[The Primeval Apocalypse] - Chapter Seven (collaboration with u/hydrael)

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The Primeval Apocalypse, by Robert Keene and Alex Raizman

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Getting out of Jamestown without getting hassled was easy. There wasn’t any sort of curfew, and it wasn’t like people weren’t allowed to leave if they wanted. It was just frowned upon. Most of the leadership—especially James—wanted to avoid folks getting lost in the dark out there. They needed the people of Jamestown to survive, especially after seeing so much death in the first few weeks of the apocalypse.

The more pragmatic among the town—like Richard—just didn’t want people to stir up trouble and lead it back here in the middle of the night, without so much concern for the well-being of the would-be troublemaker.

Either way, the result was the same.

To that end, there were guards. Most of them patrolled the bramble wall, ostensibly as an early-warning system in the event of an attack, but they were mostly to ward people away from slipping out after dusk without being able to justify themselves to a guard. But the narrow tunnel entrance I was forced to use had one permanent guard who never moved from the spot.

I’d expected to have to talk my way through them, but I knew I was home free as soon as I saw who it was. My newfound night vision meant that I recognized her well before she even saw me approaching.

Jenna and I had been basically exclusive with each other for a couple of weeks when it came to James’s endorsed “stress relief” activities. In between encounters, we’d always been friendly, but the last few days she’d been avoiding me. Either she’d caught feelings, or she had developed an interest elsewhere and was afraid of how I would react.

Neither option scared me. My feelings about being figuratively tied down were the same as hers about being literally tied down—enthusiastic. A little social stability would be a welcome change to my life. And in the other direction, we’d never defined what we had as intentionally exclusive, so I wasn’t going to let it get to me if that wasn’t what she wanted.

She just happened to be exactly my type—dark hair, dazzling smile, and capable of kicking my ass in a straight fight—and so I simply hadn’t been interested in finding another partner so long as she kept saying yes, or asking on her own initiative.

The only thing that had me worried was that I might make the first move to approach the subject with her and guess the wrong direction. I couldn’t ask her if she wanted to go steady if she was eyeing another partner, and I couldn’t accuse her of wandering if she was anxious to make it official. Either way was asking for a fight, and her skill with her obsidian sword went from attractive to terrifying with the slight adjustment in context. It was just safer to let her figure out her own feelings and get back to me, and just keep my schedule open until then.

Either way, I was going to have no trouble getting past her.

“Jenna,” I greeted her as I approached, “you’re looking lovely as ever. New haircut?”

It was a little in-joke. Nobody had had a haircut since the apocalypse. Everyone was either growing it out or hacking it off roughly when it started to get out of hand.

I’d expected a chuckle, but what I got was a jump.

“Colin?” she asked, squinting in my direction. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” I said, grimacing as I realized my mistake. My new night vision meant that I could see her clearly, and she couldn’t see me at all yet. “Sorry, I guess I high rolled my Detection on you there.”

“It’s fine,” she said as I finally stepped close enough for her to see me. “It’s nice to see you, too. If you’re looking for a pick-me-up, I’m on duty for the next few hours. But maybe later tonight…?”

I could read the anxiety and uncertainty off of her clearly. It was the same discomfort she’d had around me since a few days ago, but my new enhanced senses made the read go from black-and-white to color. I could smell nervous sweat on her palms. I could see the way her back went stiff. There was a faint chipping noise as the thumb of her left hand started to pick at the cuticle on her middle finger in a nervous tick.

There was, at least, a bit of a thrill in her. Her smile was genuine, and the joy was visible in her eyes. She was sincerely happy to see me. Jenna wasn’t upset at the idea of an evening with me, either. That was a good sign. It was nice to know she enjoyed our time together, and wasn’t just afraid to reject me.

“Later tonight would be fantastic,” I said. “I am absolutely interested. But that’s not what I came here for.” I pointed at the wooden tunnel that led through the brambles. “I just got a level-up, and I want to test out some new abilities out there where I’m not gonna hurt anyone. Just a quick five minute adventure.”

“I know what you think five minutes is,” she said, rolling her eyes with a smirk.

“If you’re off-duty when I get back, though,” I said, “maybe I’ll track you down?”

“I’d like that,” she said with a smile. She tipped her head toward the tunnel. “Now get out of here, if people start thinking I spent my guard duty talking to you all night instead of doing my job, they’ll put my name right back into the rotation.”

With that, I was out. I didn’t even really have to come up with a convincing story. I just told a simplified version of the truth, and Jenna was too distracted by the idea of avoiding a drawn-out conversation with me to ask any follow-up questions. Smooth.

Obviously, if trouble came down on Jamestown tonight, she would likely report seeing me leave just before nightfall. But that just meant that I couldn’t screw this up. If there was no trouble, then there would be no consequences, neither for me for leaving nor for Jenna if she had to admit that she didn’t stop me.

My sharper senses turned the woods into a whole new world. Even blunted by the darkness, I saw my surroundings with new light.

When I focused on my new detection radius, I could sense just how alive the woods were.

There were animals out here that I had never seen before. Prey animals whose detection radii were so large that they must have sensed me coming and fled before my detection reached them in the past, but were now well within my range before noticing me in turn. The life in the lower level of the forest canopy above me was still teeming, and I could even sense burrows beneath my feet, where some manner of dog-sized scaled critters managed an enormous warren that stretched down far beneath where my senses could reach.

Traversing the forest was much easier and less fraught with peril now.

I could sense a Daeodon foraging among a ripped-open tree root well before it sensed me, letting me give it a wide berth so that it never knew I was there. I could even find the spot where James and the raiding party had started covering their tracks after getting well clear of the Mandrill settlement, though I had to get pretty close before the disturbed earth from their passage triggered my Detection skill. I moved towards the tracks and then started to follow them back, trusting James’s circuitous route to carry me to the northeast corner of the Mandrill’s settlement without blundering into their camps that dotted the area around the town.

I wasn’t moving fast enough yet to leave anything of a backtrail to our own town, but this was just good practice. I couldn’t afford to create a disaster.

The whole while, I felt the gentle warm sensation of the system responding to me gaining power. With my new level, all of my skills’ soft caps had increased, and gaining skill levels was quick again, but more than that, I was now forcing skill checks of my newly-changed class skills. My Stealth and Intuit North skills were effectively half the level they ought to be at, and their catch-up growth was so quick that I physically noticed the difference. I found myself carrying my weight differently as I walked within just a few minutes, and my usual trailcraft to keep my way quickly became second nature rather than conscious effort, and then fell off entirely as I simply knew where I was.

After about fifteen minutes, I stopped and held my position for a moment. At my current pace, I had to be near the town. Considering how I’d adapted to my expanded senses now, I thought it was time to test out the activated enhancement to Beast Hunter. Taking a knee, I waited until the ability became available from standing still, and then activated it.

The description of the ability was, well, slightly misleading.