Ardwin gasped, flailing for a second. His eyes slammed open and he found himself on his feet before he had time to think. He spun around, but when no threat presented itself, fight or flight calmed down and his rational brain started freaking out again. He was in a grassy meadow with no civilization in sight.
What the hell? Not only was he waking up in the middle of nowhere, this place shouldn’t exist within hundreds of miles of his dorm. He went to ASU, with nothing but miles of cholla and saguaros outside the city. Beyond his immediate meadow were rolling hills dotted with occasional oak trees, but largely unforested. He could see some birds, likely hawks, circling the area from the sky, although something seemed off about them. Returning his attention to his surroundings he did a double take. Ard had somehow missed seeing James, probably because he was sitting absolutely still in the tall grass, staring out into the distance.
“James!” Ard shouted.
James started, then turned and faced him. “What are you doing in my dream?” He murmured sleepily. Ardwin refused to waste time in the apocalypse on cliches. He marched over and slapped James in the face. “No dream here. More like we got sucked into fantasyland. What happened?”
James rubbed his face and responded glaring,
“How am I supposed to know? Hey wait a sec, I think I still have my phone.”
Ardwin realized he felt a bump in his own pocket. He pulled it out. The screen was already on, which was fortunate because no power buttons were visible. On the phones were listed RPG stats, an HP bar, a pixelated figure of each of them, and an XP bar. Like a video game stat screen but with his name and image. Ardwin stared at it for a second, then shook himself. “OK before we sit here and deal with shock and stuff, we can see for miles and I don’t see a single building. Which means no readily available water, food, or shelter. We have to get that sorted, and soon.”
James added, “Plus if we have an XP bar that means one thing. Monsters.”
And since apparently whatever was going on had a flair for the dramatic, his words were punctuated by a scream. They both turned towards the sound, and rushed to get atop the hill intervening between them and the noise. More screams rang out as they did, before going silent just before they crested the hill. They both instinctively drew back as they saw a hawk, bigger than a bald eagle, tearing into the belly of their floormate Hank.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Fortunately for them, while the hawk puffed itself up and stood in front of its kill, it didn’t come after them. They stared for a second, then walked back to where they started in silent agreement. Hank was only an acquaintance, but they knew him and neither of them had seen a bloody human death before in their 20 years of life. This time Ardwin had to slap himself out of the shock setting in. No time for that now. “Ok there are more of those things. As a hawk I’d imagine they are gonna dive bomb and then fly away. We need some kinda weapon that can keep them at bay.” Ard was a Bio major aiming to become a biologist.
James literally shook himself, like a dog ridding itself of water, then dove into the problem with his friend to keep from freezing up again. “So nets, shields, spears would be useful.” James was a Ren Faire buff. They both looked around then he continued, “No time or knowledge to weave the grass, same for tree trunks into shields. I guess we could try sharpening branches from that tree.” With an objective, they both hurried to the nearest tree, up the same hill as the bird, but not at the crest and therefore not in sight. Neither talked, and ice seemed to settle into Ardwin’s veins, cracking with every movement.
Upon reaching the tree they both stopped for a second. There wasn’t a single branch or discarded leaf on the ground. It was like the oak tree had come into being fully grown.
“Guess we will have branches off.” Ardwin murmured. Fortunately for them, there were several branches straight enough for their purpose yet not so thick they’d be unable to snap them.
“You get a couple down, I’ll go find a rock we can scrape them on. Ardwin nodded and began climbing the tree. He quickly got 2 branches down, and James returned with a fist sized rock and another slightly larger from the meadow. The branches already had rough points from being snapped off, so they began trying to sharpen them with the rocks. By exerting themselves, they could somewhat refine the points, but with such primitive tools the makeshift spears wouldn’t be very sharp, and would lose their points after a single strike. When they both finished they stopped and stared at each other.
“Any ideas for what to do now?” James finally asked. Having already eaten by now, the first hawk they saw would likely just fly off if approached. And while there were about three more they could see in the sky within about a mile of them, they hadn’t attacked until now. Neither of them were content to leave murder birds circling above their heads though.
Ardwin took a deep breath to attempt to clear at least part of his panicked mind, and thought for a second.
“Ok they likely haven’t attacked us because they are probably solitary hunters and we have been pretty grouped together, while Hank was alone. Fighting one of these things alone though with these crappy things is just asking to lose an eye or get fatally injured. So I was thinking about how to bait them in, and this is my best shot. It will really depend on how desperate for food they are.” Ardwin laid out the plan.
