some other kind of animal in the hunt for us.

Allison and I were running together now, and when one of the arrows pointed back to an edge of the swarm, she clutched my arm and tried to stop me. “We don’t stand a chance, Jack.”

I shook free and pulled my axe back out. “Just have to get back there and find the next arrow. You wait here, give me what cover you can. I’ll holler back and give you a heading when I find the next mark.”

She started to say something in response, but I charged forward. The longer we hesitated the deeper into the swarm I might have to go. I swatted a flying bug out of my way with the axe. I doubted I’d killed it, but the difference in mass smashed the thing into the distance like a line drive. The next came in at a lower level, and the bug latched onto my leg. It was blocked by the shinguard, but I still felt a crushing pressure against my leg. I smashed another with my axe before it could attack with more effectiveness, and dropped my full weight onto my knee to squish the beetle on my leg. I felt the insect crack and when I staggered to my feet it hung off the armor like dead weight, but had stopped twitching.

As I battled forward through the insects, another got ahold of my left arm and the armadillo bracers I’d made weren’t enough to stop its jaws. I swunt the arm violently to the side as I kicked another and swung a sweeping blow with the axe to clear my path. The centrifugal force pulled the beetle off my arm but its mouth stayed clamped in place. I hammered my arm down and tried squashing it against my side. Legs broke but it continued to worry at my arm until I swung my arms together and cut into it with my axe. The head separated from its body and I nicked my own forearm because I couldn’t quite check the blow in time. The pain from that was nothing compared to the original bite, and I desperately swung and dodged to keep the rest off of me.

The arrow ahead was finally visible, and I leapt over a gap in the limbs to cut in that direction early. “Towards the right, Allison.” I was charging that way and saw an arrow take a beetle from the air right in front of me. It was close enough to my face that I flinched. The momentary slow down had been a mistake, and I felt a searing pain in my left ass cheek. I kept moving forward, with a bit of a limp now and swung my off hand back to check. It came back bloody but there wasn’t a bug attached so I decided I’d have to settle for that. Allison’s voice penetrated the fog of pain, and I switched tack to where she’d found the next arrow.

I felt an impact on my flak jacket from the rear and when something cold and hard brushed the back of my neck I screamed like a little girl and threw myself into a forward roll. There was an audible crack and I felt a squirt of warm goo squirt around my armor as my body weight crushed the thing on the tree beneath me. I was up again and moving faster than ever before and charged around another large tree to see Allison clipping her harness into that orange rope.

“Hurry, Jack. They’re right behind you.”

“Just go.”

She started hand after hand up the rope and I spun to put my back against the line. I smashed the first beetle to come around the corner easily enough, but soon enough a second followed. I was moving after that one when the third climbed around higher up while a fourth came in at ground level. There were going to be too many to fight soon and I jogged back to put my hand on the rope. An arrow pinned one of the beetles to the tree, and I looked up to see Allison working her bow. She’d locked her ascender in place and was hanging from her harness while she shot with both hands.

“Just fucking climb. I’m coming up.”

I dropped my axe into the bag and grabbed the rope. There wasn’t time for clips and safety, but I had plenty of upper body strength. I started up the rope eschewing the old fashioned gym class method of clamping the line between my feet, just trying for speed as I hauled hand over hand on the rope like a series of pull ups. Allison was slower despite her head start and I had to stop when I got close to her feet. I had time to look down and was just able to meet one of the flying insects with my boot when it came for me. It would be only seconds until more followed as Allison finally made it up into the canopy.

She kept climbing at a steady pace and I followed after her. My arms were getting tired but the clattering of beetle wings below us spurred me on. By the time we broke out of the foliage and made it back to the open sky above us, I could feel the lactic acid building up in my muscles. The arm that had been bitten had already healed now thanks to my overpowered health regen, but it ached terribly. I swung my leg around in a circle to gather the line beneath me and clamped my other foot down onto it to relieve some of the pressure. I let go of my white knuckled grip on the rope to buckle in the carabiner on my swiss seat before I continued to climb. Allison was a good deal higher than me now, and I settled in for a slow and steady pace as I climbed after her.

We both ended up setting the ascender to hold us in position while we took breaks a couple of times, but eventually we made it to the top. Allison cleared the edge at least twenty minutes ahead of me, but I comforted myself with the thought she was hauling a lot less weight and hadn’t just had a giant insect take a chunk out of her forearm muscle. When I finally made it up over the lip and saw her sitting up from where she had been lying on the ground.

“Take a breather, Jack. I’ll start hauling up the rope.”

She made a complicated looking twist in the rope with her wrist, putting a coil up over her shoulder and down to her opposite hip before she started hauling it in, repeating the move and using her body to keep the loops straight. I unclipped from the swiss seat and stayed sitting on the ground while I pulled my knife and tried levering the dead beetle off of my shinguard.

“I’m calling this one a draw. We made it out alive, but we’ve got dick all to show for the day’s travel.”

“Not true, Jack. Now we know where there is an entire jungle’s worth of potentially useful vegetation, and I bet those crystals you could see against the walls would be worth something. Plus there are the mushrooms I’ve got in my bag.”

“Okay, unknown fungus, location of some jewels in a baseline economy where luxury goods include toilet paper, and all the insects you could ever hope to be eaten by.”

“Uggh, those things were nasty, weren’t they?”

“Looked kind of like borer beetles, but with wings about like a brown lady bug.”

“You see a lot of earth beetles about the size of a dog, Jack?”

“I had some good sized roaches in off post housing by Fort Hood, but I was talking about the body plan not the size. You didn’t think that looked like a huge beetle?”

“Sure, you could say that. We’ll call them beetles.”

“No, I can come up with a better name than that.”

“Too late, Jack. You’ve already named them.”

I tried arguing with her, but she just pretended she couldn’t hear me. I unscrewed the anchors while she finished coiling the line, and we started the long walk back to camp. When Allison mentioned my butt cheek hanging out of the tear in my leather pants, I decided to keep her on point for the entirety of the trip. Lunch was jerky and water while we continued to travel, but persistence paid off when we got back to familiar territory right around midday when everyone else was coming off shift.

Sam was the first person we saw, dragging a huge bundle of cut lumber behind him as he approached the chimney that marked the cut up towards the mine. He stopped and waved at us.

“Hey, guys? How’d the explorations go?”

I said, “It was a wash.” at the same time Allison replied, “Found some cool mushrooms and a bunch of giant bugs.”

Sam smiled and looked back and forth between us. “Dissension in the ranks, huh? Sounds interesting, wanna tell me about it?”

I shook my head but tilted it towards Allison. “I’ve got stuff to do, but I bet she can stick around and fill you in. You still working on the mine?”

He looked over at Allison and grinned but answered my question. “Not really. As I’ve been hollowing out the rock, it occurs to me a cave up in the chimney makes a pretty good place to build a cabin. I can contribute to the company and build a mini-fortress for my place all at the same time. Two birds with one stone, Jack.”

“You’ll be outside the defensive wall.”

“I’ll be twenty feet in the air at the top of a fairly nasty climb. I could defend this place from a hundred people with a broomstick. I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Well shit, Sam, when did you get a broomstick?”

He gave me the finger and I chuckled. Allison started telling him about our trip while at the same time asking him details about what he was building. It felt like they had both forgotten I was there, so I shrugged and walked away leaving them to it. Helen was sitting on the top rail of the fence when I made it to the animal pens, bow across her lap, and she waved me over.

“Is Allison okay, Jack? Why isn’t she with you?”

“Don’t worry, she’s fine. Stopped to chat up Sam on the way back. That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Why would it bother me?”

“Well, you and Sam were together when we all met.” I shrugged at her. “I thought for a while you guys maybe were an item.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, strictly platonic. Why so nosey all of a sudden?”

“I’m curious about all kinds of shit. Like, how’s the metal working going?” I made an attempt to change the subject. She gave me a suspicious look but went along with it.

“I’ve made progress. John helped me rig a good sized bellows, and I built out some mud covered rocks as heat reflectors and managed to smelt some of the ore. Without hammer and anvil I can’t really work it, and without a crucible it pretty much just melts into a puddle in the middle of the fire. I dug out a form in the dirt and managed to funnel enough of the ore in to form it, but it was a mixed success.”

That actually sounded pretty cool, and I started paying closer attention. “What’d you make?”

She fished around in what looked like a big canvas shopping bag before she pulled something out and tossed it to me. It was a slightly unbalanced egg shaped object, flat on opposing sides, and about a foot long between the flat spaces. There was an oblong void passing through the cylinder at right angles, and visible cracks in the surface. It weighed probably ten or 12 pounds and felt solid enough.

“A hammer head? A little much to use easily isn’t it.”

“It’s kind of hard to fill smaller forms.” She shrugged in a what are you going to do kind of way and I handed her back the hammer. “I used puddled metal to check quality of the material first.. John’s file rips right into it, so the metal is fairly soft, but anything is better than trying to use a wooden mallet. If I can get back to the XP store for a crucible and a couple of real tools, I’m pretty sure I could do some sand casting. It wouldn’t be tempered metal like a blade, but I could turn out a lot of useful stuff. As it is when Kenny relieves me here in a little while I’m going to try making some spear heads.”

“That sounds great. When you’re up and running let me know, I can already think of a ton of stuff we could use around here. I might even kick in on some gear to get stuff coming faster. For now I’m gonna go find Debbie. Take it easy, Helen.”

“Sure thing, Jack.”

I’d only gone a couple feet when she called out and stopped me. When I turned back around she grinned at me and pointed.

“You know your butt is out, right, Jack?”

“Quit looking you perv, or I’ll tell Debbie.”

She laughed and waved me away, but I changed course. I figured it might be a good idea to head straight to my place for a change of clothes before I met up with the rest of us. I made it back to the cabin without bumping into anyone else and was mildly disappointed that Debbie wasn’t there. I didn’t really have any reason to expect her. Even if she’d agreed to move in, she surely had something better to do than just hanging out pining for her man. When I opened the door to the cabin I grinned. There in the middle of the living room was a tree stump that had an almost hourglass chunk carved out of the sides to make a crude coffee table. There was an honest to goodness chunk of lace square in the center of it. The lace didn’t look quite right for the doily she’d threatened me with and I walked over and scooped it up. It looked like a pair of panties that wouldn’t cover much of Debbie’s rather generous body and I laughed out loud. Those went into my pocket and I detoured over to check the loft.

She hadn’t put curtains over the arrow slits and I guessed there was a limit on how far she would go for a joke. I took a quick sponge bath in my sink and changed into clean clothes. I went over my armor cleaning it and trying to patch up the bracers before I put it back on the shelves and headed out. My first move was to head over the hill and check on the greenhouse. Debbie was there, kneeling on the inside, digging in the dirt.

She was dressed for gardening, barefoot wearing a halter top and the gym shorts I had bought her that first day. Her hair was up in a bandana, with sweat trickling down her neck. When I opened the door and went inside I could tell why. It was like a sauna inside the greenhouse.

“Holy crap, my little sugar booger, it’s hot in here.”

She ignored my attempt to get a rise out of her and just gave a desultory wave. “Hi, Jack. When I planted the first seed I got the notification it was a greenhouse. The bonus upgrade I chose was tropical conditions because it seemed the most useful.”

“Sure you shouldn’t have got some kind of safety feature instead? You’re in here unarmed with nothing but saran wrap walls.”

She straightened up and arched her back, presenting a deliteful profile in the sweat sodden shirt. She stood then, rubbing at her lower back and nudged her bow with her foot. “I’m armed, Jack, and I’ve been checking periodically. I saw you as soon as you crested the hill. Didn’t think you were worth the arrow.”

I loosened the collar of my shirt and fanned myself with my free hand. “Well, make sure you drink lots of water. This is heat stroke waiting to happen in here.”

She gestured down at her clothes and grinned when I leered at her. “It’s cause you’re not dressed for greenhouse work, Jack. Boots, jeans, and that long sleeved shirt probably aren’t the smartest choice.”

“So minimal clothing for comfort? In that case shouldn’t you be gardening in just these?”

I proudly displayed the panties I’d taken from the coffee table and she stepped forward and snatched them out of my hand. “You swipe my doily, Jack? You know how long it took me to fold that just right?”

“Judging by the amount of material not a real long time.”

“You want me to wear big granny panties, check. I’ll look for some next time I hit the XP store.”

“I’ll settle for none at all if you’d like, Debbie.”

“Huh-uh. You’ve insulted my fashion choices, Jack. You wanna make it up to me you better get to gardening. You can tell me what you found on this morning’s trip while we work.”

I agreed and Debbie put me to work. Before 15 minutes had passed my shirt and boots came off and I was working in just my blue jeans. I decided then that the levi’s missing a pant leg were going to become a pair of jorts for use in the greenhouse next time I went by my cabin.

Debbie had fairly definite plans for the layout of her greenhouse, and soon enough I found myself building the frame for raised bed gardens. She had a row of big circles underneath the center of the arched roof where she was planting trees, and would eventually line the sides with raised beds. Not just flat tables but a kind of staircase shaped arrangement she’d come up with that was supposed to maximize space and give varying degrees of direct light to the different plants. We finished the first frame together and I got stuck digging top soil to fill it while we talked. She stopped me a couple of times to pull out clumps of roots or grass that I’d missed until eventually I slowed down and focused on quality control.

After a couple of hours I’d described everything I’d seen on the trip to the canyon. Debbie couldn’t think of any useful yellow mushrooms either, but seemed to be more positive about the whole debacle than I was.

“You probably got plenty of XP from what you described, and not everything’s going to be chocoberries and conveniently close ore deposits. Just be glad you made it back safe. Maybe once we’ve upgraded some of our gear we can go back as a group and see what else is out there.”

“Maybe. What’d you slackers get up to while I was busy?”

She looked up through the transparent roof and then shrugged at me. “Still three or four hours to dark, Jack. Do you want to stop and eat something for dinner and I’ll tell you about it, or just work through and eat tonight when we head back to the cabin?”

“Wait, who says we’re working on your project all evening? As I recall we’re all caught up on trading favors. I was just helping for a little while cause I kind of liked the view.”

She arched her back again, and this time I was pretty sure it was for my benefit. She smiled when she saw that she had my attention and tsked at me. “You think this is interesting, back in the real world I used to garden in my swimsuit so I could work on my tan.”

“Well shit, I’ve been meaning to go by the XP store anyway to buy my cabin. Reckon I’m gonna have to pick you up a swimsuit while I’m there.”

She laughed at that. “The day I let a man pick out my swimsuit for me, it’ll be because they’re burying me in it. I’ll take care of my own clothes purchases thank you very much.” She paused for a second. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the shorts and bra back at the beginning, Jack.”

I waved her off. “You can’t offend me, my yummy snickerdoodle of lust. Dinner or work through is up to you.” I shrugged. “I’m good either way, but I’m probably not greenhousing tomorrow. I had a couple ideas I wanted to run down, and I’m halfway serious about trying to make a quick run to the village.”

“Still shit at naming things, Jack, but keep trying. Let’s head back to your place, I want to make up some more pipes and that’s a two person job. We can put something on to cook while we work.”

I agreed and we both put on our footwear before heading back. Debbie washed up and started shifting through the pantry while I headed out looking for pipe sized tree branches. When I had what I thought was enough I headed back, and smelled food as I swung open the door.

“What are you making?”

“Chilli. We’ve got a ton of meat and we traded for those tomatoes. I bought spices at the XP store, so this was the easiest thing I could think of to cook. At this point I’m two dinners into doing all the cooking so you better be thinking about what you’re going to wow me with for dinner tomorrow night.”

“No problem, schmoopie, I got skills in the kitchen and the bedroom.”

“Since we live in a one room cabin, aren’t they both the same thing?”

I stuck my tongue out at her and held up the limbs I’d retrieved. “You wanna get to making pipe or should we eat now?”

“It’ll take a while to cook. Let’s keep busy.”

I nodded and we headed over to the jig permanently fixed on the ground. A couple of the limbs needed a little trimming on the outside before they would feed through, but we settled into the comfortable rhythm of work we’d developed doing this in the past. Everything was almost by rote and Debbie started to fill me in on what happened in camp in the intervals where the noise of the drill would permit it.

“Helen made some real progress on the metal working.”

“I talked to her and Sam on the way in.”

“You know then. John and Jeri have plowed and planted pretty much all of the ground that was cleared, but with the speed plants grow here they’re having trouble keeping up with the weeding. They’ve also started fencing around the field. Everybody kicked in on that this afternoon and we’ve got a fairly sturdy palisade in place now. Apparently something has been coming in and raiding the crops, but we don’t know what it was yet.”

“Should we rig traps?”

“If only you had been here to help all us simpletons. John rigged some deadfalls and pit traps when he first noticed the damage. It hasn’t worked so we went with a fence.”

“Easy, snuggly-wuggly, I’m just trying to help.”

“Try and be less condensating. That’s actually the word for gaseous water transforming into a liquid by the way.”

“Okay, roger that. You sure you’re not willing to settle for Debs yet?”

“Cold day in hell, I’d rather be snuggly-wuggly. Kenny is going to spend the evening working on some wooden armor. He really does want to go hunt some spiders. In fact both Helen and Sam want in on it too. Everybody is pushing to get XP as fast as possible and people are already making shopping lists in their heads.”

The pipe was finished, we only cracked one section, and we sat down on a tree trunk to eat. I made a mental note to start work on a table and chairs before too much longer. In the meantime I kept up the conversation with Debbie.

“I want to go shopping too, so I’m not going to object.”

“Well I have a problem with it. Sure a trip to the XP store would be useful, but it burns so much time. Only 30 days remember, Jack, and we’ve already burned up a bunch of it. We can’t just halt everything anymore either. What happens to the crops and the livestock when we all go haring off to the village? Obviously we’ll have to split up, but how many can we spare to make the trip, and is it enough that they could make it there and back safely?” She shook her head at me. “It’s all so much more complicated than it looks on the surface.”

“That’s why you make the big bucks. It’s the shitty end of the stick when you’re in command. Either way you go there is a risk, and no matter which way you jump you’ll blame yourself if it comes up bad. Just keep in mind we’re all volunteers. Nobody in the free village is going to do shit you suggest if they don’t agree with it. We think for ourselves, that’s why we’re here. Use your best judgement, Debbie, that’s all anyone can ask.”

“And if I’m unsure? Do I call for volunteers? What if everyone wants to go at once? If I single people out will they be pressured to go? This leadership thing is a pain in my ass.”

“Yeah, but it’s a nice ass.”

“I’ve noticed you looking.” She handed me her empty bowl and spoon. “She who cooks does not wash. It’s an old family proverb I feel compelled to share with you. I’m going to head back to the greenhouse and install my plumbing. What are you up to after you finish with dishes?”

I grinned at her. That had been slick and I appreciated the way she’d managed me, but I made a mental note to be on my guard in the future. “Well dishes first of course.” She smiled back and repeated, ‘of course’, before I continued. “Then I’m headed up to the sawmill to bring back some lumber. It’d be nice to have real furniture. Mind if I borrow your chainsaw?”

“Sure, although while you’re at it, I’ll take any extra boards you happen to cut. That raised bed is only the first of many I’m putting into the greenhouse.”

“Surely you’re not planning on filling the entire greenhouse so soon? I thought it was built big for later expansion.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you what else happened. Sam and I cut a deal.”

“You’re helping him with that house in the mine?”

“What? No, that’s all on Sam. He’s working for me in the greenhouse every other evening. I knew you’d have your own projects and I needed some grunt labor when you’re occupied.”

“Really, how expensive was that? I work cheap but I’m guessing Sam wheedled some coffee out of you at a minimum.”

“Uggh, worse than that. The chiseler has half of my stash now, and a lifetime supply if the stuff I bought ends up growing. I’ve got orange and pineapple trees planted down the center aisle, with a space for something called breadfruit Kenny talked me into buying next time we hit the store. The tiered beds on the north side I’m splitting between tobacco, sugar cane, and coffee beans. The south side is going to be vegetables for us and an herb garden. I’ve even left some space available if I can think of another cash crop, and you could maybe plant something for yourself if you get an idea.”

“You really think you can produce all that stuff? It seems kind of ambitious.”

“No point in doing it halfway, Jack. Without an industrial base there is no economy of scale. Small scale production of high value goods is the best bet. Tobacco and coffee are outrageously priced in the XP store. I want sugar for myself and I imagine it will be easy enough to trade any surplus. Plus historically the spice traders were the first economic powerhouse, or at least that’s what John told me when I asked him for recommendations.”

“I guess he’d know, or maybe he doesn’t want competition for his farm?”

“The assholiness is peeking out, Jack. John is our friend and I trust him. Don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, it’s just the way I think. I’m headed to the sawmill. I’ll make sure and give you some wood when I get back.” I wiggled my eyebrows at the double entendre, and she gave me a peck on the cheek.

“Don’t forget to do your dishes first.” She tossed it over her shoulder as she headed back up the hill. I grinned and and pulled out my waterskin to clean up. I had planned to leave them next to the log as I walked away and accidentally forget, but she’d nipped that in the bud. I scraped the food out with a handful of dirt and then rinsed it off in a camping clean to conserve water. Until I had the plumbing up and running, I still reserved the sink for absolute necessity. I poured the rest of the water in my tanks, planning to refill the waterskin up at the keep. It might take a while to do it this way, but I didn’t look forward to the mindless drudgery of filling a tank this size by hand all in one go.

At the sawmill I ran into an unforeseen problem. It took a minimum of two people to run the mill. The main blade was a mana powered chainsaw and without a hand on the trigger to provide power, it wouldn’t run. There was no way to feed a log in through the cutting side of the mill and I cussed myself for not thinking of it before I walked all the way up here. I didn’t want to waste the trip so I settled for taking down trees and trimming them up so I could feed them through some other time.

I was busy topping one of the trees I’d dropped when I noticed I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the saw, and I didn’t see anything, but somehow it just registered there was something behind me, and I lunged to the side and cocked back the chainsaw to swing. Hunter was standing there laughing while Jeri shook her head at us both.

“What the fuck. I could have killed you, asshole.”

“Not hardly, dude. The magic chainsaws won’t cut anything but wood. You couldn’t slice a loaf of bread with one of those things, remember?”

“Yeah, but I was about to swing it hard enough to knock the piss out of something. Blunt force trauma can still ruin your day.”

“If you boys are done playing? We came up here to cut some lumber. How about you, Jack? Did you forget it takes two to run the chainsaw?”

“Actually, Jeri, I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers. I was kind of hoping somebody would show up. I’ve got a bunch of logs ready to go, ya’ll help me feed and I’ll split ‘em with you.”

They agreed and we sat to work running the mill in earnest. Everyone took turns on the saw itself because none of us had the mana capacity to run it indefinitely like Steve had. We still managed to rip through several trees worth of lumber in fairly short order. I started sliding the boards in my messenger bag, and if I had the tendency to cherry pick some of the better ones as my share I figured it was only fair as I had taken down all the trees. Jeri and Hunter stayed behind to keep turning out more when I left, apparently they’d worked some kind of deal to trade some to the others, but there was only an hour or so of light left and I had things to do.

My first stop was to unload several of the boards for Debbe back at the greenhouse.

“You’re killing me here, Jack. These are all different widths, I kind of wanted something uniform so it would look nice like the first one.”

“Well, bunny lumpkins, you can borrow my circular saw if you’d like and even them out. I’d just match the ones that are symetrical and have an avant garde kind of modern art vibe to the next set. Ask for lumber, you get lumber. I reckon next time you’ll have to give dimensions if you want something specific.”

She stepped over and kissed me. “Thanks for the boards, Jack. I guess that might have been a little picky.”

“I didn’t notice. I’m ditching this sauna and heading back to my place to work on furniture. See you when you get home.”

“Hmmmn, coming home. That has a nice sound to it, Jack.”

We kissed again briefly and I went back to my cabin. Sawdust might be an issue, but I turned on my trouble light and worked inside the cabin. The fading sunlight made it an easy decision for me. I used my router and wood glue to come up with a tongue and groove to slot the four widest boards together. While that was setting up, I used a log from the pile out front to cut a central support and nailed a couple of 2 by 6’s in a radial pattern to give it a stable base and a wider frame to put the table top on. I cut the big platform I had made into two rough squares. One got mounted on the base, and I tacked a piece of string to the center and tied the other end to my saw. A single pass and I had a round kitchen table. It would need some sanding, and I might eventually do some scroll work on the sides to make it pretty, but it was serviceable as is. I used the string trick again on the remaining half of the wide wooden platform, but offset instead of the center. I cut broad arcs into the boards giving me two sturdy wooden arches, like a two foot wide board that had been curved along the flat side of the plane.

Each of those became the seat of a bench on each side of the table. Aside from the curve I didn’t go for anything fancy. I slapped a solid piece on each end like an armrest, put a support in the middle, then took a couple of smaller green branches with plenty of flex to hook to the vertical members and make a rough looking backrest.

When I was done with that I was looking at the curved section of board I’d cut loose from the bench seats and considering trying to build a rocking chair. What I really wanted was a recliner but a rocker was probably the next best thing. I hadn’t quite made a decision when the door opened and Debbie came in.

“OOh,you built me a table, Jack. That looks kind of nice. I think I’ve got something we can use as a tablecloth in fact.”

“I was thinking about sanding it and trying to come up with something to use as stain, but a tablecloth would be a hell of a lot easier. Next up is a rocking chair I think.”

She looked around the cabin before she replied, “You don’t want to block the stove or the plumbing, and you can’t have anything in front of the ladder up into the loft. Between the bed and the dining set, where would you put a chair?”

I shrugged at her. “The loft is basically empty right now. The roof is kind of low, but we could put some chairs up there or something. Maybe more shelves because I think we’ll need more storage as we continue to accumulate stuff. I also need some kind of workshop area.”

“Sounds like maybe we need to add on. For now we could move the bed up top, use the loft for sleeping and storage, and the bottom floor as a living area. Maybe put up a leanto or something for your workshop.”

“I can probably buy an expansion once I buy access to the building. It’d be nice to buy a real shower too.”

She rubbed at the dirt on her hands and arms. “Oh hell yes. You might have just sold me on the trip back to the XP store with that idea right there. As it is I’m caked in sweat and dirt. I’m heading back up to the solar shower even though it's dark. Care to come along?”

“Need an escort through the woods?”

“I was thinking about company in the shower, actually.”

I was at the door before she finished speaking.