28 – Just Doing My Best

At Andy’s words, any control over the crowd he might have had fell apart. He didn’t try to field the twenty blurted questions; most of them were variations of “What happened?” or “Did you say you killed them?” He waited for twenty or thirty seconds, then held up his hand, signaling his desire to speak again. When everyone saw he wasn’t going to do so until they got quiet, peace eventually fell over the group of residents again.

“Listen,” he said, holding his hands out, palms up. “I’m not the kind of guy who wants to murder people. It didn’t happen like that. I came upon these guys camping in the desert and, feeling suspicious, I listened in on them for a few—”

“You spied on them?” a guy named Isaiah asked. He was leaning on a hockey stick, and Andy noticed his knee was bandaged. He couldn’t remember which one of the monsters had hurt him the night before, but that wasn’t important just then.

“Man, can you let me finish the story?” Andy glared at him, and when the guy didn’t say anything more and everyone got even quieter, Andy started speaking again. “Yeah, I spied on them. So far, out in that desert, I’ve only run into monsters, so I was being a little cautious…” Andy went on to describe the conversation he heard the men having and then his decision to try to listen in, hoping to learn as much as he could about their settlement. Then he told them about the guy who threw the knife and the subsequent chase and fight in the desert.

He didn’t go into detail; he didn’t talk about his moral quandary about running or killing. He decided it didn’t matter. The simple fact was that four men wanted to kill him, and he killed them. As he finished the story, Lucy stepped closer to him and said, her voice a little husky with the rawness of her throat, “That’s awful, Andy.”

“Yeah! Damn right, it is, young fella!” James chimed in. “Those bastards tried to kill you for nothin’? Hell no to that! You did good, standing up to them!”

To Andy’s mixed relief and dismay, more and more people in the crowd started pumping him up, congratulating him, commiserating with him, and condemning the men from the Construction City settlement. After a few seconds of that, Andy shouted, “That’s not all!” When the crowd got quiet again, or at least quieter, he said, “The reason I ran back here, the reason I’m a little freaked out right now, is because the System sent me a message after the fight.”

“What? You gained a level?” Tucker asked, reaching up to pull some of his long hair out of his face, blown there by a sudden, unseasonably cool breeze.

Andy sighed, shaking his head. “Would I call a meeting to announce that I got a level? No, listen, folks. Here’s the situation—the System is trying to get us to declare war on the other settlement.”

Again, an uproar interrupted Andy, and a dozen questions were shouted his way. He ignored them, folding his arms over his chest and just staring around, waiting. “Listen,” he finally yelled, irritation beginning to creep into his voice. “I want to tell you folks everything, but this will take all night if you don’t just listen, dammit!”

When ten or more people continued to talk amongst themselves, James reached up to his lips and let out an ear-piercing whistle. As silence fell over the dog park, he said, “I want to hear what Andy has to say, goshdammit! Don’t make me take my darn belt off!”

Andy couldn’t help chuckling at the imagery that sentence evoked. He caught Violet’s eye, and she smiled, too. Had they all forgotten his confession about killing four men already? Before he could think about it further, he started talking. “The System has a—well, a system for wars. If we declare war on the other settlement, we’re going to get bonuses, and they’re going to get a, um, debuff for a while.

“If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking the System can go ahead and screw itself; the last thing we need right now is a war. The problem is that the other settlement is probably going to get the same kind of spiel when they discover us, which is inevitable; they’re only a handful of miles away if you cross the desert.”

Violet stepped forward, and Andy saw she was holding Eduardo’s hand. “So, what? We’re supposed to just go to war and kill some other survivors because the System will encourage them to do it to us? Won’t they realize they can just talk to us?”

Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. I know that the four guys who attacked me were bragging about the people they’d killed, talking about how they were trying to recruit women, and not in a diversity sense, if you get my meaning.” He took a few steps, arms folded, moving forward and then back, pacing in a small circle while everyone stared at him. “Listen, if these people are anything like those assholes, and from what I gathered, they are, then I don’t see them turning the System down. I don’t see them passing up extra experience and quest rewards—not when they’d probably kill us anyway. So, yeah, this is a fucked-up decision we’re supposed to make, and I’m not happy about it. I also won’t make the decision without some input from you all.”

“How much time do we have?”

Andy pulled up the settlement menu and looked at the timer for the “Newly Settled” active effect. It was down to forty-four hours. “I’d say we have about two days to feel relatively comfortable in our seclusion. After that, the System’s going to stop hiding us, and then we’ll have to anticipate those guys finding us pretty much at any time. I don’t think the System will tell them about declaring war or whatever until they’re aware of us.”

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Tucker raised his hand, asking, “So, like, could we feel them out? Tomorrow?”

Andy shrugged. “I don’t know, man. If they see us ‘feeling them out,’ then they’ll become aware of us, and then the System might just go ahead and spill the beans.”

Lucy, standing nearby, said, “There are still a lot of hours left in the night. We could sneak over there.”

Andy looked at her, frowning. She had a good point. He was tired, but not exactly exhausted. In fact, he was feeling pretty damn wired. He could make the run through the desert in just an hour—less probably. Before he could even respond, the System put a message in front of his eyes:

***Special Quest: Reconnoiter the Hardhead Construction City Settlement. Obtain intelligence about their intentions toward neighboring settlements. Return with your findings. Reward: Randomly selected Codex Fragment. Accept? Yes/No.***

“What?” Lucy asked, watching him space out as he read the message.

Andy stared at the quest for a minute, his mind spinning over the reward being offered. What the hell was a “Codex Fragment?” He looked around the gathering. Had the System only offered it to him? No one else said anything, so he assumed so. Hastily, he thought yes and then cleared his throat, raising his voice. “Okay, listen. Lucy had a good idea; it’s not too late for me to jog over to their—”

“I said we,” Lucy hissed.

Andy sighed, holding up a hand in concession. “Lucy doesn’t know,” he said, still projecting his voice to the crowd, “about the skills the System has given me. With my class, I’m able to see better in the dark, and I can hide in the shadows. Like, seriously—magic. More than that, as long as it's dark, I can run a hell of a lot faster than normal. It doesn’t make sense for anyone else to try to come with me.”

“Haven’t you already risked enough?” Bernice asked.

Andy wanted to say he doubted anyone in the other settlement could make him fight if he didn’t want to, not in the dark, but then he’d basically be admitting that he didn’t have to kill those men he’d run into. He sighed, shaking his head. People would eventually put two and two together. “It’s not that big a risk. I’ll go scope things out, and if I get spotted, I’ll run for it.”

“Gimme twenty minutes to get your spear fixed up, young feller.” James didn’t wait for an answer; he turned and jogged out of the dog park, beelining for his trailer.

Omar spoke, reaching up to lift his ball cap and absently scratching his dark hair. “You make a bunch of good points, man, but I don’t like having to rely on another person so much. It ain’t right that you’re out there in the desert fighting your ass off while we sit around the park.”

Andy shrugged. “I get it. It is what it is, though. Tomorrow’s another story. When the sun comes up, I’ll be relying on you all to do all kinds of stuff.” He turned, including the group in his statement. “We’ve got to come together if we’re going to stand up to the new troubles coming our way. We’re going to need people who can build, grow food, and, yeah, fight. Even if we can work things out peacefully with the guys at Construction City, there are bands of damn monsters

out there. I fought a gila monster the size of a crocodile! Lord knows what’s happening in the city. If the good guys aren’t winning, though, you can bet your ass there’s gonna be trouble coming our way.”

“Let’s not forget,” Eduardo interjected, “the System seems to think we need more trouble than we’ve already got. If we take it at its word, we’re going to have invasions coming our way in forty days.”

“Thirty-nine,” Tucker corrected.

“So,” Andy said, trying to get them back on track, “the point is that we need to stick together. Each of us needs to do what we can to help the settlement. Right now, that means me—I need to use the skills I have to get a sense of what we’re facing from Construction City. I’ll be back before morning, and then I can give you all an update.” He shrugged. “At that point, we can have a vote, I guess.”

“A vote?” Bernice asked.

Andy nodded. “About whether we’re going to war or not.” He looked around, noticing a few faces he didn’t recognize from the day before. “Did we get some more survivors?”

“Me.” A tall, middle-aged guy with a grizzled beard raised his hand. “Greg Sumner. I work at the truck stop and started hoofing it back this way when the shit hit the fan.”

“He brought a lot of food,” Monique added. “Gave some to the people housing the kids.”

Andy nodded, locking eyes with the hard-faced man. “Thank you. Speaking of the kids—how many still have no family?”

Again, Monique spoke up, “Eight, but we’ve got them all placed with good people. I have two in addition to my own at my trailer.”

“I’ve got two, as well,” Bernice added.

“Okay. That’s really great of you all.” He looked at the crowd again. “Do you all realize how damn lucky we are? It might not feel like it, especially for those of us who’ve lost people, but things are much worse in other areas. We have good people here in this park. We’re removed from the dense population centers, so we’re not getting overrun with monsters or roving bands of assholes. We’ve got a chance to build something here, and so far, we don’t have a single person making things difficult. I hope we can keep things like that. I hope we can all remember that everyone’s suffering in some way and cut each other some slack.”

“Thank you, Andy!” a woman Andy didn’t even recognize called out. She was probably in her thirties and wore nurse scrubs.

“Yeah, hell yeah! Thank you, Andy!” Tucker added, pumping his fist. “If you hadn’t been out there, protecting our park, those four guys might have found us, and then they’d be the ones deciding if they should go to war against us!”

Andy smiled, surprised by the guy’s support. “Okay, okay. Let me get a drink and pick up my spear from James, then I’ll head out. If you’re not on gate duty, then try to get some sleep.” Again, he surprised himself with the tone of his voice and the way his words were laden with the expectation that people would listen. Whether he deserved it or not, though, people did listen, and the crowd began to disperse.

Lucy stayed close, and when most everyone had moved away, she said, “I feel bad for suggesting we check out their settlement tonight. I didn’t want you to go off alone again.”

“It was smart, Lucy. Don’t worry, anyway; I wasn’t lying about how I can sneak around.”

She stepped even closer, folding her arms over her chest, perhaps chilly in the breeze blowing out of the eastern desert. “I think you’re brave, and I think you’re right—we are lucky. We’re lucky we had a leader like you to step up.”

“I…” Andy’s words failed him for a change, and he shrugged. “I’m just doing my best.”