“Oh… good.” I uttered without meaning too, “Welp, seeing as you know who I am, I suppose you’d best do the honourable thing and introduce yourself.”
A chuckle escaped Lolly, followed shortly by her putting down her gun and giving me a polite wave, “Kelly of the Metois.”
“Well, Kelly of the Metois,” I said, some of my venomous disdain coming through before I could stop it, “I suppose you’ll be killing us then?”
“Killing you?” she laughed, “Why would we kill you?”
I shrugged and watched as Big Bob finished fixing up Chad, “Figured that’d be the next logical step.”
“You’d be wrong then. Killing you is too easy I’m afraid,” Kelly replied evilly, “so instead we’ll be taking you back to base, alive, where you’ll be held and force-fed for as long as it takes you to give up on your account and start a new one.”
“What? Do you really think I’d give up my game time and my character token just because you guys are holding me prisoner?”
Kelly let out a huff of amusement, “Yeah, most people start out thinking that. Trust me, it ain’t as easy as you’re thinking. They all healed?”
Big Bob nodded and started back over toward his squad, “Mmhm, as healthy as a freshie. Ready to-”
Big Bob has been slain (World).
I was stunned silent as I was sprayed with Big Bob’s brains, an apple-sized hole having been blown out the back of his head in perfect synchronicity with the impossible to pinpoint sound of a silenced sniper.
“Shots fired!” someone shouted as the remaining two Metois troops tried to disperse.
Lolly_Kain has been slain (World).
A bullet managed to catch the leader clean through neck, just about severing her head from the rest of her body with the force and size of it.
LoveBug has been slain (World).
That was it.
They’d all been killed.
And I still had my hands up.
Chapter Six
“Sorry ‘bout all that.” the sniper wielding bush said as it shuffled toward me, “You guys did exactly what you were supposed to though.”
GeriatricSuperHero was his name, and he wasn’t a bush, duh, he was ghillied up though.
“I… I… What? What the shit was all that?” I snapped as angrily as one can with their hands in the air.
Shut up, I was in shock.
“That,” he said as he started double-tapping the bodies with his silenced pistol, “was a trap.”
“You don’t use people as bait!” I shouted as if it wasn’t something I would do.
Sorry, had done.
“Well, you might not. I do. Besides, you were totally safe from the moment I spotted you. Why do you think I used the 5.56 on you instead of the 7.62 like on these guys?”
“So you did shoot us!”
“Never denied it.” he mumbled as he crouched over Kelly’s body, “Yeah… I’m gonna have to make a couple o’ trips. You reckon you could-oh put your Goddamn hands down, would you?”
“What do you mean ‘make a couple of trips’?” I asked as I stopped surrendering to the dead people, “What are you doing here?”
“That question’s gettin’ asked a lot around here, huh?” Geriatric laughed, “Anyway, not that it’s any of your business, but I was getting the gear off the dumb-dumb team here. Three guys and not a one of them routinely checking their six? Pathetic.”
“So, what? You thought it was totally acceptable to force us to be a part of your little scheme? Are we even gonna get a cut?”
The sniper looked between Chad and I a few times before finally shaking his head, “Nah, if you were genuine freshies maybe, but you guys clearly don’t need the help.”
“What? What makes you think we’re not freshies?”
“Are you serious? You do know that most of the guys on the forums are talking about your little gang of merry anarchists, right?”
I didn’t really want to correct him and say that we weren’t anarchists and were instead just really good at failing spectacularly.
“I didn’t realise our reputation preceded us so well.” I said, trying my best to play it cool, “But I guess that means you know what we’re capable of when people piss us off.”
“I know that you guys have a habit of getting yourselves in over your head’s, if that’s what you’re saying.”
Drats.
“Don’t worry though,” Geriatric continued, “your secret’s safe with me. Provided you watch these bodies for me until I get back.”
I looked between the three corpses, a small army of flies having come in to buzz around each of them, and then back to the waiting sniper, “Yeah… no. These’ll definitely be bringing in dinos soon, and I don’t wanna be anywhere near here when they show up.”
Geriatric let out a long sigh and shook his head, “Alright, look, the way I see it you’ve got two options. One is you leave and I track you back to that little operation you’ve got and kill you all. Two, and this is the one I’d prefer, is you watch these bodies, keep an eye on your friend ‘til he wakes up, and don’t touch any of these guys’ stuff. Best part about option two? I’ll owe you one, and I think you’ll agree that my services will come in handy.”
He had a good point, we could definitely use the allies, and besides, it wasn’t like we were in a position for me to say no.
“You’ve got a deal. How long’s all this gonna take?”
Geriatric seemed to toss around the numbers in his head for a while before finally deciding “Ten minutes? Twenty if things go awry?”
“Reckon you’ll be back before the Muties come out?” I asked as I looked up at the slightly orange sky, “Because I don’t think I’ll be able to hold ‘em off with my rifle.”
Again, Geriatric appeared to do some math, “Yeah… Yes. Should definitely be done by then.”
I didn’t like the ‘should’ part of that reply, but at least he was being realistic.
“Guess I’ll just wait here then.” I said as if the idea was off-putting, after all, I wouldn’t want him thinking that I had no problem with being made into a glorified guard dog, would I?
“Glad to hear it. Back in a jiff.” he said before collecting up some gear off one of the bodies, “Oh, and by the way, you can call me ‘The Duke’, not that you asked or anything. Geriatric Super Hero takes a while.”
“The Douche?” I asked, doing my best not to laugh, “You want me to call you ‘The Douche’?”
“The Duke.” he snapped somewhat defensively, “My name is ‘The Duke’.”
“Alright, Duke-bag.” I said with a little giggle.
He shot me a piercing glare as he obviously debated whether or not it was worth keeping me alive.
There was a good long while of silence like that, his eyes burning into my soul as he breathed heavily into his mic, before he finally let out an annoyed grunt and stormed off into the woods.
“Well,” I said, dropping into a seated position next to Chad, “that could’ve ended badly.”
Chapter Seven
The Duke had come back and left again three times after night had fallen, each time refusing to say anything to me as he stripped the bodies of everything they had of worth, including their clothing.
“What’s goin’ on?” Chad asked as he slowly sat up, making me jump.
“Christ…” I muttered with a laugh, “Uh, nothin’ much. You passed out, as I’m sure you know, and now we’re here.”
“I can see that,” he replied, looking between the three naked corpses in front of us, “I mean why aren’t we back home? I figured if you survived you’d have gotten us back.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. We were both pretty banged up.”
“That was gonna be my next question actually. How’d my HP come back?”
“It’s a… It’s a long story.” I said, not being at all interested in recapping every little thing that’d happened over the past twenty minutes, “Anyway, what’ve you been up to? You were out f
or a while.”
“Nothin’ much, went AFK and hunted down some food, figured I’d either come back to me being at Home Base or dead. Speakin’ of, why’re we here? You didn’t give me an answer before.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No you did not.”
The fact was that I didn’t really want to admit that I’d submitted to the guy who’d shot Chad and that we were playing babysitter while he reaped all the rewards.
“Zo?”
“Alright, fine. We’re waiting so some guy called ‘The Duke’ can pick these bodies clean.”
“What? Why?”
“He said he’d owe us one.”
“And he doesn’t already for shooting us?”
“Apparently not.”
“Well… ugh…” Chad let out dejectedly, “Okay, so, what? You’ve been pickin’ off dinos as they’ve come by?”
I shook my head and let a bored sigh escape me, “Not so much as a deer has come through here. I was starting to think the game had frozen or something.”
We went quiet after that, looking between the bodies and the stars together in peaceful silence as the moon rose higher and higher into the sky.
“We should just bail.” Chad announced.
“Bad idea, The Duke said he’d kill us all if we ran. It’s not like we’ve got a horde of stegosauruses to protect us anymore.”
“If we don’t leave we’ll die anyway. It’s gettin’ pretty late.”
“He’ll be back.”
“And what if he’s not? We just keep waiting here until we’re Mutie chow? I get your concern Zo, but staying here is gonna get us killed.”
“We’re staying here, and that’s final. We talked about this dude. I don’t want you undermining everything I say.”
“I’m not trying to undermi-”
“Well what would you call it?” I snapped, “I made a judgement call, and that judgement call was to stay here and hope that The Duke gets back and we can go on living.”
Chad grumbled for a few seconds as he tried and failed to come up with another argument to leave before finally saying “How do we know that this ‘Duke’ guy isn’t just Miles’ puppet?”
“Oh not this again…”
“Yes, this again.” Chad growled, “Think about it. We come out here and not ten minutes later we’re being shot at by some rogue sniper who knows exactly where we are? How in the Hell could he have known that without having a connection in the camp?”
“I don’t know man,” I groaned in response, “I just don’t see the motivation to come after us like this, let alone keeping us alive. If he was really workin’ for Miles wouldn’t he have just offed us the second he got the chance?”
“He could be-”
“What? What could he be doing that would warrant keeping us alive? Upping his price? Maybe he wants to collect his reward off Miles and then give us to the Metois? Trust me, this guy works alone, and if he wanted to do any of that stuff to us he just would’ve done it.”
I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t really buying what I was saying, and I really was starting to think that Duke wasn’t coming back, but I sure as Hell wasn’t about to tell Chad that.
“Look, I’m not saying you’re definitely wrong, I’m just saying that…” Chad trailed off as the moon hit the middle of the sky and the siren started its harrowing howl.
“Oh… no…” I said, looking around with the twitchiness of a meth head, “This is not ideal.”
“Yeah, no shit Sherlock. What the Hell are we gonna do!?”
“What, so now you’re gonna listen to me?”
“Don’t you fucki-”
A shrill, bowel-emptying scream silenced the both of us as the haunting green eyes started to fill up the middle-distance.
“Goddammit…” Chad muttered as he dashed over to Kelly’s body and pulled the carbine out of her hands, “Seriously, are we ever gonna catch a break?”
“Doesn’t look like it.” I replied, joining him and pushing my back against his as I pulled up my rifle, “Which do you think is closer, home or the farm?”
“I don’t know, I was knocked out, remember?”
“Don’t get bitchy,” I snapped, hiding my fear as the eyes drew closer in the dark, taking their precious time to attack, “give me solutions.”
“Well I haven’t got any, have I? It’s not like there’s a gap in their ranks, is there?”
He was right, we were in a tight spot and there didn’t seem to be much of way for us to think our way out of it.
“Alright…” I let out with a defeated sigh, “Fuck it.”
I found a target and fired, catching him in the eye and sending him tumbling backwards in shock.
+1 Firearm Skill
Firearm Skill: 5/100
Level Progression: 80/150
The others in his party decided to take offence to their friend being shot in the head and gave up on the slow-moving horror and became the Usain Bolt horror.
Chad released a volley of fire in a sweep while I did my best to aim for the fast-approaching group, his bullets flying wide of their mark as his piss-poor skill level justified its existence.
“Switch to semi-auto!” I shouted as I missed yet another shot.
“I can’t!”
“What do y-”
“I fucking can’t! I see the dial but ‘I’ don’t know what it is!”
And there was the other annoying part of not knowing how to use a gun.
I mean, I get that they had to make it so that the firearm skill meant something, but did they really have to make it so that you can pick up guns you barely know how to use?
Death was upon us, the Muties closing in on all sides, but, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, that wasn’t the end of my story.
There was heart-stopping boom that seemed to rock the entire forest, and suddenly there weren’t any Muties in front of us.
“Run!” The Duke roared from somewhere in the forest.
We bolted, not bothering to even try and figure out where Duke was, and started smashing past the trees like a couple of ground-bound chimps.
“Where is he!?” Chad shouted over to me as another boom filled the forest.
“Just keep running!” The Duke bellowed back from somewhere behind us, “Farm’s just up ahead!”
Yeah… I’m pretty sure it was at that point that I realised that we’d used up our ‘one’ that he owed us.
Chapter Eight
A few more seconds of panicked running and booms and we’d made it out of the forest and onto what was Piggly’s land.
The trucks were still there, just waiting to be nabbed, but so were the bodies, and let’s just say that they’d attracted a bit more than flies.
I bet seeing those guys makes you want to mess around with cloning dinos and hide in kitchens. Well don’t, it always ends badl… Actually, you know what? Please do.
“Uh…” I let out as I ground to a halt and looked over the moonlit-bathed field, “I think we might have a probl-Jaysus!”
I’d barely seen the massive black gun for a second before it’d been fired, deafening me and blowing the legs clean off one of the unrealistically large and reptilian-looking velociraptors.
I started running again, ignoring the fact that I’d all but lost my hearing, and felt the evil and calculating eyes of the raptors boring into my soul.
It seemed like a horrible idea running straight for them, but the other option was going back the other way and having to deal with the Muties.
I thanked the Gods for peripheral vision as I rolled out of the way of a raptor that’d taken a leap for me, its terrifying hooked claw just missing my lower back as I got back into a running position.
The beast had clearly decided I was dinner, ignoring the fact that there were two plenty tasty blokes behind me that were just as worthy of being dino chow as I.
One of the trucks was blocking our access to the house, and I could hear that Chad and Duke were starting to lose their steam.
They weren’t going to be able to make the run around the massive obstruction, and even if they did I was sure that we’d be running straight into a raptor’s waiting jaws.
That’s when The Duke did something that I hadn’t thought of, irritating me only a lot, and took a running slide, passing me with ease and going clean under the truck.
There was a moment of mild confusion as I struggled to remember what key initiated the slide, but when I did it was like I’d discovered fire.
I slid under the truck, blocking out the raptors’ hungry cries as my hearing returned to me, and popped up just in time to awkwardly run through the threshold of the house while The Duke stood by the doorway with his massive sniper switching between the two sides of the truck.
“Where’s Gable?” he asked with an unsettling calmness.
“He was right behind me.” I replied as I spun around and looked hopefully at the clearing under the truck.
“Well he ain’t now.” The Duke said before shooting a raptor’s head off and practically deafening me again, “We gotta lockdown.”
“No. No way, he’ll be here.” I said as I dropped to my belly and looked under the truck and saw what looked like a hundred sets of feet running toward us, “He’ll be here…”
I started counting down from three in my head.
Then from five.
Then started from ten.
“We have to-”
“He’ll be here!”
I thought that the silence that The Duke gave me in return was accepting what I was saying. Turns out it was so he could pull the door shut, pushing me inside with the door’s unnatural weight and The Duke’s strength.
“What the Hell!?” I snapped as Duke went to work securing the door shut with some kind of small power drill, trapping me in the entry hallway of Piggly’s old house.
“I didn’t see him, neither did you. The last thing we need is for all three of us to die. Here.” he said as he pulled the DMR off his back and shoved it in my hands.
GeriatricSuperHero gave you a Designated Marksman Rifle:
Durability: 200/200
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