Brandon shook his head while Chis looked at me impassively.
“He's not exactly mute,” Brandon said. “But he don't say too much. Growing up, our mom thought he was slow. They put him in a special school because he never spoke. But he's not dumb. He does talk. Think of him as Silent Bob. If he says something, you better listen.”
Brandon nodded sagely.
I hesitated. “And her?” I asked, indicating Imani. I watched as she helped a woman to a nearby door. A bathroom. She made the woman open the door herself. The floor outside the bathroom was stained red. I shuddered, remembering the exploding “bug” from the announcements. After the woman was safely delivered to the bathroom, Imani turned and helped a man in a wheelchair take a sip of water. Yolanda also moved amongst the others, talking softly.
Brandon shook his head. “We got attacked once, right after we found that tutorial place. I… I don’t really want to talk about it, man. But Imani, she had that sword, and several of the residents, we were taking them in groups to Mistress Tiatha. They can’t move so quick. It was for the better. Letting those things burn them, that’d been much worse.”
I nodded. I had questions, but I knew some things were best left unasked. It wasn’t lost on me that her high level was probably a direct result of her having to kill 12 of her former patients. And she’d probably gained a loot box or two.
“These people still can’t walk? So the dungeon’s fast healing and all those healing spells and such don’t work?”
“Oh, it’s amazing,” Brandon said. “But it’s a curse, too. All of these folks have been cured of hundreds of their little ailments. Not a one of them brought any of their medications with them down here, and it’s been okay. But at the same time, they ain’t getting any younger. Or stronger. And those who’ve lost memories or cognitive function, that hasn’t been fixed. It’s like it cured anything that’s going to kill them, but it didn’t make them better than they were, either.”
I sighed, turning my attention to the large, rounded entrance to the maze. There was a short bridge, an entrance about three times the size of the smaller portcullis entrances that peppered the way, with a raised, giant gate big enough to allow a pair of goblin dozers through side-by-side. It led to another, round courtyard with three exits. The walls shook as the monster sped by, but it didn’t appear to enter this courtyard area.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“The original plan was to gather as many people as we could and then storm the maze. We think it's shaped like a spiral. But nobody was coming, so they went looking for other exits. And that didn’t work out so well. Now it’s just us, and we can’t kill that thing. Nobody even knows what it is.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Even if we had free passage to the stairs…” I let it hang.
“I know, I know,” Brandon said. “But I just can’t leave them. I was hoping, maybe if we could get them all down to the second level, then we could do the same thing for the third level. And then they’d all get to choose a class and maybe they wouldn’t be, you know…”
“Useless?” Donut asked.
I nodded. I felt for the guy and the other three. Would I have stayed, continued with my duty? Even when it was so damn hopeless? What a nightmare. I thought I’d had it bad, but these guys… The world was over. There was no hope for these poor people they’d been in charge of protecting. This harsh environment wasn’t meant for the weak, the frail.
Yet to these four—Brandon, Chris, Yolanda, and Imani—the idea of giving up their duty wasn’t even a question.
I spent some time recounting our story, including our clash in the last safe room. I told them of our two encounters with neighborhood bosses.
“I can do something similar with this boss,” I said. “I think I can build a bomb that’ll go off on its own when the monster hits it, that way we don’t have to get locked in there to fight.”
“It won’t work,” Yolanda said, coming up to stand with us. “You know those little doors, the ones that let you see the monster? They’re protected somehow. I thought to try to hit it with my bow, but the arrow bounces right off. I poked at it with my finger, and it feels like thick clay. It even glows blue if you touch it. They look like entrances, but they ain’t. I think maybe you can go in that way if you push yourself really hard, but I wouldn’t try it. And I wouldn’t be pushing no bomb through that. The only way in is through this big gate here. And the monster doesn’t go into that first room. So you can’t hurt it without first getting locked in.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” Brandon added. “Once the gate closed, we couldn’t see in there at all. We couldn’t hear. We couldn’t talk using the party chat, not with the ones in there. It was like they’d been cut from the party.”
I sighed. We had two choices. We could leave these guys and hope to find another set of stairs somewhere. Or we could fight the borough boss here.
Neither choice was appealing. Whatever that thing was, it would be almost impossible to kill. I remembered that scene from the latest recap episode. It had been forty against one borough boss, and it had slaughtered them. We didn’t even know what the hell the monster was.
I looked at the clock. We had 40 hours. Geez. Had it really been that long since we’d run away from Frank and Maggie? There would be another show in 10 hours. We’d done nothing today except travel a hundred miles or so from where we started.
And speaking of Frank and Maggie. I had a terrible realization. “Your people, the ones who died while looking for more stairs. Which direction did they go?”
“Mostly west, toward Seattle. They would’ve been north of where you were. I remember where we killed the chilly goats. That was the farthest out my brother and I had gone. We separated from the group right around there and headed back here.”
“And how long ago did the last one disappear?”
“It was earlier today. Barely five or six hours ago.”
I looked down at Donut, thinking. It could’ve been them, Frank and Maggie. But that would mean they’d gotten to this area before us. That didn’t make sense. We were pretty far from where we’d last encountered them. Could there be another group of crawlers killing people off? Or was it a monster? Without finding their bodies, we’d never know.
Behind me, one of the elderly women started sobbing. Another, a man with a back so curved his chin rested against his own chest, scooted forward on his walker and patted her on the back. The hunch-backed man was wearing a veteran’s cap. He had been US Army Special Forces once upon a time.
If I’m gonna die, I might as well do it in the pursuit of a worthy cause.
“Are there any other rest areas around here?” I asked. “Ones that aren’t full?”
“Yeah, we know of two. One of them doesn’t have anything in it except a vending machine that hands out wrapped candies. They taste like piss but give you a +1 boost to your dexterity for ten minutes. The machine only works for you once a day. The next place is further down. It’s a Taco Bell from Peru and has full facilities, including coffee.” He leaned in. “And beer. Good beer.”
“What about the mobs near there?” I asked. “Also, how about training guilds?”
“We’ve cleared out the next two quadrants. Some of the other guys killed the first neighborhood boss. They said it was like a giant, demon man in a suit made of skin. We got the second boss. All of us here were in on that fight. That one was a floating crystal thing, but it shattered when I hit it with my hammer a few times. The next area after that, next to the Taco Bell, is still crawling with monsters. They’re lizard creatures. They jump and bite and poison you. I got hit once, and I thought I was going to die. The poison ran out on its own just before it killed me, and that was only because I kept taking health potions. We didn’t want to mess around in that neighborhood after that. But there are a couple training guilds in the area.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “This is what’s going to happen. Donut and I are going to spend the rest of today gr
inding. If you can manage to pry a pair of those rattle cans from Agatha over there, I’ll take them with us. I’m going to try to level up my skills as much as possible. You guys should do the same. Be wary of any other crawlers. Especially ones with the skulls by their names. We’re going to watch episode three, get some sleep, and then we’re going to come back here. And then all of us—Me, Donut, and you four—are going to go into there, and we’re going to fuck that boss up. We’re going to get your people down those stairs. Sound like a plan?”
“And how are we going to do that?” a new voice asked. It was Imani, speaking for the first time.
I grinned. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
23
“So, what’s this grand idea of yours?” Donut asked as we walked away. With her new skirt-like crupper combined with the butterfly talisman around her collar, she jingled when we walked. “How are we going to kill that thing?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I said. “But we need them to train. It’s our only choice. It took us a full day to find this set of stairs, and we are almost out of time. It’s better to face the enemy you know than the one you don’t.”
“We don’t know this enemy,” Donut said. “Wait, what are you doing?”
I’d come to the first of the spray-painted signs pointing toward the encampment. I took the can of red paint they’d given me, and I sprayed completely over it, covering it up.
“Did you see that Imani’s level?” I asked, standing to see if I could still read it. “She was level 10. And that was partially because of she’d been forced to kill all those people.”
“So? Are you saying if someone else comes, they might kill all the old people? Just to get experience? Oh, Carl darling. Nobody is quite that evil,” Donut paused. “Are they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t want to find out, either.”
“But what if a big group of good guys comes through? And they miss it because you covered it up?”
“Look where we are, Donut. We were lucky to find these people. There aren’t any big groups of good guys, not in these parts. It’s only sharks and minnows. Now come on. Let’s find that Taco Bell.”
“So which one are we?” Donut asked as we trekked off.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Brandon said they’d put dozens of signs up all over the place. As we headed north, I either defaced or changed all the ones I could find. There was no way I’d get to them all, but it made me feel better.
I was busy changing a sign from saying “2 blocks south” to “12 blocks south” when Donut lifted her head, sniffing. “Two more rats around the corner.”
A moment later, their dots appeared.
“Your sense of smell is getting better,” I said.
“No, I think the rats are getting stinkier,” she said.
We’d killed at least 30 rats between here and the encampment. These rats were bigger and fatter than the ones we’d fought earlier. They were all level three. Before we’d left, I’d quietly asked Brandon if they’d looted the corpses of the folks who’d been killed right when they’d entered the dungeon. He’d been horrified at first until I explained that I needed pants and shoes. He’d given me directions. They’d looted the extra wheelchairs, walkers, and canes, but they hadn’t touched their clothes. It would’ve required them to physically remove them. The thought made me ill. It also gave me a new burst of hatred for Frank Q and Maggie My, who had stripped the body of Rebecca W. They’d probably removed the clothes of the other ones they’d killed, too.
When we got to where the elderly folks had died, all that was left was piles of bones and shredded clothes, nothing usable. I picked up the gnawed remains of a slipper, tossing it down with disgust. The rats had devoured everything else, tearing through the corpses like a hurricane. And now the rats in the area were bigger.
We turned the corner and entered a new quadrant. A pair of humanoid creatures with loincloths and crude clubs saw us and hopped in our direction, hissing. These were three-foot-tall lizard monsters, like Brandon had stated, the tallest of them almost as high as my hip. They looked like upright Komodo dragons from the waist up. Small but muscular. Their legs were long and bent, kangaroo-like and scaly.
Troglodyte Pygmy – Level 2
Oh, these fuckers. With an intelligence just shy of an oft-dropped toddler, the standard troglodyte pygmy warrior would be harmless if it wasn’t so damn fast. Or venomous.
Brandon had warned me about their special attack, so I was ready. Donut hit the first with a magic missile while the second leaped right at me, hissing and baring his giant fangs.
I hit it with a right hook, my chain-covered fist smashing its head, changing the creature’s trajectory so it splattered against the wall of the tunnel. It exploded like a damn tomato. Donut’s target had practically vaporized under her single missile strike. Her Magic Missile spell had risen to level five, and she now had the option to choose how many mana points to put into each casting, from three to six. Her intelligence was currently 24, meaning she could fire eight missiles if she kept the power setting at three.
I poked at the burnt-out husk of troglodyte with my bare toe. It’d only been a few days, but I barely felt the ground now when I walked. Random rocks still hurt, but not so much as they would’ve before. “That didn’t look like a three-mana missile.”
“That was a six,” Donut said, sniffing at her handywork. “They really need to make this less disgusting.”
“If it’s a level two monster, a three will probably one-shot it,” I said. Neither dropped any loot, but I took their clubs.
“If it’s about to bite my face off, it’s getting a six,” said Donut.
We spent the next hour hunting down and killing all the troglodytes we could. The level threes were called Troglodyte Bashers and the level fours were Troglodyte Virtuosos. The Bashers were twice as big, making them almost human-sized. They didn’t have any other special abilities, and they had more regular legs. The virtuosos had a tongue attack that surprised me at first. They were the same size as the level twos, but they could shoot their tongues almost fifteen feet. The thin, wet tongues stung like a whip, inflicting poison, which was immediately canceled thanks to my nightgaunt cloak.
Donut and I were starting to become adept at fighting as a team. She’d wait for an opening to fire her missiles, and I’d move in to finish them off with a kick or a punch. I could tell just by her stance when—and where—she was going to move. She jumped on my shoulder with ease, using my height to fire on her targets from above. She’d hide behind me, easily slipping between my jacket and cloak, hanging on my back with her claws to avoid a poison attack. Well, any attack really. We didn’t level up yet to nine, but we were well on our way. It seemed after level eight, the amount of experience it took to hit the next level was absurdly high. We were plateauing. Even though I couldn’t distribute my stat points, my fighting skills were steadily climbing, giving my attacks more and more damage. The difficulty would probably start all over again when we went down a floor.
If we went down a floor.
After killing a Troglodyte Basher, all that was left from one of Donut’s missile strikes was the lizard’s head, rolling about like a lumpy soccer ball. She jumped down and idly batted at it while I caught my breath. With a single swipe, the skull flew across the hallway and shattered into the wall, leaving a crack in the stones.
“You need to practice with your claws,” I said looking at the damage. “My strength is nine, and yours is 18. You are literally twice as strong as I am, and I’m pretty damn strong now. You could probably swipe through steel if you just tried.”
“Fighting with one’s claws is just so inelegant,” she said. “It’s not ladylike.”
“And shooting lasers out of your eyes is?”
“Oh my, yes. With my Magic Missile I don’t get blood on me like a common house cat. I don’t end up matted and filthy. I can’t even imagine it. I’d end up looking like Ferdinand.”
> “Who the hell is Ferdinand?”
“Nobody you’d know.”
I sighed. “Just think about it, okay?”
She didn’t answer.
We found the troglodyte boss room after a couple hours of grinding through the hallways. This one was a little differently shaped than the others. The room was a long rectangle with what appeared to be a smaller room at the entrance, meaning I wouldn’t be able to pull off my bomb-from-afar method of boss killing. The highest mob in this area was a level four, meaning—hopefully—the boss wouldn’t be too strong. Probably a level seven or eight.
It was dangerous, but if we couldn’t handle a floor one neighborhood boss by now, we’d have no chance against whatever was guarding those stairs. We decided to go for it.
We hesitantly approached the boss room. The front door to this one was one of those glass, automatic sliding doors, though I couldn’t see inside. The sign on the door was in English. It said, “Open 24 Hours” and “Fitness, Weights, Gains.”
I grabbed a cigarette and lit it. It was my second to last one. I took a deep drag.
We stepped inside.
24
Like the door indicated, this was a high-ceilinged gym. Where we entered was a small receptionist’s desk with a turnstile. Signs hung on the wall filled with slogans like “Today is the day you gain” and “Excuses don’t lose calories” and “Release the beast.” The place smelled of sweat and oil and testosterone. From around the corner I could see racks of fitness equipment. While not tiny, the place was much smaller than the last boss room. I didn’t dare throw a dynamite stick in here.
A loud, deep grunting filled the gym, followed by the familiar ching of metal weights crashing together.
A level two troglodyte hissed at us from the counter, and Donut jumped to my shoulder and slammed him with a missile. He fell over, dead.
“Hey, was that a three power? He didn’t explode.”
“Yes, it was. I’m conserving my mana.”
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 17