The Connected System

“I actually miss the bed back at the school,” Stephen Cross said quietly.

Ahead of him in the rough line, Loch heard the whisper. He wasn’t sure who Stephen, the Striker in Josh Hauser’s group, was talking to. Loch also shared the sentiment. The beds, for those who had them, and mattresses might not have been the best but it beat sleeping on the ground anytime. Loch was lucky enough to have a real bed. A mattress on a frame. Many others were using just mattresses on the floor. Still others had sleeping bags and nothing else.

The Carpenters were making bed frames but the biggest issue was space. Bed with frames took up more space than just mattresses and right now, space was at a premium. Homes and increased living space were priorities over comforts.

But even a mattress on the floor, or even a sleeping bag, were much better than nothing but laying on the cold hard ground of a cave. They had sleeping bags, kept in Piper’s Spatial Bag, but it wasn’t that much with the rocky and hard ground.

No one had gotten a great night’s sleep. But it was better than being outside. At least in the cave there had been shelter from most of the night’s weather, which had included a hard and fast cold wind. Loch could hear it whistling through the trees, bending and snapping branches. Making trees bend and crash into others. He thought he’d heard a couple trees falling during the night.

It had gotten cold overnight and with no fire, that had made it worse. The chill had seeped up through the ground, through the thin protection offered by their sleeping bags. For their Adapted bodies to feel the chill, it really had to have been cold.

A cold breakfast didn’t help.

Elora was back at tracking the movements of the Wendigo. It was proving harder than the day before. The tracks were that much older, more time for weather and time to make them mostly disappear. Loch had no idea how Elora was finding anything to follow but he had to trust that she was. They’d only been out tracking for an hour and Stephen’s wasn’t the first complaint Loch had heard.

They were all coming from Josh’s group. None of Loch’s personal team, he finally had accepted that Brian, Jenny and Julia were going to be part of his group. He was wondering if it made sense to make them Bannerman, but hadn’t decided yet. He wanted to spend some time with Cerie, asking questions about Bannerman, but hadn’t found the time yet.

There was never enough time.

Both Kyle and T.J. knew better than to complain, or it probably didn’t bother them. As part of the hunting teams, they both spent most of their time out in the woods. At some point, they’d build some hunting cabins, scattered throughout all the various woods, but for now the hunters slept on the ground, in caves or up in trees.

Loch really didn’t know where they would find the resources, mostly in people, to build the hunting cabins. And the watchtowers and everything else they needed. Getting materials wouldn’t be a problem, there were plenty of trees to cut down and harvest. But getting the people out this far and providing guards to protect the crafters, that would be a logistical nightmare. Something for Ed Turner to worry about, and something for after the winter.

Ahead Elora had stopped, the trees visibly thinning out. Loch could see clear blue sky. As he got closer the forest floor turned to a greenish tinted water that spread out pretty far with trees lining all shores. The water wasn’t clear, a murky green with patches of ferns and lichen growing across the surface. Trees grew right on the edge, some having fallen into the pond. Loch was confused about what body of water it was.

They were walking the woods that were bordered by Route 4 on the south, Bow Lake Road on the east and some of the north, with Province Road in Strafford being the rest of the northern border. West was Route 107, sometimes called Catamount Road, and Jenness Pond Road. There were a lot of small bodies of water in that area, with the larger Bow Lake and Jenness Pond being outside the boundaries. Long Pond, Durgin Pond, Little Bow Pond and three or four ones that were still good sized but not big enough to have their own names.

Pre-Connection, they would have walked enough to reach Route 107 and beyond. But in this new world, with all the expansion, Loch wasn’t sure which pond they were looking at. Most likely one of the unnamed ones.

Or was it new?

He couldn’t see the whole perimeter of the pond, but it didn’t seem familiar. Not that he’d walked around all of them, but he knew the general layout of the land. Picturing the original map in his head, he tried to trace their steps and path but gave up. He couldn’t do it and it really didn’t matter anymore.

If it was Long Pond, there would have been houses around the perimeter, and he didn’t see any so ruled that one out. He made a mental note to see about sending scavengers through the woods to Long Pond and Jenness Pond. It might not take as long as going over the road. They’d have to take the roads back but getting there would be quicker.

Had Josh and his people come down Route 107? Maybe they’d know how the road conditions were. The Clan had plenty of wagons, carts and wheelbarrows but needed to start getting ahold of some trailers so they could start moving resources from the mines they’d found. That would also mean improving the roads.

They hadn’t thought about road crews before, people tasked with filling in the cracks and holes, removing the ruined pieces of pavement. It wouldn’t make sense to do all the roads, but the areas leading to the mines and other resource harvesting areas would be useful. That would limit the amount of repair work. There would still be a lot but no need for all of it.

Loch reached into the shoulder bag he wore, adjusting the straps of the nearly empty backpack. Everyone had one, though most of what they were finding went into Piper’s Spatial Bag. There were a lot of herbs, plants and other small resources scattered throughout the woods and they were grabbing everything they could. There were so many aggressive animals, like Mutated Chipmunks, that they were amassing a large amount of pelts, claws and other animal parts.

Attacks weren’t constant, but happened frequently enough. The animals were all lower Leveled, so the experience gains were minor.

Opening up the magical notebook that Kristin had given him, Loch made some notes with a pencil. He watched the words appear on the page, disappearing after a minute.

Create road crews to patch and repair the roads between the school and resource nodes.

He smiled, thinking of the cursing Kristin would do when she received the message.

The condition of the roads had been the only thing preventing them from getting the trailers that still existed. There weren’t many, but Loch had seen some in garages and sheds. There had been a lot of snowmobiles and ATVs in Northwood, which meant a lot of trailers. The problem would be pulling them, but they’d figure something out. Most Adapted were strong enough they could pull a trailer for a while before needing a break.

First the roads, then worry about how to get the trailers from place to place.

Again he wondered what had happened to all the horses. Larry came and went, sometimes hanging out around the school but most times off somewhere. Even Harper didn’t know where the horse went. He looked past the body of water, toward where Jenness Pond Road would be through the thick woods. There were cows down that way. Had they survived?

Probably not by now. Some predator would have gotten them.

They would have made good animals to pull trailers.

“Lord Lochlan,” Elora called out from the side, pulling Loch from his thoughts.

He put the notebook away as he walked along the shore toward where she had gone. The whole group had spread out, looking for resources or just examining the woods around them. Elora had made her way down the shore, presumably still following signs of the Wendigo. As Loch got closer, he could see that it wasn’t tracks she had found. The ground was a couple feet up from the water, a large tree right at the edge with exposed roots hanging out over the water, bits of dirt splashing. Grass hung over the edge, the plant’s roots holding it from falling in. Elora stood at the edge, toes hanging over, one hand on a branch to steady herself. The other pointed at the tree’s root structure and what it contained.

A body hung, caught in the scales, the lower half in the water. Pale skin had been pulled tight across a strange bone structure. The skull was larger and more round, the arms longer with three fingers. The odd skin wasn’t as dried out as the elf body Loch had seen. There was still some wetness to it.

“Is that one of the frog people?,” Harper asked from where she stood just behind Loch, off to the side to get a view.

“I believe so,” Elora answered. “A victim of the Wendigo.”

“The body must be burned,” Cerie said, flying over the water to hover above the body. Her glow gave the pasty white a sickly green tint. She looked around at the pond. “At the very least, it must be removed or it could corrupt the water.”

Loch looked at how the body was stuck on the roots. A good gust of wind could knock it loose easily. Luckily, it was protected from the constant winds blowing through the trees. And luckily it was a pond with the slowly circulating water. If it had been a river, the body would have been pushed downriver already.

It was not going to be easy to get the body free and on land.

Loch sighed, not liking the delay.

“Piper, get some rope from the bag,” he said, studying the roots and how they lay over the body.