by Arthur Stone
As soon as the truck started, an unexpected and unprecedented System message greeted Cheater.
Note: This is the first time in the history of the Continent that players have visited this cluster. Congratulations to you and your party members. Note: A new cluster has been discovered. Party discovery. Congratulations, this is the first cluster you have discovered! Bonus +100 distributable auxiliary stat points. Note: You have unlocked a hidden stat: Cartography. Cartography Stat Level: 1. Congratulations! Explore territories unknown to other players. The more you discover, the more your Cartography will grow. As it levels up, you will unlock more opportunities.
Note: The player Kitty is too far away from the party. She does not receive credit for the discovery.
“Wow!” Roach cheered. “No ordinary cluster. What a freebie!”
Cheater studied the message but failed to be impressed. The discovery was nice, sure, but what lay ahead summoned nothing but negative emotions. It just so happened that city clusters were connected with his worst memories, of death, of bad knees, of suicide under trucks. Now, his weak and battered party was entering a similar place.
Perhaps the infecteds would not immediately attack the fresh food source, as March had suggested. But they were unlikely to wait long. A fresh cluster was their favorite treat, and one that brought them running from miles around. Especially when there was lots of food. The feeding trough would not stay undisturbed for long.
In addition, the digis here would be unpredictable. They could clog up the roads in great traffic jams and commit acts of vandalism, sabotage, and violence.
Cheater was growing to doubt March’s plan once more.
* * *
The truck began slowing down and pulling off to the side of the road. Invisible cars honked their horns in displeasure from behind. Cheater pushed aside a torn scrap of tarp and shook his head as he looked at the jam. Somehow the townspeople had sensed something was amiss and had made a mad dash for the exit. Cars covered the way, and many broke the rules of the road by trying to go around the jam in lanes going the other way. The digis were all nervous, honking their horns, gesturing frantically, and yelling rude remarks. They paid little attention to the party’s vehicles—it seemed they were only driven by a collective desire to get out of town. Nothing else mattered to them. Even an accident was basically ignored. Cheater saw a driver sitting on the curb, clutching his bleeding head in his hands.
The artillery truck stopped near perpendicular to the road, blocking two lanes completely. Drivers breaking the rules were forced to come into dangerously close proximity, risking scratches and missing mirrors. This annoyed them to no end.
“March went into that store for some reason,” Tat informed him.
“Beer, no doubt,” Roach suggested.
Cheater was inclined to agree with him. What other reason would March enter a digi store? The party had food and water, so that was no reason.
“A police car is pulling up,” Tat said. “It just stopped. Two cops are getting out. One is coming our way, the other to the second truck.
Someone was speaking next to the cab now, their words indiscernible, and Cheater heard Clown reply excitedly. “You’re kidding. Are you trying to make me angry? Look! Why are you all just coming after me? What, am I the prettiest one here?”
There was more indistinct conversation, and then a scream, a single crack, two gunshots, and more shouts. Then, Janitor’s machine gun began pounding. Glass shattered, and pistols joined the racket. Their wielders were shooting in a hurry, but not quickly enough to think they had automatic weapons.
Something hit the cab area hard, and Tat brought up her machine gun. “They killed the cops, but there are still a few people behind the store on foot. I won’t let them get away!”
Another bullet hit the truck, and at last it fired up the ignition and started moving.
Fatso sent Cheater to cover the left side, so he could not see what was happening, only listen to it. But hearing was enough. The party’s “beer run” had resulted in a conflict with local law enforcement. Chaos had not yet asserted its power over the city, and despite the power being out, some of the cops’ communication devices should work.
No way they were getting all the way through the city without a fight.
Metal scraped on metal up ahead, and a horn blared angrily. One of the cars must have broken the rule of not going under the artillery truck’s bumper.
The chat blinked. It was March, with a brief order. Shoot all police and military. Shoot on sight.
Military? Cheater hadn’t thought of them. The police were unpleasant, of course, but not that scary. Even SWAT teams wouldn’t be a challenge for players like them.
But military—that was serious. If the city had an army base and military vehicles, they would pose a threat. One armored personnel carrier could probably end them.
After all, the natives knew the city. The party did not. March’s sensor abilities were spotty, and while they were in motion, he would miss things.
Roach shifted closer to Cheater and complained. “My Humanity’s not so great. I’ll go negative if I shoot the police.”
Fatso managed to hear. “I’ve been negative for two months now and it’s been alright. Uncomfortable at times, sure, but hardly ever annoying. Shoot on sight, like March said. I don’t have much ammo left for my machine gun, so I need to conserve.
Roach groaned and spat. “We’re hell knows how far from the border and you’re running out of ammo?”
“What do you think? Almost everything we had with us burned in that truck. Everyone is on a tight supply. Machine gun ammo isn’t easy to come by, you know. Shit. Cops!”
Sirens and lights hit them from the other side of the street. A police car emerged from the alley and ran into traffic. No matter how much they might want to, the drivers could not move out of the way. They didn’t seem to want to, either. When the realized this, the two policemen jumped out and began weaving through the cars. Both held their pistols firm in their hands.
Cheater had not even finished considering the two of them when Roach started shooting. He fired generously, sparing no bullets. One died immediately, but the other took refuge behind a car and dared not show himself. Bullets streamed over his head. The cars received many of them, and a fountain of blood spurted from one.
“Calm down” Cheater shouted, taking advantage of Roach pausing to reload. “He can’t hurt us now; we’re almost past.”
More crunching metal sounds rang out from ahead of them. Cheater learned out to see the artillery truck hammering into another traffic jam at speed. It was not a wide jam, so the truck easily cleared a way by scattering them to either side. The drivers were so stunned at this action that they did not even think of touching their horns. They only stared, with disconcertingly circular eyes.
The truck surged up onto the wrecked cars and pressed forward down a street that was nearly deserted. Here, the traffic was one way, and led into the center of town. The people were moving towards the outer edge of town, so there was little resistance here, and so the party hit a speed clearly in violation of local ordinances.
But that was not for long. The street piled out into an avenue packed with cars. Ramming the jam was not an option. They would end up stuck. Only a tank or a heavy bulldozer would do the trick.
March did not command them to turn around. Instead, they reduced speed and began making their way strategically through, pushing cars out of the way. They were only passenger cars, and only six rows across.
Once the way was clear for Clown’s truck, March’s mounted the curb, broke down a low flimsy metal fence, and started moving across the park on the other side.
One second later, Cheater had to grab the side to keep from being ejected from the vehicle. The vibrations were unimaginable, much worse than in the gray clusters, as the truck moved with too much speed. Driving like this off road among such thick trees was far from safe. Perhaps the sounds of machine guns somewhere nearby had bothered March
. They weren’t shooting at the convoy, but still, violence was best avoided.
The truck turned down a wide alley and rushed along, crushing flowers and flowerpots on one lawn after another. An old woman who had decided to give a baby a walk during the current catastrophe barely had time to bound out of the way with the stroller.
Somewhere nearby, police sirens rang out. March turned again, breaking through bushes and crushing more fences. He was trying to get to the street that ran along the side of the park across from their entry point.
The nearest siren cut out abruptly in a cacophony of crunching metal and shattering glass. Clown, who was following March, went around the overturned cop car and emerged into a near-empty street. They rushed down it as though nothing alive was in the way, though in reality all living things were simply hurrying to get out of the way.
Another police car emerged from a narrow lane and began pursuit, siren blaring. One imprecise volley from Roach, who somehow managed to shoot the windshield from a whole dozen yards away, changed the cops’ minds, and the car veered off into the park.
* * *
No one had a map of town, but even without one, it was clear that things were becoming more rural. No more high rises were in the area, and the fashion stores and fancy restaurants were replaced with antique stores and farmer’s markets. Signs showed the way to the nearest towns, suggesting they were almost out.
Chaos lay behind them. Hundreds of crippled civilian cars, dozens of dead cop cars, victims of the trucks’ bumpers or the party’s bullets. Twice, law enforcement officers had attempted to construct a barrier across the trucks’ path, and each time the police had suffered significant casualties. Janitor simply fired the artillery at them, and few cops found the courage to return fire with their pistols.
Still, they had suffered some damage. Both trucks had a lot of new holes, including some in the wheels. They could still drive, but not at top speed, and they needed to make a pit stop as soon as possible. None of them had died, but Fatso had taken a pistol round to the forearm, and Clown had had his vision threatened by metal shrapnel to the face.
Little things like that. By Continental standards, they had gotten through the city easily and without any casualties.
Well—almost.
The wide road was completely empty. For some unknown reason, the masses leaving the city had neglected to flee in this direction. This allowed the party to move at racing speeds.
They passed a huge lot of used cars for sale and a massive hardware store with construction materials out front. Then, they entered a large traffic circle with five exits.
In the middle of the circle stood an APC, amidst grass and stunted fir trees. It was no monument, but a military vehicle in position. The fact that its machine gun was aimed precisely at their point of egress suggested they had been deployed to stop the party. Four police cars stood a good distance away, along the curb. Law enforcement giving the military some space.
That seemed reasonable, given the massive losses they had suffered as they attempted to stop the convoy in town.
A military man clad in body armor and a helmet raised a megaphone to his mouth. The city was still civilized, after all. Before shooting the bad guys to bits, you had to give them a chance to surrender.
The players knew no such rules. March hit the brakes and spun the wheel. The heavy truck went into a sideways skid, presenting the enemies with the barrel of the artillery gun.
Janitor opened fire. Four of the five shells were armor piercing, and one was a high-explosive frag round. The latter round would be ineffective against well-armored military equipment, and the former four would be nearly useless against the most serious vehicles.
But this was just an older armored personnel carrier. An old vehicle whose only decent weapon was a 14.5mm machine gun. A damn good weapon, and highly valued by all players. Yet the vehicle’s armor was too weak. A machine gun could punch through it from up close.
A 23mm cannon could pierce it straight through from a distance. Now, at point blank, the masterful quasi sent three rounds at it within four seconds, dicing the body of the man with the megaphone into a thousand bloody bits and sending various metallic and organic gifts hurtling towards the police cars.
Hardly two seconds after having defeated this new obstacle, Janitor returned the gun to its normal position.
The forward truck picked up speed, and ran around the traffic circle. Cheater took aim at the police and relaxed his trigger finger.
Then, for some reason, March took the truck off the road. It demolished the chicken wire fence around a shopping center parking lot and went for the main building, clearly intending to take cover behind it.
Cheater didn’t understand, but he did see the blood drain from Fatso’s face. He was the only one with a radio, enabling him to hear the boss’s instructions without having to consult chat.
Apparently he didn’t like what he heard.
Somewhere behind them and to the left, at least two autocannons sounded. A machine gun—14.5mm, of course—backed them up. Cheater’s hearing had once been catastrophically damaged by a gun of that size, so he knew it well. A tracer zipped past Roach, punching another hole in the miserable remains of the canopy.
The next round exploded as it barely touched the tarp.
Cheater was lucky to be on one knee and facing the side, significantly higher up then where the flash occurred. Still, it knocked him out cold. When he came to, on his back, the light was fading, and his ears pounded.
He clumsily sat up, ran a hand over his bloodied face, and looked around. The remnants of smoke still lingered, but most of it had blown out, since the truck was still moving at a good clip. Everyone lay in various distressed poses, and Roach showed no signs of life.
Cheater reflexively called up his party menu and made sure all of the icons were still alive. That calmed him down, but only for a moment. He remembered seeing Tat’s icon react to the gray hound attack.
Her icon had not gone black, then.
Why?
Getting up to one knee again, he saw where the tracer rounds were coming from. An artillery gun, or a vehicle bearing an artillery gun, was positioned across the intersection. The tracers were coming from a hundred yards away, from the middle of a dense but small forest. That’s where the soldiers had set their ambush.
Cheater raised his rifle and shot into the firing point, then turned and searched for the other position. He couldn’t find it. Perhaps it was around the corner of the shopping center now.
Not that his hearing was reliable at the moment. He had been stunned.
Cheater shot again at the same point. He took a moment to be surprised at how his truck had held together under the onslaught. After all, the guns were perilously close, and there was basically no cover between the opponents. Either the gunner was an idiot, or the infection had already started to mitigate his intelligence.
Meaning he was becoming an idiot.
He squinted to the right and only then realized that something was wrong with the truck. Instead of following the leader, it was crossing the parking lot diagonally, turning neither right nor left. That would give it cover, too, but two or three seconds later than if it followed March.
A couple of seconds in situations like this could be the difference between life and death.
Cheater took another shot. This time, he nearly smiled, as the gun went silent. Had he really managed to hit something or someone critical? He had no eyes on the target, no idea where it might be. It was a random shot. But perhaps the gunner had just run out of ammo.
Whatever the case, the rounds stopped coming. The truck crossed the parking lot, demolished the fence on the other side, hit the slope of the road’s embankment, and began to climb it, half sideways. It was moving too fast, and the slope was too high.
Cheater knew what was coming. “Hang on!”
One moment later, the truck crashed into a concrete wall that reinforced the side of the road and turned onto its side. It ha
ppened so quickly, so violently, that Cheater was unable to follow his own advice.
He flew out of the truck, rolled and skidded and painfully bounced along the pavement, and lost his rifle.
When he stopped, he somehow found the strength to pick himself up with his arms. He turned his head. Roach lay nearby, arms spread wide. As motionless as before. Would he accept another resurrection? This really had been an unlucky trip for him.
Cheater saw his rifle. He crawled over to it. He would survive this. He had been in worse, and had lived to tell the tale.
Another shell exploded into one of the trees surrounding the parking lot. A small scrap of shrapnel flew into Cheater’s wrist, but he felt no pain.
After all, everything already hurt.
He grabbed his rifle and began to rise. Fatso appeared in front of him, inexplicably. He was bloodied almost beyond recognition, nearly as much as a ghoul.
His eyes flashing madly, he shouted, “Help me! We have to get Roach out of here!”
“Tat... Where is Tat?” Cheater asked robotically.
His tongue had realized she was nowhere to be seen, before his brain had realized the same.
“Just help me!”
Without any more questions, he grabbed Roach’s wrist and pulled, surprised that he had the strength to do so. March and Janitor appeared then. Each of them were dragging another body. Cheater saw that Tat was one of them.
He felt no emotion. He should have at least felt surprised at seeing March without a beer in his hand, for the first time in several days now.
Where they ended up, Cheater could not say. At some point, his partner ordered him to stop and wait for Button to get to Roach.
Cheater sat on the pavement, leaned against a wheel, placed his rifle on the ground in front of him, and unscrewed his canteen. He pressed it to his lips. The lifejuice felt like lava in his throat. It would flow through his digestion, through his veins, through his arteries, to all corners of his body, relieving the fatigue and the pain, healing his injuries and restoring his strength.
