Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  Zoey’s Fighters had finally started taking hits again.

  Chapter Seven

  Community Population: 427/550

  “How’re we looking with those explosives, Pete?” I asked as I struggled to hold my position at the head of the stairwell instead of bolting for the dumbwaiter.

  “We’re all loaded,” Pete replied as he ran up the stairs towards me, “just gotta wait for the Bearie to roll on in.”

  “Fantastic.” I said, chancing a look over to Paul beyond the dozens of lines of vegetable gardens as he opened up the little door that led to the dumbwaiter, “Chad, call in the Freemen, then get yourself upstairs.”

  “You sure you don’t wanna go first?” Chad asked from where he stood beside me with Miles, “I mean, it’s just that you are kinda important.”

  “Exactly, can’t have me goin’ up there if it’s a trap.” I said before shooting him a wink, “Go on, I’ll meet you there in a tick, you too, Miles.”

  Community Population: 419/550

  That little notification was enough to spur Chad and Miles on, well, that and the fact that Pete and his squad had just bolted past him.

  Brendo wasn’t quite so easily spooked though, and took the opportunity to stand beside me and aim through the doorway, “Couldn’t have picked a better day, huh?”

  “I’m looking at it as a test of our resolve.” I replied coolly, “Seriously though, I’m just glad that this didn’t happen a few days ago, you know? Can you imagine if we were trying to escape before we had the dumbwaiter installed?”

  “You would’ve thought of something,” Brendo said with a confident smile, “you’re pretty fuckin’ good at thinking on your feet.”

  “Yeah, well, Thren doesn’t leave much of an option when it comes to quick thinking.” I said as humbly as I could as Freemen started pouring into the stairwell and through the door, “You should head over to the dumbwaiter, I’ll meet you over there.”

  “No way, you first.”

  “And who do you think you are to be giving me orders?” I asked with a sly grin as the last of the Freemen barrelled past us, “Go on, I’ve got this.”

  “I’m telling you ‘no’,” Brendo repeated more assertively, “we lose you and all this was for nothing. Trust me, I’ll make sure the stairs cave.”

  I wanted to say something about the whole process being automatic from there on out and that I just wanted to see the explosion, but I knew that Brendo didn’t want to hear that, and instead opted to run over to the others, though not before making an exaggerated huff in his direction.

  “Chad up yet?” I asked after pushing my way to the front of the pack and seeing that Paul was turning the crank beside the little door.

  “I fuckin’ hope so,” Paul chuckled, “otherwise I’m bringing this thing back down for no reason. Who’s next?”

  “You or Miles can go.” I said right as Pete’s explosives finally went off, sending a massive plume of dust and dirt out through the stairwell’s doors and coating our entire garden.

  “Screw that, you’re next.” Pete said after a few seconds of recovering from the blast that had clearly rocked us all to our cores, “I don’t know why you weren’t the first u-”

  That’s when a second, slightly quieter explosion went off, drawing everyone on the floor’s attention up to the newly flaming air filters on the roof, the dirt clearly having jammed up the works and caused some sort of malfunction.

  “I take it that that’s…” I trailed off as I turned my attention over to Paul, “That’s bad, right?”

  “Only if you require oxygen,” Paul replied as the dumbwaiter finally reached the bottom of its little shaft, “don’t worry, we should be fine for a few minutes, but we’re gonna have to move a whole lot faster than we have been.”

  “How much faster?” I asked as I reluctantly climbed into the wooden box, curling myself into as little a ball as I could in order to fit into the dumbwaiter.

  “Five, six minutes?” Paul responded somewhat uncertainly, “I don’t know, I wasn’t exactly prepared for this. The good news is that the irrigation system will keep us mostly safe from fire.”

  I went to ask what he meant by ‘mostly safe’, but the vent deciding to go ahead and fall from the ceiling and directly onto a group of poor Freemen shut me up.

  Community Population: 416/550

  “Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times,” Paul said as he started to turn the crank and I began to ascend, “and no flash photography!”

  You want to know a really great time to figure out that you’re semi-claustrophobic? When you’re trapped in the air in a tiny wooden box, suspended from a cable that could catch fire at any point and send you plummeting to your certain doom.

  So fun.

  Chapter Eight

  After surviving what was possibly one of the worst experiences of my entire life, I climbed out of the dumbwaiter just in time for it to start getting lowered back to the guys below.

  “And our great leader emerges!” Chad laughed from next to the table of weapons closest to where I’d come out, “Just tagging weapons for the girls to grab once they come up.”

  “Good call,” I said with a little sigh as I looked around at the smoke-free armoury, “hear what happened downstairs?”

  “Well, I heard something explode, then I heard something else explode, and then I kind of heard something crash.” Chad replied before pointing over to the large fans that were built into the roof right in front of the elevator’s doors, “That’s what really got me to thinkin’ things weren’t goin’ so good though.”

  “How do you… mean?” I asked after finally noticing that a small amount of ash was falling from the fans, “Shit, is there any way we can stop that?”

  “Sounds like a Paul problem to me,” Chad said nonchalantly, “don’t worry though, I’m sure we’ll be long gone before we get snowed-in.”

  “Yeah…” I replied without bothering to mask my concern, “You think we’ll be alright after this?”

  “I mean, I hope so, and I really think so, but I also think it’s going to be a right bitch to get this place back to running as it should be.”

  I nodded in agreement, “Damn shame though.”

  “You don’t sound all that upset.” Chad practically accused after finally taking his attention off the guns.

  “Don’t I?”

  “No, you really don’t.” Chad said, “You almost sound, dare I say it, happy.”

  “Eh, I wouldn’t say I’m happy,” I lied, “just that I’m… interested to see what we can do now that we’ve got the opportunity to go back to the drawing board.”

  “Ha! I knew it,” Chad laughed, “you couldn’t go one day with this place before realising that you had fuck all else to do.”

  “I resent that,” I replied with a grin, “but yeah, maybe a little. This design… there’s nothing to improve upon, you know? We expanded to the safest levels, we did everything ‘right’, but that’s all we could do. Other than that we’re just supposed to…”

  “Improve on ourselves?” Chad suggested, “Wasn’t that the whole plan? Get the base up to scratch so we could focus on getting ourselves up to a decent level in relative comfort and safety?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “But nothin’,” Chad chuckled, the amusement in his voice having died down slightly, “you were bored, and you don’t care that this will result in hours and hours of work that myself and the others have to do while you walk around, daydreaming about whatever the fuck it is you visualise your ideal gaming experience to be.”

  “Now, that’s not fair,” I replied, a slightly defensive tone in my voice, “you’re the one who led the Bearies here.”

  “I know!” Chad cried, “And instead of chastising me for that you’re, what, thinking of redecorating?”

  “Ugh, when did Paul become the fun one of you two?” I sighed in the hopes that it would take the spotlight off me.

  “I’m serious, Zo. I get where
you’re coming from, but we all put a lot of work into this place.”

  “So, what, you feel like I don’t appreciate the work you do enough, is that it?” I snapped, deciding to finally trade my lighter side for something with a bit more snark, “I’m sorry, dude, I’ve been enjoying it, I really have, and what we’ve, sorry, you’ve built here is great, but the truth is that I’m worried about becoming the next Metois.”

  “We won’t though! We’re completely different from them, and it’s not like we want to dominate all of Thren, is it?”

  “Isn’t it though?” I replied somewhat accusatorily, “I mean, really, isn’t that the big endgame? Get big enough to wipe out anyone who’d dare to oppose us and then..?”

  Chad didn’t have an answer, and I honestly couldn’t blame him for that, but at the same time he’d gone ahead and made me all introspective and shit, which was just a whole pot of no-no in my books.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I really do love this place, I promise, but this stuff with the Bearies and… I don’t know, it just kinda makes me feel like we aren’t ready, you know?”

  “I get that,” Chad sighed with no small amount of defeat in his voice, “but you need to accept that we’re not just ‘us’ anymore, we’re not just some little group fuckin’ around. We have a lot of people down here, and they all look up to you, and if they feel like you’re just gonna bail when the opportunity first presents itself.”

  “Hey, I never said I was gonna bail.”

  “You’re right, you just said that you weren’t totally opposed to the idea of a bailing being forced upon you, right?”

  I tried to think of some kind of response that wasn’t yes, but couldn’t find one, so instead settled for a tired “Yeah… Still though, that’s a bit different than me just leaving.”

  “True, but the end result is the same.”

  Truth be told, I was kind of enjoying our little exchange, if only because it forced me to really think about what I wanted and how it affected everyone else.

  And then the first of the girls, Felicity, came out of the dumbwaiter and walked over to Chad’s table, where she took a gun and a set of body armour that was nowhere near where she grabbed.

  “Okay, how about this,” I started, the young woman in front of me giving me an idea, “you and Brendo continue to run things while Paul and I go bush for a few days.”

  Chad went to argue, stopped, then shrugged, “I don’t see why that wouldn’t be a good idea.” he practically exhaled, “Don’t see why you wouldn’t just go on a few daytime trips though, catch some more dinos or whatever.”

  Stone_Eagle307 (Community): Bearie’s dead. Guy’s are insisting we come up, that cool with you?

  Zoey (Community): As long as the rest of the girls come up first.

  Stone_Eagle307 (Community): Good to see where we sit on your list of priorities :P

  Zoey (Community): Don’t you know it ;p

  “Guess we should start looking for a way up, huh?” Chad asked as Melinda came out of the dumbwaiter and joined Felicity in arming up.

  “I reckon Paul’ll have a way.” I replied somewhat coldly, “Look, dude, I need to keep everything happy and upbeat. I mean, shit, the other option is that I go back to being all mopey and crap, and no one wants that, do they?”

  “Yeah, s’pose…”

  “‘S’pose’?” I chuckled, “No, that ain’t the answer I’m going for. C’mon, man, this is supposed to be fun.”

  “But we were having fun,” Chad retorted, “everyone else has been loving this, you’re the only hold out. And it was your idea!”

  “I know for a fact that Paul isn’t nearly as stoked as he thought he’d be,” I replied, thinking back to our conversations, “why do you think he joined me on patrol tonight?”

  “I figured you asked him.”

  I shook my head somewhat wildly at that, “I was perfectly happy just doing it solo like the last couple of nights, but he insisted on joining me. He’s an architect, and now that everything that can be designed has been done there’s nothing for him to do.”

  Chad took a few seconds to respond to that as he clearly tried to think up some kind of logical argument for Paul, but eventually settled on coming back at me, “But you don’t have that problem, you always have something to do here. I don’t know how many times we have to have this conversat-”

  “This isn’t a conversation, Chad,” I interjected, “I’m telling you that this is the way it is. This isn’t like the other times, I’m not depressed or looking for some kind of affirmation of my existence, I’m happy, and I know what I want.”

  “And what you want is to go walkabout, is it?”

  “You know what? Yes, yes I wanna go walkabout. I’m happy with this place, I really am, but I need to work on myself. Level-wise.”

  Chad went to say something, but Paul tumbling out of the dumbwaiter along with enough smoke to smog up Sydney stopped him.

  “Things have gotten… difficult.” Paul said as he struggled up to his feet, “I think there’s a small chance we might have to bail on the base for a few hours.”

  “And just how small a chance is that?” I asked, watching in amazement as Miles clawed his way out of the dumbwaiter before forcing it back down the shaft.

  “I don’t know, eighty percent?” Paul replied right before the vents over by the elevator started spewing out smoke, “Hundred percent?”

  Chapter Nine

  “Yeah…” Miles said as he helped Pete out of the dumbwaiter, followed by Brendo who’d been stuffed in there with him rather unceremoniously, “We probably should’ve left about five minutes ago.”

  “What’s the plan then?” I asked concernedly, “We can’t just let everyone down there suffocate.”

  That’s when Pete, while making no effort to hide his giddy grin, puffed out his chest and let out a happy little sound, “I’ve got a plan.”

  “He doesn’t have a plan,” Miles snapped, “he just wants to blow more shit up.”

  I tilted my head confusedly as I looked over to Pete who showed absolutely no sign that he had any interest in arguing Miles’ statement, “What does he mean by that?”

  “Grenade launcher.” Pete replied boldly, “One of the things from my arsenal that I was saving for a very special occasion.”

  “That special occasion being the act of demolishing all our hard work,” Miles bit back, “this moron thinks it’s completely acceptable to just blast our way out through the ceiling.”

  I could almost feel Chad’s eyes boring into the back of my head, but I refused to let him get me down as I pictured using something that had some real oomph.

  “Zoey?” Brendo asked, pulling me back to reality after I’d spent a few seconds reflecting Pete’s smile, “You alright?”

  “Am I alright?” I practically giggled, “Man, I am so much more than ‘alright’. Pete, go grab the launcher.”

  “Yes, boss.” Pete replied before practically skipping over to the far corner of the armoury.

  “You sure wanna do this?” Paul asked, a small smile on his face to reflect my ear-to-ear one, “I mean, downstairs is gonna be hard enough, but this? This is gonna take a lot more work to get back together.”

  “I’m sure.” I said with a confident nod after catching the almost handgun-like grenade launcher that Pete had javelined at me, “Not like we’ve got many options.”

  GeriatricSuperHero gave you a Grenade Launcher (single):

  Durability: 1000/1000

  Damage: 750

  Ammo Type: 40mm

  Description: This grenade launcher is the single-loaded variant, meaning you have to load it between each shot. This is because you can’t be trusted with the pretty six-shot. Anyway, point at face, pull trigger, banana the top half of your body.

  “Please, Zo, think about this.” Chad pretty much whispered as I took aim at a section of the ceiling that no one was standing under, “We’ve put so much work into all this, and now you’re just gon-”

  I didn’t
give him the opportunity to finish his sentence before I’d pulled the trigger, barely half-a-second passing before the grenade had hit the roof.

  For a few seconds there was nothing but the explosion, the sound ringing in our ears, the fire burning in our eyes, but then there was dirt.

  So. Much. Dirt.

  Seriously, it just started piling in, and we all had to take a few steps back in order to avoid the encroaching mound.

  “How long ‘til it stops?” Brendo asked after a few more seconds of pouring.

  “We’re pretty far down, even here.” Paul replied coolly, “Means we’ll have a way to climb up at least.”

  “Not if the pile gets too high.” I scoffed amusedly before a stressing realisation landed on me, “Dig!”

  “What?” Brendo chuckled as I started frantically digging at the dirt, throwing every way I could so as to displace the pile.

  “If the dirt clogs the hole we’ll have an even harder time getting out.” I said between throwing handfuls of dirt, “Now, come on, help me clear this!”

  Just like that, everyone lurched into action, with the exception of the ever-helpful Chad, who seemed perfectly content watching us basically embody the tale of Hercules and the mole hill.

  I thought ‘To Hell with him.’ though, and refused to let his negative, if not outright counterproductive attitude stop me from digging.

  In a way, it was kind of fun, you know, except for the fact that the fans had started pumping smoke into the room, making it even harder to focus on where the dirt was coming from, and suddenly we had more hands.

  Turns out a few more of the men had managed to come up in the dumbwaiter, and they were more than eager to help us.

  And then it happened.

  Daylight.

  I can’t begin to explain how happy I was as that first beam of light flooded into the armoury, nor how relieved I was that the smoke was finding its way out through the gap, like some kind of earth-built chimney.