by Isaac Stone
“My apologies if I was out of line,” I told him. “Don’t blame Chamita for bringing us here. She was only trying to help us get back to the surface. Please understand, Lobo is dead and she’s deeply hurt.” I turned to the others with me. “Put your weapons away, we don’t want this to get out of hand.”
Slowly, the lowered their guns until the barrels were pointed at the ground.
Raja Dagna kept his sword up and spoke a few words in a language that sounded like the squeaks of a bat. I would find out later their language was spoken in high tones. It was in the ultrasonic range and that made it difficult for the surface dwellers to hear.
The other deritar relaxed and lowered their weapons too. For the moment, the tension level dropped a few degrees.
“Her pet wolf is dead?” Raja Dagna asked me. “How did it happen?” He lowered his sword.
“Chamita tried to help us escape from some men with guns,” I tried to explain. “Lobo was killed when he ran from them. He was caught in the crossfire and died instantly. It’s left a mark on her.”
He turned to Chamita. “Is this true, child?” Although short, he was still a few inches taller than her.
The tears began again and I stood motionless as she wrapped her arms around the leader of this band of cave dwellers and cried. The sobbing went on for a good five minutes. He tried to comfort her, but, although in English, I couldn’t understand a word of what he said from my distance.
Once again, I was confounded by the image of a woman who could kill men without issue and yet cried over the loss of her wolf companion. This VR world was as confusing as the real one.
Finally, she let go of him, walked over to me and put one arm around me. Chamita leaned her head on my chest and didn’t say a word. I wondered how this would play out.
“You may come with us, but you will have to leave your weapons behind,” Raja Dagna told us. “There is a way to the surface from the nearest settlement and we will show it to you. However, we cannot risk guns brought into our country. This is our law.” He waited to see my response.
I had to trust them. Regardless my feelings, I’d rolled for opposition and hit a stalemate. The only way to break it was to do as he said and leave our weapons behind. Yes, this would lower my stat points and the ones for the team, but I didn’t see another option.
I took my automatic out of my jacket and handed it to him, after I’d removed the ammunition. “I cannot touch this weapon,” he explained to me. “It is against our laws to have contact with a weapon that leaves the one who wields it.” Which I assumed to mean they didn’t use javelins or archery either. Works in progress she said.
I placed the gun behind a rock. “Everyone, place your guns behind this rock,” I instructed my team. “Make sure you unload them first. That includes any guns you have hidden. Do it now, I want to reach the surface as soon as possible.”
Howard glared at me and unloaded his carbine as he put it away. Lester started to mumble something about all of us dying, but one look from Bonnie shut him up. He detached the drum from the Tommy gun and put them in separate locations. Bonnie did the same with her pistol.
“What happens to our guns, Raja Dagna?” I asked him. It concerned me.
“We will see that you have them back when you return to the surface,” he told me. “But they cannot enter our territory. This is the law of Berunda!”
When he uttered the name, all of the other deritari slammed their spread shafts together and chanted “Berunda!” together. I knew better than to ask what it meant.
“You may call me Dagna,” he told me. “What shall I call you?”
“Vince,” I told him. He didn’t ask for anyone else’s name for some reason.
“We shall leave for the nearest settlement,” he told me. “You and Chamita will stand to either side of me, you on the right. You friends will follow and my people will be behind them. My people know the order of the march, so there is no reason to explain it to them.”
14
“You are going to ask us how it is that I speak English,” Dagna said to me as we continued to march in the darkness. We’d turned a corner and entered a side tunnel that took us away from the river.
“It did occur to me,” responded to him, my face forward. I didn’t look him in the face as I’d deduced it was an insult.
“Many of us speak English,” he told me. “It’s useful to know when we have to go to the surface for whatever reason. We don’t do it very often, but sometimes there are supplies we can’t get that you have in abundance up there.” We continued to march.
“You next question will be how long we’ve lived in the caves,” he continued. “I will answer by saying that we do not know. Our traditions don’t go back that far. We have always lived underground and we always shall live underground. The sunlight hurts our eyes and we know how the surface people treat anyone who looks different. We are so different as to risk slaughter.”
We marched for another hour in silence. The few times I glanced back, I saw the other deritar hand signal to each other. As I guessed, they didn’t use sound while on a hunt or campaign. I had no concept of their social structure and it didn’t concern me. I wanted to get the team to the surface and end this game.
“She’s chosen you,” Dagna spoke to me about an hour later. “You do know that, don’t you?”
“What?” I said and turned to look at Chamita on his other side. She flashed her brown eyes at me. Oh, dear God, this game was headed off the rails.
“I’ve known her ever since she was found the caverns,” he told me. “Are you married? You surface people only take one wife, correct?” I was stunned.
“Yes, no,” I said, confused and ready to end the game. “No, I’m not married.” I cursed the hunky body they’d slapped me into for the game.
“It’s not a problem,” he told me. “I can do the ceremony when we reach the settlement.”
This was too much. Not only did I have a wolf girl in love with me, but we had to get out of the caverns to end the game. Somewhere in the real world, the VR crew was laughing their heads off. I needed to get this thing over before a virtual wedding night was broadcast to the planet.
My salvation came in the way of a deritar runner who appeared in front of us. He spotted Dagna and the column. Seconds later, Dagna ordered a halt and the runner was babbling something to him in their language. Dagna spoke a few words to him and the runner took off the way he’d come.
“You’ll have to do it when you get up there,” he told me. “There is a problem I need to take care of right away. Good for you we are almost to the surface entrance and you can leave. However, the runner told me he has word your bad men are guarding the tunnel exit at the surface.”
“How will we be able to escape if those thugs are up there?” I asked him. With no guns, it will be a slaughter.”
“You weapons were hidden close to the surface. Chamita knows where they are, it’s a hiding place we often use. We’ll see you off at the entrance.”
We reached the surface exit a few minutes later. The deritar formed a semicircle around us as their leader said his farewells. I looked at it and had a thought.
“This isn’t the one on the map,” I said to Dagna. “It’s closer. The one on the map was on the other side of your settlement. We haven’t reached it yet.”
“There are many ways to the surface you don’t know about,” he told me. “It’s good not all are known. I fear we may have to abandon this one, as the men who want to kill you know about it and expect you to leave. You are welcome to come to the settlement and wait it out. Eventually they will leave.”
I couldn’t sit around and wait for it to happen, if it ever did. “I thank you for the offer, but we need to get up there quick.”
He turned again to Chamita. “Is it your desire to leave with this man?” he asked her.
“Yes, Raja Dagna,” she beamed. He took her hand in one of his.
“And it is your desire this woman leave with you?” he ask
ed me as he took one of my hands.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I can’t leave her down here. If she wants to chance it against those bootleggers, we can use her.” I don’t think I understood what he was asking.
“I will do the quick version,” he sighed.
He placed both of our hands together. “It is done,” Dagna pronounced. “You are joined.”
“What a minute,” I said. “What did I just agree to?”
“I think it was obvious,” he told me. “Now take good care of Chamita and see that she’ll come back to visit us. You will always be welcome with her.”
Damn these game designers, they had a good laugh on my account! “I think she can handle herself,” I said to Dagna. “I’ve seen her in action.”
“She doesn’t know her limitations,” he told me. “You must teach her many things.” He turned with the rest of his band and marched into the darkness.
“Congratulations would be in order,” Howard said to me, “but it can wait till we get past those thugs up there.” He stared up the tunnel. Faint light shone down it from the surface.
“Ice cream and cake will wait till later,” Bonnie said. “Too bad I didn’t get to be a maid of honor. Always wanted to be one. You ever the best man, Lester?”
“No!” he snapped.
“We need to get up there,” I told them. “I don’t look forward to this.”
“As long as I with you,” Chamita said to me as she placed her arm around me again. Seriously, I needed to have that talk with the game designers. Right away, dammit!
It wasn’t a long walk to the surface. Most of the time we had to crawl over rock formations or fallen slag. I wondered how the cave dwellers dealt with intrusions from the surface because there was no door or gate at the cavern entrance. The glowing fungus was less predominant the further up you went as it didn’t seem to thrive in the sunlight. The higher we climbed, the more sunlight entered the tunnel.
As with everything else, the tunnel appeared to be natural. As we were deep in the mountains, I assumed it was because of the geological activity in the area. Or it could be another trick the game designers decided to play. I wondered if that settlement existed at all, or was it part of the work in progress. It was hard to tell. Everything felt so damn real it was hard to tell the difference. Even the rocks felt firm and sharp under my hands. The musty underground smell dissipated the closer we went to the surface. I could see the trail made by the constant traffic of people to and from the caverns.
What had Raja Dagna meant by the supplies they needed to get from the surface? I wanted to have a talk with the game designers about that too. I’m sure they had them all worked in with stories of ghouls and ghosts who roamed the night.
Although she was lighter and more nimble than me, Chamita stayed behind me as we climbed. Every time we stopped to rest, she was certain to be next to me. It was a little embarrassing. The rest of team found this pretty funny and cracked jokes about it constantly.
“You have the honeymoon planned?” Howard had to ask me at some point.
“Just knock it off, will you?” I said to him. “It’s not like that was binding….” I shut my mouth when Chamita turned around and starred at me directly in the face.
I asked for her to go ahead and see how far we had to go. When she sprang off, I had the chance to talk to the rest of the team.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t believe in shotgun marriages. I don’t know what happened down there, but it’s not valid on the surface.”
“She’s pregnant all ready?” Bonnie asked. “That was quick.”
“Okay, enough with the humor!” I said. “My intent is to get everyone to safety and get the hell out of here once we divide up the treasure.”
“Which brings up another issue,” Lester spoke.
“Technically, that treasure belongs to Chamita since she’s the only survivor of the Wellington family. Before you act like a cad and toss her to the curb, you might want to keep it in mind. As her husband, you are entitled to half. I’ll take your share if you don’t want it.”
I opened my mouth and almost said something out of character. Before I could, Chamita reappeared, thus preventing a continuity issue and, possibly, ending the game.
“Bad men there,” she told us. “Need guns. Follow.” She scampered fifty yards up the tunnel and we followed her.
It didn’t take long for Chamita to find the hidden cache the cave dwellers used as a stash site. I pulled out the book while she uncovered it and looked up the map on this section. There was no game cache listed here, which meant I wasn’t supposed to discover anything. Once again, I surmised the game designers adapted the game to fit the situation. I never did figure out how the cave dwellers got our weapons up there unnoticed. Perhaps it was a bug in the game they planned to smooth out later.
A few minutes after Chamita had our guns out; we were armed again and ready to go into action. The change was profound with Lester who went from a haggard college kid to a gunslinger when he picked up the Tommy gun and slapped on the ammo drum. We gathered around and faced the tunnel as it rose to the surface.
“So what does it look like up there, Chamita,” I asked her. “What do we have in store for us?”
“This many bad men,” Chamita said while she held up her spread right hand. By this, I assumed she meant five armed men at the exit.
“Is there a door?” I asked her.
“Yes. Open. They on other side.”
As we made our way up, it occurred to me that Raja Dagna might be the man Chamita mentioned who took care of her. I had a vision of a small child who survived the death of her parents and wondered down into the underground to be discovered by the deritar cave dwellers. It was consistent with every other crazy thing about this game. I made a mental note to ask her about him later. Providing we survived the attack at the exit.
I considered pulling out the watch to confer with the VR crew. All I needed to do was get these people with the treasure to safety and then I was out of the game with my bonus. A lot of damn good it would do me to reach the exit and be blown apart by the bootleggers. Good-bye bonus and hello smart-ass Rhonda. But I left it in my vest. I would handle this one myself and deal with the consequences.
“She’s not going to be much good with that spear against the guns they have on the other side,” Howard told me when we saw the open door. It wasn’t that large, no more than six feet high and two feet wide, easy to conceal when not in use.
“She did pretty well in the forest when Thermon was ready to kill us,” I told him.
“No light and she had the element of surprise. It’s mid-day out there from the way the light looks and they are waiting for us.”
I called Chamita over to me. “Listen, Chamita,” I told her. “It’s going to be very bad soon and I don’t want you hurt. Stay behind us and wait until the shooting stops before you go through the door. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Vince,” she told me. A second later, Chamita made a thrust in the air with her spear and bounced ahead of us to the door.
“She understands,” Howard mentioned, “but she’ll do whatever she wants.”
“You and Howard need to know something,” Bonnie spoke up as she checked her revolver. “Lester and I are getting married. We’ll go to the judge the first place we stop once we get out of here.”
Events were out of control. I thought about consulting the logbook and decided against it.
Howard slid up to me as we faced the door. “You know,” he said, “my wives were of two types. They either wanted to put four quarters on the spit every day or sit home and sew. I reckon you have a combination of both in Chamita.”
The last thing I needed was to be given love advice by a program about another program. If you looked at it, we were in a big game that could pull me out at any minute. All I needed to do was charge that door in one blaze of glory and I’d be back in suck city. Or I could think this thing out and get the bonus.
I decided on o
ption number two.
The bootleggers weren’t visible from the doorway. The opening created a problem, as it was a choke point. I knew they waited for us up there, but they didn’t know when we would be coming out. I guessed this was a precaution on the part of the mob boss to make sure we weren’t coming out. As far as he knew, we died in the cave collapse. But he knew about the treasure and wanted it. Therefore, it made sense to stake out the entrance in the remote possibility we would emerge. I didn’t know how the bootleggers knew about the door to the caverns; it didn’t matter.
We, however, had the element of surprise. I suspected the thugs up there were wasting time or bored. If I could strike before they knew it, we would escape before they could respond.
“I wish I had a grenade,” I said to Howard. “Or something explosive I could toss out that door. Even if we didn’t hit them with it, it would cause a distraction.”
“We need to get them to come in here,” Howard mentioned. “Then we can take them out.”
I knew what I had to do.
“Howard,” I told him, “give me your shotgun, I’ll hand you my 1911. I’ll get on the ground and yell. When the come in to investigate, I’ll open fire. Chamita is up there next to the door. She has her spear and can stick them if I don’t shoot them. This has to work. Cover me.”
I turned to Bonnie and Lester. “You two get on either side of the tunnel and down the ground. You want to be as small a target as possible.”
They moved into position. Howard nodded and exchanged guns with me.
There was one more thing I had to do. It would be consistent with the game. When in Rome.
“I want you three to know,” I said. “I am entitled to half of that treasure since Chamita and I am married. But I don’t want it. You three can have it. She’s the only treasure I need.”
There. It was said and didn’t sound too corny.