25 – Questions of Morality

Andy slipped through the shadows, gliding over the sands, running like he’d never done before, even when he’d played sports. He was a good runner, or he had been a few years back. He used to do it to stay fit, and he knew what people meant by a “runner’s high.” This was different, though. The exhilaration he felt every time he cast his Twilight Steps spell and let it run for a while, speeding his movement through the gloom, was something he’d be hard-pressed to describe.

It was a combination of things that made it special—the tingle of the mana flowing through him, the speed at which he moved, and the strange sensation that he was part of the darkness, a shadow among shadows. He felt like he was in on a secret as he slipped through the desert, like the night was his, and anything or anyone he ran into would be the interloper.

After a while, he knew he was getting close to the neighborhood where they’d met the Whistler, but as he ran, he became aware of flickering lights off to his right, and he slowed, changing his course to investigate. He came to a cluster of mesquite trees, big with broad canopies, and, from the cover of a stand of dried-out sacaton grass, he peered secretively at a flickering campfire someone had built near one of the trees.

He saw shadows lounging there in the dirt, and it seemed to him they could be people, but he couldn’t imagine anyone would be so reckless. Any number of monsters could see or smell that fire. Something felt off, so he didn’t approach further but lurked low in the tall, dry grass, watching.

He ran his eyes around the other nearby mesquites, studying the trunks and wide branches. Sure enough, halfway up one of the trees, nestled in the crook of a broad branch, another shadow clung, bright eyes reflecting the moonlight as it peered into the darkness. Andy thought they looked like people. The light wasn’t good, but his skills gave him an edge in that department. He saw human-looking faces, and they were wearing clothes, so he didn’t think they were some kind of mutated goblinoids.

The more he watched, the more details he picked out. Of the three sitting around the campfire, one had a spear, another a hatchet, and the third, a lanky, scarecrow-thin figure in a black rain jacket, had a long, wooden staff resting on his knees. The guy in the tree also looked like he held a weapon, but Andy couldn’t make it out. He began to reevaluate his initial impression. These guys weren’t reckless; they were confident—dangerous.

The low murmur of their conversation came to him on the wind, and Andy desperately wanted to move a little closer to try to pick out the words, so he fell back, out of their line of sight, and then moved in a wide circle until he could approach with one of the other mesquites masking his presence. When he was crouched behind the trunk, no more than twenty feet from the men by the fire, he paused, trusting his Veil of the Stalker to keep him hidden there in the shadows as he listened.

A scratchy voice, a little nasally and with a definitive whine twisting the words, was saying, “…not much left to kill around here. Anyway, it’s bullshit that Rhodes gets to raid all those houses. You gotta know there’ll be some fish hiding away—easy pickings.”

A deeper voice curtly responded, “Yeah, well, we had fun last night. The quest we got was to kill hostile monsters in the desert. Suck it up.”

“So we can earn a boon that we don’t even get a say in?” the whiner persisted. “I didn’t even get a turn last night.”

A third voice, sharp and cutting, said, “I’ll let Brooks know you’re unhappy.”

“Ah, man, don’t be a dick,” said the whiner.

“You wanna talk about being a dick? It’s your fault that chick is dead. You’re the idiot who told her we killed her man. You’re the idiot who made her fight.” Andy felt his heart begin to thump, and a strange rushing sound filled his ears. Had he heard that right? Were those assholes sitting around talking about people they’d killed?

The deep voice practically barked, “Drop that shit! What’s done is done. Anyway”—it was apparent he wanted to change the topic—“did you guys believe Chavez earlier?”

“About getting to level twelve? Hell no,” replied the sharp voice. “He’s tough, but he ain’t out here making eight levels in one day by himself. I don’t buy it for a minute.”

“Dudes,” the first, whiny voice cut in, “I wish we were on recruitment detail. Don’t say I repeated this, but Vaughn told me Brooks said to get females only. Think about that—if you’re pulling ’em in, you get the first shot—”

“Ah, Jesus, you dipshit. You couldn’t get laid before the world ended; you think you’re gonna do better now?” the sharp voice snapped.

“Well, maybe. You saw the population numbers this morning. If we can keep leveling… Might makes right in a world like this, doesn’t it?” Andy scowled, liking this guy less and less, to the point where a voice in the back of his mind was asking if he needed to do something about them.

As the men kept bantering and the topics continued to spiral into darker and darker territory, Andy clutched his spear with white knuckles. He did not like what he was hearing. Worse, it seemed like this group was from a much larger one—a “settlement” of like-minded individuals. Again, he wondered if he should try to do something, but he knew the only hope he had against four armed men was if he caught them off-guard and didn’t pull any punches.

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Could he do something like that to people, regular old humans? Did they deserve a death sentence? Was he a judge and jury now? Of course, that forced him to face the fact that there likely weren’t any judges and juries anymore, at least not that he could get to. It wasn’t like he could capture these guys and throw them in a car.

Was the world so far gone that he could execute them, though? On the other hand, if they were as bad as they sounded and they stumbled on the trailer park or led their larger group over to it, would Andy regret letting them go? Of course, that was assuming he could take them on without getting killed in the process.

He wanted to confront them—to ask them who they were and where they were from. If he couldn’t stomach doling out justice based on what he’d heard them say, he could at least keep an eye on them. He was alone, though, and if he spoke to them openly, he’d lose the advantages of his stealth and sneak attack abilities. He decided to listen for a while and see if they gave away the location of their settlement; a little spying while they bantered didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

He shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, and then he heard the soft scratch of a dried-out shrub or tumbleweed brush against something behind him. Andy whirled just in time to see a man throwing something at him. He ducked reflexively, but the spinning, tumbling knife clipped him on the forehead, slicing his skin and thudding against his skull as it continued past him to bounce off the tree.

“What the—” one of the men by the fire started to yell, only to be interrupted by the knife thrower.

“I got one! Come on! Let’s kill his ass!”

Andy felt a weird, swooning vertigo as the knife clanged against his skull, but he didn’t lose consciousness. As hot blood began to drip down his forehead, and his brain finally connected the dots about what had just happened to him, he clutched his spear and bolted. He cut to the right, dashing toward a pair of big cholla cacti. As soon as he took two or three lunging strides, he cast Twilight Steps.

Mana surged through him, and his speed practically doubled, allowing him to slip away from the knife thrower before his friends could join the party. Moreover, as soon as he gained some distance and got out of the direct moonlight, he felt the shadows slither around him, guiding him into their embrace, and he knew he would get away. The only question was whether he wanted to.

As he ran, he started to curve to the right, making a big, wide circle around the cluster of mesquite trees and the men’s campfire. The guy who’d thrown the knife had been trying to kill him. He’d also hollered at his buddies to help him finish the job. “I got one!” he’d yelled, as if this was just something they did. He didn’t try to talk; he didn’t threaten Andy. He just tried to kill him. Andy wasn’t cool with any of that.

He realized he was clenching his jaw as he ran, and he realized sticky blood had covered half his face from his scalp wound, but most of all, he realized he was pissed. He was pissed enough to do something about it. When he ran past a cluster of greasewood trees, he crouched among them, safe in his shadows, and listened.

He heard footsteps thudding all over the place. He heard men’s voices grunting, yelling, and cursing. They weren’t able to see as well as he could. Andy looked at the moon. It seemed almost like a damn floodlight to him, but he wondered how much of that was due to his Shadow Vigil ability. How blind were these guys? The guy with the knife had seen him, hadn’t he? Had it just been luck? Andy looked at his spearhead, glinting in the moonlight as he leaned against the haft. Had that been what gave him away? He lowered his spear, keeping the tip closer to the ground.

He was about fifty yards from the cluster of mesquites, but on the opposite side from where he’d been hiding earlier. He lurked there, watching, listening, and waiting. From their yells, he’d gathered that the men had split into two groups. Andy was pretty sure the knife thrower had been the guy he’d thought was in the other tree, keeping watch. Somehow, he’d gotten down and surprised Andy. He didn’t plan to let that happen again.

As he waited, he touched the gash on his forehead. It was right at his hairline, and it felt deep. He pressed his sleeve against it, gritting his teeth against the pain as he tried to get the bleeding to stop. He was crouching like that in the shadows when he heard a hoarse whisper off to his right, accompanied by the crunch of boots on hard, sandy soil.

“Dude,” the familiar, nasally voice said, “I can’t see shit. You sure you saw someone?”

The voice of the knife thrower responded, “You lazy shit. You just want to go back to the fire, but let me tell you, this guy was right on top of you! You good with that? Some punk-ass sneaking around watching you?”

“Nah, but man, we’re never gonna find him. He could’ve run anywhere.”

“Then we’ll look for a while. If we don’t find him, we’ll bring my dagger to Heath, and he can do his magic trick with the blood. Then, our little stalker will lead us right to his hideaway. Hopefully, he’s got people staying with him. We can get some more easy kills and easy loot.”

Andy had no idea what level these men were, but they were talking as if they thought they were the big shots in the area—like they could prey on whomever they wanted. Andy didn’t know what levels meant to the System other than providing improvement points and mana, but he hoped they weren’t much higher than him; they’d sounded impressed talking about a guy claiming to be level twelve, so he didn’t think there was much chance of that.

As the two men passed by his clump of greasewood, Andy noiselessly slipped out after them, stalking through the shadows. He watched them walk clumsily through the dark, kicking dead brush, stomping on rocks, even getting cholla cacti stuck in their boots, cursing and stomping them off with their heels. They had so many weaknesses that Andy felt a sudden clammy discomfort watching their backs, looking at their kidneys and ribs, their spines and necks, their inner thighs and skulls.

He was sure he could kill one of them instantly; that’s how bad they were. Could he do it, though? Could he kill another person, even one who’d tried to kill him? What set him into motion was a brief thought of the trailer park and the kids he and Lucy had brought there that afternoon. He imagined them getting their hands on Lucy or the other young women in the park. It sounded like they could find him somehow with the dagger—his blood? Andy couldn’t allow that. He couldn’t be the one who brought men like these down on his people.

Before he knew it, he was lunging forward and driving his spear into the knife thrower’s back—a perfect, critical hit right between his ribs and through his heart. As the man gasped and staggered forward, Andy yanked his spear back and drove it into the whiny-voiced man’s left kidney. He twisted it, widening the hole as his victim screamed, and then he pulled the spear out and slipped away, activating Twilight Steps as he melded with the shadows.

The whiner howled, screaming his agony and despair as the certainty of his doom closed in; nothing short of a trauma center was going to save him, and there was no way he was getting airlifted out of the desert. Andy crouched in the shadows, waiting and listening. He’d left that guy alive for a reason: his screams would bring his other friends running, and Andy would be waiting.