There is a lot of blood, and I wonder how far the bear could have gotten. I will only follow the trail for less than a hundred rooms. I won’t be ready to reset the room until I collect my weapons and move them to the loot room. I separate my shoelaces and tie my shoes as best I can with the torn laces. I drink some water and depart the room.

  My stiffness and pain fade away as I move room to room knowing that I could come across the bear at any moment. As I walk, I keep to the perimeters of the rooms and take quick looks around the walls through the openings into each next room before entering them. I rest the spear over my right shoulder and support my left arm across my body with my right elbow. I hold my extra tips in my left hand. After twenty-three rooms I come across one of my spear tips in a pool of blood on the floor. The blood trail intensifies for a time then returns to a series of drips.

  When I reach room forty-two, I peak around a corner where the blood trail leads to the room to the right, and I see a big black mass lying in the far-right corner. It’s not moving. I can see a huge circle of blood around it on the yellow carpet.

  I approach the bear cautiously. It doesn’t appear to be breathing. Maybe I should just go back to the smoothie room and stay there for a few days now that I know where it is. Then I could come back and see if the bear has moved. It seems the danger has passed. Would a bear keep rooms from resetting? It must have passed through areas while following me from the entrance where there were more than a hundred rooms from a dead human and the bear was not reset. I may need to get the body to a hundred rooms away if I want to eat again. I don’t know how I’ll do that, but first I need to make sure it’s dead.

  I make sure my spear tip is set in the handle and line up the other tips leaning against the right wall so I can grab them easily. I bring my spear down and support it at the midpoint with my left hand. My shoulder protests with intense pain, but I can take it. I’m ready to thrust into the bear’s stomach or chest if I need to. What I’m doing is probably stupid, but there is a rush of adrenaline in me like a runner’s high. I need to end this now before I worry about recovering.

  When I’m just crossing the midpoint of the bear’s room, it lifts its head and charges with a roar. I can see that one of my spear tips is still embedded in its chest. Maybe that is what has kept it from bleeding out already. I drop to my right knee and brace the back of the spear on the floor to take the force of the charge, but the bear never reaches me. After about three or four steps it collapses back onto the floor and lies there whining and whimpering in pain.

  I know it tried to kill me, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see it dying in misery. I retrieve my spear tips and circle around the bear, keeping my distance until I am to its left side. I put my extra spears down on the ground, then I run towards the bear and drive my spear into its side, before quickly backing up still holding the handle. It groans but hardly moves. I stab it four more times, twice in the neck and twice more in the body. It’s not moving at all. There’s no sign of breathing. Still, I wait for what might be a half of an hour watching it. There is no sign of life. I approach and pull the spears tips out one by one. I won’t be able to reach the one through the chest without flipping the animal, so I leave it be. Some more blood oozes out of the opened wounds, but it doesn’t pulse.

  I back away from the fallen creature until I come to the wall, then slide down to the floor and cry, sob even. “Why!” I say aloud through my tears. Why does this place exist? Why am I here? Why did this bear follow me in? Why is any of this happening?

  After a few minutes I struggle to my feet and gather my weapons. With one last look at the bear, I turn around and make my way back to the smoothie room. I look inside to see if I am forgetting anything. I notice my earbud case lying on the floor. Useless, but I grab it and put it back in my belt. I also take the other weapons I made. I decide to conduct an experiment. I leave everything on the floor outside the doors and then turn into the room on the right.

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  I continue until I am a hundred one rooms from the bear’s carcass, then return the way I came. At the room adjacent to the smoothie room, I pick up my weapons and the blood trail. I follow the drops the forty-two rooms to where I can see the bear’s body, but when I look into the room to the right, there is no bear nor any blood to be seen. At the midpoint of the opening between the rooms, there is a clean straight line through the blood spots that are still present in this room and the next room which has nothing but clean yellow carpet.

  Maybe I should have tried to eat some bear meat to supplement my diet? How would I have cooked it or preserved it? It’s too late now. Where do things go when a room resets? I put my weapons down and go another fifty-nine rooms, before returning to the smoothie room to find everything like new and a new bottle on the counter. I sit on the floor against the wall and drink what I can, resting. I consider just curling up on the floor and sleeping but instead push on to where I can sleep in Amy’s makeshift house.

  Five hundred sixty-seven rooms later, not including the small detour to pick up my weapons from the former bear room, I look into the room with the writing on the wall. Amy’s body has been unwrapped from the carpet pad and partially eaten. Most of the clothes on her lower body have been ripped off and her legs are no longer attached. John Mason’s bodies has also been ripped apart. Apparently, the two bodies, even in their partially eaten state, are still preventing these rooms from resetting, since everything is still here. Had the bear eaten them entirely, would that have changed things?

  I don’t step into the room. I leave them be and go into the small house, pulling the drywall door over the opening behind me. I lie down on the carpet padding bed. I don’t climb into the sleeping bag but just pull it over myself. Sleep comes the moment my eyes close.

  Screaming wakes me up. It’s my own. A nightmare of sharp teeth digging into my shoulder is fading from my foggy memory. I feel my left shoulder, which is swollen and painful, but there are no teeth marks. I sit up. I know where I am. I’m still in the rooms. I take my cell phone out of my pocket and press the power button. Nothing happens. I press and hold it. Nothing. Did I remember to turn it all the way off last time I looked at it? How long ago was that even?

  I feel lightheaded. I press the bottom of my wrist to my forehead and it feels hot. Do I have a fever? The top of my head feels weird. I touch the place where I was clawed by the bear and the area is swollen. I press a little and feel something ooze out. I look at my fingers. It’s too dark with only light coming from the partially blocked door illuminating the small room. There’s a nauseating smell. I get out of the bed and go out into the main room, holding my damp fingers away from me. Once I’m in the light, I see a thick yellowish liquid on my fingers. The wound is infected and oozing pus. I don’t know what to do.

  I remember passing leaking sprinklers on the route between here and the smoothie room. Is draining the pus and rinsing the wound the right thing to do? I can’t imagine leaving it the way it is would be the right thing to do and it’s not like I can go to the emergency room.

  When I arrive at the room I remembered with a strong flowing leak, I undress and pile my clothes on my shoes to keep the that way, then step under the water. I gently massage the wound until I’m unable to get any more pus out, just blood. The cold water also clears my head and probably reduced my fever. I clean off the best I can without soap or a washcloth and step out of the water. I wring out my hair, push as much water off myself as I can, and air dry.

  Once I’m dressed again, I go to Amy’s loot room. Could she have found some aspirin, ibuprofen or acetaminophen? I search, but I don’t find pills of any kind. I do find an old-fashioned glass thermometer. I rinse it off with water and wipe it on my shirt. There’s no more I can do to clean it. I place it under my armpit and wait. While I’m waiting, I remember the old Nokia phone. It’s dead, but when I plug it in and turn it on, it works. I check the date and time, but it says January 1, 2000 at 00:00. It didn’t retain the updated settings.

  I go through the menus and try the snake game Amy wrote about. At 00:10, I check the thermometer. The silver line is touching one hundred four. I rub my aching neck and go back into the little house and lie down. I stare at the ceiling and drift in and out of sleep.