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Yeoman stepped out of the shower, water dripping down his body. Other than washing away the mental fatigue that had built up, the shower had given him other benefits too. The vines on his back absorbed some water, and they felt heavier, tougher. Even though he didn’t upgrade the vines on his body inside the aliens’ dimension, he could still force spines to grow out of them. Like the spines of his grasping vines skill, the spines he grew were like roots, able to take in nutrients and water. What surprised Yeoman was he could retract the spines at will too.
As Yeoman had done with the first two stages, after drying himself off—which took much longer than usual—he sat down in front of his computer and opened up the front page of the internet. However, unlike the previous two times, a scream interrupted him, and Yeoman swore he could smell a faint scent of blood. He climbed to his feet and put on some pants. As for a top, he couldn’t fit in any of his shirts or jackets anymore, not with his wings and vines in the way. Yeoman walked down the hall, past the kitchen and living room. Red was hiding behind a couch and didn’t react when Yeoman walked by.
The scream and smell came from outside Yeoman’s apartment. He hesitated in front of the door. Why did he have to investigate personally? If this had occurred before the alien abductions had started, he would’ve just called the cops and waited. It was the New York thing to do. In the first place, he didn’t even know any of his neighbors’ names, and he had never even given a single one of them a greeting before. Maybe there were one or two exasperated glares exchanged when one of them didn’t press the open-door button on the elevator and the other had to stick their hand into the closing door to keep it open, but that didn’t really count.
There was a thumping sound followed by a man’s voice screaming, “Help!”
Yeoman peeked through his door’s peephole. In the middle of the apartment hall, there was a bloody man on the ground. On top of the man, there was a tiger. Or was it a tiger? Yeoman had seen tigers on television and streaming websites plenty of times, but he had never seen one that was so white and fluffy. It looked like a scaled-up house cat. After thinking about it for a moment, Yeoman concluded that’s probably what it was. Red had grown to the size of a tiger; if a normal house cat couldn’t do the same, then the world didn’t make any sense—not that it was doing that recently.
Yeoman opened his door and pointed four vines at the large cat. In New York, it was common to mind one’s own business. If someone was being harassed by a crazy person, the bystanders would look the other way lest they become the new target. However, Yeoman wasn’t dealing with a crazy person; the offender was just a large cat, so he didn’t mind interfering. Four vine tips flew out and struck the house cat. They expanded and wrapped around the creature’s body, and Yeoman controlled a vine to wrap around its mouth to prevent it from eating the poor man. Once the cat was reduced to a struggling, bound blob of fur, Yeoman approached and pushed it off the man. “You alright?”
The man was not alright. His clothes were shredded, and his skin was lacerated. Yeoman wasn’t a doctor, but he could tell the man was not in good shape. There was a ton of blood on the carpet, and the man was wheezing for breath, but red bubbles came out of his mouth with every gasp. Yeoman sighed. It seemed like other than subduing the cat, he also had to take this man to a hospital to save him. However, what should he do with the cat? If he left it in the hall, and it managed to get free….
“B-behind you,” the man on the ground said.
Yeoman was surprised at how pale the man looked. Sure, the man had lost a lot of blood, but he didn’t look that drained a few seconds ago. It was almost as if he saw a ghost. Yeoman turned his head, and a familiar figure scuttled against him. Red sank its mandibles into the cat’s body and scuttled backwards, dragging the yowling creature back into Yeoman’s apartment while maintaining eye contact with Yeoman and the man on the ground. Yeoman exchanged glances with the man before standing up. He closed his apartment door and locked it before squatting by the man again. “You want me to take you to the hospital?”
The man nodded his head with a blank expression.
Yeoman lifted the man in a princess carry and carried him downstairs. It was a bit awkward to walk in silence, so Yeoman tried to break the ice. “So, uh, was that your cat?”
“It was my girlfriend’s,” the man said. “She wanted to be with her parents before the next stage started, so I was left alone with it in the apartment.” He fell silent as Yeoman exited the building. “Was that your spider?”
“No.” Obviously, Yeoman had to deny it. If he said it was his spider, who knew what the man would do? Yeoman didn’t want to be sued for the price of a cat. No wonder why people said no good deed went unpunished. “I wasn’t aware of it before, but it seems like I’ll have to burn down the apartment when I get back.”
The man looked a bit skeptical, but he didn’t say anything. Yeoman leapt into the air and flew in the direction of the nearest hospital. He didn’t need a GPS to find it; he passed by it often on his way to his favorite ramen place. After a few minutes of flying, he dropped the man off at the entrance.
“Thanks for the ride,” the man said. “Flying was pretty exhilarating.”
Yeoman nodded at the man. He looked capable of walking into the hospital by himself. “See you,” Yeoman said and spread his wings. He leapt into the air, ready to finally go back home and browse some posts on the front page of the internet. He wanted to read about other people’s experiences in the third stage. However, things didn’t go as planned. Yeoman heard screaming, and from his view in the sky, he saw a woman being attacked by a very large chihuahua. It was even bigger than the cat he had defeated earlier.
It didn’t seem like anyone had the intention of helping the poor woman. People were running away from the scene of the attack, and there were even a few people in a nearby coffeeshop who were filming on their phones. Yeoman furrowed his brow. Shouldn’t there have been people capable of defeating these large animals? He thought back to the polls he had seen on the internet and recalled most people were actually bad at surviving. The majority of the population couldn’t get past the first stage and even less could clear the second. In the third stage, Yeoman hadn’t heard about any other parties reaching rank B. Yeoman scratched his head. Could it be that the number of strong people was actually really small? Well, perhaps it was because normal people didn’t have weapons on Earth. The strict gun laws in the city didn’t help either.
Yeoman flew down and shot five vine tips at the dog. They grew and wrapped around the chihuahua’s body, shutting its mouth and binding its legs together much like they had done to the cat in the hall. Yeoman nudged the chihuahua off of the woman and sighed. He had just flown to the hospital, and it seemed like he’d have to do it again. “Are you alright?” Yeoman wasn’t sure why he even bothered asking that question. Half of the woman’s face was torn, and blood profusely leaked from her scalp. Even a blind man could see this woman was not alright. She didn’t respond, so Yeoman placed his hand on her neck. He couldn’t feel a pulse, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he was a zombie and couldn’t feel it or if it was because the lady had died.
Yeoman looked around. The people who were running away were long gone, but the people who were filming in the coffeeshop had left the safety of the building and were approaching him with their phones out. “Are any of you doctors?” Yeoman asked, not expecting a positive response. After all, would a doctor be glued to the screen of his phone? “Did any of you call 911 at least?” Seeing as none of the approaching people were interested in responding, Yeoman picked the woman up, spread his wings, and flew to the hospital once more. This time, he had to enter it himself. He pushed open the front door with his vines and carried the bleeding woman to the front desk. “She was mauled by a very large dog. Where do you want me to put her?”
The nurse at the front was dumbfounded, but it only took a second for her to get her wits in order. “Follow me,” she said and stood up, walking away while shouting commands.
Yeoman went after the nurse, going through two hallways before entering an operating room where he placed the woman on a bed. While he was walking, he couldn’t help but peep into the other rooms, but he didn’t see the previous man he had saved. The hospital was large, so Yeoman concluded the man had been taken somewhere else.
“Are you a zombie?” a doctor asked, staring at Yeoman. It was hard to see what expression the man was making thanks to the blue mask covering his mouth.
Yeoman shook his head. “I’m a dryad,” he said, lying through his teeth. He wasn’t contagious, and his saliva and blood hadn’t touched the woman in any way. There was no chance she was infected. “I’m not related to this woman, so I’ll be going now.”
The doctor and assistants, who had filed into the room, stared at Yeoman as he left. The more good deeds he did, the more uncomfortable he felt. Why was that? He shook his head and retraced his path through the hospital, stopping in front of a bathroom. There was blood covering his hands and body, and Yeoman pursed his lips. He had forgotten to clean his hands after rescuing the man, so some of the man’s blood may have mixed with the woman’s. Yeoman’s eye twitched, and for the woman’s sake, he hoped his neighbor didn’t have any bloodborne illnesses. After Yeoman cleaned himself off, he left the hospital and once again took to the skies.
The streets weren’t as congested as he thought they’d be. It seemed like people had learned their lesson after the first two stages. Very few people had been driving before the start of the stage. Over an hour had passed since the stage had ended, but the number of cars in the streets were still pretty low compared to usual. It probably would’ve been fine if he called an ambulance instead of flying the woman over himself, assuming there were enough EMTs. Considering how he had just saved two people, Yeoman guessed lots of people were in need of an ambulance. Then again, with his ears, he should’ve been able to hear any ambulances on the street, but he couldn’t locate any.
Yeoman shook his head and headed home. This time, he didn’t encounter anyone yelling for help. However, he couldn’t help but feel like he was forgetting something—like a chihuahua the size of a tiger. He didn’t use the spines on his grasping vines to send roots into the dog since he was afraid of it falling onto the woman, causing her to get stabbed by the spines as well, so the vines had died after he had leapt into the air with the woman. However, the vines should’ve still been wrapped around the dog thanks to their sticky property. Yeoman adjusted his course and flew back to the area where he had subdued the dog. There were two police officers standing over it, and there were bullet holes in its head.
Yeoman wondered why the cops couldn’t have arrived earlier to save the woman and bring her to the hospital too, but then he remembered an article he had read about a knife-wielding maniac in a subway train. There were two cops watching the stabber from another subway car, and they only approached the stabber after a civilian took him down—obviously, getting stabbed in the process. Yeoman shook his head and decided to give the cops below him the benefit of the doubt; they were probably inundated by emergency dispatches.
Once Yeoman got home, he found a large puddle of blood in his living room. Other than that, there weren’t any other signs of the house cat having existed. Red was once again plopped down behind the couch, the piece of furniture not fully capable of hiding the spider’s bulbous body. Yeoman scratched his head, wondering how the hell he was going to get the bloodstain out of the carpet. His landlord would probably hold back a significant portion of Yeoman’s deposit if he left it there. After thinking for a bit, Yeoman decided the cost of getting the bloodstain out was higher than the price of the deposit, so he left it alone. Although he had cleaned himself off in the bathroom of the hospital, he still felt like he was covered in blood, so he took another shower. When he was done, he dried himself off and sat in front of the computer, hitting the F5 button on the keyboard. To his surprise, he found a video of himself on the front page of the internet, uploaded by one of those coffeeshop filmers. He scrolled down to the comment section, wondering what the internet’s opinion of him was.
“I still haven’t passed the first stage, and this guy’s already a fucking superhero.”
“How many points do you need to turn yourself into a plant? Anyone know?”
“Anyone else click on the post because of his abs?”
“Is that a chihuahua?”
“Are superheroes a thing now? If not, can we make them a thing?”
“Did y’all know male dryads die after having sex?”
“Did the woman survive? Anyone have a news article?”
Yeoman leaned back. A superhero, huh? What nonsense. Being a superhero didn’t pay bills. In fact, he was poorer now thanks to the bloodstain on his carpet. Most of the comments were questions, and Yeoman seriously considered verifying his identity and answering the questions. However, what if people found out he was a zombie? He’d rather not take that risk. It was better to lie low; at least, he’d have to wait until the end of the next stage. If he had his equipment, he wouldn’t care if people found out he was a zombie. If anyone chased after him, he’d just teleport away.