Chapter 2: Burn

There's no sense in panicking.

Rebecka kept telling herself the same sentence over and over in an effort to keep calm and collected. Panicking was a waste of resources that would better serve surviving whatever had just happened.

She had never been terribly fond of tight spaces, probably because they made her think about how her parents had died. She hadn't even been in the car with them at the time, but still, the fear of being trapped tinged her thoughts from time to time. Thankfully, the remaining portions of Havamal's Bar weren't particularly tight. The newly manifested medieval cottage took up most of the floorspace in the building but left room to move around it, even if the normal exits were blocked.

Rebecka found a small window under one of the cottage's eaves. She broke it in using her axe before crawling through into the smaller building. Once inside, she discovered more portions of the bar overlapping with elements that appeared to be from a house from the 1300s. To her right as she entered the building, a pair of metal bar stools were fused with a loom, still primed with wool. Ahead and to the left, an old stone stove was cut through the middle by part of an axe throwing lane. The wooden frame holding a chain link fence that served as the wall of the lane was kissed by the stove's still burning flames. It was only a matter of time before that fire began to spread.

Further to the left, two gang members were bisected by...what looked like the owner of the home, some sort of person wearing medieval village garb.

The gang members thrashed on the dust covered floor. It seemed the villager had already died, a look of shock on his face. Rebecka hoped it had been a quick end as she crept around the dying men on the floor. She bumped into the back of the gang leader behind her. He too was dead, his body mostly sunk into the thick stone wall.

"Help me," the last gang member breathed weakly, his lower half fused to a roughly hewn wooden table formerly covered in some sort of flour. Blood wept from the man's torso as he struggled.

Rebecka gave the man a wide berth as she crept closer to the front door of the cottage. She hoped it would be even with the front hallway of Havamal's and allow her to leave.

"Help me, please," the man stuck in the table said again.

She shook her head silently and moved to the door. It was a little hard to open, but she managed to get it to move. The front door of the bar didn't line up well, creating only a small gap just big enough for Rebecka to squeeze through. Once she reached the door of the bar she realized the light streaming in through the window was far brighter than it should be for nearly ten o'clock at night in February. She slipped her phone back into her pocket, grabbing one of her axes to prepare herself for whatever may be outside.

Rebecka took a breath and opened the door. She was hit with warmth, like late spring, and light of an afternoon sun, as she stepped into the cobblestone street of a medieval village.

No.

It wasn't entirely a village.

Other buildings, the ones that had been around Havamal's, intersected with cottages. The alarms and horns from several cars in nearby parking lots echoed, but she couldn't see the cars thanks to the structures in the way. Screams filled the air around her. To her left Quincey held a bloody hand against his side as he punched one of the gang members hard enough to knock the man into the dirt. Another gang member screamed in pain, unable to free himself from the small wooden cart his left leg and arm were fused to. She didn't know where the third gang member was. Maybe he was stuck in another wall like their boss?

I can only hope.

"Quincey! You're bleeding!" She shouted.

"He got me with a knife, but I'm fine!" The bouncer called back while giving a thumbs up.

Rebecka didn't see any immediate danger but could smell smoke coming from the door behind her. She holstered her axe and jogged over to Quincey whose face fell when she continued past him to the side of the bar. The second cottage, the one that blocked her way to the stairs inside, jutted out at an angle. A pair of people, a mother and child by the looks of them, burst out of a door on the side of the home. They also wore medieval peasant garb, the mother brandishing a large iron kitchen knife in hand. Rebecka wasn't sure what the woman was saying, but her tone as well as the knife sure screamed 'get back!' Rebecka put her hands in the air and backed up as the woman hurried the child away then down the street. The pair ran a few yards until the mother scooped the kid up in her arms and ran faster to a dirt road that cut through a heavily wooded forest on the edge of the village. Rebecka didn't have time to worry with them and turned her attention back to the, hopefully, now empty cabin.

"What the hell are you doing?" Quincey shouted.

"I think I can get up to my apartment before the fire gets it," Rebecka explained as she hurried to the eave of the building.

"Are you nuts? What for?!"

"My first aid kit. You've been stabbed," she replied.

The eave of the house was relatively low. Grabbing the roof fibers resulted in some of the straw thatching coming loose, but she was able to scramble onto it, then carefully walk to the side of the bar. An exterior rain gutter ran down the length of the building. She shimmied up it as quickly as she could until she reached the window to her bedroom. She hadn't bothered to lock it since it was on the second floor, so it opened easily.

Smoke began to pour out of the window as Rebecka pulled herself inside. She hurried to her closet, pausing to grab a jacket, which she shoved in her large go-bag full of camping and survival gear. Then, she grabbed her pump action shot-gun, affectionately named 'Thor.' She froze at the window, quickly grabbed the three small wooden idols off the altar on top of the nearby dresser, and tossed them into the backpack as the smoke grew thicker. She slung the gun's strap around her back and dropped the bag onto the roof of the cottage below. Movement up the street caught her eye.

Quincey was running away.

"Hey! Quincey!" Rebecka shouted.

"I'm gonna look for a car!" He yelled back.

That makes sense. We need a way to get out of here, she thought.

Climbing back down the wall was easier, save for the fact that something exploded inside the bar. It was small. But she knew all too well how many dangerous chemicals were stored in the kitchen, and how many guns her Uncle Blake had in his room upstairs.

Rebecka grabbed her back pack from the roof, then hopped off the cottage and started in the same direction Quincey had run. She was half a block away from Havamal's when the first of the ammo started to go off. Which made her run faster.

When she was almost to the end of the village buildings a little red Mia Sorbetto came around the corner, not close enough to hit her, but near enough that she saw Quincey's face as he turned the wheel. Instead of coming to her, he went left, up the dirt road the mother and child had used to escape the area. Rebecka kept running, albeit slowing to a jog, until finally giving up to stand still, her hands on her knees and heavy go-bag on her back. She wasn't trapped in a building, at least, but she had no idea where she was and now she was alone.

"Damn it, Quincey."

Rebecka stood back up and looked to the trees. There was no forest like this in the Dallas suburb Havamal's normally sat in. The ground gently sloped up to the trees. Rather than going down the dirt road after Quincey, she chose to head for the treeline and up the hillside. When she was high enough to get a better look at the small valley area she turned around just as something larger exploded in the building, taking out the exterior wall of Uncle Blake's bedroom.

"Not sure what that was. Did he have a claymore?" Rebecka asked herself.

The fire began to spread. Other buildings she recognized, the gas station on the corner, the Burger Hat on the next block, and many others, were cut through with small cottages and shacks. In the distance people ran for the trees. The village was far enough from the forest that she doubted it would catch on fire, at least. Still, she climbed a little higher on the hillside. The toe of her boot caught something, which caused her to look down.

"What the fuck?"

It wasn't hard to untangle herself from the power line cable. She hadn't really been caught by it, but finding it made her follow it up to her right, where the top of the pole it was attached to stuck out of a tree at an angle, consistent with how Havamal's had tilted.

It made her skin crawl.

She stopped going forward and backtracked a few yards, then took up a spot near a tree and looked back at the now burning village. Her body shook from the crash after being in fight or flight mode. She needed to sit down or she'd pass out. So she did.

And watched her home burn.