CWD: OE ~ Thirty-One

Nacho found himself overlooking a kitchen version of the Grand Canyon. He and Brie had emerged onto a wooden shelf that spanned the entire upper wall of the gargantuan room. The shelf held various knick-knacks, plates, an odd spoon collection, and some picture frames that were too far away for the actual pictures to be visible.

The floor, more than a mile below, appeared to be cracked yellow linoleum. To the left sat a little kitchen table and chairs next to an unmarked door. That likely led to the hallway they had vacated, but there was no guarantee that was the case.

To the right was where the real action was. A refrigerator towered over the kitchen from the opposite wall, nearly level with the shelf they had emerged onto. It was with a strange sense of nostalgia that they realized the fridge was running. The familiar hum of the engine flew in the face of the whole no-electricity apocalypse to which humanity had been subjected. Speaking of flies, several fly corpses the size of a typical two-door sedan littered the countertop, and a few still buzzed around the fluorescent lighting far above the humans.

Down from the fridge—across a messy butcher block counter—was a sink that could have contended with a lake in size. Only if the lake had industrial levels of pollution being dumped into it; the gargantuan reservoir was full of filthy dishwater, dotted with floating chunks of grease and rotten leftovers. That alone was filling the room with an eye-watering stink even at this distance.

Another expanse of butcher block covered the distance from the sink to the stove top—which appeared to be a combination of gas and electric. From so far away, it was hard to tell. Finally, a cabinet hung next to a door marked ‘Dining Room’. Reuben shouldered his way out of the tunnel to stand next to Nacho, surveying the giant’s kitchen. “Well, that’s… fortunate, right? We found the Dining Room, at the bare minimum. Getting there isn’t going to be easy, since the distances are all weird. Really gives me a new respect for spiders climbing through our houses.”

“Let’s not give the Patrons any ideas.” Brie immediately clapped a hand over his mouth with a hiss, knowing that any damage was likely already done.

Abby shuddered in shared revulsion.  “Amen to that, bucko.”

“Let’s head that way.” Nacho pointed to the refrigerator and started moving along the dusty platform. “I think the easiest way off this shelf is to jump to the top of the fridge, though I don’t know how we’re going to be able to get down to the counter from there. Anyone have rope, or do we need to plan to buy some?”

“I have a hundred feet.” Taye was the picture-perfect example of a good adventurer—carrying rope and expecting trouble.

“I have fifty feet,” Reuben added. “As does Nacho; I made sure of it.”

Brie and Abby moved forward to take point, followed by Reuben, Taye, Kristie, and Hazel. Nacho, Jennifer, Steve, and Stephen followed behind them to provide the rear guard, everyone settling into a fast jog as soon as they were comfortable with their placement. Even so, it took another hour of trotting across the shelf to reach the far edge, leaving them with only seven hours before the Starvation Debuff came into effect.

Nacho craned his neck to look back at the way they’d come as the group paused before tackling the next obstacle, only for Brie to tap the dusty shelf with her lacrosse stick and motivate the group to get moving again. “We’re on the clock! No jokes or delays. That means you, Reuben. Let’s just find a way down.”

Below them waited the top of the refrigerator. A hatch, like something on top of a submarine, was in the center of the huge fridge. That hatch wasn’t enormous like the rest of the room—it seemed to be comfortably human-sized. It was pretty clear that was where Nacho and his Snack Attack were expected to go.

Would there be another way out of the freezer? Or was it a trap?

Reuben saw it and was appropriately skeptical, launching into speculation even as his wife stared daggers at him. “It’s a good bet that the freezer is bad news. Do we ignore it and try to get to the counter? Or should we try to find a way to the floor?”

Nacho gazed down to the nasty, dusty top of the fridge. “Let’s see if we can get down there first. Then we can decide. The hatch might be locked.”

“You know it’s not,” Jennifer prophesied in a sing-song voice. “We’re being led. It’s interesting that we happened to find that mousehole that brought us to the ledge, and now there’s that hatch. The Patrons have laid out the path—fridge to counter, to sink, to that stovetop.”

Now that they were closer, Nacho could just pick out the outline of a little door in the side of the cabinet on the other side of the stove, proving Jennifer’s theory right. They had a precise path to follow. Taye was already coiling out his rope. “Okay. Let’s see how far this reaches.”

No one was surprised when the end of the rope somehow perfectly reached down to about ten feet over the top of the fridge. Jennifer tied knots to make it easier on everyone else, though each of them were over twice as strong as they had been at the start of the Juxtaposition. Still, climbing down a swinging rope wasn’t easy. Kristie suggested buying rappelling gear, but no one wanted to waste credits.

Taye took a moment to consider the placement of his makeshift ladder and called out a realization worth mentioning. “If we use the rope to get the fridge, we’re not going to be able to retrieve it, and it’ll still be a bit of a drop. That means we’re stuck on top of the counter once we climb down. Are we good with that?”

“I think we have to be.” Brie stowed Mr. Lacrosse Stick in a Storage Slot and slipped over the edge, dropping as quickly as possible down the knotted length. Once she reached the end, she pushed away from the wall, swinging as far as she could with the rope before releasing and landing with a roll on the fridge top. Abby followed her over the edge next, and one by one, they replicated the feat of acrobatics their combat leader had performed.

Nacho was grateful for the knots as he descended. By the time he’d lowered himself to the end of his rope, he could already feel the fridge’s motor running—the vibrations traveled up his legs. Before jumping, he got a better look at the butcher block counter that connected the freezer to the sink. The wood was stained, scored, and even burned. It looked like a battle had taken place there. The sink itself was even more disgusting the closer he got—it was nearly overflowing with decomposing sludge. The cook didn’t know how to get his team across that slop without swimming, and he certainly wasn’t looking forward to that.

Tumbling to the fridge’s surface, Nacho smoothly rolled and got back to his feet. Without slowing, he made his way directly to the hatch, spun the handle, and hauled it open. A blast of freezing air hit everyone nearby, nearly sending them flying over the edge. After everyone was stable, they checked inside and found an ice-encrusted ladder.

Nacho sent his glowing potstickers down. The freezer was stacked full of frosty boxes—TV dinners, Hot Pockets, and a few frozen pizzas. The meals must’ve been there a long time. It resembled the neglected freezer at someone’s office, full of frozen food from forgotten feasts. The cook put his foot on the top rung, “I’ll go first-?”

His statement was cut off with a yelp as his main Berserker pushed him out of the way and took his place. “That would be my responsibility, even if I’m not thrilled about the cold.”

“I’ll back you up,” Reuben offered as he pulled a scowling Nacho off the ground.

Brie dropped down the ladder with a speedy slide, mirroring Nacho’s feat from their descent into the Welcome Dungeon. True to his word, Reuben followed, and then Kristie climbed down before the team deigned to allow Nacho to join the procession. He had never been quite as happy as he was at the moment he discovered that his Gauntlets of Oven Taming could keep his hands warm on the freezing metal that sped by.

They slid more slowly than they’d be comfortable with on a non-frozen ladder, as they were uncertain about being able to slow down as effectively on the ice-encrusted monstrosity. Nacho strained his eyes to search for another hatch on the counter side of the freezer as he moved, but there were too many boxes in the way to be able to tell for certain.

As the last of them landed in the ground that was in dire need of a good defrost cycle, something shifted around them. It was hard to tell where the sound came from, as the acoustics in the freezer were terrible. The frozen dinners were stacked like shipping containers, leaving only narrow spaces for them to run through, but if any one of the boxes of Weight Watcher fudge bars came tumbling down, they’d ironically get crushed by their massive size.

“Anyone else hear the one about the frozen pizza?” Reuben chuckled in a normal tone, even if his teeth were chattering. “Never mind. I’m too cold, and that joke is too cheesy.”

As the group let out a collective groan, the boxes around them went crazy, shaking and bouncing all over the place.

Nacho reacted instantly, shifting his body and pulling Abby out of harm’s way as a sharp edge of cardboard burst off a box to form an opening. “The monsters are in the boxes! Everyone move!”

Doughy hands, tipped with pepperoni claws and coated in half-frozen spaghetti sauce ripped out of a package of Hot Pockets. A TV dinner box let out a roar as congealed gravy tentacles tore through the front. A Blue Bunny ice cream tub blew off its lid, and a bestial ice cream bunny rose up: certain death to the lactose intolerant.

Reuben didn’t seem too concerned, putting on a brave face and jeering, “Food-based monsters? Let me at ‘em!”

“No.” Nacho knew better than to let this slow them down. “It isn’t time to fight. It’s time to run.”