How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book One

by V. Moody

  Flossie took my pause for thought as an opportunity to step in. She jumped in front of Claire with her arms spread out, like a referee stopping a boxing match.

  “Alright, that’s enough. We got things to do, can’t be chatting all day. Ah get what you’re saying, Colin. We just got to be careful. Even back home, there’s some places you don’t go at night by yourself. Same thing, right? Right, Claire?”

  “Sure,” said Claire. “Whatever.” She turned to Maurice and Dudley, both of whom looked terrified by the thought they might be asked to share their thoughts on the matter. “I just want you two to know I don’t think you’d do anything like that. I think you’re both really great guys.” Then she turned back to me. “You, I’m not so sure about.”

  Even though she was just being spiteful and didn’t really mean it (I hope), it still stung to hear her say that. She flinched a little. I think she could see she had hurt me and perhaps she thought she had gone too far. Or maybe I was just imagining it.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, rather more viciously than I intended. “I won’t lay a finger on you. Ever.”

  The flash of pain in her eyes told me I had scored a direct hit, and I immediately regretted what I said, or at least the way I had put it.

  “In any case,” I continued, trying to dig my way out of the hole I’d jumped into, “I’m pretty sure the only way I’ll get laid in this place is if one of those douchebags sticks me on their dick and uses me as a condom.”

  There was a moment of silence and then Maurice burst out laughing, followed by the others, including Claire. I’m not sure it was that funny a joke, but the tension needed to be broken and apparently the idea of me being sexually assaulted was something everyone could have a good laugh about.

  20. Kill The Wabbit

  We finally worked our way around the wheatfield and reached the other side. A fallow green field on a gentle slope led to the top of a low hill, beyond which there was a huge open area of grass, completely flat and disappearing into the distance in all directions.

  The country was called Flatland, and I guessed this was why.

  And everywhere you looked there were rabbits. Hundreds of them.

  They didn’t look exactly like the rabbits back home. They were about the same size—brown, black and a few white ones—with long, floppy ears, but they had elongated faces, and instead of a pom-pom tuft, a pinkish stub for a tail. They didn’t hop, either. More scurried about.

  “Aw!” said Flossie. She walked up to the nearest one and picked it up.

  She picked it up! I was stunned. If it was going to be this easy we’d have five daggers each by sundown.

  Of course, it was not going to be that easy.

  The rabbit turned it’s fluffy face to look at Flossie and then snarled at her, revealing not a cute Bugs Bunny overbite, but dozens of triangular fangs. I swear I heard the Jaw’s theme start to play.

  Flossie screamed and threw the rabbit. She didn’t just drop it, she launched it. It flew through the air, the first of it’s kind to go airborne I’d be willing to bet. It landed on the grass with a ‘flump’ sound, rolled a couple of times, shook its head and scurried off.

  After that, the other rabbits were wary of us and every time we took a step towards one it took a step further away. No matter, we had come prepared with weapons and we had picked up plenty of pebbles on the way. The time had come to see if we had what it took to defeat the rabbits of Flatland.

  Short answer: no.

  We quickly realised a few things. First, we had to spread out. A couple of near-misses (not the rabbits, each other) made it clear we were more of a danger to ourselves than to the rabbits. It also helped if we were sort of opposite each other so if one person’s shots drove the rabbits away, it would be towards someone else. Although, directly opposite wasn’t a good idea either.

  The other thing that became readily apparent was that aiming at a living things was very different to aiming at a wooden post. Not just because they moved—the rabbits sort of ambled about but mainly stayed in the same place unless we got too close—but because the idea of snuffing out their existence made your heart hammer in your chest and sweat break out all over your body.

  Still, we all gave it a go, sending stones whizzing across the meadow, hitting nothing but air and turf. All except for Claire. She just stood there with one arm hanging down, the other hand holding onto her elbow. I don’t think she was refusing to try, I think it was more that she was paralysed by indecision and couldn’t bring herself to get on with it, even though she was probably telling herself to do just that.

  She looked miserable. And it was pissing me off.

  “What?” She had caught me staring at her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “What I said back in town, about nobody having to do anything they don’t want to, I meant it. This isn’t a democracy, you don’t have to follow the majority vote. Nobody’s going to bully you to go along. If you agree to do something, do it. If you don’t, don’t”

  “And that’s fine, is it?” she said, angry as ever.

  “If you’re happy with being a burden on others, then yes.” I nodded towards the others as they groaned and yelled at every near and not so near miss. “They won’t turn their backs on you or kick you out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And what about you?”

  “Same as you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, neither do I. If I don’t think it’s worth staying with you guys, I’ll leave. I don’t want to waste my days arguing over every little thing and carrying people who don’t even want to try.”

  Claire’s mouth shrunk into her face. Her body trembled and I thought she might start crying. But she lowered herself to her knees and picked out some stones from the grass. She stood up again and loaded her sling, spun it and then whipped it down. Before the stone had even landed, she had reloaded and fired off another one. Then another, and another.

  She wasn’t aiming—most of the time she was staring at me—but they came out fast and low, peppering the ground around the rabbits, sending them scurrying off.

  When her hand was empty, she got down on her knees again and collected more stones. She got up and started firing again. Tears streaked down her face, but she kept at it, getting faster and faster.

  Did I feel like a shit? Yes. Was I going to tell her to stop, that it was okay, she didn’t have to do it? No. If blackmail was the way to get her head in the game, so be it.

  And then she hit one. Right in the side. It seemed to jump sideways and then fell over.

  Claire dropped her sling and put both hands over her mouth, horrified. The others saw and cheered, thinking she’d be as delighted as them. I walked over to the body of the victim. It had brown fur apart from a black hole where the stone had hit it. As I reached down, it suddenly got back up, shook it’s whole body, and scampered away.

  There wasn’t any blood. It wasn’t a wound, just a bruise. Claire’s gasp turned into sobbing and Flossie rushed over to console her, probably thinking she was upset to have failed, whereas it was probably more likely relief. But she had pushed herself to do what she knew had to be done, and after she recovered from the shock of hitting something, she was able to try again.

  She would occasionally look over at me as she sent her shots across the meadow, but the expression was not so much resentment at what I was forcing her to do, as it was determination to prove me wrong. That she didn’t need to be carried, by me or the others.

  It took a couple more hours before we finally bagged our first rabbit. The person who go it was, of course, Flossie. Still by far the worst of us, she managed to hit it right in the eye. A shot I’m a hundred percent certain she would never be able to make again. Why? Because the rabbit she had aimed at was a fat, black one about five metres in front of her. The one she hit was about twenty metres directly behind her.

  I decided we should call it a day after that. The sun was fairly low in the sky but we had plenty of light. More of an
issue was that we hadn’t brought any water with us, and it had been a warm afternoon. The others were happy to head back.

  Dudley picked up our prize and held it up by its hind legs while the others tentatively took a closer look. Even Claire had come to accept this as something we had to get used to.

  As we set off, I looked over my shoulder at the sun falling towards the horizon and got a strange prickly feeling on the back of my neck. It took me a few moments to understand the cause of it. The sun was setting in the east.

  21. May I Take Your Coat?

  As soon as we got back to Probet, we headed for the tanner’s store, proudly carrying our one rabbit like it was a great accomplishment. Which it was for us, so not surprisingly we felt a little pleased with ourselves.

  The tanner soon brought us back to earth.

  “We don’t take the whole thing, just the skin.” He was outside his shop, slicing up a stiff looking piece of leather that had come from some huge animal.

  “How do we skin it?” Maurice asked. The fact someone spoke other than me was an indication of how far we’d come. At this rate, we’d hit normal in a couple of months.

  The tanner paused long enough to give us a disparaging look, then continued with cutting the leather with an incredibly sharp pair of shears.

  “If you show us how to skin this one,” I said, “you can have the skin for free.” It seemed a fair trade. We wouldn’t get any money (although I’m not sure we’d be able to buy a whole lot with one chob), but we’d have learned a new skill, and that was much more important in an RPG. Yes, I still felt this was a game.

  The tanner, like merchants everywhere, was hardwired to never turn down a good deal. He leaned back and called out. “Miri, come her a moment.”

  One of the girls from the back of the shop came running out. She was small and looked to be in her early teens. Her brown hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, revealing a serious face. His daughter, his assistant, his wife—hard to say. Maybe all three.

  “Miri, show these visitors how to skin a rabbit.”

  A glimmer of irritation passed across the girl’s face, but she nodded. She wiped her hands on the front of her pinny and snatched the rabbit from Dudley. She stomped around the side of the shop without saying anything.

  We followed her to the back where large wooden tubs of foul smelling liquid bubbled and steamed. The other girl had a long pole in her hands and was using it to stir the contents of each tub.

  Miri kneeled down on a patch of dirt and lay the rabbit down. She took a knife out of the front pocket of the pinny.

  With two deft slices she cut the rabbit across the middle and from neck to crotch. Then she peeled back the skin and pulled it off like she was taking a baby out of a babygrow. A dead baby out of babygrow stuck to its skin, only much more gut-churning.

  Her movements were sharp and forceful, but the skin came away in one piece, only the loud tearing sound indicated it was actually attached to the rabbit.

  We all watched open-mouthed. It was disgusting and impressive at the same time. She did it so smoothly and quickly it looked easy, but I expected we’d find it anything but when we tried to do it ourselves.

  She threw the the skin into one of the tubs and handed me the pink carcass. It was hard not to think of it as something out of a horror movie. Bunny Hunter. “This killer doesn’t just take your life, he takes your skin!” But that was just my soft middle-class sensibilities. This was food. At least, I hoped it was.

  I took it from her, forcing myself not to react to the revulsion welling up inside me as I felt slippery smoothness of the flesh in my hand. “Can we eat this?”

  She made a face that could have been disapproval, or just annoyance that we were taking up so much of her time. To be honest, with its long snout and pink tail, the rabbit looked more like a large, long-eared rat. It’s not surprising there’d be a similarity, since rabbits are rodents, but still, not the most appetising thought.

  “If you want. You have to gut and clean it first.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  She gave me the same look Kizwat had when I asked him which way was east. But she took the rabbit back and put it on the ground. She stabbed it in the chest and dragged her knife through the body. Then she pulled the incision apart, cracking bones as she opened it up to reveal the innards. Bunny Hunter 2. “This time he wants what’s inside!”

  She flipped it over and everything fell out in a big red mess. She used her knife to scoop out the last of it, slicing off the attached parts. The smell of blood and shit cut through the already acrid air.

  Miri handed me the rabbit. “Wash it properly. Anything else?” She said it in a tone that suggested the answer should be, “No.”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you.”

  We all felt a bit queasy after seeing the rabbit peeled and gutted like that, but I assumed we would eventually get used to it. We left her to her work and set off back to the shed. We still hadn’t made any money, but we had dinner sorted.

  22. A Gift From Prometheus

  It was evening and the light had started to fade by the time we returned to the shed. Captain Grayson was sitting on the edge of his desk with a stack of grey blankets next to him.

  “Welcome back,” he said. “I see you’ve been…” His voiced trailed off as he saw the rabbit and he pulled a strange face I couldn’t quite place. “Here, you’ll need these. It gets a little chilly at night.”

  He handed each of us a blanket. They weren’t very big, about the size of a towel—more shawl, than cloak—made of a scratchy, wiry material. We happily took them from him.

  “Do you have anything we can use to carry water?” I asked him.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and then jumped off the desk. He walked over to a wall that had a large cloth hanging over it, which turned out to be curtains. He parted them enough to reach in and pulled out another box. This one had a bunch of water skins in it.

  I felt a bit irked that he hadn’t told us about them before, but it seemed like it was kind of a test to only give us certain things when we asked for them. It made me realise we should have been asking a lot more questions. I tried to think of what else we might need and came up with a complete blank.

  There were a couple of soldiers waiting by the exit to the courtyard with a bucket of stew. They slopped out a ladleful into a metal dish and handed it to us as we walked out. It looked like the same stuff we had for lunch, but at least we could add some rabbit to it now.

  Two of the other groups had already returned and set up for the night. On the right, the cool kids had a decent-sized fire going, and they had what looked like chickens roasting on a spit.

  On the left side, Golden Boy and company had gone one better. They had a whole pig over a roaring inferno. Their fire was huge, and the pig, some kind of boar judging by the tusks, was already a golden brown.

  Members of both groups had water skins at their feet or hanging from belts, most of them bigger and in better condition than the ones we got. Apparently they were a lot quicker on the uptake than us.

  We headed over to the remains of our fire. It looked piddly by comparison to theirs, but it had been a trial run. We needed to build something that would last us all night. Only there was a slight problem.

  There had been a load of firewood piled up against one of the walls that ran around the courtyard. Lots of smaller twigs and branches, and some bigger logs. Obviously the others had used some already. There was still quite a few of the smaller bits of wood, but all the logs had gone. It was pretty obvious where.

  “Oh ah, it’ll be alright,” said Flossie, smiling anxiously. “We can still use these small ones to get a fire going. Be nice and cozy in no time.”

  True, but for how long? We needed those bigger logs if we wanted to have a fire that lasted more than a couple of hours. I was already annoyed by Grayson’s sneakiness, now this fuckwittery—I wasn’t having it.

  I marched over to Golden Boy, leaving the rest of my party
to stand and watch from a distance, of course. Had I stopped to think about what I was doing, I wouldn’t have done it. Probably would have had a panic attack just at the idea of confronting them. Fortunately, I wasn’t thinking at all.

  “Hey, why did you take all the larger bits of wood? There’s none left now.” I sounded whiney and like a little bitch, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I was all in.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” said the big black dude, putting his hands on his hips and ‘inadvertently’ flexing the huge muscles in his arms. “Easy bruv. We just took what we needed. Plenty left over there.”