“What about me?” said Anthony. “I didn’t get a shower after getting clawed up by that cat!” Which was true. We’d washed him off sparingly with water from a bottle and he’d just thrown his ruined clothes away, replacing them with the spare set he’d brought.
She gave him a considering look. “You can come if you want,” she said. “I expect you to behave.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “I’ll be good. I just want to wash.”
“Fine. Come on.” The three of them walked down the hall, leaving Danielle and I looking at Samantha and Mike in surprise.
“You don’t think they’re going to…” Samantha started to speak, then stopped, blushing.
“I doubt it,” I said. “For one thing, there’s not enough room in that bathroom. I think she’s just messing with him.”
I sat down on a suspiciously mottled couch with a sigh. Danielle sat next to me so fast I barely saw her move. She was warm and soft and she made it really hard to be motivated.
“You guys okay?” I asked. “Things are not going as well as I hoped, I have to say.”
“We’re okay,” said Samantha. “Worried about the kids, but we just have to hope. What about you guys? Families?”
“My parents died in a car crash years ago,” I said. “No brothers or sisters. An aunt and two uncles, couple of cousins. We’re not close.”
“My parents are in New York,” said Danielle. I felt her tense up and put an arm around her. She snuggled up to me gratefully. “I’m trying really hard not to think about it. At least they’re in an outer suburb. Maybe they’ll… evacuate them or something.”
“You guys level after the fight?” I said, changing the subject. “We did. We already dropped our points.” After I said this, I realized I had another point, and dropped it into Constitution as well. I decided to get it to 15, then start working on other Attributes. My HP went up, again, but nothing else changed.
“I put mine into Dexterity again,” said Samantha. “Joe and Anthony said that a ten is average and now I’m at ten. I’ve been a klutz my whole life. This is weird.”
“Intelligence for me,” said Mike. “I want more Mana so I can use my healing more often.”
“Don’t let your stats get too out of whack,” I cautioned. “It’s best to keep your important ones high but it’s no fun if you’re a high level with the strength of a ten-year-old or something.”
“Okay,” said Samantha. “We’ll work on it. It takes more and more experience to level, doesn’t it?”
Since I had just leveled twice, I was starting to get a handle on the progression.
“It seems like every level is about double the amount for the one before it,” I said. “It started out low, but it’ll get big fast. We have to be smart about what we do at lower levels because I think we’ll be stuck with it later.”
Mike looked thoughtful. “Like residency,” he said. “You can do whatever and theoretically you can rotate into new stuff later, but usually you stick with what you liked as a resident your whole career.”
“Yes,” I said. “The System is a little more complicated than most games. We all use Mana and Mana seems to be tied to Intelligence. In simple games, if you’re a fighter, you more or less ignore Intelligence and stick to Strength so you can hit things harder. Whereas Mages need Intelligence but can be pretty wimpy physically.”
“I can’t believe we’re living in a video game,” said Danielle. “I mean, I don’t hate video games. I have Tetris and stuff on my phone. But I never got into this crazy role-playing stuff.”
“Not what you said last night,” I said and poked her in the ribs. She spluttered.
“That’s different!” Before she could get too wound up I gave her a squeeze and a smile that let her know I was just teasing.
“Were you roleplaying as a catgirl last night?” said Samantha. “Is that why…” She turned bright red as she realized how personal her question was.
“No!” Danielle said shrilly. Then she took a deep breath. “What we were doing last night has nothing to do with this. I don’t know why it happened.”
I decided to keep quiet. She now knew I liked catgirls, and either she hadn’t made the connection or didn’t want to share. It was her ability, and I didn’t want to be pushy about it.
Mike perked up at the mention of her Special Skill.
“Can I ask you about it?” he said to Danielle. “Because that was incredible.”
Samantha poked him in the side, hard, and muttered something I didn’t catch. Then it was Mike’s turn to blush.
“Sorry!” he said. “Personal question. Sorry. But that was just fascinating. If you want to talk about it…” Samantha poked him again and he shut up.
“We can,” she said. “But not now. Give me a little time to get used to the idea?”
“No problem,” he said, relieved. “When you’re ready.”
“Speaking of,” I said, “’System, time.’”
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Local Time is 4:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, April 8, 2017.
“Four-thirty already,” I said with a frown. “It’ll start getting dark in two hours or so and we’re barely halfway to town. Maybe we should stay here and leave in the morning.”
“Wait another day to get to town?” said Mike, not sounding happy. “I don’t like that idea.”
“Me neither, honey,” said Samantha quietly. “But if that bobcat had jumped us in the dark, it would have killed Anthony. At least. Maybe we should.”
“Crap.” I stood up. “That reminds me. What did you do with the bodies?”
“We unloaded the guns and brought them in the house,” said Mike. “They’re in the corner there.” He pointed to the three shotguns standing against the wall. “Other than that we didn’t do anything with them. Why?”
“Scavengers,” I said. Samantha’s eyes widened.
“We have to bury them,” she said.
“I have a better idea” I said.
“What? Burn them? That’d be even worse, the smell would go for miles,” replied Samantha.
“No. Loot them.” I gave her a serious look. “You killed two of them. You can loot them. Danielle can do the other one. You saw what happened to the bobcat. There wasn’t even blood left.”
She looked a little sick. “Loot them? Humans? Like, get their meat? Their skins?”
“God, I hope not,” I said. “But if we do, that’ll be a lot easier to get rid of than a huge bloody corpse.” I heard Danielle swallow at the reminder of what she’d done. I squeezed her again.
“Danielle,” I said gently. “That man was trying to kill us. You saved my life. Now we need to do this so we can be safe. I’ll be with you.” She buried her head in my shoulder and nodded.
“Let’s try,” I went on. “The one on the porch at least. It would be a kindness if we could clean that up.”