Amazon Apocalypse Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Travel from there was rather uneventful, as far as life in our new world was concerned. We made camp later that night and were attacked by moss men again, but we drove them off easily.

The next campground turned out to be much closer to the circle of caravans than my bunker was to the first one. These more civilized areas weren’t spread out as much as my little patch of wilderness. It felt almost like the system had wanted to expand the wild and unknown regions of the world. At the same time, it wanted to keep enough of humanity together to stand a fighting chance of withstanding what was to come.

That thought troubled me. Would I be at a disadvantage being out in the wilderness with only Regina for backup? But at the same time, I couldn’t imagine the people in the city having as many opportunities to level up as we would.

Those staying in the cities might be safer for a time, but if those cities ever fell, they’d be helpless against waves of monsters that were growing ever stronger. Already, many of the monsters that had been level one initially were level two now. That boded trouble long-term if Regina and I didn’t keep fighting for higher stats.

On that front, Regina was busy celebrating. After stomping on the head of her tenth snake, she finally reached level 8, mostly from her contributions in helping me kill that bear earlier. I’d killed a few things as well while we traveled but hadn’t yet reached my next level. After leveling up, Regina’s motions became noticeably smoother.

“I put two points into dexterity and one into wisdom,” Regina shrugged. “I suppose following your example can’t hurt too much, and I already get two points in strength every level anyway.”

I congratulated Regina on her level up, and we celebrated by eating that snake she’d killed to level up. After, we found our next stop, a romantic cliff-top known to be a great spot to watch the stars and a favorite cheap date for young lovers.

There were plenty of cars in the parking lot, but they were still parked in even rows like everything was normal.

“Hold on,” I held up my hand to halt Regina as I scanned the parking lot with my binoculars.

There was something amiss here...

It took me a few sweeps to figure it out. People. There were no people anywhere to be found.

“Keep your weapon ready,” I said. “Be ready to drop your pack and fight at a moment’s notice.”

Regina dawned an expression of complete seriousness and nodded at me. She adjusted her massive bag, so it hung over one shoulder instead of over both. She could toss it aside with a simple flick and use her bat with both hands.

I did something similar with my musket and had it up over one arm. I pulled one of the flintlock pistols into my other hand and had both of them held at the ready.

We descended from our vantage point at the top of a nearby hill to the cliff face, treading all the while carefully. Nothing came out to attack us, and we spotted no signs of people anywhere.

“Some of these cars still have their keys in the ignition,” Regina noted as she peered through windshields.

“Check out this one,” I pointed at a newer model. “It’s still idling. Whoever was here hadn’t intended to leave for long.”

Most of the vehicles were older sedans. They were the kinds of cars that parents might hand down to their kids heading off to college. A couple of them seemed more valuable than the others, and I made a note of them. All the cars were still in working order, but some were out of gas from being left idle and others had dead batteries.

Regina knew little about cars, but she could hunt around for a key and try them one by one to see what was working and what wasn’t. While she checked the cars, I started looking for tracks. The owners of these vehicles had to be somewhere. With so many keys still in the ignition they must have left in an awful hurry.

Gravel wasn’t good for holding footprints, and the hard-packed dirt of the parking lot was scarcely any better. It took a lot of searching to find something, but when I did the evidence was unmistakable.

“People went this way. A lot of them,” I muttered as I looked at a cluster of broken branches and scuffed dirt. It had been one of the last places I looked because it headed off directly into the forest instead of down the road. It was the last place I expected humans to head if they had to go somewhere on foot.

The tracks I saw on the ground weren’t the even and distinct prints of shoes to make matters stranger. Many of the feet walking here had been bare, and a few had claw marks at the toes. Perhaps others had racial changes like Regina’s? Ones that made wearing shoes difficult?

That would explain the strange footprints, but not the hand-prints on the ground as well. I studied the tracks, recreating the scene in my mind as I gathered more information.

There were other tracks here, too, smaller and off to the sides. At first, I’d assumed they were child footprints, but when I finally found something clean enough to examine in detail, I realized they weren’t proportioned right for a child’s foot. They were shaped like those for an adult, but smaller and with tiny claws at the end of each nail.

There were scuffs in the dirt here and there. Signs of a struggle. I caught sight of a red stain on the grass.

Blood?

Nearby, I found a stick with feathers glued to the side. It was smooth and shaped with hand tools. By the jagged look of the broken half, it had been snapped recently. Blood stained the stone tip. This had been an arrow, and until recently, it had been sticking out of someone.

I sized it up. Based on the half I had in my hands, I guessed the completed arrow to be no longer than my forearm. That would be a short draw length for a human. I glanced at the tiny tracks off to the side of the trail. If I was right, this arrow would be perfectly proportioned for something the size of a child.

These were troubling discoveries. It was almost like the people from these cars had been herded into the forest at arrow point. But why, and by who?

I rejoined Regina, who was still looking over the cars. “These two are the best vehicles of the lot! Both have four-wheel drive and plenty of cargo space. If we can pull the gasoline out of the parked vehicles, we can load these two up and make the trip home with two trunks filled with goodies. I’ve already collected a bunch of coats, blankets, and spare clothes and shoved them in the trunks, so we’ve got anything worthwhile already here. I noticed your bunker had a distinct lack of clothing in my size, so I picked up plenty of stuff in my size to wear. I’m getting good at this rugged survivalist scavenger thing, aren’t I?”

“Great work, Regina. But I have some troubling news. I’m going to need you to watch my back while we follow a nearby trail. Something happened to the people who owned these cars, and I want to find out what.”

If there was trouble in my backyard, I wanted to know what it was before it came for me. If I was the type to shut myself away in my bunker and hope for the best, I wouldn’t be out here now. I knew the best way to avoid trouble was to know about it and deal with it before it came to bite you in the ass.

“I will allow you to take the lead then,” Regina said as she fell into step behind me while I stooped low to the ground and followed the trail.

The blood made following the trail considerably easier. After the first couple paces, whoever was herding these humans stopped caring about leaving a trail, and the evidence of their passage became more apparent. Broken twigs, snapped branches, pools of dried blood. I found a few more arrows, all broken. Whoever or whatever had been doing this had picked up every usable arrow and only left the broken ones behind.

After gathering the arrow tips, I confirmed the heads were made of stone.

A primitive race, then?

But at the same time, the stone seemed unnaturally well-formed. The breaks were glass-like in their perfection. These arrows were knapped into points, but not through any means I knew of. Nor did I recognize the type of stone. This was more evidence pointing to entities not from earth, but smarter than the monsters I'd seen so far.

I pocketed the piece of rock for later study. I was still hunched over the ground when Regina lifted her arm and pointed.

I glanced up at her. Her face had gone pale, and her voice quivered.

Then I followed her gaze and realized there was little point in staying bent over in the mud.

In a clearing just ahead of us, there were piles of festering corpses. A few crows had found them already to poke and prod at the fresh human bodies. A cloud of flies buzzed overhead, and now that I was listening instead of focusing on the tracks, I realized I could hear them. These scavengers were practically salivating at the sight of the feast before them.

“Good god...” my face sank as I walked over to investigate further.

“I... uh... I’m going to go check on the... cars...” Regina said, face pale as a sheet of paper. She’d butchered that bear easily enough, but seeing a human body was an entirely different matter. Until recently, Regina had been a human. Seeing one of your own kind limp and rotting disturbed the heart and soul in a way no dead animal could compare to.

I heard Regina scurry off into the woods to lose her lunch. I was afraid I might do the same. After a wince of discomfort and sympathy for this unfortunate death, I steeled my stomach. I resolved myself to investigate further to make sure I wouldn’t end up like one of them.

The corpses were fresh, and the blood had just dried. Making out the looks of horror on these limp and lifeless faces was all too easy. The carnage before me would have been easier to bear if the bodies had rotted and decayed.

But I was actually thankful for the gruesome sight. The freshness of the bodies meant it was easy for me to figure out what killed them.

I found the arrows I expected with a few broken shafts still sticking from bellies or eye sockets. There were more arrow wounds than arrows, so presumably, those that did this had already retrieved all the intact projectiles for use on more unwilling human victims.

There were a few slit throats too. Here I saw a young man with wide eyes staring up blankly with a red smile under his chin. His hands were still reaching for this throat even in death to stop the bleeding.

I pushed his cold dead fingers aside to look at the wound. A small knife, probably made out of the same sharpened stone as the arrowhead I had in my pocket.

This young man had been executed here without pity or mercy. Who? Why?

Not all of the dead humans here had been killed in one quick blow. I saw signs of scuffed knees and bloodied hands. A few had tried to fight back. Others had signs of being dragged here already dead. The humans had been on the losing side of this fight. There were bite marks on those that weren’t put down with sharp rocks. It looked like these people had been bitten by some breed of giant wolf. So the small people had helpers then?

That made sense. Even untrained, a human should be able to deal with a creature the size of a child, baring special abilities or extremely high stats.

My mind went back to Sarah and Craig, that brother and sister we’d spoken to at the previous campsite. They’d spoken of little green men who rode ferocious beasts. Could this have been their work?

I grimaced, wishing I’d gotten more information from Craig, but the other man had been too stubborn. I’d have to figure out what this new threat was the hard way.

I continued to study the corpses. There was a bit of blood on a rock still clutched in the hands of a large dark-skinned man. It looked too thick and black to be human blood. Even unarmed and caught entirely off-guard, some of these people had put up a decent fight. I wished that I had the time to give them a proper burial.

Eventually, Regina emptied her stomach enough to join me. She stood by my side and immediately noticed something that I did not.

“Weird,” Regina remarked. “They’re all men!”

I’d been busy studying the wounds and the blood trails. While I was examining the details, Regina saw the forest beyond the trees. She was right. Everybody before us was male, without exception.

This cliff face was a romantic getaway for couples, which suggested the numbers of men and women should be roughly equal. So where were all the women?

“We need to scout the area. There might be a second pile of bodies nearby. Or there might be tracks leading elsewhere.”

Regina nodded as I spoke and happily looked to the ground, happier to look for tracks than for corpses.

I did the same, looking carefully for blood and any signs of passage. The ground around the pile of corpses had been trodden over so many times by so many different people that it was tough to make anything out of the prints.

There were more of those claw-like feet here and a couple of big paws to go with them. They'd milled around this area for a while, probably piling the bodies up and killing off the last of the men. But where had they gone after that? I just needed to focus. If I was a better tracker, I was certain I’d be able to make heads or tails of this.

Just when I was building a picture in my mind, Regina screamed twice. First, a high pitch whine of pain, then the howl of a warrior about to smash something with her club.

I turned at the noise and saw something big and covered in fur towering over Regina with jaws open and slathering. On its back was a small green figure holding a bow. Moments ago, he’d shot a stone-tipped arrow into Regina’s unarmored thigh.

The arrow stuck out of Regina’s leg, but by the looks of it, the arrow wasn’t too deep, even if it had struck unarmored skin. The draw of Regina’s brows told me she was more angry than hurt, which was a relief to see.

The massive wolf-like creature the small green man was riding knocked another arrow to his bow and aimed for Regina, but Regina took a swing first. She leaped off the ground, baseball bat behind her head in a massive swing. If that swing connected with the little green man’s head like she was aiming, it would pop its head like a watermelon.

The little green man must have known this too because he pulled on his reigns around the jaws and collar of his mount and pulled back. The beast beneath him reared back in a fury and swiped a mighty paw at Regina.

Regina had to abort her swing and jump backward. Her points in dexterity were already making themselves known because she retreated with speed and grace that wouldn’t have been possible back when she was putting all of her points into strength.

I dropped to one knee and brought my musket sights to my eye, just like I had for the bear. All I needed was one clear shot.

“Regina! Get clear!” I shouted at my companion.

Without turning to look or ask questions, Regina jumped out of the way. I took that moment to pull the trigger on my musket. The powder roared with a defining boom and the lead ball it threw soared through the air to crash into the beast between the little green man’s thighs.

The beast roared in pain, tipping over onto its side and tossing the little green man off. But unlike the bear, this thing didn’t die. Instead, it pawed at the ground, hissing and panting before climbing back to its feet.

I tossed my musket aside and drew both my pistols. The little green man was reaching for his spear, but I leveled my sidearm at him and fired.

Like the bear, his head exploded in a fountain of gore, and he collapsed on the ground, dead. Now that the moment of danger had finally passed, I looked at my system screens displaying information about this pair of monsters.

Goblin Scout (Level 7)

Status: Dead

Werewolf (Level 6)

Status: Wounded

A goblin? Between this and the stats, it confirmed that the system had a thing for RPG games. Or maybe RPG games were its way of preparing people for the system before it even arrived.

Whatever the reasons were, the goblin was dead now, and the creature it had been riding was heavily wounded. Both were worth a substantial number of points being equal level to me, and after killing that goblin, I could already feel like I was close to another level-up.

Killing this werewolf thing would probably put me over the edge. I drew my pistol and leveled it at the creature’s head. It had survived a musket shot to the flank, but I doubted it would have as easy a time enduring a lead ball to the brain.

But before I pulled the trigger, the werewolf before me trembled and shook, rapidly shrinking in on itself. Its hair faded and vanished as its body turned smaller, and within moments instead of being about to put down a ferocious golden-furred wolf, I was looming over a dirty blonde-haired human girl.

She sat in the dirt, wincing at a wound in her side as she shook her hair out of her eyes. She was naked except for a leather harness the goblin had put on her, and somehow the saddle had trapped her hands behind her back during her transformation back to a human form.

I pulled my pistol back as I realized I recognized the woman before me. I’d seen her earlier that very day.

“You’re... Sarah, right? From the campgrounds?”

The girl-turned-werewolf nodded at me, tears welling up in her eyes.

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