CHAPTER 10: A Way Out

  After I could finally convince the lady that she was in no ‘current’ danger, and that this really was a Starbucks, she held up one finger in the universal “give me a minute” gesture, and went right back into the ladies’ restroom. She was in there so long I thought perhaps she was looking for a way back to where she had come from, because it was obvious it wasn’t here, but the occasional sound of running water or the hand dryer going confirmed that she was doing the same thing I had; doing her best to take a shower in a Starbucks bathroom sink. She had looked like some sort of casino worker, or maybe a bus driver, based on the uniform. She was a Black woman, maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, not much over five feet, and with more than a few extra pounds. The way she hopped up after getting a good look at our local barista showed she was far more spry than one would give her credit for at first glance, though. Looking down at myself, a pretty average 19-year-old male physique from the outside… I may have been in the military, but it was the Air Force after all. I certainly didn’t look like a Marine. But I was stronger than any two men put together from before the System. Looks not only ‘could’ be deceiving anymore, they absolutely 'were' deceiving.

  She emerged ten minutes later, short hair dripping, blood gone, eyes red but clear. She’d swapped out the slaughterhouse uniform for an ill-fitting Starbucks tee she must have liberated from the supply closet. The shirt was a couple of sizes too small for her, causing the lady in the logo to look a bit like the wearer. I got up, trying to look as nonthreatening as I could manage.

  “Hey,” I said, soft as I could. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer, just shot a look at the barista and pressed herself flat to the wall, giving the counter a ten-foot berth. The ghoul barista didn’t move, didn’t even seem to register us. Patiently standing at the counter, gently tickling a slice of the cinnamon swirl cake as he waited for the next customer. The woman walked around him in a wide, looping arc, never taking her eyes off him until she reached the far side of the lobby.

  She slowly sank into a chair with a sigh. Only after what appeared to be a quiet prayer did, she actually look directly at me, seeming to study me intently for a couple of seconds before speaking. “You’re not one of them,” she said, voice low, as if the ghoul might overhear anyway. “You’re alive.”

  I nodded and tried to make my smile apologetic rather than bleak. “Yeah. Mostly. My name's Joe.” I waited. Nothing. I tried again: “If you’re a coffee drinker, their coffee is excellent, although it costs one mana per cup. The cinnamon cake is good too,” she raised an eyebrow at him, a small grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “From other locations.” Joe rushed to say. “I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it from this one.” Joe may have been imagining it, but he was pretty sure her eyebrow went higher. “They only offer it one way apparently, the coffee, that is, not the cake. Black. I’ve heard many people asking the barista for cream and sugar, but he just stands there.” Joe continued; he could feel his face flushing with embarrassment. This time her other eyebrow went up to join in on the skepticism as she glanced around the deserted coffee shop.

  I sighed loudly and continued. “At a different Starbucks, the one up in Minot. There are a lot of people up there. Not so much here.”

  “It is nice to meet you Joe, I’m Shanice, and I do not know where either Minot or ‘here’ is.”

  “Welllll,” I said, drawing out the ‘well’ as if I were about to explain breathing to someone who had done it for fifty or sixty years. “‘Here’ is Bismarck, North Dakota. Minot is a small town about two hours north of here, which is near the Minot Air Force Base, which is where I was when the world went to shit.” I said. “Language, young man.” Shanice interrupted, quietly, almost absently, as I continued, unphased. The world had ended, and I would not watch my language for anyone. “Are you okay? Did you maybe hit your head or something? How could you not know where Bismarck is? You are in it after all… I have a ton of different medications in my storage if you need something.” I wanted to say insulin, but figured it would be best to let her say it herself if that was the case. Now that I thought about it, he wondered if things like diabetes could be cured with the wave of a hand now. Not my hand, of course. I could only create cancer, not cure it.

  Shanice looked me directly in the eyes for a few seconds, perhaps trying to determine my trustworthiness. “Joe, thirty minutes ago I was in a dungeon called the Cursed Village, getting chewed on by what I’m pretty sure was a five foot tall panther with glowing green eyes. Forty-five minutes ago I was in the Grand Canyon, due north of Flagstaff, Arizona. To be honest with you, I don’t feel like I’m even on the same planet anymore, let alone be able to identify this place as ‘anywhere in particular’, North Dakota, merely by the interior decor of the local Starbucks.” She sighed, then finished lamely, “Lord help me.” Then she apologized to me for being ‘short’ with me. I quipped she couldn’t help it she was born short, to which she gave me the dreaded eyebrow arch that all black women seemed to be born with already perfected.

  We sat in awkward silence for another minute before I reiterated my question about wanting coffee. “I would love some Joe, but I can’t drink it black… far too bitter for me.” Shanice responded. “Oh, this is great stuff, though; not bitter at all. Also, I can’t help with cream, but I may have some sugar in my storage that you can have.” I answered, trying my best to be helpful. “Storage?” Shanice asked, obviously confused. It was my turn to gloat over the storage thing. “Almost four days in and you haven’t figured out your inventory yet?” I said with a grin, much preferring the moment from this side of the fence. Shanice turned a now pale face towards me and asked quietly, “Four days? That’s not possible. This whole thing started less than three or four hours ago.” I could see her checking her interface, almost assuredly looking at the logs of events since this had begun. She whispered something to herself about a time penalty, her thoughts obviously somewhere else, probably with ‘someone’ else. She stood suddenly and politely, yet in a very no-nonsense manner, said, “It was very nice to meet you, Joe, but I have to go.”

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  As she turned and started marching towards the door, I winced and called after her. “About that … you, I mean, ‘we’, may have a bit of a problem.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a Shanice now with a ‘very’ pale face was sitting back in her same seat, sipping on a black, but very sweet cup of coffee, explaining to me everything that had happened to her, and how her son must have been worried sick about her, sitting and waiting at a campground twenty miles south of the Grand Canyon. She claimed to have left nothing out, refusing to add lying to her list of sins. “We all had to do things we wish we hadn’t.” I said, having zero compunction about lying and sticking with the same “I did what I had to do to escape the base.” story. Shanice was visibly upset, but she was a pragmatic woman if nothing else. “Well, I’m a healer, and you’re a fighter. Do you think between the two of us we can make it out?” I checked my stats, and seeing that my mana was full, and had been for a while, I cursed and switched it back to leveling. I looked back at Shanice, who had an appropriately disapproving frown on her face, then explained that I was frustrated with the loss of mana due to not switching back to leveling when I should have. Once again, I was the fool, as Shanice explained to me I could have set my absorption to fill my mana pool, then automatically overflow to leveling when I was full on mana. I resolved never to lord knowledge over anyone ever again. “You seem to have figured that out rather quickly if it’s only been a few hours for you.” I said, eyeing Shanice a bit skeptically. “At least half that time was studying the interface Joe, I just hadn’t made it to the inventory tab, as I had nothing to be concerned about storing.” She had that grandmotherly way of explaining things that made me feel both grateful and irritated at the same time. How she constantly used my name when talking to me kind of grated on my nerves as well. I sighed (softly this time to avoid trouble) and changed the subject.

  “Let’s go shopping and see if we can find anything that can help us.” I said, standing up and picking up the trash while downing the last of my coffee. “Are we gonna throw tainted cinnamon cake slices at them and hope they ignore us while we run?” Shanice said, turning to look towards the barista, and the only source of shopping that she was aware of. I immediately spewed coffee everywhere, luckily not towards Shanice. I coughed and choked as Shanice pounded me on the back, asking if I was okay. I choked out a barely audible “tainted” with a meaningful glance towards the barista. Shanice turned a shade of red I didn’t know black people were capable of. I materialized a bottle of water out of my inventory and started drinking, much to Shanice’s amazement. Ten minutes later, after explaining both the inventory system and the pillar, we both went shopping, desperate to find something that would offer a way out. I spent hours searching for something that might do them some good. I saw some warrior class skills that would work great, like “juggernaut’s Charge” and a mage skill called “Blink” that could probably carry me well past the wall of flesh, but even if I could buy it, which I could not, that would do Shanice any good. I bought some grooming supplies, and some new boots that mirrored the self-repair and cleaning functions of my clothes, but eventually left disappointed, cursing the ability limitations of my shit class.

  Shanice was out a split second before me, a hopeful look on her face. I immediately sensed the mood shift and excitedly asked her what she had found. “I can go back, Joe! I can go back to the dungeon!” Of course, nothing is ever easy. There were several issues with going back. First and foremost was the cost. It cost 500 mana for her to take the quest that would send her back to the dungeon directly from the pillar. She only had a mana pool of 160 mana, but that could be dealt with given time to gain a few levels. She told me that her per-level stat point gain was six. After some mental math (performed by Shanice) we discovered it would take over twelve days at her 110 mana per hour to get her intelligence up to fifty, allowing her to have the 500 mana capacity to buy the quest. Not only was that a terrible way to allocate her critical early points, but she was in tears about the twelve days, imagining her son thinking her dead, maybe even dying himself waiting for her at the desolate camping site. I felt terrible for her, but was ultimately helpless to do anything about it. The quest wasn’t available to me, he checked. It was called “Return to Cursed Village” after all, and I had never been there.

  We sat quietly across from each other when Shanice spoke quietly. “Joe, there is another way, and I know it is asking a lot, but I don’t know what else to do.” I Immediately straightened up, because I was potentially in an even bigger bind than Shanice, as I had no option for escape other than hoping to brute force my way out… a prospect I did not think that I had much of a chance of surviving. Not without a lot more levels, perhaps requiring months sitting in this Starbucks just trying not to go mad. “What is it? What can we do?” I asked, shifting forward on my seat.

  “Shanice Brown has invited you to join her party. Do you accept? YES/NO,”

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, “I didn’t know that was a thing!” “Language!” Came the automatic reply, but not harsh, and tinged with a bit of guilt. “I think we can pool our mana to buy the quest if we are in a group, and I’m pretty sure that if you are in my group, you could go with me. It said that ‘your group may teleport directly from the pillar to the entrance, but leaving by any route other than the central pillar will result in a significantly larger time penalty’… that is besides coming out in a random Starbucks somewhere else in the world. I can’t do this alone, Joe. I know it’s asking a lot, and you may not even have enough right now to cover me, but between the two of us, we can certainly get out of here a lot sooner than twelve days. I missed a lot of leveling time, so I thought you might have more mana than I do…” she trailed off. “Like I said, I know how important mana is. I know that this will delay your own progress, but I don’t know what else to do, Joe.” I clicked YES without a word.

  I was wrapped in a bear hug before I registered her standing up. “Thank you, Joe,” she whispered fiercely. “He may be a grown man now, but I will always see the little boy who called me ‘mama’ for the first time every time I look at him.” As the hug was dragging on to the point of becoming awkward, Shanice spoke up. “Joe?” Came the muffled question from somewhere near my shoulder. “Yes, Shanice.” I replied. “What is a Reaper?”