[ 13 ]
THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS ANGLE OUR WAY TOWARD THAT CORPSE.
I asked Mordecai if we’d be able to loot everything the dead woman had, and he said yes, crawlers drop everything but the unopened loot boxes. Non- crawlers would also be able to loot her body, but they wouldn’t have access to her inventory, so the woman likely had some items on her.
“Maybe she’ll have some pants for you.”
“Unless she’s over six feet tall then probably not,” I said. Items from the surface didn’t magically re-size themselves. Still, I held out hope she’d have something.
“By the way,” I added a few minutes later, “those magic missiles of yours run out pretty quickly. You really need to start training with your claws.”
Donut didn’t say anything for several moments. “I… I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m scared of getting hurt. What if it hits me back? I don’t want to get hit back.”
“How is it you can be so reckless and timid at the same time?”
“I can’t control my instincts! I’m just a few generations shy of being a ferocious tiger stalking through the jungles.”
“I’ve seen your pedigree,” I said. “You’re a few generations shy of nothing. Also, your grandfather was also your uncle.”
Both of us turned the corner, and there she was.
She was sitting, leaning up against a wall just off the main corridor. She was on the very edge of the Hoarder’s neighborhood.
The woman was naked. She had no clothes, no gear at all. The manner of her death wasn’t obvious.
She appeared to be about thirty years old. Slight. Asian. Her hair was
pulled back into a ponytail. A full sleeve tattoo of koi and a crane decorated her left arm. The bright colors of the tattoo suggested it was recent ink. She had several other, older tattoos.
“I think goblins came along and took all her stuff,” I said. I examined her, popping up the info box.
Lootable Corpse. Crawler Rebecca W. Level 3. Killed by Crawler
Frank Q.
Apple Core.
I felt as if I was slapped. Killed by Crawler Frank Q.
That’s when I saw it. A gunshot wound, right in her chest between her breasts, right in the middle of a moth tattoo. It’d killed her instantly, not leaking hardly any blood.
“Oh goodness. This Frank Q gentleman doesn’t seem like a decent person at all,” Donut said.
I instinctively looked up at my map, looking for blue dots. There were none. Would the dots be hidden if the person was trying to hide? If I wasn’t in the area of the neighborhood map, the red dots wouldn’t appear unless I was right on top of them. But NPCs always appeared if they were within a couple hundred meters, even if they were around the corner. Could other crawlers hide from me?
Christ, another thing to worry about. A crazy asshole with a gun.
I was suddenly, inexplicably reminded of that day. The last day I ever saw my father.
You’re a bully. You’re a bully and nobody likes you. It’s why mom left.
I was expecting him to get angry, to hit me. But he never hit me, not once. The man just laughed and laughed, and that was enough. I don’t need you to like me. But you will respect me.
The memory came quickly, out of nowhere. I didn’t know why. Nobody had died that day. Nobody had been hurt at all, not physically.
“Maybe Frank Q isn’t a human,” Donut was saying. “Maybe he’s one of those cocker spaniels.” She sniffed at the corpse. “Yes, this is definitely the work of a cocker spaniel.”
I sighed. “She’s been shot,” I said. “Look. That’s from a gun.”
“Maybe the dog had a gun. If I had a gun in my inventory, I could shoot
it.”
“No, you couldn’t. It wasn’t a dog.”
One of our neighbors in the apartment had a dog named Angel. A cocker
spaniel. I couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but her dog was always barking her head off. Bea was friendly with the owner, and they were always chatting in the hallway. Every once in a while Angel would burst into our apartment, barking, running in circles. She’d pee on the floor and shriek-bark at Donut, who would sit atop her cat tree and hiss and spit and poof all her hair out.
“We need to be careful,” I said. “Keep on the lookout for other players. If we come across any, don’t tell them what gear we have. They can’t examine it if they’re not in our party.”
“We are in a dungeon filled with killer cockroaches and drug-dealing llamas. Some imbecile with a gun doesn’t scare me,” Donut announced.
“And they shouldn’t scare you, either. We should hunt this vile killer down and bring him to justice.”
“Weren’t we just talking about this? And this guy doesn’t scare me,” I said. I looked down at the dead woman. I wondered who she was, why someone like her was outside at 2:30 in the morning on such a night. I’m never going to know her story. Nobody is ever going to know it. I wondered how scared she’d been. Only to be killed by a fellow human. He’d looted her corpse, taking everything, leaving only an apple core. It made me irrationally angry. “In fact, I think you’re right. I want to find him if we can.”
I thought for a moment. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s stick to the neighborhood for right now since we have the map. We’ll hunt down the remaining red dots. We need all the easy experience we can get. Then we’ll go back to the safe room and watch the premiere.” Mordecai had said the show would air on the screens in the safe room. “After that, the stairs will open up. We’ll go hunting for both the stairs and this guy.”
“You’re not scared of that guy? Really?” Donut asked, looking between
me and the corpse.
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
“Well then, you’re crazy. I don’t like you being crazy. I’m scared of him.
We need to stay away from him. What if he’s like one of those murder hobos you hear so much about?”
“Just two seconds ago you said, and I quote, ‘Some imbecile with a gun doesn’t scare me!’”
“Yeah, that’s when I thought you were being a pussy. I didn’t realize you were getting all Charles Bronson Death Wish on me!”
“How do you even know what that is?”
“You two always leave the TV on when you go to work. I absorbed all that stuff. Miss Beatrice always leaves it on Lifetime and HGTV, and you leave it on that channel that plays the A-Team and Charles Bronson movies all day.”
“We’ll be careful,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Nearby, a group of three red dots was steadily moving through a hallway.
The map didn’t say what they were, but based on our earlier encounters, I guessed them to be more of the rats. I suspected we wouldn’t see any more
Scatterers in this neighborhood.
“Come on, Donut. Let’s hunt.”
