by Ky Tyrand
The girl nodded her approval.
I’m getting good at this!
She had to duck under the branch, and give his stretching bones as much space as she could while crawling around him. The last thing Lexi needed right now was to become a part of Scarface’s root system. She got to her feet, grumbling about how her perfectly good trail was now ruined by trees, when she noticed that Scarface had something strapped to his back. The girl did a double-take after spotting it out of the corner of her eye. It looked like the hilt of a sword poking out of a wide scabbard!
Lexi didn’t want to get too close – there weren’t a lot of things more frightening to be near than a man whose bones were bursting out of his skin and crunching into tree branches – but she didn’t want that sword getting wrecked. Nor did she want to have to climb for it after.
So the girl jumped at it with her dagger, cutting the strap that held it to his … well, his … trunk.
She backed away with the weapon in hand. It was as heavy as it looked. Lexi slid it out of the scabbard for a better look. It was some kind of weird curvy blade, wide near the end accounting for its weight.
Too heavy for her to use as a weapon, but she had no doubt that it would come in handy.
Lexi returned to her fort with an armload of wood, a big fat sword, and a fish named Nemo.
The fire got stoked, Nemo got eaten, and Lexi played around with the sword. One thing was for certain: it was heavy. She could cleave a zombie in half with this thing, if she were ever able to land a solid hit.
The weight made it impractical for her, though. Especially if it meant lugging it around everywhere she went.
But … it would be great for chopping wood and bamboo. And making a shelter was next on her to-do list. So Lexi started dragging out poles from her lumber pile and went to work.
The girl wished she had have thought to leave at least a couple culms of bamboo standing in the middle of the clearing to make for something solid to attach to. Her first plan was to stand some up, but instead Lexi devised a creative way to build a lean-to that didn’t require any legs in the front at all. She just had to squeeze into the untouched wilderness behind her bench in order to attach poles to the bases of a half dozen freestanding culms, and then lean them on some branches at the edge of the tree line.
Lexi tied everything as well as she could with the branch whips, ending up with some prongs that projected out at an angle over her platform. The back wall was made of the standing bamboo at the edge of the clearing. With the addition of some weavings between the prongs, which she continued right down the back wall, the girl had made a surprisingly sturdy structure. By the time she was done covering the top with palm fronds, Lexi was confident that it would keep her dry if it rained, so long as it didn’t get too windy.
Finally finished, Lexi sat down on her platform … her covered platform … and let out a breath.
“It’s pretty awesome,” the girl admitted to herself.
She had a shelter.
She had food, water, and fire.
If nothing got stupid, she could survive out here.
Now she was ready.
The jungle needed to be cleared of zombies.
All of them.
Lexi did some math in her head. Not including Miss Pirate Cove, the girl was pretty sure she’d seen seven zombies coming onto shore after the swamping of her boat. There could have been more that followed.
She’d killed two of them: Tall Dark and Dead, and Scarface. That left five.
There were also some that had made it around the rocky peninsula in the small boat that Lexi had found. The vessel that tried to take her to Davy Jones’ Locker. It might have fit four normal sized people. But Blackbeard, Braidbeard, and even Long Belt, were all pretty huge. Lexi couldn’t imagine any more of them having fit on that boat without sinking it.
That’s not to say there couldn’t have been other boats. Or they might have swam, or been washed around.
There may also have been more that made it around the Peninsula while chasing the last remaining survivor of the Lady take-me-the-hell-away-from-this-place shipwreck.
So, according to Lexi’s calculations … she had precisely no idea how many zombies were lurking about the jungle.
Not entirely true: she knew there were at least five of them. Probably (hopefully) not more than six. Or ten. Plus one dragon.
Lexi let out a breath.
She had her work cut out for her.
One of the first things she needed to think about was how to get stronger. Lexi had spent the last month or two getting weaker and weaker, and she needed to turn that around. That would come from two things: exercise and calories.
The fish were a perfect source of protein and fat. And her bamboo gazebo was like a fish magnet. But she had to start sourcing other food, if for no other reason than the fish supply may run out. And it might not seem tasty forever.
Lexi knew the straw/raspberries were good to eat. That was something. She needed more things like that.
From now on, Lexi decided she would be on the lookout and try the smallest taste of anything that looked edible. If it didn’t make her sick, she would go back and try a little more. The last thing she wanted was to poison herself out here. Again.
Now, for the exercise. Lexi needed to build her strength. The trick of it was, she had to be prepared to fight or flee at any given moment. When Miss Pirate Cove had attacked her, Lexi was so fatigued from rowing and fighting the ocean that she had nothing left when it came time to fight for her life. She could never put herself into that position again.
Lexi had come dangerously close to a similar situation after gathering wood. And was dead tired when she fell out of the tree and onto Blackbeard’s plate.
So, from now on, Lexi would try to exercise her muscles in small amounts throughout the entire day.
She could do pushups on the ground right here. Well, maybe A pushup. Maybe from her knees.
She could do squats and lunges here, too.
Braidbeard’s tree was right outside her fort. She could practice climbing that.
The trick would be to not spend hours at it. A few minutes here and there, no more.
Alright, Lexi had a plan to strengthen up.
Next on her list was finding the best way to kill a pirate zombie.
30
Since Lexi no longer had the Imperative Rod, the Zombie Prong was her weapon of choice. It was awkward to carry times, but not overly heavy. Its biggest downfall was that the tip was made of wood. It wouldn’t hold an edge, and there was a good chance of it breaking. If that happened at the wrong time, it could be a real problem.
The benefit to it was that it had a reasonably long reach. Lexi could keep a bit of distance between herself and her opponents. So long as she could land a clean hit. Scarface had come at her like a bulldozer. He didn’t seem at all frightened of getting hurt. It was like these zombies didn’t feel pain.
Lexi frowned, wondering if there was a way to kill pirate zombies without going anywhere near them.
She had an idea.
It was farfetched, and probably wouldn’t work anywhere near as well as she was envisioning. But it was an idea worth entertaining, at least with some experimentation.
After going through a few quick exercises, Lexi did a feasibility study on a little project that she would refer to as: Build a Katniss Bow.
She experimented with some different materials, beginning with bamboo. It was more difficult than she thought it might be, with pieces being either too flexible, or not flexible enough. After a lot of trial and error, Lexi came to the conclusion that the best way to do it would be to lay several strips of wood together so that the middle could be stronger than the ends. Her biggest problem, however, was that she had no string.
The only thing she could come up with was using her own hair. It was always getting in her face anyway, and Lexi thought she might be able to braid strands together in such a way that she could make a long enough piece. Bu
t since her little pact with Parma, Lexi’s hair had gotten so weak that just running a brush through it was often enough to break it. She would never be able to trust a bowstring made out of something likely to snap during the heat of battle.
There had to be something out here that would work better.
Lexi eventually set her pieces aside, deciding there wasn’t much more she could do with them until she found something that would work for a string.
After doing a few more exercises, she went out to gather some more wood and decided to give Braidbeard’s Tree a little climb. It was shocking how big it had gotten, and the canopy of leaves was already filled in. The roots were everywhere, making for some interesting places to begin climbing. But Lexi was only on the tree for a few moments when she realized that she was already breaking her rule about not overdoing it.
What if you have to fight or run from something the moment you step down from this tree?
The girl slid back to the water. She couldn’t believe that someone who weighed as little as herself could feel so heavy.
Feeling a little down on herself, Lexi headed back to camp, deciding to gather wood later.
After shimmying through the bamboo forest, she leaned her water bottle up against a crosspiece she’d added to the tripod for it – specially designed to prevent tipping.
That little bamboo structure had been incredibly useful. Something that Lexi considered herself to have gotten right. The tripod was so simple, yet incredibly sturdy and practical. Strong enough to hold … a person.
Lexi plunked herself down on the bench, scratching her chin while staring at the structure.
The bamboo was so strong and light that she could use it to build just about anything. Anything but a bow.
After giving it some thought, Lexi gathered up a few pieces from what was left of her woodpile and started fiddling with an idea that came to her. Within a few minutes she had rigged up another tripod, much taller than the one over the fire.
Lexi tested the strength by hanging on it. It didn’t flex in the slightest. So she whipped up another one just like the first, standing it a few feet away.
After stringing a long pole across the tops of the two pyramids, she stood back to check out her creation.
One end was slightly higher than the other, but she adjusted that by bringing the legs together a bit.
Lexi nodded her approval. Perfect.
The horizontal bar was just high enough that she could touch the bottom with her fingertips. She jumped a bit to get her hands on it, but then the bar unexpectedly spun with her weight. Her fingers slipped off just after her feet swung out from under her, and the girl suddenly found herself plopped onto her butt under the bar.
Despite the fact that it hurt, Lexi couldn’t think of anything to do but laugh. It was the type of thing that Tonya Henderson would have tormented her about for days. But Tonya wasn’t here to see her fail. And Lexi no longer cared what that wench thought of her. Tonya would die out here. I won’t.
Lexi picked herself back up and tried again. This time she alternated her hands – one overhand grip, and one underhand grip. The bar didn’t spin, but Lexi didn’t move. Now what.
She hung there, trying to pull herself up.
The girl got as far as bending her elbows before her hand grip gave out and she dropped. At least this time she landed on her feet.
Okay, so the pullup was an epic fail. But the bar was a win, and every time she walked by it, Lexi was determined to at least hang from it, and try to pull herself up as far as she could.
And so that’s what she did.
The next few days went by quickly and without incident.
Though she dearly missed her parents and the luxuries of home, Lexi reminded herself that it would never be the same there without Parma. There was something about that thought that made it easier to be out here, alone.
She could hear the monkeys in the distance, and every now and then she would see the dragon flying overhead. But Lexi didn’t encounter any more zombies, despite exploring farther and farther from her fort.
The girl had developed a routine that took up her entire day. Between gathering and testing food, collecting wood, exploring, improving her fort, making weapons, practicing with weapons, building training equipment, and approximately ten million other things – all while exercising in-between and during – Lexi was way too busy to get bored.
Wood gathering quickly became an integral part of her exercise regimen. It began with chopping logs using the heavy sword, and then lifting the chunks of wood in different ways – twisting and pressing, squatting and lunging, even throwing the hefty pieces as far as she could. The moment Lexi felt her muscles getting fatigued, she would drop her load to the ground and let herself rest; sometimes even leaving the wood where it landed until later in the day.
And, just like she’d planned, she hung on her chin-up bar every time she walked by, pulling herself up as high as she could. And then, while still hanging, Lexi would lift her feet as high as she could without bending her knees.
She had even made a second, shorter, bar which gave her a setup similar to the uneven bars she used to swing on in gymnastics. Lexi wasn’t up to trying anything as dramatic as what she used to be able to do, but found that it opened up more exercise options.
The girl wasn’t an expert on fitness, but whatever she was doing seemed to be working. She could tell because the logs she was cutting were getting thicker; the pieces she lifted were longer and heavier. Pushups were no longer done from her knees. And, after only a few days, Lexi was able to pull herself all the way to the top of her chin-up bar without any help from the lower bar.
Where she once saw only bones on her body, she was now beginning to see muscle.
And it wasn’t just her strength that she had been working on.
Lexi had somehow found the time to build herself a life-sized zombie mannequin. A training dummy of sorts. She’d done it using some live bamboo culms at the edge of her clearing. They were small enough to bend together, allowing her to lash them into the shape of a big X. She used existing branches that she built up with palm fronds to form arms and a head that bounced around when she hit it.
With her concern about damaging the Zombie Prong, the bobble-head give, and padding of leaves tied with very thin whips, made Lexi feel a lot better about practicing with it.
The torso and legs were built up as well, though they didn’t allow for any movement. Lexi had to be careful using her weapon on these parts, and planned to keep her eyes open for another stick that was similar in size and weight so that she didn’t have to worry about wrecking her good one during training.
The biggest problem with her mannequin was that it didn’t chase her or fight back. It was pretty easy for Lexi to feel like she was kicking its butt when it just stood there and took it. But she had faced real monsters enough times to know that it was not so easy to hit them when they were attacking.
It was better than nothing, and at least allowed her to practice the strength and accuracy of some of her movements.
Around the outside of the dummy, Lexi had cut down some of the neighboring stalks, adding to her clearing so that she could get to the sides. During her explorations, the girl had discovered that the bamboo grove was even bigger than she’d thought, so there was no shortage of space to expand into.
The more Lexi poked at the dummy, the more she wondered about finding something she could throw at it. She’d pretty much given up on the idea of a bow, yet couldn’t help but think that there must be something else she could use to attack from a distance.
Her Zombie Prong might work well to throw, but Lexi wouldn’t dare let go of it. If she missed, or if the point broke off, she would be in even more trouble than she already was. This left her wondering if she could make something that would be more disposable. A weapon that she could afford to lose or break.
She considered some kind of spear or javelin, but Lexi didn’t want to carry anything too big when sh
e was already lugging the Zombie Prong.
Instead, what she came up with was a short piece of bamboo, about a foot and a half long, that she converted into a little pointed club. The bamboo on its own was light, but the hollow chambers were perfect for attaching branches of solid wood into, which added a little weight to the end and gave her something she could whittle down to a sharp point. By the time she was finished carving, she had what looked almost like a giant wooden pencil.
It took some practice throwing – okay, a lot of practice – and the weaving of a backdrop so she didn’t have to keep wiggling through the bamboo grove to retrieve it. But eventually she was able to make it stick solidly into zombie test dummy. And not just with her right hand.
Lexi had always been able to write and do things almost as well with her left hand. So once she figured out the best technique – which seemed to be a whip like motion with her arm and body – throwing with either hand wasn’t an issue. Of course, the farther back she got, the harder it was to hit. But it felt like five to fifteen feet was a good range. Any more than that and her accuracy dropped substantially.
The dart also made a decent weapon for hand to hand combat. Lightweight, but solid enough at the end for a good clobber. A zombie would have to get a bit too close for comfort before Lexi chose it over the Zombie Prong, but things had a way of going all haywire during the heat of the moment, and she thought it might make for good backup. Satisfied that she had something that was both practical and effective, Lexi went to work making several more.
She even made some holders out of slightly larger tubes. With her knowledge that charging zombies would be much harder to hit than her stationary target, Lexi wanted to be able to carry a lot of them. The little bamboo sleeves would free up her hands while keeping the darts easy to pull out. Lexi found that by drilling a small hole in the bottom node of her holsters, she could carry the weapons face down without damaging the sharp tips. This way, not only could she grab them quickly (without having to worry about stabbing her hand every time she reached for them), but she would also be picking them up from the proper end, and not have to fumble around with them in the heat of battle.
