“What do you mean you got a notification?” John asked, but he’d already guessed what had happened.

  “Boss!” Truffle shouted gleefully, “I got a card, and it’s really cool too. Ooh I’m gonna have so much fun with this.”

  John sighed and shook his head. He’d wanted that card for himself, though a part of him was happy that his companion had one now as well. It’d definitely be useful to have an ally with him that could actually fight, assuming the card power was any good.

  Did this mean Truffle was a contestant? The implications of what that could mean later down the line twisted John’s stomach in knots. He suppressed that feeling though, for the time being at least.

  “What does it do?” He asked the pig, trying to convey happiness in his tone.

  “It’s called Soul Devourer,” Truffle replied, sounding out all the syllables of the card name like a child learning to read for the first time. “Here, let me read it to you.

  “Soul Devourer: This is a full stack card that allows the user to store up to three powers gained by eating their enemies. Stored powers expire after twelve hours. Accepting Soul Devourer into your soul will mean that you cannot add any more cards to your deck for the remainder of the game. Full stack cards are a deck unto themselves.”

  “A deck unto themselves?” John repeated contemplatively.

  Did that mean that Truffle had just gained the equivalent of four cards? Did it also count as a soul card? Would he be able to get through the gate now? It seemed too good to be true. Buck had said that you got better cards from challenges, but John was starting to wonder if there was more to that. Did competing in challenges guarantee a card that would fit with your build? Truffle didn’t have a build, but he had openly expressed an interest in eating things.

  Then again, it could have been because he ingested the card that its power manifested that way. Either way, the power was completely unrelated to the nature of the mob he’d gotten it from which suggested that, had John gotten the card, it would have been a completely different power all together. He had so many questions and so few answers. This system was an enigma and John wondered if he’d ever be able to truly understand how it worked.

  He sat for a moment with a blank look on his face as he continued trying to untangle the knot in his brain. The system had clearly stated that a contestant needed to collect four cards and a soul card to pass through the gate.

  However, according to Truffle, this card classed as a full deck. That seemed like a bit of a loophole to John, but then again, he still wasn’t certain that Truffle counted as a contestant. Was he a wild card? A pet? Was that why he was given this full stack card? John had no way of knowing, but he needed to find out. He had so little information to go on.

  Knowledge is power, he thought, yet he feared he had so little knowledge of this game. Hopefully that wouldn’t bite him in the ass later down the line.

  “That sounds super OP,” he eventually replied with a forced smile.

  “I know!” the teacup pig replied, padding the ground in excitement, “and, because I just ate some of that boss guy, I already have a stored power.”

  “What is it?” John asked, feeling a little excited himself, the pig’s energy was contagious.

  “It lets me snort Phosphorus.”

  “What the actual fuck,” John said, making a conscious effort to stop his mouth from hanging open.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Truffle replied, lowering his head, “it’s a terrible power. I like my food rare; how can I eat my enemies if I have to burn them to a crisp to kill them? No one wants that, Boss.”

  “James always liked his steak well done,” Baz murmured as he pulled himself away from the tree. “I told him, I said: brother, meat should be rare. That’s where all the flavour is, but he never listened to me.”

  John turned to stare at the man with a pitying expression as he staggered towards them, head hung low like a zombie.

  He was as good as dead on his own. He had no card, no family, just a few knives on a bandolier slung over his chest and he hadn’t even thought to use them during the fight.

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  “I guess he died as something he loved,” Truffle said in a sincere and contemplative tone and John’s jaw dropped as he stared wide eyed towards the pig. Had he really just compared the man’s brother to a well-done steak? The comparison was accurate, but highly inappropriate.

  Despite the morbidity of it, John had to suppress his desire to laugh as he turned his head away from the grieving, former twin.

  “Huh,” Baz replied, looking down at the morose teacup pig, “I guess he did.”

  The man chuckled a little as his shoulders bounced slightly, though the laughter didn’t reach his red, puffy eyes.

  “You hear that you damned fool,” he shouted, turning towards the charred corpse, “you let that god damned robot turn you into burnt meat. How many times have I told you that rare is where all the flavour is?” He moved towards the body slowly, chuckling as he shouted at it. His laughter was erratic, unhinged even.

  “How many times,” he said again, quieter, “but you never did listen did you?” He dropped to his knees and the rising and falling of his shoulders took on a jerkier motion. “You damned fool.” His chuckling devolved into quiet sobs as he kneeled next to his dead sibling, refusing to look away from his charred face as salty tears dripped from his nose, landing on the exposed bone and burnt flesh and sizzling.

  John sighed and turned away, the least he could do was give the man some privacy. Though in this game, he wasn’t sure it existed.

  Motioning for Truffle to follow him, he walked a few paces away where they could talk without interrupting Baz.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said quietly, glancing up at the sun which sat high in the sky. “We need food, water, and a place to spend the night.”

  “I can smell the ocean,” Truffle said, adding an upwards inflection to the end of word. “Maybe we can go fishing?”

  “Fishing?” John replied sceptically. “Knowing this place we’ll get attacked by a hoard of shrimp on a barbecue. Don’t you think it’s a little strange that these so-called advanced species have chosen to reduce an entire culture to a few stereotypes? “I mean, so far we’ve fought a kangaroo with boxing gloves, a Whowie - whatever the fuck that was supposed to be - and a pack of koalas. On the list of typical things you’d expect to find in Australia, all that’s left are wallabies, spiders, and shrimp on the barbie. It just seems a little juvenile, don’t you think?”

  “Boss, I’m pretty sure this game show is their version of daytime television,” Truffle said thoughtfully, “I doubt they care about stereotyping, they’re trying to get views, don’t think about it so hard. It’s trash TV.”

  John raised an eyebrow at the little pig and placed his hands on his hips. “When did you get so insightful?”

  “I’ve always been a font of wisdom; you just couldn’t understand me before.”

  “Is that right?” John replied, “so that time I caught you chewing Anne’s shoe was wise was it?”

  “A pig’s gotta eat?” He said happily, “So, can we go catch some fishes?”

  John nodded and before they left the area, he looked back towards Baz he was still sobbing quietly over his brother. He thought about inviting him to join them, but decided it was better not to interrupt. In this game it was probably safer to be a solo player. Joanna’s words rang in his mind this is a battle royale after all, the math speaks for itself. It would be better this way. Perhaps he’d give him a fish if he ran into him later.

  Together with Truffle, he stomped through the bloody wasteland that had been left behind after the challenge. It was disgusting. Guts, gore, blood, viscera, fur, charred flesh and limbs were scattered like a flower field in hell.

  It was suffocating, the smell seemed to seep into every pore and crevice. His nose stung, his skin felt slimy and the thickness of the air made it hard to breathe. To make it worse, all of those things were underpinned by an overwhelming smell of cordite. He checked his chest where he’d been stabbed by the koala earlier. It had begun to scab over; it seemed to be healing faster than it should have. The knives hadn’t cut him too deep but still, were contestants given faster regeneration in this game?

  John was thankful to get out of there when they reached a nearby alleyway and fled down it. On the other side they reached a promenade and thick scent of death was replaced with a light, salty tinge that tickled John’s nose.

  “See, I told you I smelled the ocean!” Truffle said as he trotted across the disused road towards the beach.

  It truly was a magnificently beautiful sight. The ocean looked like paradise. Crystal clear waters lapping over a golden, sandy beach, unblemished by the touch of man and cleaner than the streets behind it.

  As he followed the energetic pig, John noticed a small stall with a sign hanging over it. It was a little wooden structure and inside it there was a plethora of fishing rods, bait, tackle, and buckets.

  Ask the alien overlords and they shall provide, he thought dourly, wondering if this shack had manifested purely because Truffle has openly expressed a desire to fish.

  A sign hung lazily above the stall, clanging lightly in the breeze. It read: A Perth-ect Day For Fishing.

  Ignoring it, he leant over and grabbed two rods and some other fishing equipment before continuing to follow Truffle.

  Why he’d picked up two rods was beyond him. Truffle didn’t have apposable thumbs. John would have to be the one to do the actual fishing. Sadly, he didn’t even have a six pack to accompany the laborious activity. The entire point of fishing was the drinking that accompanied it and it was the perfect weather to crack open a cold one.

  They walked along the beach a short way before setting up next to the sea. John knew it wouldn’t be as easy to fish in such shallow water as it would have been on a pier, but there wasn’t one so he’d have to make do.

  “Get in there, Boss!” Truffle squealed happily, “Momma’s got a hankering for fresh mackerel.”

  “You’re a boy,” John called back, “and I doubt we’ll catch any mackerel here.”

  Grumbling, he pulled off his boots, rolled up his blood-soaked jeans and waded into the shallows. The water was waist high before he cast his line and after a few hours of boredom and barely three fish in his bucket, he found himself thinking once again about the shrimp.

  “I really thought there would be a giant shrimp monster.”