Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “No, we go out guerrilla style, like I said before.” I scolded with a stern expression, “Then, while we pick them off quiet-like, Chad and Paul’ll go to work making sure that anyone who breaches the perimeter catches a bad case of bullet fever.”

  Everyone stayed silent for a moment, regarding me with awe following my great phrase.

  “‘Bullet fever’?” Pete mocked.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t awe that they were looking at me with.

  “Whatever dude,” I said, pretending I wasn’t embarrassed, “point is we have a real chance of surviving this if we play our cards right.”

  “What about the Js?” Paul interjected, reminding me that I’d failed to account for one of our greatest assets.

  “I was getting there.” I lied, “They’ll be… Wait, where are they? Shouldn’t they be milling around Home Base?”

  Chad shrugged, “Not sure, they’re out of my range, which means we won’t be able to see where they’ve gone ‘til they come back.”

  “If they come back.” Miles countered.

  “They ain’t dead,” Chad snapped defensively, “we’d have been notified if they were dead. At the very least our population would’ve gone down.”

  Thankful that I had good ol’ Chad to answer the questions I couldn’t, I started going to work with crafting a new shield.

  -1 Makeshift Shield

  Removed: 3 Scrap Metal, 2 Leather Strips

  “So when’s all this gonna take place?” Pete asked as I looked over my new shield, “Are we gonna head out now? Or is there some kinda prep work you wanna get done first?”

  “We roll in three minutes,” I replied before turning my attention to my lever action, “and from there we take positions and wait.”

  Miles put his hands on his hips at that, his irritability and patience for me not looking at them growing with each passing second, “For how long?”

  “For as long as it takes for them to come,” I responded coolly before going to work on my rifle, “and we know they’re coming.”

  “And what happens if night falls? Are we supposed to just hang out there with the Muties?”

  “Climb a tree you freakin’ pussy.” Pete said before I could, “Zo’s gonna get us through this, and I have complete faith in that.”

  “That makes one of us.” I muttered as quietly as I could, “You guys head out and get ready, I’ll meet you by the bikes in a minute.”

  Miles and Pete left the cabin to Paul, Chad, and I after that, each making sure to make sure the other was uncomfortable on the way out.

  “Are you sure you wanna be working with those two?” Chad asked concernedly, “How do you know there isn’t gonna be some kinda ‘friendly’ fire mishap?”

  “I’m confident that they’ll stick to the mission.” I replied, still working on my gun, “It’s when they haven’t got anything to do that we should be worried.”

  “I’m with Chad on this one,” Paul piped up, “the last thing you need is for one of them to decide it’s easier to put down the other when you’re in the middle of a fight.”

  “Guys, I need you to trust me on this.” I snapped slightly more aggressively than I’d intended to, to which the room fell quiet, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m just not sure that I trust them yet. I’d rather have them out there with me than in here with either of you.”

  “What? You don’t think we can hold our own?” Chad asked, making sure to sound as offended as possible.

  “Ugh, it’s not that. It’s… If a fight comes this way, then either one of them can have plausible deniability when it comes to why one of you is dead. After that it’s not a short jump to killing the two of us who return so that they can take the base for themselves.”

  Paul tilted his head in confusion, “Where’s all this coming from? You seemed pretty damned sure that they were trustworthy earlier today.”

  “Yeah, that was before I started going over the fact that Pete agrees with almost everything I say.” I said, the conclusion only coming to my mind as the words came out, “The dude seems so desperate to get on my good side and that… well, that makes me uneasy considering he was so adamant about working on his own when we first met him.”

  I wasn’t sure if the guys agreed with me or not, but at the very least they seemed to be accepting of my thought process, which was definitely getting cluttered with the fact that the crafting process for my rifle was taking forever.

  “You’re sure taking your time with that.” Paul said, seemingly to deliberately irritate me.

  “Yeah, I don’t have the schematics.”

  “Then do you really think it’s the best idea to be messing with it? Aren’t you worried that you’re gonna break it?”

  “Well I am now!”

  The thought that it could be taking so long because I was ruining it with my crafting hadn’t even so much as crossed my mind until Paul had brought it up, but after he had it was all I could think about.

  “What if I’ve-”

  -1 Lever Action Rifle:

  Crafted: Sawn-off Lever Action Rifle:

  Durability: 90/90

  Damage: 64

  Ammo Type: .357

  Description: A whole lot of bang for your buck. While it has lost a great deal of control and accuracy, the sawn-off lever action rifle makes up for it with more power than necessary. Guarantee you get hit with the kickback and blow your own face off though.

  “Ha! Told you I wouldn’t break it.” I exclaimed giddily, showing off my less-than-shiny new toy, before growing serious and looking between my two friends with a renewed vigour, “Now, let’s go kick some arse.”

  Chapter Five

  After discovering that no one, including Pete, gave a crap about my new gun that allowed for simultaneous shield cover and shooting, I’d started leading my group off into the forest, leaving Chad and Paul to get ready for the coming storm.

  “Alright,” I whispered, breaking the silence that was sitting over Miles, Pete, and I, “once we’re in the trees I’m gonna need Miles to head around to the south end of the cabin, then Pete over to the northwest, and I’ll head to the northeast. Sound good?”

  “Works for me.” Miles said as we stepped into the forest before running off silently toward his area, proving my suspicion that he wanted to be as far away from Pete as fast as possible.

  “I heard you, before,” Pete whispered once Miles was out of earshot, “what you guys were saying about not trusting us.”

  Just like that, my stomach was in knots.

  “Oh, um…” I trailed off, not knowing whether I should apologise or snap at him for eavesdropping.

  “Don’t worry, Miles didn’t hear anythin’.” Pete clarified as if it would work to settle the discomfort that had come between us, “He was off muckin’ about with the nursery.”

  “Ah, good, good.” I replied awkwardly, wishing that he’d just run off to his position like a good little soldier.

  Silence reigned for a few seconds after that before Pete let out a dejected sigh, “Look, I get it. From what I understand you guys got cornholed pretty hard by your last group, but I promise that I ain’t plannin’ to do nothing like that.”

  “It ain’t that man, it’s just…” I said, struggling to find the right combination of words, “I don’t know you, yeah? I mean, I thought I did, but now that things have had a chance to settle down a bit I… I don’t know, you know?”

  Pete gave me a slightly confused look at that, then shook his head and smiled, “I think I do. I also think it’s funny that you think this is anywhere near calm,” he laughed, “but the fact of the matter is I ain’t the type to stab people in the back.”

  “No, you much prefer to shoot them from a distance with a silenced, high calibre sniper rifle.” I joked, trying desperately to bring back a sense of brevity to our relationship.

  “Heh, you caught me,” Pete chuckled back, allowing me to breathe easy once more, “but seriously though, I can guarantee that I’m not gonna turn on you, not y
et anyway. And neither will Miles. You can say a lot about that man, but he isn’t a two-faced bitch… Well, maybe just a little.”

  I forced a laugh at that, then smiled, “Alright, get into position we can talk more about this later.”

  “Okay, as long as you know we’re good.”

  “I know, see you.”

  Pete didn’t respond, instead opting to give me a simple wave before running off toward his position, leaving me to walk deeper into the woods, looking around for a good position to hole up in while at the same time wondering if I’d built it all up in my head.

  I didn’t get much of chance to do that though. No, instead of being given the opportunity to go through an issue that really was plaguing me with uncertainty I got to focus on the fast dimming sunlight that was revealing something that replaced all of my doubt with fear.

  “Fuck me…” I muttered as I watched the headlights pierce the veil of dusk, the steady grumble of a powerful engine making only slightly more sound than the heavy metal treads that were crushing the trees the machine was ploughing through.

  Should have probably remembered sooner that the Metois had tanks.

  Chapter Six

  With all the poise and grace of a toddler covered in butter climbing out of a bathtub, I managed to scamper off and take cover behind a tree.

  ‘Goddamn Zo…’ I snapped internally, ‘Couldn’t have thought of this before spreading everyone out through the forest?’

  The voices of the tank engineers chattering away had finally reached my ears, which meant that I had all of about forty seconds before I was meeting the business end of a big ol’ AP shell, and that was only if it got stuck on trees on its way toward me.

  And then I got an idea.

  Dig.

  I wasn’t able to get far at first, what with the fact that I was using my hands instead of a shovel, but I did manage to get far enough down that I was able to start crawling on my belly and digging without revealing my position.

  “Come on…” I whispered as I got to the final bit of dirt, “You got this…”

  “What the shit!?” I heard someone shriek, “Stop the-”

  It was too late, they’d fallen into my trap, cutting off my air supply and just barely missing me, but getting trapped nonetheless.

  “What’s goin’ on?” another person called out as I dug my way out, a quiet sigh of relief escaping me when the moonlight became visible, “There a ditch or somethin’?”

  “Nah,” the first guy grumbled, “some fucker’s gone and hollowed out the ground.”

  I managed to crawl out undetected, coming up in my gopheristic fashion behind a large tree recently felled by the tank, but to my grand dismay I discovered that the tank wasn’t alone.

  “Alright,” the second guy let out dejectedly, “we’ll dig you out, hold up.”

  “Not all three of you!” the first snapped, “Keep at least two for guard duty, don’t need any o’ these ‘Zoey’s Fighters’ to sneak up on us.”

  “Heh, you really think any of those idiots has a chance at gettin’ the jump on us?” someone else scoffed, “You know as well as I do that that whole thing back at Home Base was a fluke. Fuckers would’ve taken a whole lot more if they’d have planned any of that shit out.”

  “Doesn’t make Home Base any less fucked,” a fourth voice, and I guessed the other engineer, scolded, “especially not after what happened when those fuckin’ steggies came through. We don’t make an example of these guys and we’ll be left open to a whole lotta hurt now that the walls are down.”

  “And why don’t you just broadcast that to the entire world?” the first engineer growled, “Maybe let everyone know that this is our second-to-last tank as well? I’m sure that no one’s listening.”

  The second engineer stayed quiet for a time, clearly stunned by the scolding, before letting out a defeated “I’m sorry, I just didn’t think that-”

  “That’s your fuckin’ problem mate, you don’t think. Hurry up with diggin’ out that ditch, we need to get a move on.”

  “Fifteen more seconds. This shit’d be so much easier if you’d let the others work with me.”

  That was my cue to move, popping out from behind the tree with my shield high and my singlehanded rifle planted firmly on top of it.

  The first of the two armed men who were guarding the digger was easy enough to dispatch, my shot blasting a hole right through where his jaw used to be, but the second one was quicker to take cover.

  KylesMumsABish has been slain (World).

  A quick laugh at the dude’s name escaped me before I realised that the tank I’d stupidly assumed was out of commission started turning its massive gun to me.

  Small arms fire was one thing, but rounds that were specifically made to blow up vehicles and level structures? I sincerely doubted my shield was going to hold up.

  I barely managed it, but I successfully rolled out of the way as the pile of metal and boom-boom shot through the tree like it was papier-mâché before burying itself in the ground some distance behind it and exploding, bringing a large group of trees to little more than stumps and splinters.

  “Focus on getting us out of the ditch!” one of the engineers called out, “We’ll get the bitch with the shield.”

  With no small amount of difficulty, I managed to scramble into a running position only to have to dive again as another round was sent my way.

  “Use the incendiary rounds!” the second engineer shouted over the sound of the explosion.

  “And burn down the forest!?” the excavator roared as I just barely missed getting crushed by a tree, “We’ve got men out there!”

  “Just shut up and dig!”

  The gun seemed to lose me for a few seconds, hovering over where I’d been before their last shot, and I decided to take the advantage and charge the tank.

  Great idea, I know.

  “She’s around the back!” the first engineer cried while the gun aimed around for me, but it was too little too late, I was too close for them to shoot me, and moving around the left side.

  “Around the rig-I mean left side!” the second engineer stammered.

  He’d confused his escort though, and before either of them could figure out where I was I’d leaned around the corner of the metal beast and fired two quick shots, the first hitting its mark and smashing through my furthest target’s face, effectively turning the back of his helmet into a messy soup bowl, while the second shot caught the closet of my targets in his thigh.

  GunnarLycanthrope has been slain (World).

  “Guys!?” the second shooter cried after he fell to the ground, “A little help!”

  I prepared for the worst, if either of the engineers climbed out I’d be absolutely defenceless against their attacks unless I could somehow back up enough that I wasn’t in the remaining guard’s firing line.

  “You know the rules, can’t leave the tank without clearance!”

  “Screw clearance, help m-”

  FlippyFloppyDigs has been slain (World).

  I’d done it, with a quick shot over my shield I’d managed to blow most of the top of Digs’ head clean off, leaving his sentence unfinished and his buddies to panic in the tank.

  +1 Firearm Skill

  Firearm Skill: 11/100

  Level Progression: 150/150

  Level Up!

  Special Trait Point Awarded!

  Level Progression: 0/200

  Chapter Seven

  “Have to admit,” I said with a smile as I climbed up on top of the tank, leaving my previous enemies to bleed into the collapsed earth, “I’m pretty damn impressed with myself. I mean, taking on three soldiers and a tank? That’s pretty insane, even by my standards of ‘fluking’ it.”

  “Good luck getting in here!” the first engineer called out after I’d started inspecting the hatch, “This baby’s locked up good and tight. You ain’t getting in here, no way, no how!”

  He was right of course, they were basically sealed inside a metal coc
oon, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t exaggerate about what my resources were.

  “True,” I said with a sigh before falling into a seated position next to the hatch, “I haven’t got the tools. But that’s what we have clans for, isn’t it?”

  “What?” the second guard let out with what sounded like very genuine fear.

  “Oh, my guys, they’re on their way here now with everything we need to bust this ‘ere tin can open. Then we’ll go ahead and execute y’all before you can so much as lift a finger.”

  I let them stew on that for a while, during which time I was positive they were messaging each other in some kind of private chat, before letting out a thoughtful huff like I was about to say something and had stopped.

  “What was that?” the first engineer asked.

  “Ah, it’s nothing.”

  “No, no, what is it? Are your guys here?”

  “Huh? Oh, no, no I was just thinking…” I trailed off with a sly grin, “well, I am the leader of Zoey’s Fighters, and with that comes some benefits.”

  “Like what?” the other engineer chimed in, a desperation coming into the mix with his still present fear.

  My grin turned into a full-blown beam as the poor fools stepped into my web, “Like, for example, the ability to give you guys protection? Maybe even offer you a spot in our clan?”

  I didn’t plan on letting them into anything, obviously, but it didn’t hurt to let them think that for a while as I prepared to shoot them both in their stupid faces.

  “Never mind,” I said after a few seconds of waiting, “looks like my guys are her-”

  “No!” the second engineer shrieked, much to the first’s clear annoyance, “No, wait! We’ll… ugh, we’ll open the hatch. Just… don’t kill us, alright?”

  “Hey, a woman’s only as good as her word.” I trailed off as I got into a position where I could both block any fire they sent my way and shoot the two with ease.