Max’s was still quiet and dark. The girl couldn’t spot the rat Jake had told her about, but she assumed it was in here watching her. The other rats in their nest shifted. The giant snake had followed her and Baxter up the tunnel, stopping before the tunnel ended at the floor of Max’s

“Jake,” she said. “Did your bird tell you anything about the men? Are they still outside?”

As she was waiting for Jake to reply, another voice spoke.

“Hey little bitch! Tell your friend to come on out!”

Jake and Hildi both recognized the voice. It was one of the men that had been chasing her, the sullen one. Hildi looked up as a man stepped through the window and toward her. He was about 178 cm, white, and dirty as a result of not having had a shower in a week. He waved his hand at her and she could see light glimmering off the metal of the knife he held.

“Come on, little bitch! Where’s your friend.”

Hildi backed up toward the tunnel. She was scared. She was eighteen and a high school student. Everything else was forgotten.

“He back there?” the man continued. “Come on out, Jake. Where you at? Where’d you come from, little bitch? Don’t matter, really. Cause I got you now. I ain’t never had a ginger before. Jake? You better come on out for I cut her. It’d be a shame.”

Hildi hit the wall next to the tunnel. She couldn’t back away anymore.

“Jake? Kill man?” Baxter said.

The man kept walking toward the girl and the dog. He’d didn’t care about the dog. He figured one good kick and it was dead. Stomp its head.

“Hold on, Baxter. I got this,” Jake said. He was watching the man approaching Hildi and Baxter through his rat’s eyes.

“I see,” said the man. He was finally close enough that he could see the tunnel Baxter had dug to the surface. “Got yourself a tunnel. Jake must be down there. Hey Jake, come on out now!” He heard something from inside the dark tunnel. Maybe skin, maybe cloth touching the wall, a curious ticking noise that quickly stopped. “Jake, don’t make me cut her!” He leaned over and looked into the hole.

The snake struck then. Only about two meters of it came out of the hole. Its big head completely open, its 10 cm long fangs extended and stabbing into the man’s upper body. One fang punctured his chest, hitting the heart, the other dug in beside his neck, puncturing the little triangle made by his trapezius muscles and his collar bone.

The man screamed once, then bounced and rolled into the side of the rat’s nest, propelled by the force of the giant snake’s strike. He may have already been dead by the time he stopped moving.

The great snake was not doing much better. A white haze enveloped the region of its body outside the tunnel’s mouth. There was a frying noise and the smell of snake grew much stronger, momentarily, before the snake was able to pull itself, barely, back inside the tunnel.

Jake cast “Monster Heal” on the snake, three times before he was sure that the snake was going to live.

“Thank you! Thank you!” said Hildi.

“It’s Ok,” said Jake. “It’s Ok. Don’t worry about anything. Just relax. Baxter.”

Baxter moved up to her. She sank to her knees and grabbed him and started crying into his fur.

“How? Why?” she cried. The building was quiet. Only the rats shifting in the nest made any noise, but with Baxter near, they knew better than to come out. Jake didn’t know how to respond and he lacked the arms to hold her, so he stayed quiet, letting Baxter sooth her.

“Did you hear him,” he finally said.

“Yes,” she answered.

“He was rotten. To the core,” Jake said. “You don’t get that bad in seven days, that’s years of work there. That quivering voiced one we heard with him, he’d just started. But this guy, don’t waste your time thinking about him.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I don’t for sure, but it stands to reason. I think kids start neutral, some a little good, some a little bad. Then they learn. One way, they wind up like that guy did, another way, they wind up like you. This apocalypse has given a way for guys like that to come out from under where they’ve been hiding. That’s why you need to get strong. Well, the monsters too.”

For some reason, Hildi started laughing then. “Monsters too!”

Baxter squirmed into her lap and she sat there for about 10 minutes crying and holding him, but finally she dried off her face, sighed, and stood up. “Jake,” she said. “Any more men around.”

“Sorry about that,” Jake said. “He must have come back when my hawk wasn’t watching. I’ve had the hawk sweep the place several times. The rest of them are gone.”

“Ok,” she said. “Let go!” she said to Baxter and with him trotting beside her, she left the building.

“Oh,” she said. “Do I need to do something with him? You know, the man? Drag him somewhere? Bury him.” By this point she was running down the former highway toward Sapulpa, so Jake was pretty sure this was a warped bit of southern politeness, ‘Do you need my help with the body of the man that your giant snake just killed?’ He knew where she was because he had his hawk up watching her.

“No, I got it,” Jake said. “So what’s your plan?”

“Run until I get close to the house that those men were at, then sneak past and run some more. Get home, gather up Billy, go by your mom’s place and talk her and your family into coming here, then come back here. We’ll come back on a different road. I imagine it will take a while to get them packed up, so that’ll give me time to scout a new route back.”

“Baxter, keep her safe,” Jake said.

“I will!” Baxter said.

“Ok, that sounds workable,” Jake said. “If you need help convincing my mom, well, good luck with that. I’m here, but she’s kind of stubborn. I also don’t know how far we can communicate. So, if you don’t hear me, don’t be surprised. And, I’m not a hundred percent sure that Baxter can go beyond a kilometer from me. None of my other animals seem able to. At least not yet. Oh, and if you have some strange urges, like to come back to Max’s, don’t be surprised either.”

“Got it! Mom!” she said.

Jake waited and watched them run using the hawk. It didn’t take long for them to reach the point past which the hawk couldn’t fly and they just kept running. “And, Baxter’s officially past where the hawk couldn’t go, so I think he’s good to go. Everything is gonna work out, I hope.”

“OMG, chill!” she said.

It was quiet without her and Baxter. Although Baxter didn’t talk all that much, he was a comforting presence to have around. The sound of him noshing on his dog bones or his snoring had become the soundtrack of Jake’s day. Jake didn’t precisely get lonely, but the feeling that he did get was close enough that he could call it that. A sense of absence, of something missing, like a wind blowing through a door, left open behind you.

“‘Alright then,’ Jake thought. ‘Time to make a list.’

He called his trusty list up again. The first thing that he did was change, Keep Baxter Happy to Keep Baxter/Hildi Happy.

He thought about adding a dungeon goal of ‘Get Body Out of Entrance’ but decided that it was too short term to make the list. Just to prove it, he had his rat go grab the man by the foot and haul him into the tunnel. He was originally going to use his ability ‘Dungeon Clean/Reset’ to dispose of the man, but the rat seemed to like the taste, so he figured why not and let the rat nosh on him. The snake seemed interested too, so he had the rat pull the man down deeper into the tunnel, chew off a leg for himself and then leave the rest of the man’s body in the tunnel. The snake also enjoyed the man. ‘Totally not a waste of Oxygen,’ Jake thought. ‘That man made two dungeon monsters very happy!’

New Life Goals (as a dungeon)

Reconnaissance Keep Baxter/Hildi happy Life as a dungeon Keep digging ‘til Bob says it’s enough Loot (make some) Monsters (get some) Me happy and connected My mom and family Figure out what being a dungeon means. Figure out the changes to the world. Figure out how not to become a murder pit

Looking at his list, he thought he needed something about security. Those guys were not a good crew and if his family was going to be around here, he should probably prepare to deal with them. Evidently the Bobs were serious when they said monsters were not allowed out of the dungeon. His snake was out for less than 6 seconds and had over 450 points of damage done to it. Come to think of it, they’d never said monsters weren’t allowed out of the dungeon, they’d just given him a special, expensive ability that allowed him to create tame monsters that could get out of the dungeon.

The other thing was just being better prepared. Right now, he really only had a single snake lying between his core and anybody wanting it. He wasn’t sure if the rules that governed dungeons in web novels were real or not, but he’d hate to see a big crew come down his tunnel after him and only have a single snake to fight them off.

With the jackass’es attack on Hildi, he figured that he pretty much had failed his first goal, Reconnaissance, completely. He couldn’t call it anything but a failure. A man had actually gotten close enough to threaten his bonded, in his territory, and he hadn’t know that guy was even there.

‘So, security, reconnaissance were now one and two on his new list. Monster’s had to be a part of that,’ he thought. ‘And, if I’m going to have monsters, I’ve got to have loot. It boils down to I still don’t know what I’m doing. The Bobs put me here and didn’t tell me squat. Or only hinted. So, let’s see what I’ve figured out about being a dungeon so far:

Racial Imperatives

Must have dungeon entrance at surface … Yep Rooms must be connected … Yep Blood hunger … Yep. I felt no shame killing that guy. I want to do it again. Even exchange … Yep. This just feels right to me. Bounds are clearly defined … Yep, but I’m not clear on what they are. I can sense dirt around my rooms, but can’t sense in the air above my tunnel. Subject to urges, doesn’t like to compromise … Yep Monsters must stay within bounds except as scouts … Yep. Saw that with the snake. Must grow … Yep. I’ve been digging for a week and never once really questioned it, so … Likes to create, almost a need…. Yes, that one was confirmed by the Bobs when they said, “what are dungeon’s for except to bring new things into the world.”

Nine items that pretty much defined his life right now. Although, now that he thought about it, that was only the dungeon side of him. Eight items that he was not wild about and the ninth that he liked. Maybe because it appealed to the same side that had caused him to want to be an author. The man side, the Jake Silvestre side, had a different set of priorities and that was Jake’s list. Jake’s list was how he was going to stay human. And he had to think that something about that list was what the Bobs had put him back here for. If they’d just wanted a murder pit they could have well, put one of those rats in charge. Set it up and let it run. Kill a rat, ching, get a gold piece. Instead, they’d put me and Baxter and now, Hildi in charge.

So, what do the Bobs want? Ah screw the Bobs, he thought. Ineffable. So, eff them.

What do I want? What does Baxter want? What does Hildi want? And how can we make it happen?

Jake

Baxter

Hildi

Family Safe

Baxter Safe

Hildi Safe

Jake Safe

Family Safe

Jake Safe

He thought about that for a while.

‘Is that it?’ he asked himself. ‘Really, after surviving High School, graduating from an Ivy League college, living in a fucking closet for 2 years to pay off student loans, that’s what my list is? What am I, a saint? Right!’ the last word was said especially sarcastically. ‘I didn’t even think of doing something for my family until I was a week into the apocalypse. Admittedly, it is the apocalypse, but still, seven days! How about some honesty here.’ He put up his list again and started brainstorming, this time being more real.

Jake

Baxter

Hildi

Human again

Cool powers

Eat again

…

Figure out the Bobs

Keep Bobs happy

Get laid again

Be loved

Love

Have fun

Friends that matter

To survive

To have my friends and family survive

To do something worthy

Create cool shit!

Fun fights

Good food

Cool powers

Get laid

Be loved

Love

Friends that matter.

To survive

To have my friends and family survive

Get laid

Cool powers

Good food

Be loved

Love

Have fun

Friends that matter

To survive

To have my friends and family survive

To do something worthy

‘Now that’s a list,’ Jake thought. ‘That’s a list I can stand behind. Fuck these assholes that want to turn the world into some kind of Thunderdome. I know what I want. I know what Baxter wants. And, I’m guessing that Hildi wants the same things I do. Because that’s what it means to be human. Now, I’ve just got to figure out, no, we’ve got to figure out how to make it happen.’

“So on my new list, what’s urgent? Because it’s all important, but what do I need to do to make the rest of it possible.”

Survive - Protect myself, Friends and Family Survive - Protect my friends and family.

Then he started to plan. But the first thing he did was create two more rattlesnakes.