The Legendary Junkmaster

Jason felt his eyes drooping from his sleepless night as the dull morning light illuminated the cocoons. The people inside them began to stir as the light disturbed their sleep. Jason watched on his Gramps, and Dani came into view, yawning as they opened their makeshift pods.

"Damn! That was the best sleep I've ever had!" Harry's expression was relaxed and satisfied as he clambered out of the blanket.

"Definitely! It's so much better than sleeping on the ground!" Dani chuckled as a pop resounded in the air.

"Where did you get the idea from?" Harry asked with a curious expression as he glanced at Dani's new position on one of the branches.

"Ah, my dad showed me how to do it years ago. It was just a bit of fun as we set it up in m bedroom using metal stands instead of branches. But every now and then, I still sleep in it." Dani let out a proud smile as she replied.

"Was your dad a scavenger at some point?" Harry asked with some surprise in his tone. "Don't get me wrong, it's just that town folks don't usually think of stuff like this."

"No, I don't think so anyway." Dani seemed to ponder the question for a bit. She had to admit that it was a bit of an odd thing for her dad to know.

"Hm, maybe it was one of his parents, and they showed him how to do it just like he did with you." Harry smiled when he saw that Dani was questioning what she actually knew about her parents.

"Yeah, it could have been. Dad's never spoke about them." Dani smiled as her worries about her dad's past were washed away. It made more sense to her that he picked it up from a family member rather than being a scavenger himself.

Under Jason's watchful gaze, the pair continued to dismantle their hammocks in a pleasant mood. Jason continuously cursed them as they seemed to completely ignore him. He was beginning to feel like a third wheel! What the fuck was up with that?

Dani was the first to finish packing up and teleported down the ground with a broad smile on her face. Harry was not far behind her, but climbing down the tree took a bit more time.

"Hey! Thanks for not waking me up. I really needed that!" Dani chuckled as she lightly punched Jason on the shoulder.

"It's not like you gave me any choice. Is it?" Jason growled with a dark expression masking his face. "Did you even consider the danger you ended up putting us in?"

Dani showed a look of surprise as she flicked from Jason's open hostility towards her. "What do you mean?"

"Jason! Don't be hard on her." Harry fried, warning at his grandson before he could elaborate. He did not want Jason to say anything that might make Dani reluctant to help them out again in the future.

Jason glared at his Gramps before snatching his backpack up off the ground. "Forget it. Let's go."

Jason had just single-handedly assassinated the excellent mood for the other two as he stormed off in the direction that they had been headed since the day before. Harry could only sigh in exasperation as he motioned for Dani to follow them. She had a helpless expression on her face as she trailed after them. Harry could tell that she was trying to figure out what danger she had actually put them in.

"Did you really have to be so hard on her?" Syssie asked with a worried tone as she casually strolled beside Jason.

'Yes, you heard it as well, right? All those animal noises that kept coming through the night? What if I'd fallen asleep?' Jason replied with a salty attitude in his thoughts. He could not voice his response because then he would just look weird to the others. 'Sure, they might have been fine up in the trees if a beast happened across us. But what about me? If I fell asleep, then that could have been the end for me!'

Syssie sighed in response. The problem was that Jason was wholly justified in his anger. Even she had been worried for his safety as the noises drew closer to them at various points in the night. Still, she felt like Harry was more to blame than Dani. After all, Harry was a veteran that clearly knew how dangerous this area was. So he should have taken responsibility and rotated with Jason all night.

Even if Dani had kept watch, she was so inexperienced that she might have fallen asleep or missed a vital sign that they were being hunted. In Syssie's mind, it should have definitely been left up to the two men. However, Harry had chosen to be his usual petty self and disappeared out of reach. He might have been feeling guilty, and that was why he had stood up for Dani just now. But Syssie could not be sure of that.

It did not take long before the group started to come across signs that beasts had passed by. Freshly broken branches and disturbed dirt showed which directions they had headed in. Dani gasped when she saw these signs, and it finally dawned on her how real the danger had been last night.

Even Jason was surprised as he glanced at the various paw prints and hoof marks as they passed them by. 'Where the hell has he brought us?' Jason gasped in surprise. He had never seen evidence of such a variety of beasts living in close proximity to each other. It was a wonder that they had not hunted each other to extinction!

"From here on out, you better keep quiet, kids. One wrong move could get us all killed." Harry stated solemnly as he examined the tracks.

Dani and Jason could only nod in agreement. Their lives were entirely in the hands of this veteran scavenger. Neither of them was stupid enough to disobey him at this point. The marks left behind by the beasts were enough to scare them shitless.

For a while, they followed the same direction as the tracks before Harry veered off course and into the thick of the forest. Jason wondered why his Gramps had done this. 'Wouldn't it be quicker to just follow them all the way?'

Harry began to slow his pace as the ground beneath their feet suddenly began to incline sharply. It was tough going climbing up it, but the group did their best to hold back their laborious breathing. Soon, Jason spotted the ground levelling out up ahead. The spacing between the trees also became more expansive, making the steep hill sparsely populated by them at its summit.

As they reached the flat ground of the summit, Harry suddenly dropped his belly to the ground. Prompting the two teenagers to do the same. Of course, they quickly followed suit before crawling through the dirt to get a look at what Harry could see.

It was needless to say that the pair had to stifle a gasp as the scenery of the so-called Zoo came into their view. What had once been neat paths that people used to walk on was now cracked and broken. Allowing overgrown vegetation to push up towards the sky. There was a clear distinction between the areas used as the lair for different species.

What had obviously been walls at some point was now falling apart as they still protected these lairs. A few buildings were spread around, and Jason could only wonder what they had been used for in the past. Jason's sight began to light up like a Christmas tree as it began to ping the location of the various plants that he had tagged before.

'It's like a damn treasure trove of plants!' Jason thought ecstatically as he quickly took note of their various locations. To be honest, he had begun to question his Gramps judgement for bringing them here since his interface never pinged anything even once. But now, he could finally see why the old man had been so confident!

Suddenly a growth of plants was illuminated brightly in his vision. Jason's eyes went wide as he recognised them as the ones he needed to make the compressed gas. They were growing out the top of a fake-looking rock structure. After a quick look at it, Jason realised that they definitely needed Dani to retrieve those ones. Climbing that structure would take too long, especially when they could be spotted by a beast at any moment.

"Where are all the beasts?" Dani asked with a confused expression.

Now that she mentioned it, Jason realised there was no sign of them. Which made no sense considering how many tracks they had seen on the way here. Jason turned to his Gramps with a confused expression, hoping he could shed some light on the matter.

"What we saw on the way here were the tracks of the nocturnal beasts. The ones that are active during the day have yet to come out. Just keep quiet and wait for it. It won't be long now. Remember, we're just scouting just now." Harry whispered with a grave expression.

Ten minutes passed before a loud roar echoed from the rocky structure that Jason had kept his eyes on. His complexion paled as his eyes bore witness to the monster that claimed that area as its home as it walked proudly out into the sunlight.