Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  There were a couple of seconds there where nothing happened, leading me to believe that there wasn’t actually any kind of benefit for women choosing that particular perk, and then it happened.

  Suddenly my tits went up a size and got slightly better jiggle-physics to showcase them.

  “Aw…” I droned out disappointedly.

  “What’re yo-woah!” Paul yelped when he saw my sweater-stretchers, “I… I… What’re you complaining about?”

  “It’s just that…” I started then stopped as I got slightly embarrassed, something that quickly faded when I remembered my present company, “I thought that I’d get a penis.”

  “A penis?” Pete scoffed, “Why did you want a penis?”

  I shot him a look like it was a completely reasonable thing for me to pissed off about, “Well at the very least I thought I get something like one of those engorged hyena clitorises.”

  Everyone in the cabin fell silent after that, staring at me with a weird mix of discomfort, curiosity, and some very genuine shock.

  “A… what?” Miles asked, his voice reflecting his expression perfectly.

  “A mock-penis,” I replied, “have you seriou-look, it’s not important, let’s just move on, okay?”

  “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to,” Chad chuckled, “I mean, why do you know that much about hyenas? And why would you want a… a… I just… why? Wouldn’t that be stupidly impractical?”

  “It’s a sign of dominanc-it’s not important.” I snapped, “Again, can we please just move on? Look, the sun’s coming out.”

  And just like that, everyone’s attention was brought to the beautiful orange glow that had started to cascade through the cabin’s windows, making them completely forgetting my quasi-penis envy.

  “So, who’s ready to go kick some…” I trailed off in dread as I opened the door and saw what was waiting over the corpses we’d made the mistake of leaving almost right outside the door, “arse.”

  “What’s-oh…” Chad started then stopped as he pushed past me and got outside, “Oh, that is one bloody bunny.”

  Chapter Five

  “What the fuck are we gonna do?” Chad hissed out of the corner of his mouth as the rabbit followed us with its cold, black eyes.

  “I don’t know…” I murmured back, “You manage to hurt it at all last time?”

  “I barely managed to squeeze off a single round before the thing had me,” Chad replied with no small amount of fear, “fuckin’ thing’s too damn quick.”

  “So… you didn’t manage to hit i-”

  “No I didn’t manage to fucking hit it!” Chad growled, causing the rabbit to lock its attention squarely on him, “Oh… no…”

  The little fuzzy creature did nothing but stare at Chad for a good few seconds, but then its eyes started to take on a sort of evil red glow.

  “That can’t be good…” Paul muttered.

  “Fuckin’ really?” I snapped back before turning my attention to the thoroughly terrified Chad, “Just back into the cabin, nice and slow.”

  Chad went to follow my order, but came to a stop as the rabbit prepared to launch at him, its teeth bared and ears tucked back menacingly.

  We were all frozen, speechless, and waiting for the moment that we ended up like the Metois troops who’d taken cover in our cabin.

  And then something that made me jump shocked us all back to reality.

  “What the shit!?” I yelped after Pete fired three eardrum-bursting rounds from his hand cannon right next to my head.

  “Got it.” came Pete’s proud but coolly disinterested response, “Can’t believe no one tried that.”

  I was confused for a moment, but then I looked to where the rabbit had been and saw nothing but a few tufts of white fur and a twitching hind leg a few feet away from the four-inch-deep hole that the rest of the gory mess laid in.

  “Holy crap…” I trailed off in genuine shock, “I… How did you do that?”

  “I think the trick was shooting it before it decided to move around like a coked-out lightning bolt.” Pete replied nonchalantly as he stepped past the rest of us and out into the crisp morning air, “Now, who’s ready to go capture a Metois base?”

  Everyone else still seemed pretty shocked by what Pete had done, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was one Hell of a way to kick-start our journey.

  “Let’s rock and roll.”

  Chapter Six

  After loading up as much of the gear as we could with the Js and the rest of the NPCs, we’d sent them on their merry, followed closely by Pete on his bike, and then the rest of us up the rear.

  Things were actually going pretty well, except for the occasional bitching that I hadn’t given one of the others a bike, and we were making pretty good time, but then we heard something.

  It was nothing much at first, and I’d honestly thought that it was just something wrong with my ears, but the source quickly became clearer as we continued trudging our way through the forest.

  An engine, a dying engine, but an engine nonetheless, and it was getting a bit too close for comfort.

  “What do we do?” Paul asked as I pulled my shield off my back and checked my ammo.

  “You know what? I’m gettin’ kinda sick of people asking me that question.” I replied with more irritation in my voice than I’d intended, “I’d really appreciate it if y’all could start throwing some suggestions my way.”

  “Probably should’ve thought of that before you decided you wanted to be leader, eh?” Miles suggested then immediately regretted when I shot him a cold look, “All I mean is that-”

  “Everyone shut up.” Chad snapped, “Car’s getting closer.”

  “You’re sure it’s a car?” I asked.

  “Positive,” Chad replied confidently, “too quiet for a fourbie, and I’m pretty sure we’d be able to tell if it was a bike.”

  I was both relieved and concerned at that.

  On the one hand I was glad that we weren’t about to get demolished by a semi-functional fourbie, but at the same time I was worried about what a car could mean.

  People were fine with abandoning cars, and they were more than happy to let them be used as shields, which meant that when or if we stumbled across them they would have the advantage of strong cover.

  I wasn’t about to let everyone else know I was shitting my damn pants though, and, as the sounds of the obviously heavily damaged vehicle reached a point where it was clear it was coming for us, I dropped to a knee, aimed over my shield, and prepared for the worst.

  And then it finally came, trundling through the woods like it owned the place, a little white sedan with a yellow lightning bolt on the side.

  The vehicle was completely devoid of life as it drove past the front of us with an almost palpable level of disinterest, but had clearly seen its fair share of fighting.

  Recently.

  “What’s it doing?” Miles asked as we cautiously approached the slow-moving car.

  “I’m guessing the driver bailed mid-fight,” Chad replied before I could, “from there I’m guessin’ it just glitched out and kept moving.”

  “Agreed,” I added after unequipping my shield, “you reckon it’ll run?”

  “I think it is, catching it’s going to be the problem.” Paul chuckled right before I finally caught up with the vehicle and opened its trunk, causing the thing to come to a spluttering halt, “Well, it was.”

  I started looking over the vehicle’s stats, but quickly discovered I was basically looking at an incredibly unfinished and torn apart map.

  “From what I can see we need a couple of odds and ends,” I said, trying my best to guess what was needed to make the old girl run properly, “but I think we’ll be able to get most of that stuff at the base.”

  “You’re not seriously considering bringing this thing with us, are you?” Miles asked derisively, “It’ll bring in everyone and their pets if we try and drive this thing.”

  “But it’ll also give us some
good cover,” Paul replied in my defence, “and we don’t know how many vehicles, if any, will be left at the base.”

  “Exactly,” I said with a smile as I looked over what I hoped would become my next big project, “and having a car wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, but this thing is barely a car.” Miles replied, making absolutely no effort whatsoever to sound like he was paying my suggestion any mind, “I just don’t see why we’d settle for below-mediocrity when we’re about to take the Metois base. That’d be like winning the lottery and buying some piece o’ crap hatchback from the eighties.”

  It didn’t matter what he said, no matter how hurtful, I was already in love. I can’t quite say why, but I knew in my heart of hearts that that little car was going to be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

  With an undeniable amount of peppiness, I ignored everyone’s voices and climbed into the driver’s seat where I started getting a feel for the girl.

  So, you’ve run out of fuel. What. A. Shame. I suppose all that’s left for you to do is hop on out and face certain doom barefoot. I have to admit, this wasn’t the way I expected you to die. It seemed far more likely that you’d slip on a banana peel and land arse-first on a rusty pipe.

  “How’s everything look from up there?” Paul asked as he joined me in the front of the car, “We need anything special?”

  “Outta gas,” I replied with a smile, “but other than that I think we’re good to go.”

  “Really?” Miles chimed in curiously, “You’re sure?”

  “I mean… yeah, pretty sure. I reckon I could spot a million problems if I actually knew what I was looking for, but fuel seems to be the only thing holding us back at the moment.”

  It seemed a bit convenient, which is what I’m sure made Miles more than a little cautious, but at the same time it wasn’t completely impossible.

  Weirder things had happened, I mean, we’d just offed a killer bunny that had brutally murdered a massive amount of Metois.

  Still though, I understood the trepidation that everyone must’ve been feeling.

  “Then let’s go get some petrol.” Chad finally said, breaking the silence that had fallen over our little group, “This car had to come from somewhere, yeah? And I think it’s fair to assume that Metois played a part in this.”

  “What makes you say that?” Miles asked as I climbed out of the car.

  Chad gestured at the bullet holes, “These are all pretty well grouped around the driver’s door, all the glass has been shot out, and look,” he said, indicating to a few bigger holes around the rear of the car, “if a mounted MG didn’t do that, then I don’t know what did.”

  I kind of wished that I’d been the one to connect all those dots, but at the same time I was happy enough to have Chad talking about getting the car running again that I didn’t care if he was also inadvertently pointing out a lot of the reasons why we shouldn’t bother.

  “Alright, let’s go then.” I proclaimed before Miles got the chance to start second-guessing, “I’m thinking Paul and I just head in the direction it came from while you two stay here and make sure no one else nicks off with it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Miles groaned with an exaggerated eye-rolling, “we’ll just stay here and defend the wreck that no one in their right mind would want. Sounds super.”

  “If Miles doesn’t stop bitching about it, feel free to shoot him.” I said with a mocking smile, before turning around and leaving Chad and Miles to decide whether or not I was kidding.

  I didn’t know what was happening with Miles, but he’d seemed to have lost most of what had made him so appealing when I’d first met him.

  Gone was the strong agency and military tact, and in its place was the constant bitchiness and undermining.

  And then a thought occurred to me, well, more a memory, and a concerning one at that.

  Miles had been having a row with his old CO when I’d seen him for the first time, and while he was certainly a bit less bitchy than how he was being with me, there was definitely loads of insubordination.

  “I think we’ll have to keep our eye on him,” I whispered to Paul once I was sure we were out of earshot, “last thing we need is to get shot in the back when we’re this close.”

  “No need to tell me twice,” Paul chuckled back, “you remember when you first brought him back to base? Heh, good times.”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a little, somewhat uncomfortable laugh as I recalled the nearly very bloody scene I’d returned to back then, “good times.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You reckon Pete’ll worry if we take much longer?” Paul asked as we continued into our tenth minute of tracing back through the path of destruction that the car had left behind.

  “Eh, he doesn’t seem like the type who’d get overly concerned with people running late to me,” I replied with a shrug, “he seems more like the type of guy who’d let his pre-teen kids hang out alone in town after dark.”

  “You mean a shitty kind?” Paul scoffed.

  “I wouldn’t say shitty…” I trailed off as I tried to find a better word to describe my friends’ inattentive parents, “but yeah. Hey, at least it means we don’t have to stress about getting back any time soon though, right?”

  “Yeah, unless Miles decides to kill Chad and take his smart-gun.” Paul replied with what sounded like genuine concern, “Do you really think he’ll turn on us?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I’m pretty confident that Pete’s not gonna try to screw us over, but Miles… eh, I’m just not so sure, you know? The guy did start a gunfight with his other clan, why not ours?”

  We both fell quiet for a short time after that, listening out for the sound of gunfire while also watching out for Chad’s name to pop up on our screen.

  The stress was starting to reach unbearable levels when, finally, we found the site of the battle.

  It was a bit of a mess, but it didn’t actually look like there was much of fight, which said to me that a weakened Metois squad must’ve come across a pretty lucky group of freshies and they’d all but wiped each other out.

  The whole thing would’ve had to have happened ages prior though, based simply on the fact that all the bodies were gone, and it appeared as if no one else had managed to pass through given that there was a boatload of untouched, if not slightly damaged gear.

  “Mind if I grab one of these guns?” Paul asked as I found a shot-to-shit ute with a crudely attached MG.

  “Go nuts mate,” I replied after I spotted a red jerry can in the ute’s front seat, “probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to grab yourself some ammo and gear as well.”

  +1 20 Litre Jerry Can (Full):

  Durability: 50/50

  Description: Great for getting that barbeque to really sizzle. Also works well to get rid of those pesky sparks coming from the generator, so go on, dump it all right on there.

  “Hey! I found some pristine boots!” Paul announced with a little giggle, “And a helmet!”

  “As long as it doesn’t have any Metois markings you should be good…” I started then trailed off as a thought occurred to me, “Hey, how many Metois uniforms do you think we’ll be able to find here?”

  Paul shrugged as he put on his new boots and helmet, “I dunno, six, seven? How come?”

  “I’ve just had an idea,” I replied as a smile started to play across my lips, “and we’re gonna need those uniforms.”

  Chapter Eight

  “What do you think?” I asked as I spun around in front of Chad and Miles, donning my brand-spanking new Metois outfit, “Pretty nifty, huh?”

  It felt kind of dirty wearing the enemy’s colours, but at the same time I was pretty proud of myself for thinking ahead.

  “Won’t Pete just shoot us on sight?” Chad replied without taking any consideration for what I’d asked, “I mean, he might’ve done that already given the fact that we’re about to offer him a bangin’ base, but doesn’t this give
him an excuse?”

  “I already sent him a message,” Paul said as he handed out the uniforms, “he’s looking out for a bunch of Metois driving around in a shitbox.”

  “Hey,” I snapped, “I resent you calling my baby a shitbox.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  “No, I just resent it.”

  That earned me a little grin from Paul, who was actually looking pretty spiffy in his Metois garb, before he turned back to the not entirely convinced Miles, “We’ll be fine, and it means that if we run into any Metois on the way back or at the base we’ll be fine.”

  “Until they figure it out.” Chad replied with a smile as he pulled on his uniform, “But I’m guessing they’re not gonna have much of a chance to react, huh?”

  “Not if we have anything to do with it.” I interjected as I went to work on filling the car with petrol, “If you guys have an actual problem with this plan, just tell me. It’d be better than finding out halfway through.”

  I was met with Chad and Paul shaking their heads and Miles giving me a disinterested shrug, which I’m pretty sure was the best I was going to get out of him after forcing him to get back into his old uniform.

  You successfully filled the fuel tank.

  Hey, look at you, killing the environment with more of your gas-guzzling ways. Good job on further destroying the world. Dick.

  -1 20 Litre JerryCan (Empty)

  “Alright then, if we’re all agreed,” I said after dumping the empty jerry on the ground, “let’s boogie.”

  “You’re the boss.” Miles replied with a tired sigh as I climbed into the driver’s seat and the others piled in behind me.

  “We’ve really gotta work on your attitude problem,” Chad half-heartedly scoffed, “it’s starting to impede on our day-to-day fun.”

  “Well I’m sorry that I’m not exactly stoked to be out driving in a big target wearing stolen Metois gear. That’s just one of my things.”

  “You have a lot of ‘things’, don’t you?” Paul laughed as I threw the car in reverse with an unsettling sound from the engine and got us back on course for the base, “Seriously, when did you get so whingey?”