“You alright?” I asked as we shuffled toward the tree in a line of mostly broken shields.
“Yeah, just need someone to patch me up ‘fore I bleed out.”
“Heh, dude, you’re a Goddamn bullet magnet.” Pete joked as he scrooched down next to Paul and started wrapping a bandage around his wound.
“Not my fault the world hates my legs.”
I was glad Paul was taking the flak in stride, but I was starting to get a bit irritated with how often Pete insisted on making fun of the rest of the guys.
Another volley hit the shields, turning mine into little more than a frame of the protective metal it was.
“Can you hurry up and put him down!?” I growled at Chad who’d, for some reason, decided it’d be the best move for him to shuffle along with us in the crouched position instead of, you know, actually helping.
He took a few seconds to register what I’d said, and even when he had, he didn’t seem to have his heart set on standing as we drew nearer to our target.
“Why aren’t you getting up!?”
“We’re too damn close! If I stand up I’m gonna get my head blown off.”
“And if you stay down here you’re gonna get your head blown off.” Pete warned with a small revolver in his hand as he turned his attention to the coward in our midst.
And with that, I was suddenly fine with Pete mocking people again.
“Ugh, fine.” Chad said in an effort to sound indignant, but instead came across as being closer to a fearful child.
I couldn’t help but smile as Chad warily rose to his feet, dropped back down into a crouched position, and then quickly stood up again twice without taking a single shot.
Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful that he’d been there to support me when I’d been scatterbrained, but the guy still had trouble following my orders, so it was fun seeing him squirm a little.
“Fuck it!” he finally roared, “Suppressive fire!”
One full clip and a good deal of laughter on my end later, the notification popped up.
Chalupa_Batman has been slain (World).
“Why were you laughing?” Chad asked between heaved breaths as we all got to our feet, confident that the Metois squad were all dead.
“Suppressive fire? Dude, it’s not suppressing if you’re plan is to kill the guy.”
“Also, what’s with the spray-and-pray?” Pete scolded, “You’ve got a rifle that, as I said before, is fire-and-forget, and it’s way more effective if you use it as such instead of… I don’t even know what you were trying to do with it.”
“Pete’s right,” Miles chimed in, clearly annoyed with the fact that he was saying those words, “it’s not an LMG, you’ve gotta stop using it like one.”
“Okay, let’s lay off him a bit,” I interjected with a little chuckle, “the guy’s had enough. Besides, we need to start talking about what we’re gonna be doin’ from here.”
“Isn’t that your job?” Paul asked with a sly smile.
He was right, annoying and totally undermining my brilliant idea to outsource my responsibility as leader, but right.
“Guess that’s true,” I replied with a severe glare at Paul, “well, I suppose that leaves you and Miles on clean-up.”
“What?” Miles moaned, “Why do we have to clean this mess up?”
“Not the whole thing, just grabbing what you can and hauling it back home so we can get ready for whatever support this douche called in.”
“But I don’t wanna be left behi-” Paul started and stopped as a crunching sound went off and he keeled over to his right.
We all just stared at him a while, confused and intrigued as to what we’d just seen happen, before I finally figured it out with a laugh.
“Your leg’s broken again, isn’t it?”
“No…” Paul muttered as he went to stand then fell again, “…Yes.”
“Heh, alright, so Chad and Miles’ll be on clean-up, Pete and I’ll get the king of late reaction times home, then we’ll go from there. Sound good?”
I was met with nods from everyone except Paul who was struggling to get to his feet enough so that I could start helping him walk.
“If I fall, you wait ‘til I get back up, alright?” Paul grunted as I pulled his arm over my neck while Miles and Chad went to work stripping the bodies, “None of that getting dragged around crap.”
“You worried that’ll break your legs even worse?” I joked.
“Actually, yes.” Paul bit back.
“I’m on his side with this,” Pete said before leading the way back toward Home Base, “guy’s clearly got some sort of brittle bone disease.”
“No, the game just hates me and loves seeing me in pain because it’s a freakin’ dick.”
“And apparently some pretty severe PMS.” I mocked as we shuffled through the forest, “How long do you reckon it’ll take us to get back home at this pace?”
Pete shrugged, “Ten minutes, give or take, provided we don’t run into any…” he trailed off before coming to a stop and sighing, “trouble.”
Chapter Three
I wasn’t sure what Pete was talking about at first, but I trusted his judgement as he put his finger to his lips and gestured for us to pick up the pace.
“I don’t hear anything…” Paul whispered.
Neither Pete nor I responded.
“Which direction is it coming from?”
Again, we stayed silent.
“Is my mic on?”
“Would you shut up and move!?” Pete hissed without breaking his stride.
The reaction had stunned me for a moment, but after a while of keeping at our half jogging, half limping pace and getting deeper into the woods, I finally heard the sound.
It was a faint buzzing which I couldn’t recognise at first, the sound of what was clearly a beehive trapped in a metal box bouncing around the trees being one that I’d certainly never heard before, but then something clicked in my head.
“Dirt bikes…” I muttered in fear.
“You too.” Pete snapped with slightly more respect than he’d had for Paul.
They were behind us.
Then beside us.
Then ahead of us.
My feet dug into the dirt as I instinctively forced myself to stop, “We can’t keep going that way.”
“We don’t have any option but to go that way,” Pete replied concernedly, “anywhere else and I guarantee we’ll run into another patrol.”
“But if we keep going that way we’ll definitely run into another patrol.”
That must’ve been around the point when Paul started saying “Guys?” but Pete and I were far too busy to even register his voice.
“Yeah, of guys on bikes. It’ll be hard, but we’ll be able to dodge ‘em.”
“Guys?”
“And what happens when they follow us home because we have no way to knock them off their bikes?”
“Then we fortify and wait ‘til the Js take them out, but that’s only gonna happen if we go now.”
“Guys!”
“What!?” Pete and I barked back at the impatient Paul.
“The bikes,” he replied, slightly taken aback by us yelling at him, “they’ve stopped.”
Pete turned his ear to the sky and cursed under his breath when he didn’t hear the excited thrum of a motorcycle’s engine.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Paul asked, “Means they can’t follow us home.”
“No, it means they’ve found us and now they’re coming our way.” I said before Pete could get the chance, “We need to hide. Now.”
“No shit Sherlock,” Pete snapped, “but where? If we didn’t have brittle-bone Paul here it’d be a cinch, sure, but the dude’s not exactly inconspicuous.”
“If you guys leave me to die I swear I will sell every one of you arseholes out.” Paul warned.
“See, now I want to just to spite you.” I said right as someone coughed.
Without bothering to ask if it was anyone i
n our party, I turned tail and started running, well, as best as I could with Paul dragging along beside me anyway.
Before long the forest air was shattered with gunfire while Pete and I desperately looked around for anywhere that could hold as temporary cover.
“There!” Pete shouted, pointing to a log just off our path.
We made a beeline for it, darting around and scrooching down behind the metre-thick dead tree as its bark was turned into little more than mulch.
“You reckon you could take ‘em on?” I asked hopefully after ensuring Paul was sufficiently blocked from view.
Pete shook his head, “There’re over two dozen of them out there. I’m guessin’ the biker guys met up with a second squad.”
“Well that’s just fan-fucking-tastic.” Chad growled as he slid over to us right before Miles did the same, “Because here I was sittin’ thinking you’d be our saving grace throughout this whole shit-storm.”
“Hey, don’t put this on me.” Pete snarled, “I set traps and do my best to not be seen by my targets because I’m a true survivor, not some run-and-gun idiot.”
I didn’t know if that was a deliberate attack on Chad, but he definitely took it that way, though he was far too much of a chickenshit to do anything about it.
Do you hear that? The heavy, fast-paced thumps? Or perhaps you see the spined sail ripping through the forest? It’s lean, it’s mean, it’s definitely going to eat you.
“You guys get that notification?” I whispered under the shooting and shouts of the very obviously oblivious Metois soldiers.
Everyone but Pete gave me a nod, the one who’d refused to become a freshie having kept all his creature logs while the rest of us got a good warning.
“I recognise that one…” Miles said, “I wanna say…”
Miles didn’t have the chance to finish his thought as the ear-splitting cry of a hungry spinosaurus silenced the shooting.
Option one is you run then die. Option two is you hide then die. Option three is… point is that you’re probably going to die after this massive, speedy bastard catches up with you.
“Look out!” one of the Metois soldiers cried out as the huge dino barrelled its way out of the forest and started attacking them.
“Run!” I roared before scooping Paul up by the arm and making a mad dash toward home and, in doing so, right at the spino’s killing field.
xXLupiLupoXx has been slain (World).
The Metois were defenceless against the creature, its size and surprising speed making it nigh impossible to take out without the aid of a bazooka or a mounted MG.
It wasn’t out to get us though, and while its gigantic feet and tail did almost take me out at least five times, I managed to get Paul and I to safety.
Without any regard for whether or not the guys had managed to keep up, I kept running, ignoring the deaths popping up as we reached where the Metois had ditched their three dirt bikes.
“You take one of these,” I said as I helped Paul up onto a bike, “I’ll wait for the others to show up.”
“But what about-”
“Whatever it is, it can wait. Go.” I ordered before turning away, effectively removing any chance for further discussion.
There were a few seconds of silence, well, except for all the roaring and screaming out in the distance, before Paul finally revved the engine twice then peeled away at high speed.
“Come on, come on, come on…” I whispered in the hopes that it would somehow make them move faster.
I’d done it, I’d failed as a leader and gotten everyone but Paul killed in a-
“Christ woman!” Chad laughed as he came panting out of the woods, the rest of Zoey’s Fighters in close tow, “Couldn’t have given us more than two seconds before running headlong into a spino?”
“I-”
“Hey, cool bikes.” Pete said as he spotted the motorcycles behind me, “Dibs.”
“You can’t just call dibs,” Miles snapped, “I’m sure Zoey has-”
“Y’all wanna shut up so we can get outta here?” I interjected bitterly, “Or we can sit around here with our dicks in our hands all day, it’s totally up to you.”
Met with a few embarrassed looks, plus Pete’s one of respectful impatience, I smiled and pressed on, “Good, now, Pete and Chad’ll take the last two bikes. And before you chuck a hissy fit Miles, it’s because they’ve got the best skills and gear.”
Miles’ mouth opened and closed a few times at that before he finally gave in with a sigh and a nod, “Alright, so I guess we’ll go up the rear then?”
“Of course that’s the first question you ask.” Pete mocked with a roll of his eyes as he climbed up on his dirt bike, “Damn horn dog.”
With great difficulty, I managed to bite back a laugh, but not the smirk that earned me a sour look from Miles.
“Come on, we better get out of here before whoever wins that fight comes our way.” I said in an attempt to detract from my cheeky grin which just would not die.
“You really think there’re gonna be any ‘winners’ in that fight?” Miles asked without losing his obviously pissed off expression, “That dino was taking a Hell of a beating when we left, and I sincerely doubt that that Metois group is gonna be in any position to come hunting for us.”
“Dude, just…” I said, trying my best not to snap or laugh at him, “Let’s just go, alright? Better safe than sorry.”
Miles still didn’t seem all that happy with me, but he let out a sigh of agreeance and gave a submissive nod, to which I started leading us home after the others.
He was an odd one, the way he swapped around from being a brash, rebellious soldier to being a snippy bitch, then to this weird mix of meek and passive-aggressive.
It left me wondering what kind of personality he actually had, if any.
I’d met people like that before, that seemed to have no real grasp of who they were and instead bounced off of the people around them.
Eh, I suppose we all do that in one way or another, Miles’ version was just more obvious.
The triumphant roar of the spino behind us snapped me back to reality and reminded me that I really needed to keep my head on a swivel.
That’s also when I realised what it was that had me being so contemplative and linked to similar instances I’d experienced in the past.
It was the stress of it all, the constant knowledge that at any moment I could be ambushed, or eaten by a dino, or, and this was the big new one, any number of my crew could have the same happen.
Things were expanding, I had a strong player who was in the same position of the clan hierarchy as my friend who had a habit of getting himself shot, and another player who was a turncoat from the army that I was forced into fighting.
Oh yeah, and I was fighting an army.
“Gotta get outta your head…” I muttered to myself, for which I got a confused look from my fellow bush-basher that I ignored, “Gotta get outta your head before you get everyone killed…”
Chapter Four
After assuring Miles that I wasn’t about to go on a schizophrenic rampage and kill off everyone once we got back to Home Base, things had turned pretty quiet.
The Metois were obviously in the process of regrouping, at least that’s what I hoped, so I felt comfortable to move quickly and make a bit of noise.
“Good to see you finally decided to show up.” Chad mocked as we came out of the trees and saw that he, along with the others, had parked their bikes in front of the cabin, “Figured you’d gotten yourselves captured.”
“No such luck.” I replied with a smile before walking into the cabin with my lever action out, “You guys hear anything?”
“Not here,” Pete chimed in as he followed me into the cabin, “but before they changed their channel, we heard that they know where we are.”
“So what does that mean for us?” I asked before looking over my gun thoughtfully as I prepared to make some much needed modifications.
“Means it’s jus
t a matter of time before they send whatever they’ve got left our way.” Paul chimed in, alerting me to the fact that he was on the bed getting his leg fixed up by Melinda.
“Well… that’s less than ideal.” I replied with more nonchalance than Paul had been expecting.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care, as I said before I think I was incredibly anxious on a deep, perhaps even subconscious level, but at the same time I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to do, like fix my shield and gun.
I didn’t quite want to start crafting until we’d finished the conversation, but my eagerness was making it so I was only processing about half of what they said.
“What’s the plan then?” Pete asked after I’d drifted off into one of my silent moments.
“Oh, um… I don’t know.” I said before realising that leaving it there would undoubtedly lead to some kind of mini-mutiny, “I mean, I think we have two options. We can fortify, do our best to stay standing as they march toward us, or we can head out there and go all guerrilla on their arses.”
“Where does that second option leave me?” Paul asked, pointing at his leg, “I ain’t exactly in a position to be squattin’ in the woods or hidin’ up in trees.”
“Paul’s right,” Miles interjected after having spent some time talking to Chad, “if we all go out he’s gonna be left completely defenceless.”
“What do you suggest then?” I asked as Chad followed in behind Miles, “Should we dig our heels in and wait for them to come? Do our best to hold down ‘til then?”
“Or we could do both?” Pete suggested, “Paul was tellin’ me that you guys ended burrowing up under the house at one point, which means there’s a possible evac opportunity for Paul and whoever stays with him.”
Splitting up didn’t seem like the best of plans, especially considering the fact that it meant leaving one of our most vulnerable members in the hands of only one other person, but at the same time it seemed like the only viable option.
“We go into two teams then,” I said, “Paul stays here with Chad, the rest of us head out bush and get ready for a fight.”
“And what exactly are we going to do out there?” Miles asked with obvious doubtfulness for the plan, “Make a bunch of noise and get ourselves shot?”
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