Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  Los Dos Laredos.

  Chapter Nine

  The music reached cacophonous levels right before the semi came crashing through the compound, squishing dino and human alike until it finally reached the rex, which it slammed into at full speed, knocking the mighty beast off its feet and sending it flying toward the main building while I watched on in stunned silence.

  For a moment there was nothing beyond the sound of the truck hissing and rumbling, the few survivors of the attack struggling to get to their feet as something unfolded inside the semi’s trailer that none of us could see.

  And then, with a powerful, screeching creak, the doors at the back of the trailer swung open and men laden with red armour came pouring out, laying down fire on the survivors while I finally made the smart decision to take some cover.

  “Clear those buildings!” one of them called out, “Find Zoey and her group!”

  “Yes, sir!” came the reply of the clearly decently trained troops.

  “Fuckin’ Hell this is fun,” someone else scoffed, “you reckon you could ever settle in a place like this?”

  “Nah,” came the first guy’s response, “love the rig too much to let her rust in some freakin’ compound. Hey, Zoey! Come out here!”

  GeriatricSuperHero (Community): I’m gonna go ahead and suggest you don’t do that.

  Zoey (Community): What other choice do I have?

  GeriatricSuperHero (Community): Literally anything other than that.

  “Come on!” the second guy shouted with a friendly tone, “We didn’t come all this way to kill you.”

  “Alright,” I muttered before stepping out from around the corner I’d hidden myself behind with my hands high in the air, “alright, what do you guys want?”

  Their names were FrederickTheMasterful and LimeyBrendo, and based on their slightly better armour and guns, they were in charge.

  “Want?” Freddie chuckled as we approached each other, “Ain’t that obvious? We want what’s in that there crate.”

  “And… what, that’s it?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Brendo replied with a shake of his head, “we’ll also be wanting to harvest these vehicles for parts, as well as all the crap from the dinos and the players. Seems fair considering the fact that we went ahead and killed ‘em all for you.”

  “And don’t worry,” Freddie added as we finally got within a few feet of each other and I could stop walking, “we won’t be leaving the rotting bits to bring in any… untoward attention.”

  I was confused as to why they were being so helpful, it wasn’t exactly a common occurrence in Thren to have people be unnecessarily nice after all.

  Not saying I wasn’t grateful for it, just saying that I was about ninety percent convinced that I was about two seconds from being shot by every one of the red armoured blokes.

  “S’pose you’ll be doin’ this out of the kindness of your heart then?” Pete said before I could as he came up behind me.

  “Pete!” Freddie exclaimed, “It’s good to see you man, it’s been way too long.”

  “With reason,” Pete replied coldly, “remember? Gary decided he’d try to take me out, along with a bunch of the other guys?”

  “Yeah…” Brendo trailed off somewhat embarrassedly, “Was kinda like that scene from Game of Thrones. You know, when they all stab that Jon guy?”

  “I know what you’re talking about, and yes, it was kinda like that.” Pete said with an undeniable amount of anger in his voice, “But I got away, didn’t I?”

  “Well stop talkin’ like we had anything to do with all that,” Freddie replied, finally deciding to go on the defence, “we made sure all those dicks were booted right the fuck out, and we’ve made sure to kill ‘em every second we get.”

  “That doesn’t take away from the fact that you guys decided you’d take my position at the head of the pack, does it? I mean, you pricks didn’t even bother trying to look for me, did you?” Pete snapped, leaving little opportunity for me to be stunned by the fact that he used to roll with the RvB crew, “And look at what you’ve done to my rig…”

  “What do you mean?” Brendo asked confusedly, “She looks great? We even made sure to stick to that bullshit policy of yours where we rotate the tyres every couple of days.”

  “Yeah, she’s in good nick, but why in the Hell are you blastin’ ‘La Cucaracha’ everywhere you go?”

  “It’s ‘Los Dos Laredos’, and you know it.” Freddie snapped, “And we play it because we’re having fun. You do remember fun, right? Or has playing the rogue sniper for so long warped your concept of it?”

  “I know how to have fun.” Pete replied, pausing for a moment in the apparent hope that I’d back him up before sighing and pressing on, “I just made the decision that I didn’t have to do stupid shit in order to have fun.”

  “Stupid shit?” Brendo scoffed, “We just killed a freakin’ rex with a semi. How is that stupid?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’ve gone and fucked the rig.” Pete said matter-of-factly, earning him a few confused looks before he pointed at the cab of the semi, which had, at some point, burst into flames.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing in the world for me to do, but when Brendo let out a girlish scream I couldn’t help but start laughing my arse off.

  “Where’s the fire extinguisher!? Where’s the fire extinguisher!?” the distraught Brendo cried as he and several of the other guys in the group tried to douse the flames.

  “It’s in the fuckin’ cab!” Freddie roared back, “Someone find the water in the trailer, hurry!”

  “That shouldn’t be on fire, right?” I whispered over to the absolutely beaming Pete, “I mean, it looked as good as fine before.”

  “Yeah,” Pete replied out of the corner of his mouth, “but that was before I hit it a couple of times with my silenced pistol. I was pretty sure they’d heard it until I got down here and saw how intent they were with talking to you.”

  “Will it be alright?” I asked as one of the grunts of Freddie and Brendo’s force came running out from behind the truck with one of those cubed containers of water.

  “Should be,” Pete said with a half-hearted shrug, “but then again… Eh, nah, I reckon she’ll be fine.”

  “You reckon they’ll still leave us alone?”

  Again, Pete shrugged, “I mean, they don’t know that we had anything to do with the truck catching fire,” he said before turning and looking at me, “are you gonna tell them?”

  I looked between Pete and the burning truck a few times, not to figure out the answer, but simply because it was kind of funny to me that he’d managed to supremely screw up the rig with something as innocuous as a pistol.

  “Nah, they’ll figure it out, or they won’t.”

  This might sound weird, but it actually felt pretty good having a secret with Pete. It wasn’t much, sure, but it was enough that I could feel like we were bonding at least a little bit.

  Man, I was pretty damned desperate to make some new friends, huh?

  Chapter Ten

  By the time the guys had managed to put out the fire, Chad, Paul, Miles, and the NPCs had come up out of the basement with undeniably confused expressions wiped across their faces.

  “What’s going on out here?” Chad asked as he approached Pete and me while we continued to watch the brief but fun moment of chaos.

  “Nothin’ much,” Pete replied with a little grin, “how about for you guys? You have fun cowering in the basement?”

  “Don’t act like you weren’t two seconds from coming down.” Chad snapped before turning his attention to me, “Anyway, Zoey, are we good?”

  “We should be,” I replied as I watched a very clearly tired Brendo and Freddie start making their way toward us, “it’d be great if you could get the builders to start shifting the corpses into the trailer, but other than that I think we’ve made ourselves some new friends.”

  “New friends?” Paul asked amusedly, “Why, we’re always in need of new frie
nds.”

  “You can be a dick about it as much as you want, but the fact of the matter is we really could use some allies, especially when we’ve made it clear that we’re here to stay.”

  “Friends?” Freddie chuckled, showing that he’d finally gotten within hearing range, “Nah, what you guys need is some uniforms, maybe some banners. You’re looking very… Metois.”

  “Eh, it was the gear that was available,” I replied, only having just noticed then that we were still wearing the stolen uniforms, “anyway, everything back in working order?”

  “Yeah, should be right as rain,” Brendo said with a thankful sigh, “but this place? This place looks like it could use some sprucing up.”

  “We’ve got our ‘sprucing’ already, thanks.” Miles said before I could, his tone showing that he had just as much of a problem with the guys as Pete did, but neither Freddie nor Brendo were about to pay that kind of negativity.

  “You may have plans,” Freddie replied coolly, “but I’m positive that you guys haven’t got all the resources you need.”

  I was a bit uncomfortable with the fact that he knew that we needed stuff, but I decided that I’d be the one in the group to assume the best for once and put on my very best smile, “And I’m guessing that you guys wanna help us out with our sprucing?”

  “Can y’all lay off with the ‘sprucing’?” Pete groaned, “My ears can only handle so much.”

  “Ah, Pete,” Brendo laughed, “always acting like you’re the bravest and toughest, but can’t handle words like sprucing or mois-”

  “Say it and die.” Pete growled, “And if any of you try it to be funny, know that I’ll fuckin’ kill you too.”

  I’d met people who were pretty weird about stuff like that, I mean, I didn’t like the word moist either, but Pete genuinely seemed like he absolutely, utterly hated the word, and like he’d hit someone if they ever said it in person.

  “Alright, now that that uncomfortableness is out of the way,” Freddie half-laughed, “down to business. I’d like to offer our services and truck in exchange for something from you.”

  “And what would that something be?” I asked, convinced that it was going to be something immensely difficult and impossible to uphold.

  “I would like you to give us room and board.”

  “What was that?”

  I was utterly stunned by the request, mostly because I’d always just sort of thought they roamed around in their truck and only ever stopped to wreak havoc or rile up dinos.

  “We need a place to rest our head from time-to-time, I mean, we can’t be logged in all day every day, can we? Anyway, here looks like it’ll do just as well as any place, and it comes with the added bonus that we actually like you guys.”

  “And why’s that?” Paul interjected, “Because there’s so few of us and you can just take what you need if we don’t give it to you?”

  “No,” Brendo replied with what sounded like genuine offence in his voice, “because you guys are really freakin’ good at what you do. You said it yourself, there are so few of you, and yet you managed to take down the Metois.”

  “Only because you guys helped wreck the base.” Chad added somewhat timidly.

  “Which we were only able to do because you’d already buggered their security.” Freddie added quickly, “Face it, we couldn’t keep you guys down if we wanted to, and I just know that neither one of us wants to be on the other’s bad side, right?”

  I took a while to respond, mostly because I was getting pretty used to everyone cutting me out of the conversation, but, as I watched my builders and their soldiers working together, I couldn’t help but smile and nod, “Exactly. Question is though, do you think you’ll be able to hold up your end of the bargain? I mean, we’re probably gonna need a lot of resources.”

  Brendo scoffed at that then pointed to the semi, “Notice the big honkin’ truck?” he said with a laugh, “Don’t worry, we’ll be able to carry whatever you need. Hell, we might even be able to do it in a single trip.”

  I wanted to say something to him about his cockiness, but at the same time the way he said it wasn’t bragging, it was a simple statement of fact.

  “And all you guys need is for a place to rest every now and again?” I asked, “I mean, that offer seems a bit dubious at best.”

  “Only because you guys don’t know what it’s like to run a permanently mobile base.” Freddie replied with a little half-smile, “It has its perks, sure, but at the same time we’re always going to need some place to come back to. Look, do we have a deal or not? We can always go looking for some other base out there.”

  “I think that that should be up to Pete,” Miles said before I could respond, “after all, he’s gonna be the one most affected by this whole deal.”

  That’s when I realised just how serious this whole thing was. Pete being a bit snarky? Eh, everyone has a past. Miles opting for the best option for Pete? Now that was interesting, and, honestly, slightly concerning.

  “If Zoey trusts them then…” Pete started then trailed off with a sigh, “then I suppose that’s good enough for me. But if I catch wind that there’s any kind of fuckery going on-”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure there will be bloody murder all round.” Freddie interjected dismissively, “Don’t worry, we swear we aren’t going to screw you guys in any way, shape, or form, as long as we have a deal.”

  And just like that, it was back to me again, but I wasn’t worried, I basically had my response locked in from well before I’d first been asked about the deal.

  “As long as everyone is cordial with one another, I don’t see why we can’t do business.” I said before gesturing to Paul, “He’s just drawn up the plans and is about to hand them off to our primary engineer, so if you wanna go with him and find out exactly what we’re gonna need from you guys.”

  “Straight to it, I like that.” Freddie said as he looked over to Brendo, “You go with Paul, shout if you get into any trouble.”

  “I want to say that that won’t be necessary,” Brendo started before looking over at Paul, “but if I remember correctly, he shot Miles… how many times?”

  “Accidents happen,” Miles replied coolly, “so be careful.”

  “Ooh, is that a threat?” Brendo chuckled as Paul gestured for him to follow, “I’m sure this Paul fellow’s a good enough bloke, and I doubt that you’ve managed to corrupt him with all those bullshit stories about me.”

  ‘And here I thought I’d managed to fix all the bickering.’ I thought to myself with a little smile as I watched the undeniable tension building in my little group.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was concerned about how it was all going to play out, but the fact of the matter was that I’d finally developed something with Pete that I’d call friendship, and I’d also started to accept that Chad was right.

  We were moving on up, it was all happening, and there wasn’t a thing in the world that could stop us.

  …

  …

  +1 Foreshadowing Skill

  FRAGGED 9

  Chapter One

  Freddie and Brendo turned out to be trustworthy, and were quick to start fulfilling their end of the bargain by sending a large portion of their force out with the truck, but I could tell that they were starting to get nervous about the size of my little clan as the Js returned with a relative horde of newly conquered Freemen.

  “That’s a lot of people…” Brendo trailed off as he, Freddie, Chad, and I all stood at the gate, watching the Freemen pile in.

  “Sure is.” I replied happily, “Not that you have anything to worry about, what with that little thing you’ve got hidden away in your goodie box.”

  “For the last time,” Freddie interjected with a sigh, “we won’t be opening it inside the compound, and our men would sooner commit seppuku than open it without us.”

  “Oh, come on, we all wanna find out what we traded for.” I pleaded half-heartedly, “Aren’t you at least a little curious?”

&nb
sp; “Of course we’re curious,” Brendo replied, “we just don’t want Miles or Pete to decide that stealing whatever it is we’ve got is worth getting reamed out by you. Besides, it’s on the truck, and there ain’t no sense in us not seeing it when it gets opened.”

  Community Population: 68/290

  My oh my, haven’t you grown? It would appear that you’ve gone ahead and started to form a truly formidable group for yourself, which I’m sure you’re just going to drive into the ground at the first available opportunity. Anyway, your Freemen have started chatting, and while most of the conversation consists of contempt for you, they have also discovered that they’re capable of managing each other without your guidance, provided you keep your Specialist around, of course. Who knows, we might get lucky and they might finally overthrow you like I’ve always wanted.

  “Heh, looks I’ve just been made widely redundant,” I half-joked, “where’re your boys at?”

  “No idea,” Freddie replied as the new Freemen walked around and got started on a bunch of tasks, “shouldn’t be long though. Another ten minutes I’d wager.”

  “Brilliant,” I said with a smile before turning to Brendo, “and how’d things go with Paul and our architect?”

  “Eh, so-so. As I said before, there were some details that Paul had to ensure were just right.” Brendo responded almost too coolly, “That guy’s gonna end up some stressed middle-aged dude who offs himself because the chick at the cafe forgot to correctly layer his sandwich.”

  I wanted to argue, but he kind of had a point, so I instead looked to the bored-looking Chad, “Anything we should be worried about on our end?”

  Chad shrugged at that, “Things are looking pretty good, other than the fact that we’re gonna have fuck all to do for the next couple of hours.”

  To tell you the truth, I’d started to worry about that too, but mostly because I felt like if we stopped for too long we’d end up going soft and making mistakes.

  I couldn’t tell him that though, not after unloading like I had before, I didn’t want to put any more pressure on him than I already had.