Travis's Journey Through the Apocalypse

Chapter 8

Just a Little Toot-Toot

“Are you okay?” Janet asked in a worried voice. I turned my head toward her, gave her a thumbs-up, and gritted my teeth.

“Fuck, that’s wild,” Beth said. I turned my head to look at her, and she was staring at my leg, mouth gaping in awe. Janet put her hand on my shoulder in a way so Beth wouldn’t notice. I looked at her, and she gave me a soft, I’m here for you smile and looked at my leg again in fascination.

After about ten minutes of my itchy, burning nightmare, basically all my pain was gone. I mean, no itch, no burn, no fucking pain at all. My leg looked like it was back to normal, except for a bright pink patch of skin where the spear had pierced my leg, but even that looked like it was fading slowly.

The next thing I knew, I was pulled from my thoughts when a loud fart ripped through the quiet room. I looked up at Beth, and then I looked at Janet, whose face was now bright red. Then she farted again.

“Omg, that felt so good,” Janet said

“Janet!” Beth scolded

“Sorry, but it really did,” Janet said.

I looked at her, a little shocked, and then I heard Beth let out a small laugh. I turned and looked at Beth. She had her hands over her mouth, red-faced, and looked shocked at the fact she’d just laughed at a fart. Then, I felt a bloating feeling in my stomach. There was nothing to do. I had to let it rip, so I closed my eyes and did.

Oh my god, that felt amazing. I am just letting it go. Holy fuck, damn near orgasmic. I opened my eyes, a smile on my face, and saw Janet looking at me with a, oh yeah, did that feel nice, look on her face. Beth looked like. Now she thought that wasn’t funny. “That was gross, Travis. Come on. Janet farts, so you have to join the party?” Beth said, with a disapproving tone to her voice.

Then the loudest fart so far smacked the air. Janet and I looked at Beth, shocked. Beth’s face had gone from disapproval to shock and embarrassment instantly. Janet started laughing after a few seconds, breaking the silence, and I couldn’t help it. I started laughing as well.

Beth’s face relaxed the next moment and then she was laughing with us. Then fuck! I had to fart again, and I let it go. Janet soon snapped a good one out after that. Beth hit us with a room shaker, which was mayhem after that.

The farting session lasted only about five minutes in total, but that’s a lot of farts if you think about it. “Didn’t realize farting could wear you out, but I feel like I need a fucking nap now,” Janet said. Beth and I nodded at that, and without speaking, we all sat down on the floor and laid our backs against the wall. One by one, we passed out.

Janet sat next to me. Beth passed out in seconds and was snoring away on Janet’s other side. I heard Beth’s snores, and then suddenly, Janet had her head on my shoulder, falling fast asleep. I reached over and rubbed her leg in what I intended to be a reassuring manner. Janet looked up at me through her eyelashes and smiled. She held my arm with one hand. I let go of her leg as we passed out.

My eyes slowly opened, and I felt better rested than I had since, fuck it, ever. I was the first one up. I looked down at Janet, who was still holding my arm, her head still on my shoulder. I softly jostled her leg, and her eyes slowly opened. “Morning, have a good nap?” I said in a soft voice. Not so much as to not wake Beth up. She looked a little drowsy, then slowly lifted her head off my shoulder and let my arm go.

“Oh, gods, yes! Wow, I feel like I’ve been waiting for a nap like that my whole life.”, she said while stretching a little in place. At that point, Beth was making sounds like she was waking up. I looked past Janet and saw Beth yawn. She looked over at Janet while she cleared the sleep from her eyes.

“Sleep okay there, Beth?” Janet asked.

“Jesus! Wow, yes, damn. I feel like I’ve never had a stressful day in my life. We just slept on the floor, leaning against a wall. I should feel all stiff and shit. I mean, I feel like I was sleeping on a cloud. Those Senzuketa Beans really are amazing.”, Beth said.

Janet smiled at Beth. Talking about the Beans again got me thinking. She had called them a treasure, and honestly, the little loot hamster in my stomach had been crying out at me about the injustice that no loot dropped from those fucking Caprainki troops.

Wasn’t this a fucking Dungeon? What was this crap? We beat monsters, where was my fucking loot, Dungeon? Huh? Huh?! Then I stopped. What if they dropped the loot where they died? We had been pretty focused on getting the fuck out of there at the time.

I hadn’t even checked if they had dropped shit! “Fuck! Oh fuck.”, I said out loud in a soft voice, talking to myself. Did we just leave the loot!? And if we did, would it still be there, or did we just lose half of what we came here for? We got our levels, the first part of why we were in this fucking Dungeon. Beth and Janet had mentioned that they had made it to level 5 after that fight, and I’d hit level 6.

It was definitely getting more challenging to level up. My XP needs had definitely increased, and I was sure it would only get worse. The second reason we were here, though, was to get fucking loot! If we were actually going to clear this Dungeon, which was starting to seem like a more daunting task.

After that last encounter, we needed that loot. Janet was looking at me like I was going a little crazy.

“Talking to yourself over there? You, okay?” Janet said, smirking, and asked, "Should I be worried about this?"

“What?” I said. I probably said that out loud when I was yelling at myself about the loot thing. “I was just thinking about our fight with the Caprainki.” “The what?” Beth interrupted.

“The Caprainki’s, that’s what the fucking goat dudes were actually called.”, I told Beth and Janet.

“Oh, really, actually, I think I do remember that from the kill notification I got from one of them.”, Beth said, looking like she was trying to recall the info.

“I was just thinking that we didn’t get any loot from those Caprainki, or if we did, we totally forgot it in our rush to get the fuck out of there to get back to the safe room.”, I told them. Janet looked at me, blinking for a moment. Beth gave me the same look. Janet broke the silence. “The fuck are we still doing here waiting around? We’re all healed up, right?” She looked around. Beth and I nodded back. Yeah, we were both pretty much good now, then Janet continued.

“What the fuck are we doing just sitting here chatting? Let’s get the loot and head back to the tree house to regroup. I need a fucking drink of something with a bit of a different punch than that magic water as well. I smiled at Janet.

“Well said, Janet,” I told her. In the next minute, we were all back at the entrance to the Dungeon, weapons in hand and waiting for, well, I didn’t really know. What the fuck were we waiting for?

“You gall’s ready?” I asked Beth and Janet. I got a nod from each of the ladies, and we entered the Dungeon for the second time.

Well, the first thing we found out was the Dungeon didn’t reset every time we left and reentered, or at least not that fast. We made our way back to the scene of the battle. There was blood everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

The floor was covered. Bodies were strewn all over the floor, and as we got closer to them, the smell was indescribable. I mean, oh my fucking god, that shit was fowl. Oh yeah, and no fucking loot boxes, so this just got more complicated.

I had to pinch my nose closed as I found it hard to deal with the smell. As I did, I heard a wrenching sound and looked at Beth. She was over by a wall, hand up supporting herself as she was throwing up on the floor. I felt terrible for her and totally got it. I was surprised I wasn’t throwing up myself.

The next thing I knew, I heard Janet start to wretch, and then she was up against the opposite wall from Beth, throwing up as well. Oh shit, both got hit, that’s a bitch. I really hate throwing up, like it’s the worst, and I was so happy I was keeping my stomach under control.

My hand slipped a little at that exact moment, and that was it. I let just enough of that smell, that always cheesy, acidic smell of bile, and I was fucked. I started to wretch. I made my way over to the wall and started throwing up.

When we were all done puking our guts out, we collectively decided to go back to the safe room and clean up before we did anything else. After we were all clean, we went back into the Dungeon. We all had a hand on our noses and looked down at the corpses that filled the hallway. It didn’t look like any other Caprainki had come by and seen what had gone down yet, so I guess that was one thing we had going for us.

“Well fuck, where do we even start with this fucking mess.” I posed the question to Janet and Beth. We all stood there looking at the body a little longer, then Beth looked at us, let her hand fall from her nose, and set her face.

Out of nowhere, she walked over to the close’s corps and started to loosen the straps holding the Caprainki breastplate fastened. I watched Beth for a moment, then looked at Janet. She looked at Beth with a grossed-out outlook on her face and would not break her gaze from what Beth was doing.

I let out a nasal laugh, and she looked up at me like I was crazy. She saw my smile and yelled at me in a nasal tone, “What? That’s fucking disgusting. You can join her if you want, but that’s fucking gross as fuck! I’m not doing that, no fucking way.”

I looked at her, gave her a more extensive, shit-eating grin, and said, “Oh okay, so no loot for Janet, that’s cool, more for us.” She groaned and then gave me a, please don’t make me do this pout and through in some puppy dog eyes for good measure.

I just laughed some more. She walked over and stroked my shoulder, giving me a playful, flirty look, then said in a sultry voice completely ruined by the whole nasally voice the hand holding her noise gave her, “Come on, you’ll share, right? Go and get me something HARD and LONG to protect myself, you know what I like, right?”

I blinked at her for a moment. That was actually really fucking hot, even all nasally, then I snapped out of it. “Yeah, not gonna happen. If you want it, you dig through the nasty like the rest of us.”, I said. Her face fell, and she gave me a dirty look. “Fine, but you’re dead to me.” She said in an all too serious tone.

“Come on, Janet,” I said back, and she looked at me as if she was not playing around anymore.

“Travis, dead, too, me.”, she said and walked off. Fuck, maybe I fucked up, like. The way she had been acting toward me recently had made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could get my dick touched.

Fuck! That would be amazing. I hadn’t gotten laid in three months. I had a one-night stand with a girl before the whole integration thing, and we had both been shit-faced. Needless to say, I didn’t remember much about it, and that might have been a good thing.

Janet started walking around to the different bodies, grabbing the weapons she could see on the Caprainki’s. She was making a pile of them. I think she decided it was the least messy of the jobs that had to be done. We were taking these guys for everything they had.

Meanwhile, Beth got the breastplate of the first Caprainki, took everything else of value the Caprainki had, and moved on to the next body, repeating the entire process. I walked towards the body that Janet had already taken the weapon from, and Beth hadn’t gotten to yet.

I bent down next to the body of one of the Caprainki and tried to figure out how I was going to start stealing all this guy’s shit. The smell was still ever present and lingering. You could almost taste it on the back of your tongue. I gagged again but forced it down and decided I would start with the breastplate as Beth had.

I felt with my hands at the place on the side of the Caprainki chest where the clasps to the chest plate were fastened. I found them after a second. There was just too much blood matted into the short-cut wool that covered every visible part of their bodies to see it with my eyes.

After finding them, I had to work on them for a second. Turned out they were connected with leather straps that were just tied together. It’s fucking hard to get a knot, sticky with blood un-fucking tied I learned that fast.

I eventually got the ties loose and the two on the other side of the breastplate. That was nice because I could just slip it over Caprainki’s head and slide it from under its back. After I got that off, it had two arm guard bracer-type things I could steal, I mean repurpose. They were metal on the outside and leather on the inside. With both of them off, I decided to put on pants next. Hell, it was the only thing left on this guy.

In the process of depantsing the Caprainki, which I never laughed at in my head. When I found a pouch on the Caprainki’s belt, it was a small pouch about the size of a, maybe double, my fanny pack size. When I looked inside, I found two vials resembling those that take your blood in. Full of a red substance. It was too watery to be blood, and when it hit the light just right, it had an almost green fluorescent color. There were also a few small marble-sized balls made of a dark green herb tightly wound and folded in on itself. They looked like pills but just a bit too big to swallow, more bite-sized.

I took the lot and then finished taking off its pants. It had some boots on, and I had to pull those off before I could finish taking the pants. All the Caprainki had on now was a weird loincloth covering his junk.

I looked over at the progress of the ladies, and Beth was now on her 4th, while Janet was taking the shit that Beth pulled off and adding it to her ever-growing pile of loot. Janet walked over to me after I had all my Caprainki shit in a little pile next to me, and then she bent down and grabbed the breastplate off the pile. She looked at me and gave me a “fuck off” look as she walked the breastplate over to her pile without a word.

Shit Janet, I thought to myself, if she was really mad at me, then you know what, tough shit, this new world was complex, and I’m not gonna shelter her from that, even if I want to fuck her. She’ll have to pitch in on all the crap, not just the fun shit or, well, terrifying shit. Whatever, I’m losing my point. Basically, she gotta do the same shit as Beth and me, no special treatment.

I then gave a firm nod to the air as if that was that and started on the next Caprainki body. By the time I finished my second, Beth was almost done with the last one, so I just helped bring the piles of gear Beth was making to Janet’s collection.

Once Beth was done, she let us know with a big sigh and said, “That’s it, that’s the last one. I’m so done. Let’s get this shit and get back to the tree house. Janet, you said you had something stronger back there. Did you mean liquor? Please say you meant liquor?”

Beth had an almost pleading look as she looked at Janet. Janet just let out a short laugh and said, “Oh yeah, girl, you better believe that’s what I meant. Let’s go get fucked up.”

Getting all the loot back to the tree house took a while. The first annoyance in that process was that when we got out of the Dungeon, we appeared in the safe bubble that surrounded the entrance to the Dungeon. That wasn’t the annoying part, though. That was great. It meant we could leave a pile here instead of going back into the Dungeon every time we had to do a tree house run or making piles outside the Dungeon and just hope no one or thing fucked with it.

No, the annoying part was when we got out there, we saw a group of twenty-five little T-Rex things had taken over the pond area, so we had to wait three hours until they left. It did give us plenty of time to bring all our new shit outside, which I guess was fine. It was just boring.

When the coast was finally clear, we had to make a fuck tone of runs back and forth from the tree house to the Dungeon. We eventually grabbed some blankets and made gear bundles to carry more loot back. When all the loot was piled up in the tree house. We gathered at the door that was now a table to have a well-deserved drink.

Janet had found a liquor cabinet in some house while out scavenging. The owner had two bottles of excellent ass whisky and two handles of vodka that had survived the integration. Janet had gladly grabbed what they had left behind. The point is that It was ours now, and that’s all that fucking mattered.

Janet poured what I think was the sixth round now. I was definitely getting drunk. Twenty minutes after that, Beth was pouring the fifteenth round, and everyone was fucking shit-faced. We all talked about the fucking craziness of the whole dungeon dive, and all agreed very drunkenly that we were terrific and that Dungeon was now our bitch.

Beth had just poured her umpteenth shot when the second bottle was almost empty. She downed it, then stood up and walked right over to the mattress we had dragged all the way up in the tree. She fell right into bed, kind of face-planting into it.

I was impressed. It was almost elegant. She was so drunk. I’d watched her not an hour before and bet Janet she could pee off the tree house without falling out of it. I laughed so hard. Beth balanced herself against a branch with one hand and the tree house with the other. The funniest part of the whole thing was Beth trying to ensure she wasn’t simultaneously peeing on her feet. Most of it made it off the tree house and only got a little on her shoes.

Janet had been a little standoffish all night, and it seemed like she was actually still pissed at me about the whole looting thing. About thirty minutes after Beth had passed out, I was sitting at the table pouring another shot for Janet and myself. At the same time, Janet had moved over to the bed and had been lying next to Beth.

I thought she had passed out for a second till she lifted her head up out of the blue and insisted I pour her a shot, then lay back down. Janet sighed, and I looked over, spilling some vodka in the process. Janet pulled herself into a seated position and looked over at me. She had a dazed smile as if she was content with whatever she felt right then. She was just gazing off into our kerosene lantern lite tree house. Then she turned her head toward me, still smiling, and promptly stood up. “You want your shot?” I asked her.

“What? No, no, I don’t want that. I didn’t ask for a shot. Don’t try and get me drunk cuz I already am.” She said, and then kind of laughed at her own words. My eyebrows lifted at her sudden flip. I was pretty drunk, too, so it was also a little hard to focus on her. After my eyes had communicated the image in front of me to my brain, I saw Janet’s hand held out to me, a soft smile on her face. She giggled softly, and then I heard her slur, “Looks like some can’t handle their liquor.”

Then she burped, looked down, and brought her hand to her mouth in an, oh shit, was that me, look. I let out a brief chuckle, and Janet looked at me like she had just remembered I was there.

The hand that wasn’t at her mouth was still extended to me. I took it, pulled myself to my feet, off balancing her slightly with my action, and wasn’t ready. I reached out to help steady her, and for about twenty seconds, it was an actual crap shoot if we were gonna end up on the floor or stay standing.

The odds must have been in our favor. At the end of our little, will they fall, won’t they fall, I was holding Janet close, and she was gripping my arms tight. “Okay, think we’re good,” I said, chuckling softly.

Our faces were inches from each other, and we looked into each other’s eyes for a moment before we realized how close we were. Janet softly laughed awkwardly, then untangled herself from my arms. When I realized what she was trying to do, I let her go of her like she was made of hot coals.

She smiled and then grabbed my hand again. She led me over to a big, comfy chair near the tree house entrance. It was a lot of effort to get it up here, but it was totally worth it. The chair was entirely made of well-worn leather, and it was big enough to sit two people or one extremely comfortably.

Janet looked like she was leading me to sit in my big chair, but as she stood before it, she turned and stopped. We stood there for a few seconds, holding each other’s hands. She was looking at me like she was trying to see something in my eyes but was having trouble seeing it.

Then, out of nowhere, her hand shot up, and the next thing I knew, I had a Senzuketa Bean in my mouth. “Janet, what the…?” She just put her hand over my mouth and said, “Chew, please?” I stopped and looked at her. I saw she had a bean in between her teeth, too, and once she had seen that I’d seen it, she started chewing. After I saw that, I just shut up and chewed.

Once we both had swallowed our beans, Janet winked at me and pulled me into the chair with a little more strength than I think she intended to use. She then hopped onto the chair next to me and snuggled into my chest.

I was a bit shocked at her actions, but it felt nice, so I just went with it, and I needed physical contact. When Janet sat down next to me, she’d been smiling, but after a second of being tucked into my chest, I heard soft sobs and felt a small amount of wetness through my shirt. I didn’t say anything. I just held her as she cried, and we started sobering up from the Senzuketa Bean.

The alcohol was leaving my body at a pretty quick pace, and at this rate, we’d probably be sober in the next ten minutes. Janet stopped crying after about five minutes when the farts kicked in, real romantic, or well, the crying wasn’t really romantic either, but fuck me.

She giggled at one or two farts through her cries and just let me hold her for that ten minutes. When Janet stopped crying, she sat up, wiped her eyes, put a hand on each shoulder, and looked at my face. Her eyes were slightly puffy from crying, but even like that, she looked pretty.

“Are you okay, Janet?” I said in a soft voice. She put a finger on my lips, then closed her eyes and took a breath. Her eyes opened. She looked calmer and more collected. “Travis, first, I’m sorry. I was kind of blowing you off tonight. Honestly, I just didn’t want Beth to think I liked you.” She gave me an apologetic smile.

“We’ve been through some shit now, and if you or Beth died after what happened to Tom. I wouldn’t be okay. I was thinking about it after we fought those Caprainkis, right? Oh, fuck it, whatever they were called, if I lost you or Beth, if I lost you.” Then she stopped talking. Her bottom lip was quivering, and it looked like she was gonna cry again.

“I mean, I loved Tom. I did. We didn’t have the best… and when he died.” Janet stopped speaking at that and let out a few tears. I wanted to embrace her, but she held me back. “Please, I need to say this. I do not want to forget him, but I think I need you tonight.

I grabbed her and pulled her into my arms. “It’s okay. You really saved me back in that fight. Without you, I’d be Caprainki food by now,” I whispered into her ear. She let out a few small chuckles, her head once again buried in my chest.

Then she pulled back from me a little, and I let my hand fall to her lower back. She held the back of my head with one hand and my shoulder with her other. She looked at me for one more second, then she kissed me.