I ask her to let me go.

Sadie takes you out to the main section of her cave. It’s filled with webs, dark, and humid. She bounds around, talks to you, makes plans, and admits her desire to meet you again. Although you aren’t sure what to make of it, it does make you curious what else she’d be willing to do with you. Clova herself doesn’t seem too interested in doing anything intimate, and you haven’t had a chance to see what else Deadwood has to offer as far as adult pleasure goes.

You got a hold of your mind when Sadie took you to a tightly wrapped body-sized cocoon that wiggled and thrashed. “Your friend in there,” she says matter factly. “She didn’t seem to be a fan of me, so I suppose you don’t want me to tell her that you and I fucked, right?”

“Might be a good thing if she doesn’t find out,” you sigh. “So, I’m good to go?”

She nods and eyes you. “But, try to arrange a time where we can meet up again. I’m sure you and I will have to change views about each others, uhm, kind once we get to know each other even better!”

You eye her too. Her skirt, crop top look pretty hot, even in the lowlighting on this part of the cave. It’s even sexier when you realize she has no panties or bra on underneath any of that. Sadie perks herself out for you to look at her a little more and giggles, shooting you a quick wink and hip-bump to flash you if the gash you were balls deep inside of just some time earlier. The idea of meeting her again sounds better and better in your head…

Sadie hands you a big web sack, which scares you at first because it looks like an egg sack, but she confirms it to be your gear, all webbed up like it’s one giant webbed present.

When you’re both done gawking at each other, Sadie lifts Clova gives her to you. It’s an awkward grip, but if Sadie can her up, then so can you!

...Kind of. Without the extra set of arms, it is kind of hard to wrap yourself around the cocoon. With some guidance, you are led out.

It must be noon because the sun is directly beaming down from above, warming the air and melting the rest of the snow that had fallen over the last couple of days. The forest is lively with birds and other wildlife that scatter once you step out of the cave.

You stop halfway and turn to Sadie. “Could you do me a favor?”

She knits her brows and tilts her head.

“People might come back looking for you again if you keep killing everyone. So can you try to be more…sneaky? Evade a little more often.”

“You wanna fuck that badly again?”

You blush hard at her response to your request, but before you can answer, Sadie continues. “I think I can do that. I haven’t had anyone who wants to be with me since I lived with my family.”

“And where is your family, exactly?”

Sadie’s expression darkens, and then she forces a laugh out. “I don’t know anymore, but you know how family can sometimes be, right?”

Not wanting to overstep your boundaries, you just nod and thank her for letting you and Clova live before you start hiking into the forest.

Once you get a fair distance from Sadie’s cave, you set Clova down and start cutting away from his silk prison. You suppose Clova can hear you once enough of the webs are cut off because she stops wiggling and lets you do what you need to do to get her out.

As carefully as you can, you cut around her head and pull the web from her head like a tight mask. Clova gasped and looked at you.

“I. Hate. Spiders.” Is her first phrase.

Even though you can’t say the same to her, you still smile and ask how she is. Clova replies with a sarcastic remark and then clarifies that she wants to be completely free from her sticky bonds. So you cut, slice, and tug away, leaving a pile of white string beside you. Hopefully, no one that wants to kill Sadie won’t find this and follow your tracks back to the cave…

Clova stretches and jogs in place once she’s out. When she stops, she shakes her head, a couple of strings of white web drop from her hair. It’ll be a couple of days before she’s escaped ALL the webs.

“Thanks for the help back there,” Clova says. “How did you get out of there?”

You clear your throat. You hadn’t thought about how to explain this to Clova yet, so you chose to evade it. “I’ll tell you how as soon as we’re back to our safe house. Until then, I think we should stay focused on what’s around us.”

Clova nods, despite you expecting resistance. “You’re right. I don’t know where we are precisely, though.” She looks around and makes a face as she thinks.

You start cutting the websack that held onto all your gear. You dig out her M16 and your Garand and ask her what her plan is. Clova looks at you and frowns. “Just stay behind me. I’ll get us back.”

…

…

You were behind Clova for over 2 hours. Most of the traveling was done in silence, the kind of silence you didn’t want to break since you figured she was thinking about where to go and how to tell where you both were with every step she took.

Clova was so fixated on returning that she didn’t even stop to drink or eat. She’d shoot an occasional glance back to make sure you were still there, but otherwise, she continued onward without making minor distractions for herself. It would only be a matter of time before you were back on the right track, you hoped.

Eventually, you stopped near a place that looked kind of familiar to you, which wasn’t good because everything seemed vaguely familiar to you. The only thing that was different about where you were now is that Clova chose to stop. When you asked what she was doing, she crouched down and “sshh’ed” at you.

You wasted no time mimicking her movement. You shouldered your rifle and exhaled through your mouth, watching Clova as she tilted her head side-to-side like a dog, tuning into something you didn’t hear at all. “I think there’s man in the forest.”

“That’s one way to point it,” you remark. “Trouble?”

“This time of year? I don’t think there’s anyone you want to run into while in the forest.” Clova then sighed. “Might just be me being paranoid though, I thought I heard something talking way out.”

“Great fucking ears, dude.”

She chuckled. “Call it hunters instinct.”

Hunters instinct or not, you walked less than 100 meters and met a skirmish area. The trees here were bullet-torn. Gun powder and heat lingered in the air as a slight mist set loop around the forest.

Then, where the treeline broke, dead horses, cows, and people sprawled out over the open, walking amongst them were men in irregular outfits, poking and looting the bodies while finishing others that were still alive. Clova ducked behind the thick brush with you sticking closely behind her.

It becomes apparent that you are witnessing the aftermath of a raider attack. It must’ve been a caravan that tried to use an alternative route to Deadwood, ironically, trying to avoid getting hit. About two dozen raiders are poking around for loot, but the violence of the assault hasn’t left much.

“We should get out of here,” Clova says. “We can’t help them now.”

“You know these guys?” You whisper.

Clova nods. “I am familiar with these guys. I know where they’re camped out right now. This is about half the manpower I remember seeing the last time I engaged with’em.”

“How close are they?”

She makes a face as if she didn’t want to answer, but she does anyway. “About 30 minutes from our safe house, probably a little less.”

You wonder why she didn’t mention it before, but you know this is no time for questions.

You both begin reversing when someone screams. There’s a brief shouting match before laughter spills into the air as one of the raiders drags one of the survivors out. It’s a girl.

Your lungs deflate. “Oh, no…”

The attackers surround and begin beating and stripping her, spitting crude comments and odd remarks—Clova grunts, uncomfortable with the show being put out.

Thankfully, for both you and Clova, you don’t have to watch anything sexual. They just beat the girl half-senseless and tie her up, and throws her with their spoils of war. Then, more raiders come into view, chalking the number of hostile raiders to 2 dozen.

Clova retreats further back. “We should REALLY get out of here now. Warren, come on.”

Your odds are bad…really bad. You aren’t going to make any arguments here, but when you make it back to the cave, Clova unloads her gear and sits on the couch without comment; you poke for orders.

Clova knits her eyebrows. “We’ll spend the weekend here and go back to Deadwood. We finished the stupid contract, uhm, more or less at least, and now we get to go back.”

“What about the raiders?”

“Oh,” she blinks as if she had already forgotten about them. “Yeah, I’ll mention it to our supers. They’ll probably keep us away from this part of the area until we get a full team.”

“Shouldn’t we…help that girl we saw?” You lean against the wall, expecting her to agree.

“No,” she deadpans. “We don’t know her, and she isn’t one of our own. So we don’t owe her anything, especially our lives. Not to mention, there’s no contract to collect here.”

You adjust your stance. “Well, maybe she’s a part of a big trading company. She might-”

“No,” Clova says again, but this time more firmly. “We’re not putting our necks on the line for some random girl. I don’t see why we should do that.”

The red of her eyes flash aggressively as they stare at you. You know she has no intention of going out to risk her life for another one. She then rolls them and leans into the couch. “As a contractor, I thought you wouldn’t mind not putting your life on the line for free. What is this anyway? Why do you want to go out so badly? She made a mistake. Now she’ll have to live with it. She should have either killed herself or been killed during the engagement.”

You stare at Clova, surprised by her reasoning. She shrugs and shoots up. “What the fuck do you want to do, Warren? You want to play hero and side-kick or something? Because let me say this RIGHT NOW. Us going out there to fight 50 some-odd dudes isn't just a dumb idea, but it will get one of us killed."