Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  FRAGGED

  THE MOTHER FRAGGIN’

  COMPLETE COLLECTION

  BY

  ZACHARIAH DRACOULIS

  FOREWORD

  Would you look at that, we’ve got a complete collection!

  Man, this has been one Hell of a journey, huh?

  Anyway, on to more important stuff.

  First things first, leave a review to make me all dancey and shizit.

  Secondly, I’ve used the word plugin again and even though I’ve now checked the Kindle Previewer three times and things look a-go there’s still a chance that there’s some screwy crap with the formatting and whatnot.

  And finally, thank you for your continued support.

  Anyway, dig in, have fun, and have an awesome day.

  FRAGGED

  Chapter One

  I’m a simple kinda girl. I like movies, TV, masturbation, games, and a bunch of other stuff, I’m not hard to please is what I’m saying. But you know what I don’t like?

  Cocksuckers.

  Cocksuckers who would, given the opportunity, fuck me and the rest of our clan up the arse in order to get a little bit ahead in Thren, Thren being the MMORPG that has been heralded as one of the best games of all time.

  It just pissed me off.

  I keep paying for game time, sure, but that’s just because… You know what? Piss off. I do what I do for fun and I don’t deserve to be judged by anyone, alright?

  …

  Sorry.

  Anyway, rant aside, to say I was dissatisfied with the events that had just transpired would be a major understatement, my mind already going through all the creatively evil ways I was going to torture the potato in my clan who betrayed me. Of course I’d have to find out who it was first, but my methods would work regardless of who it was.

  Good morning, Zoey. You’ve been asleep for a long time.

  “No I fucking haven’t.” I growled at the in-game text and the soft voice that went along with it as I slowly got to my feet.

  I was forced to blink against the blinding light that was cascading through the trees that surrounded me, my hand coming up involuntarily and blocking my view.

  The world is a very different place now, little is known of how the events of today came to pass, but rumours of a failed time travel experiment are the most prevalent concepts of the new humans.

  My head was stuck on a track, looking around at the woods in wonderment while I angrily slammed my spacebar knowing that it’d achieve nothing. Gotta say I reckon that’s the absolute worst part about perma-death, I have to put up with all the boring ‘Welcome’ crap.

  To be fair death can be pretty rare if you know what you’re doing, and sometimes it pays to go through the brief beginning sequence if only to give you some perspective.

  My eyes finally came to rest on the simple wooden cabin that had been generated for me.

  Now it is your turn to survive in a land of dinosaurs, gangs, rabid humans, and worse. Will you create a community? Or take another’s? The choice is yours.

  The training wheels finally came off and I was free to move around the forest but didn’t as a message popped up in the small chat area in the bottom left-hand corner of my vision.

  SERVER (Direct): Starter supplies will drop in thirty minutes.

  I pulled up my menu screen and discovered I was as naked as the day I was born, my fatigues and armour were gone, along with everything else that I’d been using to get to over ten thousand days of survival. I was still in shock, and the fact that I had to start over from scratch made me want to claw my eyes out.

  “Thirty minutes…” I muttered to myself as I took note of the time and looked around nervously, “Gotta survive for thirty minutes… Easy.”

  Ignoring the cabin as I’d normally done in my past lives, I made a break for the nearest tree and started pummelling it with my fists, the bark slowly cracking with each punch.

  Tree: 199/200

  +1 Large Stick (Blunt):

  Durability: 15/15

  Damage: 2

  Description: It’s a big bloody stick. What do you want, a medal?

  I spent a few seconds reading over the description a few times, the single line of snarky dialogue being enough to make me smile. The developers had a sense of humour about them, I had to give them that, and, as pissed off as I was, I was still having some fun running around desperately.

  Next on my list of things to do was to find a rock, preferably a big one.

  It took some searching, but I eventually found one nestled between two bushes behind the cabin and started hitting it with my stick.

  After a solid minute of thwacking I finally chipped a piece of the rock away.

  Boulder: 499/500

  +3 Small Rock:

  Durability: 30/30

  Damage: 3

  Description: A rock. Not edible. I repeat: Not. Edible.

  Removed: Small Rock, Large Stick (Blunt)

  Crafted: Simple Axe:

  Durability: 75/75

  Damage: 10

  Description: Bronk make axe. Bronk cut tree. Bronk cut self. Bronk die of infection. Good job Bronk.

  I admired the axe for a while, the simpleness of the thing reminding me of my first few hours in Thren. Me meeting my first clan, me butchering my first clan for their resources.

  Good times.

  I was about to start cutting down the trees and the grass in my immediate vicinity when I heard a voice not far from me, the prepubescent cracks reminding me of my high school from the year before, “Hello! Friendly! I’m friendly!”

  Either he was trying to lure in fresh spawns with the promise of safety in numbers only to kill them for the fun of it, or he was just an idiot who’d end up drawing in less stupid people if he kept yelling like he was. Didn’t matter to me, I was gonna be collecting my first scalp regardless.

  Barely five seconds of searching went by before I found my yodeller, his chant of ‘Friendly’ acting like a radar system for me.

  I crouched in a bush just off the path that he was subconsciously following, his puffy vest and jeans the first thing that caught my eye followed quickly by the bow he had drawn and ready in his hands.

  “Friendly!” he cried as he passed me, his screeching apparently only matched by his complete lack of awareness.

  I don’t know why, maybe it has something to do with my insatiable need to be a bitch, but as I ran up behind him I couldn’t help but yell “Friendly!” at the top of my lungs before smashing the guy up the back of the head with my axe, drawing little blood but knocking him out cold.

  Yelvin PussaySlayer (Local): WTF!? I SAID FRIENDLY!!!

  Zoey (Local): DILLIGAF?

  Ah, DILLIGAF, how long it had been since I’d used that little acronym.

  Yelvin PussaySlayer has been slain (World).

  Yelvin PussaySlayer (Local): ZOEY HACKS.

  Yelvin PussaySlayer left the server.

  +1 Blade Skill

  Blade Skill: 1/100

  Level Progression: 10/100

  +1 Player Scalp

  I rotated the scalp around in the little object window in my menu until I could see Yelvin’s name printed on its underside.

  I liked the scalp system, it was like the dog tag system in that one FPS game I played only much more gruesome and exceedingly more awesome.

  +1 Puffy Vest:

  Durability: 37/50

  Description: For when you want to stay dry and get picked on all at the same time.

  +1 Blue Jeans:

  Durability: 20/75

  Description: Durable, comfortable, still smell like the biker who got killed in them. What more could you ask for?

  +1 Simple Wooden Bow:

  Durability: 45/50

  Damage: 12

  Description:
One of mankind’s oldest weapons. It’s simple in both design and usage. What’s the bet that you manage to whip yourself across the fingers with it?

  +14 Simple Arrows:

  Description: Put in bow. Aim bow. Somehow stab yourself in the foot.

  I got the clothes on and immediately felt better as I watched the little green thermometer pop up in the top left-hand corner of my vision indicating that I was safe from the ravages of the cold, for the time being anyway.

  I’d finally completed phase one in my ‘Winging It’ plan that I’d only come up with after I’d started the trek back home, and phase two was already coming along nicely in my mind.

  In less than five minutes I’d gone from seemingly unending and passionate rage to the giddy eagerness of a sixteen-year-old about to lose their V-card.

  See, I think that’s why I’m in therapy.

  Chapter Two

  I sat crouched above the cave entrance, the minutes quickly ticking by as I breathed deeply and kept my arrow drawn and aimed downward.

  Phase two was simple enough, hit one in the leg and wait for the rest to come running out to help it. The only problem with the plan was that there was an awful lot of waiting required for phase two to work.

  It was one of those cases where you know that all you have to do is hold your ground and wait for your prey to come to you, knowing full well that if you try to pursue it you’ll either end up failing the hunt altogether or getting brutally double-teamed by the bitch called Luck and the dick called Timing.

  But waiting’s boring.

  I was barely a second away from buckling and letting my impatience get the better of me when I heard the tell-tale chitters and grunts associated with my proposed prey.

  Ensuring my bowstring was tight, I smiled as the dirty naked man came out of the cave in his not quite fully evolved manner and came to squat just a few metres from the entrance.

  I let out my breath and the arrow along with it, successfully pinning the unsuspecting man’s calf the forest floor.

  Clearly the pain didn’t register for a moment, his bellowing growl not coming out until I’d already slung my bow over my shoulder and pulled out my axe.

  As suspected, three of the Rabid’s women came out and I was able to drop down on them before they could even attempt to release their hunter and protector.

  It barely took me a second to jump down and crack the three of them up the back of their heads, knocking them all out of for hopefully a minute but more than likely thirty seconds.

  I swiftly put the male out of his misery, there wasn’t any space for men in my camp, and not because I’m misandrist or anything, no, but simply because the men were deliberately programmed to be slightly more warmongering and brutish.

  Also ‘cause chicks rule, but whatev’s.

  +2 Blade Skill

  Blade Skill: 3/100

  Level Progression: 30/100

  Removed: 15 Plant Fibres

  Crafted: 3 Rope

  Description: Great for binding wooden structures, imprisoning those who’d attempt to escape you, and necking yourself. Why don’t you try that last one and see how we go?

  +1 Crafting Skill

  Crafting Skill: 1/100

  Level Progression: 40/100

  Without wasting any more time, I bound my prisoners and started the tedious process of dragging my Rabids home.

  I don’t think it was until I’d dumped the third and final Rabid in front of my cabin’s door that I started to wonder if what I was doing was morally wrong, but then the little Community Population: 3/10 popped up in the bottom of my screen and I smiled.

  Congratulations, you have started the process of creating a thriving community. You’ve done so by kidnapping members of a small, savage tribe of Rabids sure, and maybe those people you took were the only ones who could provide for their tribe, but hey, at least you’ve got someone to work security for you. Enjoy your slave militia.

  SERVER (Direct): Starter supplies will drop in three minutes.

  My brief moment of happiness was once again ruined by the realities of the game, the bitter and insulting omniscient narrator’s humorous descriptions and anecdotes proving to be nothing compared to the irritating Server messages.

  “Berries!” I shouted to myself before bolting around from shrubbery to shrubbery in search of the berries I’d need before the Rabids woke up.

  I started the thirty-second countdown clock in my mind as I finally found the small bush of red berries and started thwacking at it with my axe.

  +5 Biy Berries:

  Description: You know how your mumma always told you not to eat stuff you found in the woods? Trust me, your mumma don’t know shit.

  Without so much as a second glance I zoomed over to the three unconscious bodies and started force-feeding them the berries.

  -1 Biy Berry

  -1 Biy Berry

  -1 Biy Berry

  I waited what seemed like an unfair amount of time for the little blue popup window appeared and gave me one of the biggest choices available in Thren.

  You have fed THREE Rabids Biy Berries, would you like to convert them into SLAVES or FREEMEN?

  As horrible as it sounds, slaves had their benefits. They required less housing, demanded less food, and were more productive in the short-term. However if you got too many the potential for an uprising became almost inevitable, and even if that didn’t happen the attrition rate was exponentially higher than that of Freemen, including Freemen soldiers.

  Three Rabid women were converted.

  Three Freemen have joined your community.

  Great job, you showed that you have some kind of a conscience. You still own people though.

  Who do you think I am? Meredith Calhoun? Course I wasn’t gonna enslave people. The thought never crossed my mind…

  Chapter Three

  “Dankistan? Kekibekistan?” I muttered to myself as I watched the still unconscious members of my unnamed community, “Boobland?”

  I was stuck, no two ways about it. I wanted to name my settlement something funny at first, something meme related, but as time went on I remembered more and more what it was like to be stuck with TrillyTrollTripTropLand with my last society.

  SERVER (Direct): Starter supplies will drop in three... two… one… Crate inbound, please standby.

  Your first crate is gonna draw a whole lotta attention that I guarantee you don’t want. My suggestion? Put out the smoke quick smart.

  “You guys just aren’t getting up, huh?” I asked disappointedly, “You better hope the crate lands nearby…”

  I looked skyward as the sound of large twin propellers roared overhead, the hefty crate I wanted coming to glide in softly directly toward me.

  There was nothing for a while and I silently hoped that they’d patched out the smoke for the starter crate.

  Pop.

  Yeah, I know, I should’ve known.

  When I first started playing Thren the sight of red smoke both elated and terrified me, the thought of a dozen other players closing in on me as I searched the crate of indescribable goodies sending chills up my nooby spine.

  But I certainly wasn’t a noob anymore.

  “Great,” I groaned in annoyance, “that can be nothing but good.”

  I took a single large step backwards and watched as the crate fell with an unceremonious thud to the dirt I’d just been occupying.

  Ignoring the fact that it had managed to get through the trees that surrounded my cabin without so much as a tear on the parachute, I went to work on destroying the flare, taking it out with five good hits with my axe.

  After that I stood there a moment without saying a word, listening out for the SWAT level team to come crawling out of the woodwork to blow me to pieces.

  For a full two minutes I stood there, jumping at every tiny broken twig and windy whistle, until finally deciding I was more or less safe.

  With what seemed like an act of complete overkill, I stuff my axe under the lid and popped it off
.

  No one knows who’s dropping the crates. Is it someone who wants to help? Is it someone who likes to watch people fight to the death over bandages and useless schematics? Or is it some kind of randomly coded event to help people who can’t help themselves? It doesn’t matter, point is be grateful and accept the treats that the plane drops on you.

  +1 Lever Action Rifle:

  Durability: 75/75

  Damage: 23

  Ammo Type: .357

  Description: This beauty has some mileage on her but she’s still as simple as apple pie. Aim. Shoot. Reload. You’re still gonna break the lever though, aren’t you?

  +1 Box of Fifty .44:

  Description: Bullets that’ll blow the balls off a buck and kill the innocent bystander fifty feet behind it. Have fun.

  +3 Bandages:

  Description: I bet you’re gonna need a lot of these.

  +1 Empty Glass Jars:

  Description: Not as useless as you might think.

  +10 Paper:

  Description: Say it with me; used to make dynamite. There you go, don’t throw it away. Litterbug.

  +1 Roll of Duct Tape:

  Description: There are two things duct tape can’t fix; One: Something that ain’t broken.

  Two: Your parent’s unhappy marriage.

  I decided to save my internal rage for the forums later, for the time being I was just gonna focus on building a society and arming my citizens and not at all that I always got the wrong ammo type for the weapon I had.

  It’s fine, it’s fine.

  I rubbed my eyes and started the process of smashing the crate with my axe until it collapsed into a pile of dust on the ground.

  +5 Wooden Planks:

  Description: Useful for barricading, weapon building, and smacking yourself in the face with when you inevitably do something stupid. Be sure to put some nails in it first.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me…” I groaned as I looked over to my conscious and standing community members, their crude loincloths having magically vanished and leaving them naked as if to show off that their skin was as clean and clear as a teen popstar’s before the inevitable nervous breakdown.