Chapter 9: Isolation
Mike woke to sunlight streaming through gaps in his shelter's roof. The warm beams made dust motes dance in the air, momentarily distracting him from the dull ache that ran through his entire body. He lay still, taking mental stock of his injuries. The deep gashes from the wolf attack had healed to tender pink lines, and the burning sensation from his acid-splashed skin had faded to a manageable throb. His advanced healing abilities continued their mysterious work, gradually knitting his flesh back together with supernatural speed.
He sat up on his makeshift bed, wincing as stiffened muscles protested the movement. Hunger gnawed at his stomach like a trapped animal. The last proper meal he'd consumed had been before the wolf attack – dry meat and water, hardly satisfying but necessary for survival.
Mike's hand moved unconsciously to his belt where his phone had once been secured. The device now sat on a stone shelf he'd built into the wall. Its battery had fallen to 3%, his last technological connection to Earth. He pulled his attention away from the phone and focused on immediate needs.
"Today's plan," he muttered, his voice rough from disuse. "Check underground for supplies, then build better walls."
The explosion had been terrifyingly loud – too loud. If other predators roamed nearby, they might investigate the disturbance. The wolf pack had found him; others could follow. His current defenses wouldn't withstand another serious attack.
Mike's first destination was the underground storage area. He descended the stone stairs carefully, his boots making soft scuffing sounds against the ancient steps. The cool air below ground felt good against his skin after the stifling warmth of his shelter. With tools in hand, he began methodically exploring rooms he hadn't fully investigated during his exhausted first survey.
In the first large chamber, Mike discovered a row of wooden buckets tucked beneath a stone shelf. Their craftsmanship impressed him – each stave perfectly cut and fitted, bound with metal hoops showing minimal rust despite centuries of abandonment. He ran his fingers along the smooth interior of one bucket, marveling at how the wood had been preserved.
"Perfect for sap collection," he decided, gathering three that appeared in best condition.
He continued his exploration, moving from chamber to chamber with growing excitement. A coil of rope made from unidentifiable plant fibers lay coiled on a workbench. Nearby, a set of leather gloves sat perfectly preserved in a sealed container. When Mike tried them on, they fit his hands as if made for him. Most valuable of all, he discovered a comprehensive toolkit containing various implements for metalworking and carpentry – awls, chisels, punches, and other tools whose specific purposes he could only guess.
By midday, Mike had assembled a pile of useful supplies near the entrance, ready to be hauled to the surface. The physical labor felt purposeful and cleansing after the chaos of recent days. His body responded better than expected, strength returning with each trip up and down the stairs.
Once he'd brought his haul to the surface, Mike turned his attention to the sap trees. The one damaged in the explosion continued to ooze amber fluid from its split trunk. Using his utility knife and a thin metal rod he'd found underground, Mike carefully cleaned the clogged spout of the nearest intact tree. Hardened sap crumbled away beneath his probing, revealing a brass-like fitting. Fresh sap began flowing immediately when the spout cleared, its sweet-chemical smell potent in the midday heat.
Mike positioned a wooden bucket beneath the spout, taking care to angle it properly to catch the steady drip. He moved methodically from tree to tree, clearing each spout and setting containers to collect the valuable explosive material. By late afternoon, five trees were actively producing sap, their amber treasure slowly accumulating in various containers.
"One down, several to go," Mike murmured, wiping sticky residue from his hands onto his pants.
With sap collection underway, Mike turned to fortifying his position. The wolf attack had exposed critical weaknesses in his defenses. He needed more than alarms and simple snares; he needed weaponized traps capable of killing or seriously wounding intruders.
Using the Japanese saw he'd salvaged from the ruins, Mike began constructing the first of several deadfall traps. The saw's teeth bit through wood with impressive precision, allowing him to create trigger mechanisms far more sensitive than his previous attempts. He drove square nails with his hammer to secure supporting structures, the metal spikes penetrating the tough wood with satisfying solidity.
Mike worked methodically, applying construction principles he'd used professionally for years. Each deadfall followed the same basic design – a heavy stone suspended above a likely approach path, held by a delicate trigger system. When disturbed, the weight would drop onto whatever passed beneath. He camouflaged the triggers with leaves and thin soil layers, making them nearly invisible to unwary creatures.
In areas unsuitable for deadfalls, Mike dug pit traps. He spent hours shoveling earth with a blade he'd fashioned from a flat piece of metal, the soil gradually giving way to create four-foot-deep depressions. He sharpened dozens of wooden stakes, his hands developing fresh blisters despite his calluses. When positioned upright in the pit floor, the stakes formed a lethal bed of spikes. Mike covered each pit with a lattice of slender branches overlaid with leaves and soil – strong enough to support small animals but guaranteed to collapse under the weight of a wolf or larger predator.
Sweat poured down Mike's face as he worked through the afternoon heat. His shirt clung to his back, dark patches spreading across the fabric. He paused occasionally to drink from the well, the cool water revitalizing him momentarily before he returned to his labor. His muscles burned pleasantly from the exertion, pain transformed into a reminder that he was alive and fighting to stay that way.
By sunset, Mike had completed six deadfalls and four pit traps at key approach points to his shelter. Satisfaction warmed him as he surveyed his work. The defenses weren't impenetrable, but they would slow attackers and potentially eliminate several before they reached his shelter.
Returning to the sap trees, Mike checked the collection buckets. Each contained a shallow pool of amber fluid – not much yet, but promising. He carefully transferred small amounts into sections of bamboo-like reeds he'd harvested earlier. Using melted beeswax from a wild hive he'd discovered, Mike sealed the ends of each tube, creating primitive but effective pipe bombs.
"Explosive surprise packages," he said with grim satisfaction, storing them in a stone-lined cache near his shelter.
For his final task of the day, Mike experimented with the sap's properties. He spread thin layers on large leaves, placing them in the last rays of sunlight to dry. The tacky material gradually hardened, forming flexible strips that still retained their flammable nature. Perfect for makeshift fuses.
Night descended as Mike completed his work. Bone-tired but content with the day's progress, he returned to his shelter with water and tuna fruit harvested from nearby trees. The fruit's strange fish-sweet flavor had become oddly comforting in its familiarity, providing consistent nutrition when other food sources failed.
After eating, Mike reached instinctively for his phone to record the day's accomplishments. His finger pressed the power button, but the screen remained black and lifeless. He tried again, holding the button longer, then attempted various combinations of keys, but nothing happened. The battery had finally exhausted itself completely.
"No," Mike whispered, a hollow feeling expanding in his chest. "Not yet."
He stared at the dead device in his hands. Until now, the phone had been both practical tool and psychological anchor – a reminder that another world existed, that he had a life to return to. Without it, his isolation felt absolute and overwhelming.
Mike sat in darkness, the dead phone clutched tightly in his hands. Emotions he'd held at bay for weeks finally broke through his carefully maintained defenses. He thought of Sarah waiting at home, imagined her calling hospitals and police stations with increasing desperation. He pictured Jeremy asking when dad was coming back, confusion giving way to fear and then to grief as days stretched into weeks with no explanation, no body, no closure.
"They don't even know if I'm alive," he said softly, his voice cracking.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Mike allowed himself to truly feel the magnitude of his loss. Not just comfort or safety, but connection to everything and everyone he loved. Tears came unexpectedly, rolling silently down his face as he thought of Sarah's smile, the way she'd tease him about his stubborn approach to problems, of Jeremy's laughter during their weekend camping trips, of quiet evenings together on the back porch watching fireflies rise from the lawn.
The grief felt bottomless, but necessary. It was human to mourn, to acknowledge what had been taken. And within that acknowledgment, Mike found an unexpected strength taking root – a resolve hardening like steel being tempered.
"I'm not dying here," he said, his voice steadier. "I'm getting back to Sarah and Jeremy. Somehow."
He carefully placed the phone on the stone shelf he'd built into the wall. It would remain there, useless but meaningful, a reminder of what he was fighting to return to. His fingers lingered on the screen, where the family photo that had been his background was now lost to darkness.
Sleep came fitfully that night, his dreams filled with fragments from home intermingled with wolves and monsters and floating symbols he couldn't comprehend. Sarah appeared repeatedly – sometimes reaching for him, sometimes simply watching from a distance, her expression unreadable. In one particularly vivid moment, he saw her sitting at their kitchen table, phone in hand, speaking urgently to someone he couldn't see. He woke several times, disoriented and anxious, before finally surrendering to a light doze as dawn approached.
Morning brought renewed purpose. The emotional breakdown had been necessary, but dwelling on what he couldn't change would only decrease his chances of survival. Mike rose, ate a small breakfast of dried meat, and set about expanding his defenses with methodical determination.
The next several days fell into a productive rhythm. Mornings were dedicated to building and setting traps, with Mike applying increasingly sophisticated designs inspired by his construction knowledge. He crafted a deadfall with a secondary trigger that would release a swinging log if the primary trap was somehow avoided. He dug a concealed pit with angled stakes designed to impale anything that fell in, regardless of how it landed.
Afternoons Mike devoted to improving his shelter. Using the Japanese saw and reclaimed timbers from the ruins, he constructed a proper door with an ingenious barring mechanism that could be operated from either side. The hinges he fashioned from metal scraps found in the underground storage, heating and bending them using a small forge he'd built from stones and clay. The door swung smoothly on these handmade hinges, securing against the frame with satisfying solidity.
When the door was complete, Mike turned his attention to the roof. He patched holes using a framework of saplings covered with woven reeds and sealed with clay. The roof wouldn't withstand a determined attack, but it would keep out rain and provide basic insulation against the night's chill.
Inside, Mike built shelving along the walls, creating organized storage for his growing collection of tools and supplies. Each shelf was carefully leveled and secured, the joinery improving with each piece as his skills sharpened. He divided the shelves by purpose – food storage separated from tools, weapons kept within easy reach of his sleeping area.
Speaking of sleeping, Mike constructed a raised platform bed with a proper frame to keep him off the cold ground. He wove reed mats to create a flexible but supportive surface that distributed his weight evenly. When completed, the bed provided the first comfortable sleep he'd experienced since arriving in this world.
As Mike worked, strange blue rectangles occasionally appeared before him. The symbols within shifted constantly, never quite resolving into anything readable, though certain arrangements seemed to indicate progress or improvement. When he completed a particularly complex trap design, a larger notification appeared with orange symbols that pulsed rhythmically before fading away.
On the fourth day after the wolf attack, Mike was setting a complicated snare trap when one of these notifications appeared. Larger than usual, it contained what appeared to be new orange symbols beside other markings that shifted too quickly to follow. When Mike instinctively touched the notification, it expanded to reveal what looked like a trap schematic – lines and shapes arranged in a pattern that, after studying it, Mike recognized as a design for a tension-driven spear trap.
"A blueprint?" he realized, excitement building. "The system is showing me how to build something new."
Though the accompanying text remained indecipherable, Mike found he could interpret the diagram through some intuitive understanding. He could visualize how the pieces fitted together, how the mechanism would function, what materials he would need. The knowledge seemed to flow directly into his mind, bypassing language entirely.
That afternoon, Mike gathered materials and began constructing the new trap according to the blueprint. The mechanism was more sophisticated than anything he'd attempted before – a spring-loaded frame that would propel multiple sharpened stakes toward anything that triggered it. The triggering system involved a delicate pressure plate connected to a release pin that would free the tensioned frame when disturbed.
Mike worked with growing confidence, his hands seeming to know what to do even when his conscious mind hesitated. When he finally set the completed trap at a key approach to his shelter, another notification appeared – this one glowing with golden light that suggested approval or achievement.
The days blurred together as Mike continued his work. Each trap built, each improvement to his shelter, each successful experiment with the sap brought new notifications, new progress, and occasionally new blueprints. His integration with the system deepened through consistent effort and practical application rather than sudden insight.
A week after the wolf attack, Mike stood on the roof of his shelter, surveying his domain. The ruins were now ringed with traps of various designs, from simple snares to complex mechanical devices capable of seriously injuring or killing intruders. His shelter had transformed into a genuinely defensible position, with reinforced walls, a secure door, and even a basic alarm system of reed chimes that would sound if something approached.
His collection of explosive sap had grown substantial, with multiple caches of bamboo bombs positioned strategically throughout the ruins. The dried sap strips had proven effective as fuses, allowing for timed detonations if necessary.
Food storage had improved as well. Mike had constructed a smoker from clay and stones, using it to preserve meat from successful hunts. Dried fruits hung in bunches from shelter rafters, and root vegetables he'd discovered stored well in a cool corner of the underground chambers. He'd even begun experimenting with fermentation, using clay pots to create a tangy drink from fruit juices that provided both hydration and calories.
Mike had created, through persistence and ingenuity, a fortress from ruins. It wasn't home—could never be home—but it was a base from which he could operate safely, a foundation upon which to build his understanding of this world and, eventually, find a way back to Sarah and Jeremy.
As the sun set on the seventh day, Mike allowed himself a rare moment of pride. He had survived. More than survived—he had adapted and thrived despite impossible circumstances. His body had grown leaner but stronger, his hands more calloused but infinitely more skilled. His mind had sharpened, quick to identify threats and opportunities in this dangerous world.
Whatever came next, he was ready.
Or so he thought.