Goodie looked at him askew, “Really?”

“What?”

“You’re really going to do a smug strut because of that? You do know that those were the runts, right? That the deeper we go in, the more ferocious they’re gonna get?”

“Yes, I know that. I’m not ignorant.” Alpha replied, indignant at having his parade of self-worship rained on.

“The creatures inhabiting the deeper layers of this place are there because they’re mean enough to keep their position,” Goodie continued, trying to turn the downpour into a monsoon. “They’re not there because of some system of steady progression, they’re there because they spend every day of their lives fighting and killing each other for dominance, they’re there because they have the power to keep their competition at bay. Competition, I might add, that would have to be near or equal in power to just be able to reach them to begin with, let alone able offer a challenge to them of any sort. Said creatures that we will have if you want to get to any of the treasures that may… but probably don’t…exist in this ever-changing labyrinth that you’ve brought us into.”

Brought us into, he thought. It was something he had learnt from the internet, that by laying the blame for the decisions and actions solely on Alpha, he painted a mental target for everyone else to focus on when tempers began to run high. And by referring to himself and the rest of the group as ‘us’, he placed them all in the same tribe, allowing him to exploit everyone’s baser social instincts, the ‘us versus them’ mentality, that tribal instinct to protect the pack from all the ruination of all that was other.

Of course, Goodie knew he was being confrontational in doing so, contradicting his earlier desire to not give people a reason to focus on him. The last thing he ever wanted to do was cause himself to become the centre of attention, especially with the shit storm that he knew would eventually come down on them, but with the ease of their first encounter and the discovery of the band of idiots possession of at least some basic skills in combat, he knew that this group was going to drag him far too deep into the Burrows for him to have any hope of escaping without exposing himself to significant risk in doing so. So, his only recourse was to whittle them down by questioning and criticising everything in hopes that he would cause them to succumb to infighting much sooner. Even if he could work his way free from the bitch’s control, he did not want to have to spend hours making his way back to the surface.

He knew that if he confronted a group of those rabbit things on his own, he could use Her Majesty to deal with them, but there was a huge difference between knowing something and being certain of it and he was far from certain about what might happen. He was not the type of person to be certain about anything, really, having long considered the word synonymous with arrogance and stupidity and having had a life that never missed a chance to point out that despite his ‘above average’ intelligence, he was still an idiot.

Alpha was too arrogant, too sure of himself to second guess his decisions, but if Goodie could somehow trigger the survival instincts of the rest of the group, get them to start questioning their leader’s grand plan, then he would have a glimmer of hope of getting out of this stupidity alive.

“I know all that, AND there ARE treasures here, ones we can get to with little risk.”

He knew?

“You know this how, exactly?” Goodie enquired.

“Because weeeee…have a map.”

Gods, he thought. Goodie wondered just how much was this fool was infatuated with himself?

His eyes were drawn to the side as the Alpha-Bitch began rummaging around her backpack; a moment later she withdrew what he assumed was ‘the map’ and handed it to Alpha-Butch, who unfolded it before turning it over and showing it to him.

Instead of the map, he looked alpha in the eyes and asked in his most condescending tone “You recall me saying ever-changing, right? It was just a second ago.”

Alpha visibly clenched his jaw. “Those changes are supposed to take decades and the guy that we got this from only stopped using this a couple of years ago, so it should still be good.”

Goodie was about to point out several problems with the boy’s assumptions, but he did not know how far he was supposed to be pushing the guy; The video he had watched had said that sabotage should be slow and gradual as to not only lower the chance of the others around him becoming aware of his intent but also so that the erosion of trust that he was trying to instil in them would pass from the conscious mind into the subconscious mind. Though, for the life of him, he could not say why. It was not because he did not understand, though, if he had bothered to listen to the whole lecture…well, he probably still would not have understood, but the video just got so wordy at that point that he zoned out and switched to one about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Now that had been a far more informative video in his opinion, in fact, were it not for the threat of capital punishment, he would have spent his first year here skinning rabbits and farming fish like a madman. Well, he thought, not these mutant freaks, though he could skin them if he wanted to, but…blegh, no.

Still, he did not think it was right to suddenly switch from being antagonistic to being positive, not that he really knew how to be. So, instead of backpedalling, he ducked his head down to stare at ‘the map’, a ratty piece of parchment that looked like it had been inked with sewage and stored in someone’s arse crack for the better part of a decade. It was far from complete, but the parts of the Burrows that were drawn in seemed comprehensive. The complexity of the fine line-work and detailed drawings, making Goodie’s eyes water as he tried to take them all in at once.

He sniffed. Not for any particular reason, mind you, he just did. “Hmmm…and how much did you pay for this map of yours?”

A huge grin plastered itself across Alpha’s face before he replied.

“Absolutely nothing, Jennifer happened to be a relative of the guy we got it from and he gave it to us for free after she told him what happened after his disappearance from earth.”

Goodie looked at ‘Jennifer’, or as he called her ‘Alpha-Bitch’, as she stood to the side with a smug look on her face. He was somewhat confused as he was not sure of her reasons for doing so, being related to someone was not an intentional thing, so what why the hell was her nose so high in the air? Whatever, it was not important.

“What he told us is that this place sometimes remembers people…or their death at least. And over here…,” alpha pointed at one of the many red Xs on the map, “…right here, is a spawned corpse.”

“And on that spawned corpse is not only a magic ring, but a magic dagger.”

Magic items, just lying about, yeah, Goodie was sure that this lot would stumble upon mountains of loot as they wandered…actually…he was being sarcastic before, but knowing the universe…universes, these arseholes, the alpha arseholes at least, would be able to just waltz through this place and come out with pockets full of treasure. That was how it always was. Life bent over for the pretty people, while people like him bent over for life.

Alpha seemed to sense Goodie’s doubt as he responded before he could say anything. Though what Goodie wanted to say to the man-boy was not a question, but a few impolite words. More than a few, really. Actually, quite a lot. One could even go so far as to say a shit load.

“No, no, it’s out of the way…I mean, okay, that’s still no guarantee, but the guy used to make a living farming the Burrows and he said that people rarely go off the beaten track when they raid this place, so the chances of us finding something are high. And even this one’s a bust, there are all the others, so we’re bound to find something.”

As the idiot spoke, he looked round, directing his words to everyone in the group, his optimism practically radiating off of him as he talked. Goodie saw some of the faces around him perk up, the promise of hope blinding them to the reality of their situation which did not serve his aims in the slightest. So, Goodie reminded them.

“So, you’re still going to be keeping me as a slave?”

The emotional one-eighty Alpha exhibited as he heard the question was almost cartoonish enough that Goodie would not have been surprised if jets of steam suddenly burst from guy’s ears, but that was not important. What was important was that the people around him looked as if they suddenly remembered how full of shit the guy was.

“Dude, seriously? Why are you being such a dick?!” Alpha whined.

Alpha’s tone spoke of absolute confusion, as if the idiot had no clue as to what he could have done to antagonise Goodie. From his years of experience with similar arseholes, he had little doubt that the douche did think of himself as innocent in the matter or at the very least that his actions were justifiable if he even acknowledged some wrongdoing on his part. The mindset of these entitled dipshits never ceased to amaze him, how they could do anything they wanted with no thought of consequence or repercussion. It infuriated him even more that such thinking would rarely be proven wrong

Goodie threw a thumb towards his neck.

“You are my captor,” he declared, remembering to use the singular form of the word as to not antagonise the rest of the group; Locking his eyes onto the boy before him, he tried to express to the rest of the people around him through his body language that he held Alpha solely responsible for everything that had occurred. He did not, of course, entirely blame the guy. He may have been the leader, but it was the support or inaction of the followers that ultimately put the collar around his neck.

Goodie looked at alpha right in the eyes as he continued, “you are threatening my life, forcing me into a dangerous situation against my will under threat of death and you actually have the gall to wonder why I’m so reluctant to help you? While I cannot prevent you from forcing me to help you, I will certainly not be offering you anything beyond the minimum of effort.”

We had to get you to help us, you didn’t leave us any choice.” Alpha replied. Once again diverting the blame from himself “…and, anyhow, we’re going to give a share of the loot!

Now that truly pissed Goodie off.

“I am not a whore,” he shouted, I do not want anything you have to offer, I do not want anything that you might gain on this venture, I only want my freedom, the freedom you stole from me when you placed these bombs on my neck, the freedom you took when you threatened my life with their activation.”

“Okay, okay. Jesus. Look, I know what we did wasn’t cool…”

Cool, Goodie thought. Not bad, not wrong, just not cool. More elitist mind-set. Thankfully, however, the idiot said we…what we did. He had little doubt that some among the watching crowd would be mentally correcting it that ‘we’ to ‘you’. They were not necessarily allying themselves with him, but having them separating themselves from Alpha was in some ways better. As unlikely as it was, if they were to visibly rally behind him, the leaders of this cluster-fuck in the making might just opt for some form of beat down or worse to re-establish their dominance. And he knew that would not get far with a pair of broken legs. An obvious realisation to some, but he had the misfortune to be speaking from experience.

But he did not want to dwell on the that, thankfully the idiot started talking again.

If Alpha had any clue as to what Goodie was trying to do, he made no sign of it as he continued talking. “Eric said that your abilities made you the best type of scout…” Eric’s fault now, Goodie noted, more passing the buck from the ever innocent, “…the best way to guide us through this place without having to go through every freak and their mother. We’re not looking to fight and we’re certainly not going to force you to fight for us. We just need you to help us bypass all the monsters, then we can just grab the loot then get the hell out of here.”

“Well, according to your map there, the nearest X is about four days away. You do realise that the waggon-train will leave without us come sunup?” Even with the time dilation in effect, we’d have at most three days to get everything done”

“Yes…,” Alpha squeezed out between his gritted teeth, “but what we found out is that that slow time effect is magnified when the moon is full and you know tonight’s moon is?

Goodie Rolled his eyes, an action that did not go unnoticed. He hated it when people asked questions like that; the answer was obvious, so why ask it. “The waxing crescent,” he replied.

“What?” alpha asked with a confused look. “No…it’s the full moon.”

The look on Alpha’s face as he corrected him made it plain to see that the snark had gone completely over the idiot’s head and that he believed there was something mentally wrong with Goodie for being unable to answer correctly, as if ‘he’ was the idiot.

“…it’ll increase the slow effect by more than ten times what it already does, so we have three months to do whatever want, but we won’t even need a week because we have you to help guide us.”

“A month.”

“What?”

“Three times ten is thirty, that’s a month, even by the local calendar.”

“I meant that. Whatever, look the point…”

“No, not whatever. You’ve dragged everyone down here with nothing but hope and a poorly thought out plan. As far as I can see, triggering this collar around my neck would be a lot quicker and far less painful than being mauled to death by a bunch of fucking rabbits.”

Alpha looked like he was about to scream, but the Geezer that had been keeping himself in the background stepped forward, “Okay, okay now, let’s everyone just calm down.”

Goodie wondered why he had not stepped in earlier. He had thought the guy was the real leader of the group. But so far, he had done nothing to direct or even casually influence the group and, in his experience, adults rarely let a child lead them unless they were somehow related. Even then

Ignoring the old man, Alpha was once again about to yell something when Goodie cut him off.

“And what about the undead?”

It was actually a legitimate question, not just him being confrontational. Many had been lost in and to the Burrows, so there were bound to a few zombies here and there and Goodie still feared that thing that he had encountered in the dust storm, the memory of it causing not just him but also Diane to lose more than a few nights of sleep. Even now, a part of his brain was convinced that the thing had only been toying with him and Diane and as soon as they let down their guard, as soon as they started to recover from that trauma, it would walk out of the shadows and tear the two of them apart, limb from limb.

Alpha obviously took it another way, though. The last thing Goodie saw was the boy’s fist flying towards his face, the impact feeling like a brick slamming into his nose. He fell to the ground and slipped into unconsciousness.

The sound of arguing sending him off to sleep. He did not recognise the voices, but some of the people around him had started arguing and swearing with their illustrious leader.

Were it not for the pain and his immediate blackout, he would have smiled.