Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “Well don’t, alright? Just drop it. Just keep me company like you’re supposed to and watch my six.”

  “Heh, that’s why I’m out here? I thought it was so that… I wanna say William?”

  “Miles.”

  “That’s right, so that Miles guy can go ahead and beat seven shades of crap outta Paul before we get back.”

  I rolled my eyes and smiled at that, “That’s only half the reason. Anyway, I wanted to get away from there for a bit. Kinda defrag, you know?”

  “Ah, yeah, I get you. Too much goin’ on?”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a nod, “between the dinos and the truck and Miles… I don’t know, I guess it was all too much for me. Don’t tell Paul that, he’d never let me live it down.”

  “Heh, yes, whatever would we do if we found out that you are actually human?”

  Chad could joke all he wanted, but the fact was that I was so concerned about letting slip that I actually had feelings other than anger and frustration that I’d rather put myself through some pretty intense emotional and psychological trauma than bother dealing with it.

  I mean, the other option would mean talking about my poor fee-fees, and that just didn’t sit right with me.

  “Anyway,” Chad said, breaking the silence that I’d accidentally allowed to slip over us as we bushwhacked our way deeper and deeper into the unknown forest territory that was the other side of the road, “I suppose we should do something mildly useful out here, right? Otherwise we’re just dickin’ about.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m workin’ on it…” I replied half-heartedly, “Well, I s’pose we could talk about what we’re gonna do about all those steggies? You got any ideas?”

  “Actually yeah, I thought of somethin’ as we were squeezin’ past ‘em before, but I don’t know if Felicity’ll be a huge fan of it.”

  “As long as we ain’t killin’ them, I don’t care. What’s the plan?”

  “Well, I figured we’d let the Js each have one, of course.”

  “Of course.” I said, nodding along and making sure I was as big a part of the process as possible.

  “Cool, and then I thought we could…”

  Chad then went on to explain the rest of his plan, each thing he said more exciting than the last, and by the end of it I had a grin so evilly maniacal that I guarantee I would’ve been stopped from entering a public event.

  What? I’m not gonna tell you the whole plan, that’d ruin the fun of you finding out throughout the course of the grand narrative that is my life, wouldn’t it?

  Chapter Three

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  “There, you happy?” I asked, making no attempt to hide my disinterest in Miles and Paul’s bickering, “I made you a part of our group officially.”

  I’d returned home with Chad to chaos. The steggies were agitated, there was a fight breaking out in the cabin, and oh yeah, the truck had started being attacked by curious birds which I knew had the potential to draw in their slightly larger and carnivorous ancestors.

  “No I’m bloody not!” Miles snapped from where he stood fully nude above Paul, “This prick shot me in the face!”

  “Well, to be fair that was the plan from the start, wasn’t it? Fresh start? Getting to experience the game as a freshie again? Any of this ringin’ a bell?”

  “Twice! He shot me in the head twice!”

  I gave the noticeably frightened Paul a sharp look, “And why did you do that?”

  “He came at me with a rock!”

  “I came into the cabin and asked where Zoey was!”

  “With a rock! I’m completely innocent here!”

  “What the Hell do you mean you’re innocent!? Innocent people don’t hide bodies!”

  Things were escalating again to the point where I was seriously starting to consider running back out into the woods.

  Luckily I had Chad to back me up though.

  “Shut up! The both of you!” Chad roared over the high school-esque bitch fit, silencing it in an instant.

  “Thanks,” I said after leaving things quiet for a few seconds, “now, yes, Paul may’ve shot you in the head, twice, which I’m sure you’ll give him Hell for forever, but right now we’ve got more pressing matters. First off we’ve got a truck full of equipment that needs to be unloaded, then there’s the massive group of steggies out front, and finally the fact that the Metois are hot on our arse.”

  “And the fact that we’ve still gotta build our base.” Paul pointed out.

  “Yes,” I bit back, trying to hide my fast-building frustration as best as I could, “that as well. Anyway, Chad has a plan on how we can start clearing some of that up, and, if I’m not mistaken, he’s working on it as we speak.”

  Yeah… he wasn’t. At least I don’t think he was, he got awfully panicky when I looked at him.

  “Oh! Um… yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.” Chad said with a weird amount of speed before looking off into the middle distance as he went to work.

  “And… what’re you doing?” Paul asked as he and Miles stared at Chad confusedly.

  “Well, firstly I’m transferring ownership of three of the steggies to the Js seeing as they’ll definitely put them to good use.”

  Silence fell over the room, with the exception of a few loud clicks coming through Chad’s mic, and the three of us not AFK looked amongst each other in more-or-less patient waiting.

  “And secondly, I’ve just scrubbed any ownership of the other nine we had and sent them off as an anonymous gift to the Metois.”

  “You what!?” Miles practically shrieked as his eyes bugged out of his head, “Why would you do that!? The last thing we need is for them to have more dinos!”

  “We do want that, actually, especially if they’re all pissed off and ready to attack their owners.” Chad replied slyly, an evil little twinkle in his eye.

  “What? Why would they be pissed?”

  “Well because I’ve set them on about fifteen tasks before they gift themselves to the Metois. Which means…”

  And that’s when Miles got it, “Ah, which means they’ll be hungry, probably somewhat beaten, and ready to start some shit, yeah?”

  Chad nodded, “Mmhm, and my guess is that the Metois don’t get many unsolicited gifts and they’ll probably let off a few shots before they even realise that the steggies belong to them.”

  “That’s true, the boys were startin’ to get a mite jumpy. Wouldn’t surprise me if a few more lads like me start droppin’ out of the Metois.”

  It was certainly something to think about, the fall of the Metois from within could really mean a big power shift, which would certainly be exciting for most of the players out there.

  Me though? I was concerned about the vacuum that the Metois would leave behind, and whether whoever took over after them would be just as bad as them, or even worse?

  “Alright,” I said, jumping back into the conversation before I totally forgot what was going on and got too lost in my own head, “that covers the Metois and dino problem. Next thing on the docket is unloadin’ the truck and scrappin’ it for parts. Should we use engineer or the builder?”

  Everyone in the cabin thought on it for a few seconds before Paul finally made a decision, “Go the engineer, the builder won’t get much out of it, whereas the engineer’ll use it as an opportunity to learn how to make new stuff. Plus we need the engineer to start working on stuff or she’ll never be able to help us build the base.”

  “Francesca it is.” I said without meaning to sound nearly as blunt as I did, “You’ll be helping her Miles.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you need to get your skills up a bit, and I also reckon it’s for the best if you spend some time here getting to know the lay of the land, learning how we do things, p-”

  “You’re worried I’m a spy.” he interjected with a bored expression, “Fine, fine, I’ll go ahead and waste a bunch of our time u
nloading a truck. What’ll you be doing?”

  “I’ll be heading out with Chad to see if anyone’s left out at that farm.”

  “And risk getting caught by a Metois clean-up crew?” Chad laughed, “You must be joking.”

  “I most definitely am not.” I growled, “If they all shot each other as badly as I think they did I doubt that many, if any got out alive. That means a whole lotta Metois gear just waiting for the taking, plus I want whatever they salvaged.”

  “That’s not a bad idea actually,” Miles chimed in, “we found a whole mess of stuff in there. Guns, ammo, seeds, non-perishable rations, it was like walkin’ into some redneck’s bunker.”

  “See, Miles thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Yeah,” Chad replied with a nod, “but you did just infer that he could be spy, right? Doesn’t it make sense that he’d wanna send us to our deaths while he waited here with cripple boy?”

  “Hey!” Paul snapped, “I resent that.”

  “Why? Are you an ableist?”

  “What? No! I’m just saying that-”

  “Guys, guys, please…” I trailed off as I started to rub my suddenly tired eyes, “Just… ugh, just be good to each other, alright? That’s all I’m askin’. Can we get through just one day where we’re nice to each other?”

  There was no response for a few seconds, each of the three looking between each other with varying levels of distrust and irritation, before they finally nodded.

  “Good, thank you. Thank you so much. Paul, get better, quickly. Chad, get Francesca on the truck and then be ready to move. Miles… just find some damn pants and get to work.”

  Chapter Four

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave those two alone together? I mean Paul did shoot him, twice.”

  “I am well aware of that fact, but they need to get used to each other sometime.”

  Chad had spent a great deal of time during our trek out into the woods second guessing what I’d said back at the cabin, but I didn’t entirely mind it, especially considering that it meant that time felt like it was going slightly faster.

  “Look, I get your concerns, I really do,” I said, trying to sound as convincing as possible, “but right now you and me have gotta be out here, doing stuff like this so that we can start getting in-sync.”

  “I thought we were already in-sync?”

  “Yeah, we are, in every other aspect but leadership. You’re the man with the plan, no denying that, but I’m the bitch with the iron fist, which means I need you to start either backing me up with everything I say or shutting the Hell up.”

  “Aren’t we a democracy?”

  “Like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”

  Yeah, turns out making jokes about North Korea is a really good way to kill a conversation with some people, but in my defence I couldn’t not make it, it was just too perfect.

  Anyway, we wandered in silence for a while, staying vigilant and diving for cover every time we thought we’d come across a Metois patrol. I say ‘thought’ because every damn time it just turned out to be an odd group of bushes or some kind of animal.

  I’d be worried that we were gonna get to the point where we weren’t going to hide when we really needed to, but after the fifth time I became confident that we were chicken-shit enough to hide from anything.

  Problem is being scared and jumpy doesn’t make you more perceptive.

  “Get down!” Chad shouted right as I heard the piercing whip crack of a sniper firing.

  The bullet missed me by maybe a centimetre as I hit the ground, but as the dirt exploded just ahead of me I realised that I was hiding in the wrong spot.

  I realised too late though, and before I could scramble to my feet another shot had been fired and Chad had caught a bullet in the leg as he’d stood up.

  “Goddammit!” he cursed as he struggled to hobble along with me by his side, “Fucker’s in the trees. You see him?”

  “Oh yeah, sure, I’ll go ahead and stop to look for the guy shooting at us, that’s a great idea.”

  Another bullet whizzed dangerously close to my head, proving that the sniper clearly had trouble with moving targets.

  “Just go, alright?” Chad grunted, “No sense in you getting killed too.”

  “Don’t pull that shit, just run.” I replied with very obvious disinterest.

  “Well I bloody well can’t, can I?” was the snarled response I got back, “You know what? This, this right here, this is why Paul and I think Miles is a traitorous dick.”

  HEALTH: 52/100

  I didn’t even hear the gun going off that time, some kind of sound bug I guessed, but that didn’t change the fact that there was a giant hole in my left shoulder.

  “I really don’t need to be dealing with this from you right now.” I hissed, “We need to be focussing on…” and that’s when I realised Chad was missing.

  I spun around and spotted him almost instantly, face down and unconscious on the forest floor with a small puddle of blood pooling around his body.

  HEALTH: 32/100

  I swore under my breath before making a break for Chad’s body.

  “Always gotta put everyone before yourself, don’t you Zo?” I asked myself in annoyance as I slid the rest of the way to the bloody body, “‘Oh look at me, I’m a hero!’” I mocked, “No, you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

  You have successfully applied a Bandage to Gable_1337.

  Bleeding stopped.

  Removed: Bandage

  HEALTH: 12/100

  “Come on, come on, come on…” I muttered, egging myself on as I desperately tried to wrap the bandage around me in the weird Macarena-inspired dance that was the animation, twitching occasionally as a bullet would narrowly miss me.

  You have successfully applied a Bandage to yourself.

  Bleeding stopped.

  Removed: Bandage

  “Perfect.” I said with some relief as I looked out at the world which had gone black-and-white and a bit fuzzy, “Now, let’s move.”

  I grabbed the still unconscious Chad by the scruff of the neck and started dragging him.

  Now… is this as creepy as it looks or..?

  “Shut up.” I snapped, struggling to move as the sound of my blood pumping through my heart grew deafening, muffling the gunfire as bullets continued to just barely miss me.

  We were gonna die, I was pretty damn sure of it, either from the sniper who’d taken a liking to us or from someone or something that I’d run into in my blind zig-zagging.

  And then a miracle happened.

  A very bad miracle.

  Not a miracle.

  “Uh oh…”

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t have any time to react, the squad of three Metois troops had moved in from the brush with their guns aimed directly at me.

  “Drop the body, now!” the one at the front of the pack, Lolly_Kain, ordered as her squad stopped a few feet from me.

  Every rebellious bone in my body wanted to tell her to go screw herself, but my hands had already complied, dropping Chad unceremoniously back on his face in the ankle-high grass we’d stopped in.

  “Good, now put your hands up. If I see you reachin’ for that bow or the peashooter on your back I’ll put you in the ground so fast you won’t know what happened.”

  Again, I complied, staring at the holographic sight on her carbine in quiet admiration.

  One of the squad members, Big Bob, approached me, his gun staying levelled with my face as he did so.

  “What were you running from anyway?” the leader asked, “We heard gunfire.”

  “Some sniper…” I replied nervously, waiting for another whip crack.

  “She’s wounded,” Bob said as he started to look me over, “should I patch her up?”

  Lolly looked me up and down suspiciously, then over to her squad mate, and then finally gave him a nod, “Go ahead.”

  Big Bob injected you with morphine.

  With that, colour returned to m
y vision.

  Morphine huh? Hope you’re ready to start mumbling incoherently.

  Big Bob tested your blood.

  Ah, getting a check-up, are you? Be sure to tell them that you ate a poppy seed bagel. You can thank me later.

  “Anyone got a bag of A neg?” my saviour asked from where he crouched by my thigh.

  A few seconds of silent shuffling and searching later and a bag of blood was tossed by LoveBug to Bob who caught it easily.

  “You’re lucky we found you.” he said as he started hooking up the IV system, “You probably had a few more minutes before you were out cold like your friend here.”

  “Speaking of,” Lolly chimed back in, “what are you doing out here?”

  “Just…”

  Big Bob started giving you a blood transfusion.

  Did you know that one in five transfusions are tainted with disease in the new world? Wait, that can’t be right… Ah, there we go. One in five transfusions aren’t tainted.

  “Just what?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, right. Sorry, just a bit out of it.” I said as I looked around, my hands still high in the air, “Did you guys see what happened to the sniper?”

  Lolly shook her head, “Not yet anyway, we probably scared him off. Now, what are you doing out here?”

  Either they had no idea who we were, which was the best outcome in my opinion, or they did and just thought that we were idiots for coming out when there were hit squads out for our heads.

  “Just trying to make our way.” I said after finally deciding to hope for the best.

  Big Bob’s blood transfusion was a success.

  HEALTH: 100/100

  Huh, I was certain you were gonna die. Ah well, there’s always hope for another day.

  “I’ll fix up the other guy, yeah?” Big Bob asked as he started shuffling over toward Chad.

  “Yes, whatever, just do your thing.” Lolly replied dismissively before returning her attention to me, “See, most people know to avoid these parts, we’ve been given the order to shoot to kill.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Heh, you’re clever, but not that clever. Zoey of ‘Zoey’s Fighters.’”