Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “No you bloody couldn’t have,” Miles chuckled as he and Chad did their part to widen the hole in the concrete, “you two were way too busy chatting away to notice anything. Proof, you didn’t know we’d gotten through until Brendo opened his mouth.”

  I went to say something snide, but stopped when Chad extended a hand down the hole and gestured for me to grab it, “Ugh… Grab Pete first,” I pretty much spat as I helped the bleeding sniper to his feet, “twit’s probably only got about a minute left.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Pete chuckled after Chad had grabbed his hand and I’d started pushing him up, “now would be a really good time for someone to have a bandage.”

  “Probably in the main building, sorry.” Brendo announced with a sigh, “I think I remember seeing some stuff behind the desk in the lobby.”

  “What about you?” I asked as I jumped and grabbed Chad’s hand, allowing him to pull me up into the small, two-person quarters that they were hiding in, “I mean, you’d have to at least have some medical crap on you, right?”

  “I did,” Brendo replied, “but I needed most of it to get myself patched up, and Chad over here needed a bit of treatment too.”

  I gave a look to Chad that asked ‘What happened?’ without me actually having to say the words, and earned myself a somewhat dejected sigh.

  “I broke my ankle on the last step.” Chad groaned out disappointedly, “Messed myself up pretty bad actually, ended up having to crawl over here while Miles got Brendo to safety.”

  “So…” Pete trailed off as he propped himself up against the bunkbed along the right wall, “what you’re saying is that I’m screwed, am I getting that right?”

  “Not in as many words, but yeah, basically.”

  I didn’t like how pessimistic he was being, either of them actually, but I understood where it was coming from.

  The rest of us would be able to wait it out, but Pete… Pete didn’t have that luxury, and while he would be able to respawn should shit get too dire, that still meant that he would be restarting from the ground up, which I knew he absolutely hated the idea of doing.

  “How long until daylight?” I asked without actually wanting the answer.

  “Five, maybe ten minutes?” Miles replied after looking through the window, “Pete has maybe three or four.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Pete chuckled before turning somewhat cold, “Alright, time for plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?” Chad asked concernedly.

  “Simple.” Pete replied coolly, “Brendo and Miles hook me under my arms, increasing our speed, while Chad and Zo cover us from up here.”

  “And why the Hell would I do that?” Brendo snapped.

  “Because it’s your mate’s fault that all this is happening,” Pete bit back, “if he hadn’t have pulled away and left us for dead we would’ve at least had a fighting chance.”

  Brendo clearly went to argue that point, but instead sighed and gave in, “Alright, fair enough.”

  “When did you wanna move?” Miles asked, “And what door did you wanna use? Because I think the front one’s as good as out of service.”

  “Now-ish would be good.” Pete replied, clearly as surprised as I was that Miles hadn’t put up more of a fight, “and yeah, I thought we could use that side door.”

  “You sure?” I asked, “I mean, we aren’t gonna be able to provide much cover for you guys if you go that way.”

  “There won’t be any need for cover until we’re in the final leg,” Brendo clarified, apparently coming to grips with Pete’s plan as he and Miles picked him up, “for the most part we’ll be able to dodge them, we’ll just need you to draw their attention when we have nowhere to go but forward.”

  The logic was sound, unsurprisingly, and while I still had my concerns about the whole thing, the three with the most to lose clearly weren’t burdened with that.

  “Are you positive you don’t want us to come with?” I asked in a final bid to try to get them to see if we could wait it out, “I mean, we’ll be more useful down there, surely.”

  “Maybe,” Pete said with a shrug, “but if we die we’ll just respawn, if you die, we lose our leader. Trust me, it’s better if you two just stay here.”

  That’s when I realised that Pete wasn’t having Chad stay with me to help with covering them, he was assigning me a bodyguard.

  While I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea that he thought I needed protection, I appreciated the gesture, and decided that, in an act of thanks, I’d let him take the others for what I was near-positive was a suicide mission.

  “Best of luck.” I said flatly, catching my monotonous tone only after I’d spoken, “See you in the morning.”

  “You bloody better,” Pete chuckled, “I’m done with being abandoned.”

  Chapter Eight

  I wish I could say that the whole thing went off with some kind of dramatic turn, or maybe even that I managed to put down one of the Bearies, but the truth is that the guys were completely out of our line of sight for pretty much the entire time, and they didn’t exactly have a hard time getting into the main building.

  GeriatricSuperHero (Community): All good. Getting patched up now.

  Zoey (Community): Cheers for the update.

  “Well, that could’ve gone worse,” Chad practically groaned after trilling his lips, “how you holdin’ up? You anywhere near as bored as me?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I chuckled in response before sitting on the lower bunk and sighing, “Sorry for not trusting you more with Freddie and Brendo, you were right to be suspicious.”

  “I don’t know, Brendo seems pretty cool,” Chad replied with a smile, “besides, as I said before, there’s no way I could’ve told you before I did, and there wasn’t much else you could do after that.”

  “Heh, keep that in mind for if that fuck-stain comes back around here.” I said, “Seriously though, do you think they’ll be a problem?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Chad breathed out with a shrug, “he could come by to pick up Brendo and piss off again, or he could decide that this place isn’t worth nearly the amount of trouble that he thought it was and leave us alone forever.”

  “I honestly don’t know which of those options I prefer,” I sighed before rubbing my brow, “like you said, Brendo’s good people, I’d hate to see him go.”

  “Well, we can’t rightly keep him here if he wants to leave, can we?”

  “That’s not what I’m concerned about,” I replied coldly, “what happens if Brendo tells Freddie to go fuck himself? I don’t imagine we’ll wanna get caught in that crossfire.”

  Chad took a few seconds to catch my meaning, but when he did it hit him hard, “Oh… Shit, yeah… I mean, we don’t exactly have the facilities to protect him, do we?”

  “Exactly, and we definitely don’t have the firepower to keep them at bay.”

  “So… so, we might end up selling Brendo up the river, eh?”

  “Or puttin’ him down.” I said through gritted teeth, “At the end of the day, better him than us. He ain’t exactly part of us, is he?”

  “Yeah,” Chad replied unsurely, “but neither were Miles or Pete before we let them into the fray.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m sayin’ that it’s better to lose what we have as heroes than keep it by being dogs.”

  We sat on that thought a while, both of us letting it hang in the air and sort of stew over us, before I finally let out a little laugh and smiled, “Man, this game is way more dramatic than it has to be.”

  “Yeah, well, you know…” Chad said, reflecting my grin, “that’s the nature of Thren. Doesn’t ever quite feel like a game, does it?”

  “You got that righ…” I trailed off as I noticed the orange glow of early morning creeping up through the window, “Oh, this is gonna be interesting.”

  Both Chad and I wasted no time in running over to the window to see how the Bearies were going to react to the siren that was dra
wing the Muties back to wherever it is they went.

  “What do you reckon they’re gonn-Jesus!” Chad shrieked as we both hit the deck and the Bearies started exploding, launching spikes in every direction in a bloody blur.

  Good morning. I see you’ve, disappointingly, survived the new monsters, and seen what happens in order to prevent any salvaging of their genetic material, not that you’d be smart enough to do that. Anyway, hope you’re looking forward to seeing them again tonight.

  “What a night,” I laughed as I scrambled up to my feet, “what a night…”

  “Tell me about it.” Chad said right before I dropped down the hole he and the others had created, “You think the others are gonna be okay?”

  “Probably a bit stir-crazy, but I reckon other than that they’ll be fine.” I replied after a second of making sure I hadn’t broken my ankles by dropping down, “What do you think the day’s gonna bring?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” Chad chuckled as he joined me and then gestured for me to lead the way out of the broom closet, “I just hope it’s at least a little bit quieter than yesterday.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.” I said after walking out into the blood-covered compound, “Think these’ll bring in any dinos?”

  “I don’t think so,” Chad replied, “and even if we do end up pullin’ a troupe of raptors or somethin’, I’m sure we’ll be able to handle it.”

  “And I’m sure you didn’t think we’d be attacked by those Bearie things either.”

  “Touché.” Chad chuckled, “Are we really stickin’ with ‘Bearie’ though? Seems a bit…”

  I didn’t understand why he’d trailed off until I heard the truck rolling into the compound and turned to see that it had stopped just a few feet inside the main gate.

  “Couldn’t even give us five fuckin’ minutes…” I muttered before doing my best to look domineering.

  “Glad to see you made it through the night.” Freddie called over as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the semi’s cabin, “Figured those bear-things would’ve made you mincemeat by this point.”

  “What do you want?” Chad practically spat, forgoing any chance of nicety that could’ve been.

  I didn’t wholly mind though, I wasn’t exactly in the friendliest mood either.

  “It’s a funny story really.” Freddie replied, maintaining his composure as he strode over to the front of his semi where he came to stand and make a show of the fact that he had a big ol’ machine gun in his hands, “You see, after Miles, Pete, and yourself made it clear that me and mine weren’t welcome here, we decided that we’d have ourselves a little chat.”

  “And that chat involved running off at the first sign of trouble, did it?” I mocked, “Seriously, I figured a guy with a truck like that would at least have some balls.”

  Freddie clearly didn’t appreciate me insinuating that he was ball-less, but he wanted to keep up the appearance of being better than everyone else, “That was part of it, yes, but the bigger, more pertinent item of discussion was that we decided there was no reason for us to keep you around. I mean, we could just use the workers you’ve got and let them run this place.”

  I didn’t react the way I expected, as instead of freaking out, or at the very least showing signs of being surprised, I simply let out a tired, slightly annoyed sigh, “Alright, come on then.” I half-heartedly goaded before taking aim at him, “I got shit to do today, and I’d rather we finished this off quickly.”

  It was mostly a bluff, show Freddie that I wasn’t scared of him and all that in the hopes that he’d back down like the pussy he’d proven himself to be, but instead he took aim at me with his puree maker.

  “This is gonna get real messy real fast…” Chad muttered through the corner of his mouth as he, too, took aim.

  “Doesn’t have to go down this way,” Freddie called, “you guys could just leave.”

  It was a disingenuous offer, I knew that, but some part of me hoped that it was true.

  I didn’t get much of an opportunity to ponder that though as, with barely any warning, I heard Brendo bellow “Oi, fuck-face!” followed swiftly by the sound of his meaty gun firing at a ridiculous RPM.

  The look on Freddie’s face as the bullets flew all around him was probably the best part, but we didn’t get more than about two seconds of it before he’d made a mad scramble for his door and clambered up into the truck which was already pulling away.

  “Come on, fuckin’ bring it, you chickenshit prick!”

  Brendo continued to fire right up until the truck had well and truly pulled away, maybe even a little afterward, and seemed to only stop because his gun ran out of ammo.

  “That… wasn’t how I expected that to go down. Like… at all…” Chad managed to get out past his incredibly shaky voice.

  “Yeah, I don’t expect that you did.” Brendo replied gruffly before stalking toward the main gate, “He’ll be back, and he’ll be prepared. You guys really ought to think about bolstering your defences.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked, following after him as I did.

  “I’m not welcome in my old clan, and you guys aren’t exactly jumpin’ at the opportunity to recruit the mate of the guy who just threatened to take everything you’ve worked for.”

  “That’s not how I see it,” I said after looking to the guys for confirmation, “I don’t think that’s how any of us see it.”

  “Then how do you see it?” Brendo half-snapped as he came to a halt, forcing me to do the same, “Because that seems to be the only one that makes sense.”

  “I… We see you as the bloke who, following nothin’ but his own sense of right and wrong, decided to turn on his mate to help defend us.”

  “And you patched me up.” Chad added, “Didn’t have to do that, didn’t even have to tell me that you had the stuff to do that.”

  “You also saved my arse,” Pete chimed in before Brendo could open his mouth, “and owing you one while you’re out walk-about is gonna be a bitch of a thing for me to deal with.”

  Things fell quiet for a while after that, Brendo opening his mouth a few times, me doing the same, but at the end of it we all kind of realised that we’d said everything that needed to be said on the matter.

  “Fine, guess I’ll stick around.” Brendo said, trying and failing to hide a smile before looking up over my shoulder with a slightly confused face, “Heh, would you look at that?”

  I followed his eyes and nearly jumped as I saw Paul come out of the building, a grin from ear-to-ear plastered on his face, “Hey!” he called over as he walked over, “Sounded like you guys had quite the night!”

  “Where. The fuck. Have you been?” I growled without moving, “We’ve been havin’ shit pile after shit pile dumped all over us, and you’ve been, what? Fuckin’ around with doodles?”

  That was enough to stop Paul in his tracks, but not enough to wipe the smile off his face, “Well, thanks to my ‘fucking around with doodles’, it’s done.”

  “What do you mean ‘it’s done’?” Chad asked as he stormed over toward the increasingly anxious Paul.

  “The bunker design.” Paul replied past an apple-sized lump in his throat, “It’s finished, we can start building the bunker.”

  And, with that, my anger was washed away, “What?” I practically laughed as I started towards him with a newfound smile, “You mean…”

  “I mean that the workers can get started as soon as you’re ready.” Paul announced proudly, his happiness returning following the dissipation of the rage and frustration that had been levelled at him, “Shouldn’t take ‘em too long either, provided we keep the numbers we’ve got.”

  I was so excited, I wanted to scream and jump and shriek and let out a dozen years of ‘girly’ expressions all at once, but stopped just short of actually starting.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul asked, apparently seeing the slightly devastated look on my face.

  “We can’t build it…” I muttered disappointedly a
s my realisation played over and over again in my head, “We’ve gotta bolster our defences.”

  “Shit…” Chad cursed under his breath, “Is there any chance that we won’t need all the stuff?”

  “Not if you wanna do the job right.” Brendo chimed in, “Freddie’s gonna come back hard, and he’s gonna be fixin’ to absolutely obliterate this place. Our only chance is if we really lock ourselves down.”

  I wanted to believe that maybe Brendo was just trying to make us waste all of our resources, but that brief brush with suspicion was quickly quashed as I realised it was just wishful thinking.

  “Ugh…” I groaned as I turned around and looked at the main gate, “I swear, I’m gonna kill the absolute fuck out of that guy.”

  FRAGGED 10

  Chapter One

  The first hour or so following Freddie’s attempted takeover of our compound was mostly spent with me stomping around and moaning about how we were wasting our resources on defences, especially the massive wooden wall that blocked the destroyed main gate.

  Don’t get me wrong, I knew why we were doing it, it was just that I really didn’t want to.

  We’d finally hit a point where we could start building our underground base, and that cocksuck had gone ahead and screwed it all up.

  “Claymores are set,” Pete announced as he came up to meet me on the roof of the main building, “and the Js are making sure everyone stays safe and within the borders of the compound.”

  “Guess that’s a good thing…” I sighed dejectedly, “Thanks for ammo for my… my…”

  “DMR?” Pete asked amusedly.

  “Yeah, DMR, that’s the one.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Pete said after coming to stand by my side, then smiled when he saw just how glum I looked, “Hey, cheer up, I just gave up all my claymores for this little defence play of ours when I could’ve just as easily run off into the woods.”

  “So why didn’t you?” I asked genuinely, “You have that option, why not take it?”