Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “So?” Paul laughed, “They’ve been trying for ages and haven’t gotten anywhere close to here yet. Oh, and cool gun.”

  “This ol’ thang?” Chad gushed, “I’m callin’ her Vera. She’s a-”

  “It’s different.” I said dramatically, interrupting Chad in what I was sure would’ve been a two hour giggle-fest, “You wanna fill ‘em in Miles?”

  “Gladly,” Miles replied, clearly appreciating the fact that he was getting a chance to speak, “well, I went on the forums before to check and see if there was any reason people were avoiding crates. I didn’t find anything on that, but I did find a general warning posted by the Metois sayi-”

  “Hey, guys,” Chad interjected, seemingly as some form of payback, “sorry to cut in. But can I be re-added to the clan? It’s kinda bugging me that it hasn’t happened yet.”

  I must’ve stared at him for a full fifteen seconds in stunned silence before finally saying “Are you serious? Do you really think that that’s the priority right now? Really?”

  “Well… yeah. It’s been a few minutes now, and I don’t want to get forgotten before we end up-”

  “Fine! Look, you’re back in the clan. You happy?”

  Gable_1337 has been added to your community

  Community Population: 12/35

  “Yes.” Chad said somewhat smugly, “Proceed.”

  Miles was dumbfounded, unsurprisingly, and it took him a second to remember what he was saying, but he got there eventually, “Uh… yeah… Like I was saying… hm… Oh, yeah, right, the Metois have figured out what part of the map we’re in, and they’re coming for us.”

  “Oh yeah?” Paul said, not bothering to hide his suspicion, “And how would they know where we are exactly?”

  “Dude, don’t.” Miles warned, “I promise I had nothing to do with this, and if I did I promise that I would’ve killed you all by now.”

  “With what? Your club? Yeah, I’m real scared buddy.”

  “You wanna start this shit up again? You wanna go me!? ‘Cause I’ll fuckin’ floor you in a New York minute mate!”

  “Both o’ you shut up!” I barked, hiding how shocked I was that they were still at each other’s throats, “We’re all in this together, and I’m pretty sure Miles would’ve pulled the ripcord by now and rejoined the Metois if he knew the death brigade were comin’ this way.”

  Miles and Paul looked somewhat embarrassed, and neither of them appeared to be willing to lead or continue any kind of conversation, which I couldn’t really fault them for, getting roused on doesn’t do much to make people feel like they should talk.

  “Alright then, if we’re all settled down,” I said, taking charge as I probably should’ve from the word go, “we need to start planning. First and foremost, has anyone come into contact with Home Base yet?”

  Paul stared at me blankly for a few seconds before realising I was talking to him, “Oh, me? Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think, or you don’t know?”

  “…I don’t think so.” Paul replied as confidently as he could, “I’m pretty sure I’d know if someone did too, I’ve kinda got a sixth sense about these things. I can tell when someone’s comin’ from a mile away.”

  In case you couldn’t tell, he didn’t. He really didn’t.

  “Anyone else hear that?” Chad asked.

  I turned my head sideways and shook my head, “I don’t hear anything. What’s it sound like?”

  “I dunno…” Chad said, clearly struggling to hear what I definitely couldn’t, “Like a really quiet lawnmower?”

  Miles decided to take that as his cue to offer his opinion and walked over to where Chad was standing by the door, “It’s an engine. Someone’s parked outside.”

  “Everyone back away from the door!” I hissed as I pulled up my DMR and levelled it with right about where a head would be if someone came through.

  “Could it be Metois?” Paul asked, aiming his shotgun at the door.

  Miles shook his head, “No way, they’d be coming in on foot. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Chad piped in as he held Vera a tad too delicately for my liking.

  “Unless they thought they’d do better rolling in in a few trucks, hit with a shit-ton of force before we have a chance to react.”

  “Well, that’s just brilliant,” I grumbled, “either it’s the Metois and we’re all fucked, or it’s not the Metois and we might still all be fucked…”

  No, I’m not sure why it was taking me so long to remember who I should’ve been expecting to arrive in a truck, but, to be fair, I hadn’t exactly been getting the best news that day, and I wasn’t about to start hoping for the best.

  Don’t worry, I figured it out eventually.

  Chapter Five

  “Howdy!” a familiar voice called through the door of the cabin, “Now, I know y’all probably have your guns aimed at the door waiting for me to open up so you can fill me with enough lead to choke an American tourist, am I right?”

  “Yep,” Miles responded flatly, his club above his head, “and we aren’t interested in whatever it is that you’re sellin’.”

  “Do my ears deceive me, or is that Stone Eagle I hear? Now, Zoey, I figured you’d keep better company.”

  “You know the Duke?” Miles snarled.

  “Mmhm, he helped me get out of trouble last night,” I said without lowering my guard, “why?”

  “Because ol’ Stoney in there and myself have some… history.”

  “History? History!?” Miles shrieked in a pitch that I didn’t think he could reach, “You dumped me a week before our anniversary and stole my bloody cat!”

  “Yeah, but to be fair we both know that that cat liked me a whole lot more than it liked you.”

  “That’s because you kept giving him all the fucking catn-”

  “Miles!” I barked, finally lowering my weapon, inspiring Chad and Paul to do the same, “We’ve got a lot more to deal with than your petty RL bullshit.”

  “Ha!” he scoffed in response, “‘Petty RL bullshit’? Did you know that he forced me to get a place in the city, then left me to pay the rent for the last six months of the lease? I lived on two minute noodles for months!”

  “So?” Paul asked, “We lived on pretty much nothin’ but that for four years during uni.”

  “Oh my God! Guys!” I shouted in a slightly defeated tone, “Not important right now, alright?”

  “That’s right everyone, listen to the boss.” Pete mocked through the door.

  At first I went to get offended, and then I realised that the mocking was for Miles, not me.

  “Can I come in now?”

  I gave Miles a stern look, but he refused to lower his club, “Alright, yeah. Careful though, Miles might end up beatin’ your brains in.”

  “Eh, I don’t think he will.” Pete said as he opened the door and came inside, a dark fist-sized object in his right hand.

  It was hard to see in the light given that we were all blocking the fire, but it certainly looked like a-

  “Is that a fucking grenade!?” Miles yelped.

  Pete nodded, a sly grin playing across his lips as he did, “Mmhm.”

  “Where the fuck did you get a grenade!?”

  “Ah, I think you should be asking about where the pin is.”

  It was at that moment that I started to get the feeling that I wouldn’t get the chance to get killed by an army of pissed off Metois soldiers.

  “Pete,” I said tiredly, “throw that away.”

  “Not until he puts down his club.”

  “Well I’m not putting my club down until you get rid of the grenade.”

  “Would the both of you just go outside!?” Paul shouted from where he cowered in the far corner of the room.

  I was in Hell. That’s it, I was in Hell, and those bozos were my eternal punishment, with a new bozo to be added to the pile every day like some kind of sick game.

  Seriously, a world where I never got the one L-shaped
piece I needed in Tetris was preferable to what I was going through.

  “Just do it.” I muttered, “Throw it on the ground and blow us all up. I’m really not in the mood for this emotional mind game bullshit.”

  Pete looked at me with what looked like genuine concern, then put on a smile and rolled his eyes, “Fine, if you’re gonna get all moany about it.” he said before turning around and pegging the rock as hard as he could out the door.

  Only, it didn’t go out the door, no, it bounced off the top of the frame and landed smack-bang in the middle of the cabin.

  “Well… shit.”

  Chapter Six

  As welcoming of the sweet embrace of death as I had been, I gotta admit that even I started to panic a bit when that grenade landed on the ground.

  The others? Well, they all tried and failed to make a mad scramble for the door, the door that Pete refused to vacate so that everyone could escape to safety.

  One second went by.

  Nothing.

  Two seconds.

  Nothing.

  The three second mark finally rolled around and Pete started laughing his arse off, “You really think I’d risk blowing myself up over you ding-dongs?”

  That’s when I decided to look at the grenade, and I mean really look at it, and noticed what had Pete in stitches, “It’s a rock.” I said with a little chuckle, “It’s just a fuckin’ rock.”

  “Damn right it’s a rock!” Pete laughed, “And all of you started runnin’ around like headless chooks! Well, ‘cept for Zo, but I’m thinkin’ that maybe not much spooks Zo.”

  “You’d be thinking right.” I replied confidently, pretending I wasn’t freaked right the fuck out by kangaroos, wombats, spiders, emus, cassowaries, magpies…

  You know what? It’s probably just a good idea to assume that if it’s an animal in Australia I’m scared of it.

  Except for koalas.

  Actually, sometimes including koalas.

  Damn drop bears.

  Anyway, onward with the story.

  “So, I take it you got the truck?”

  Pete nodded proudly, “You know it, was harder than I expected too.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said as I followed him outside, “How come?”

  “Rex trouble.” he responded with a small gulp, “Remember how you were sayin’ the smell of meat would draw one in?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, long story short, you were right. Still managed to get to the truck though,” he said, pointing to the Metois vehicle he’d parked in front of the cabin, “and I figured I lost it when I got back to my place and grabbed up all my gear. I was wrong though, damn thing found me again.”

  “So…” I trailed off, hoping I wouldn’t have to ask as everyone else came out of the cabin, “where is it now?”

  “Don’t worry, I lost it ages ago. We’re good.”

  “And you got the tracker off?” Miles asked, making sure as much contempt came through in his words as possible.

  “The what?”

  “The tracker, you got it off the truck, right?”

  Pete looked around at the rest of us as if to ask ‘Is he serious?’ before turning back to Miles and nodding, “Yes. I’m pretty sure.”

  “What do you mean you’re ‘pretty sure’? It’s a pretty simple question, and you’d remember if you had done it.”

  “Then I’m positive.”

  Pete and Miles stared each other down for a while before Miles opened his mouth again, “You’re sur-”

  “Positive.”

  Again, they stared at each other.

  “Fine, guess you won’t mind if I check then?”

  Pete shrugged, “Sure, go ahead.”

  “So, Pete,” I said as Miles continued to glare at Pete on his way over to the truck, “you see any Metois dudes makin’ their way here?”

  “Nah, spotted a couple of steggies though, they were headin’ towa-”

  “You fuckin’ liar!” Miles growled, coming out from behind the truck with a tracker in his hand, “Do you realise what you’ve done?”

  “Oh, that tracker.”

  I was about ready to flip my shit, which I think, given the circumstances, was actually completely reasonable.

  I managed to not blow my top though, and instead, in a calm and reasonable voice, said “It’s my fault, I should’ve told him about the tracker before I left him at the farm.”

  “Don’t start making excuses for him.” Miles snapped, “Once you start you won’t be able to stop. Trust me.”

  “Ugh, whatever.” I groaned as I rubbed my forehead in an attempt to get the furrow out of my brow, “You wanna get rid of it? ‘Cause it’s my understanding that the longer that that thing is here, the more likely that the Metois are gonna know where we are, right?”

  Miles, who was still clearly pissed that I hadn’t had a go at Pete yet, sighed and nodded, “Yeah, I’ll go find somewhere to ditch it. Be right… back.”

  I didn’t understand his hesitance at first and figured he’d successfully hidden a burp or something, but then I heard the heavy thumps and the trees cracking in the distance.

  “Pete?” Chad asked, staring into the forest with very real fear in his eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  “That t-rex… You’re sure you lost it, yeah?”

  Pete stayed silent for a few seconds as if to ponder the question, then let out a confident “Positive.”

  “Okay…” Paul uttered as he aimed his shotgun into the forest, “So that means it definitely followed you back here then, yeah?”

  Again, Pete stayed quiet for a moment, “Definitely.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You still have that .50 cal?” I asked as a heart-stopping roar ripped through the forest and pierced my trembling soul.

  Pete shook his head and started backing up toward the cabin, “Haven’t got any ammo left for it, no.”

  We were boned, I was sure of it, but then I thought about all the other times we’d been boned over the previous few days and calmed down a bit, and then I realised that my luck had to run out eventually, and why wouldn’t it be that day with the dino we’d tempted fate with so many times before.

  “You reckon it’s the same one?” Paul asked as we all started to follow Pete’s lead.

  “Same one as what?” Pete whispered.

  “We’ve had run-ins with a t-rex in this area already,” Chad interjected, obviously thinking that talking would somehow make himself feel more comfortable, “and I doubt it, that thing probably died ages ago.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Miles warned, “they’re resilient fuckers, and they have a habit of attacking the one target over and over again until either it or they die.”

  “This is just what we needed.” I grumbled as we finally reached the cabin and locked ourselves inside, “What’re we gonna do now?”

  “Die I reckon.” Pete said less-than-tactfully, “Guess this is it.”

  Miles rolled his eyes and shook his head, “Always so damn dramatic, have you ever considered the possibility that these guys might actually be pretty good at surviving?”

  Chad, Paul, and I all shared a proud little look that quickly turned into one of concern as we realised that Miles probably expected us to think of a way to get out of the situation that wasn’t simply winging it and hoping for the best.

  “Puh-lease,” Pete laughed, “you know as well as I do that these guys survive by sheer dumb luck and not much else.”

  I wanted to be offended, I really did, but he wasn’t exactly wrong.

  Undoubtedly the two would’ve continued to bicker until the cows came home, but the cabin vibrating like it was some chick in a horror flick about to get her head cut off took away their chance.

  The rex had arrived, and he sounded pissed.

  “This’d be a great time for a plan.” Pete said a little more pointedly than I’d have liked.

  “I’m open to suggestions.” I whispered back as snippily as I could manage, “We’ve gott
a have something that can take it out, right?”

  I was met with shaking heads, followed by Chad pointing at his new best friend, “I doubt even my lovely Vera could put that thing down. What about the truck, has it got anything we can use in it?”

  Pete shook his head, “I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff, but I locked that thing up good and tight once I got my stuff in there, it’d take me at least ten seconds to open it.”

  “And why is that a problem?” Miles asked with no small amount of judgement.

  The rex roaring at the top of its lungs answered the question before Pete got the chance, and made Miles go an odd shade of burgundy.

  “I say we run out and split up.” Paul suggested, “It worked for us before.”

  “With a farmer,” Chad mocked, “not the king of the dinos.”

  “Leave him alone,” I snapped, “at least he’s suggesting something.”

  Paul went to thank me, but the sound of the truck out front getting tipped on its side stopped him.

  “I say we do it.” I said, deciding that a stupid action was better than no action at all, “We bolt as fast as we can in separate directions and hope for the best.”

  “And what if we run into a Metois patrol, hm?” Pete asked, “Keep in mind that Miles over here is carrying a douche magnet.”

  “Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Miles spat snidely.

  “You guys are startin’ to get on my nerves.” I snarled with more aggression than I’d intended, “Just… leave each other alone and help us try and figure out what the Hell we’re gonna do.”

  “Well, and I’m just spit-ballin’ here,” Pete said, a certain level of calm coming across in his voice, “Miles could stick that there tracker on the rex.”

  “And what would putting me that close to the rex achieve?”

  “For one thing, getting eaten would finally shut you up,” I said before I could stop myself, “and for another, it could potentially get the Metois away from the Home Base, buy us a little more time ‘til we can figure out what we’re gonna do if they find us.”