Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “Okay… Shit, what else could it be?” I muttered to myself as I tried ‘0-0-0-0’ in a last-ditch effort, which caused my screen to flash red and show a little ‘3 ATTEMPTS REMAINING’ under the failed passcode.

  “Hey, Zo?” Pete asked with a newfound giddiness in his voice from somewhere over to my right, “You can still track them, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I replied without looking up from my map, “but they’re on dinos, there’s no chance we’ll catch up to them, even if they do stop to eat or something. We’re stuck on foot, we’re a man down, and… yep, they’ve taken the girls with them. Great. Just great.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Pete proclaimed confidently before realising what he’d said, “Not the kidnapping stuff, I’m sure you’re right about that, but being stuck on foot.”

  “No,” Brendo groaned, “please don’t tell me you’re seriously considering…”

  “C’mon, kiddies!” Pete shouted over as I finally looked away from my map and saw that he’d gone over to the bus, “We’re goin’ dino hunting!”

  Chapter Six

  I wish I could tell you that after Pete had showed such enthusiasm for driving the bus we’d hopped right on and gone hammering after the Js in an epic race against time, but that would make me a dirty liar.

  “This thing clearly hasn’t driven in a long time,” Brendo said as he looked under the bonnet of the moss and vine-covered yellow school bus, “and it’s gonna take a while to get all the parts.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pete scoffed, “The engine’s damn near perfect, and it’s got all its wheels!”

  “Yeah, but the floor under the driver’s seat is missing, the windows are smashed to shit, and the thing’s outta gas.” Brendo replied with no small amount of sympathy, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think she’s worth the effort.”

  “Chad’s worth the effort.” Paul chimed in boldly as I joined Miles in inspecting the exterior of the bus, “He’s been a bit of a pain to be around since we lost the bunker, sure, but, God help me, I don’t wanna head to the Spire without the prick.”

  I got what Paul was saying, and as much as I wanted to accept that Brendo was right, I just couldn’t find it within myself to let Chad and his unconscious body get dragged all over Thren while we went off and had a little adventure.

  “So, what?” Miles practically scoffed as I started pulling vines off the bus, “We waste a bunch of time getting this thing back up to a roadworthy condition just so we can go save a guy who’s made it pretty clear that he has a really big issue with what we’re doing?”

  “It’s not a waste,” I said before Pete could snap at him about something or other, “if we can get this ol’ girl up and running we’ll be able to use her to get to the city, and she might even get us far enough into the city that we won’t have to worry about all those dicks that hang around the outskirts, if we actually put some effort in and armour her that is.”

  “See?” Pete said proudly, “Zoey says yes, which means we’re doing it.”

  I’m pretty sure everyone there knew that there was an unspoken ‘suck it’ directed at Miles somewhere there, but we all decided that it’d be for the best if we just didn’t bring it up.

  “So, what’s first on the list?” Brendo asked after taking a few steps back from the bus so as to get a better look at her.

  “Those bars on the windows in the classrooms,” I replied with a smile, “I reckon we should get them on the windshield and whatnot, reinforce that busted glass.”

  “That doesn’t get her running though.” Paul said as he rubbed his chin, “But I s’pose Miles and I can go on a fuel hunt while you guys get the armour done up.”

  I mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at Paul for offering to get rid of Miles for a little while, to which he simply replied with a nod.

  “Where would we even look though?” Miles asked, the negativity in his voice having died down some, “I mean, we’re not exactly in the immediate vicinity of a servo.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be a garage somewhere,” Paul replied as Pete wandered off somewhere toward the back of the school, “we might have to walk a while, but I recko-”

  “There’s a garage back here.” Pete interjected from where he stood just around the back corner of the school, “I think there’s a bunch of spare tyres and stuff in there.”

  Not going to lie, the fact that Paul’s generous offer had just been rendered useless made me feel kind of sorry for him, but he didn’t seem to mind, he actually used to his advantage in convincing Miles to come with him by simply waving for him to follow.

  Miles still didn’t seem a hundred percent convinced that that was the best use of his time, but he followed after Paul dutifully, leaving Brendo, Pete, and I to focus on the task of getting the bus up to spec in terms of armour and all-around safety.

  “Bars on the windows you said?” Brendo asked, “Sounds good to me, but have you got a way to get them out of the walls? Not trying to undermine you or anything, I just think it’s important that we remember that we haven’t got all the stuff we used to.”

  “That’s a fair point, Zo.” Pete added, “It’s one thing to fuel her up, it’s another thing entirely to extract bars from brick, especially now that we don’t have any Freemen.”

  To be perfectly honest, I’d kind of forgotten that we’d all but lost our little gang of worker bees and that we’d have to do the entire project by hand, but then I came to a little, somewhat giddy realisation.

  “Reckon this place has a shop-room?”

  “A shop-room?” Brendo asked confusedly, killing my excitement slightly, “What do you mean a ‘shop-room’?”

  “Like woodwork, metalwork, that kinda shit.” Pete answered before I could, “But yeah, I’d say so. There’s an annex by the bus garage. How come?”

  “Because we’re gonna need hammers,” I replied, my eagerness having returned to full strength, “big hammers.”

  Chapter Seven

  +1 Sledgehammer:

  Durability: 275/275

  Damage: 90

  Description: Do I really have to explain this one to you? It’s a big piece of fibreglass with a heavy part at the end. Just… I don’t know, go hit a wall or something.

  I turned the hefty hammer over in my hands a couple of times before grabbing it near the base of the head and letting it swing in my hand.

  “Surprised I can wield this with just the one hand,” I said with a little grin, “we should make some more shields and go all dwarven warrior on everyone’s arse.”

  “Or, and this is just a thought, we could do what we originally set out to do for once?” Pete suggested with a smile, “I promise we can go do that after we finish the bus.”

  “Bah, you’re just saying that because you wanna drive around like Otto from the Simpsons.” I replied dismissively as I started leading us back around to the front of the school.

  “Is that really so wrong?” Pete asked after letting out a chuckle, “Besides, the longer we wait, the further away Chad ge-who are you?”

  I was briefly thrown by the question, but then I noticed the three freshie-looking players approaching us from the forest beside us.

  “Do you really not remember us?” the one at the front, labelled as LoueyBillsTwisted_Uncle, asked as he and his posse came to a stop a few feet from us, “Come on, we were that group which almost qualified for your little ‘specialist’ course.”

  And that’s when I realised who they were and immediately felt an immense amount of guilt, “Oh, shit… How long have you been back in the game?”

  Uncle, otherwise known as one of the AFK guys from the clan, shrugged, “Fifteen minutes or so? Doesn’t matter, what matters is that me ‘n’ my mates ‘ere spawned in to discover that we’d been busted back down to noobs.”

  “Sorry about that,” Brendo chimed in, “I should’ve messaged you and told you to wait ‘til we got some more beds ready.”

  “Got more beds ready?” Uncle scoffed, “Is
that what y’all are doin’ here? Locking down the school so you can lay out some nice cots?”

  “We’re going to the Spire,” I proclaimed boldly, not liking the somewhat aggressive tone that Uncle had taken with Brendo, “you’re more than welcome to join us.”

  “Oh?” Uncle practically laughed, “We’re welcome to join you, are we?”

  “That… That is what I said, isn’t it?”

  “Sorry, let me rephrase my question,” Uncle started before clearing his throat, “why in the fuck do you think we’d wanna go anywhere with you dickheads? You do realise that we were pushing level fifty when we joined your clan, right? Do you know how many hours of work we lost because of you?”

  “Two… three?” Pete asked in an apparently deliberate attempt to aggravate them, and if that wasn’t enough, what he said next was more than enough to push Uncle and his friends over the edge, “I don’t know, sorry, I’m not sure how long it takes a couple o’ bitches to get to level fifty. Did it take a while?”

  “Bitches?” Uncle snarled with a slightly higher pitch than he’d intended, “Are you seriously calling us bitches?”

  “I mean, at the very least, you’re inept.” Pete replied with a shrug, “You said it yourself, you’ve been in the game for fifteen minutes and you’re still rockin’, what, basic axes and fibre clothing?”

  One of Uncle’s friends, TouchaTouchaTouchMe, took that as his cue to pull a bow off his back and aim it directly at Pete, “No, we’ve got a bit more than that.”

  Without saying another word, Touch let loose one of his arrows which, unsurprisingly, deflected off Pete’s armoured chest and flew harmlessly into the air.

  “Bad move.” Pete said with a sly grin before charging the archer with his hammer.

  Not wanting to leave him alone in battle, I too ran at the thoroughly terrified freshies, my hammer dragging along the ground as I did so, before I got within a few feet of Uncle and swung upward with as much strength as I could muster.

  I must say even I winced slightly as the weight head of my hammer drove into Uncle’s chin and went right on up his face, tearing away flesh, muscle, and bone as it did so and, unsurprisingly, knocking him flat on his back.

  The most fucked up part about it though?

  He was still alive.

  “Sorry,” I apologised unconvincingly as I lifted my hammer up onto my shoulder, “better luck next time.”

  With that, I swung my hammer down hard into his chest, which wasn’t my mark, I admit, but did just a good a job of killing him as hitting his head would’ve.

  TouchaTouchaTouchMe has been slain (World).

  LoueyBillsTwisted_Uncle has been slain (World).

  Sweet_SweetLemonade has been slain (World).

  “You know what?” Pete asked through a few heaved breaths as we stood over the bloody mulch we’d created, “I think I might like this hammer more than I liked my old rifle.”

  “Is that so?” Brendo chuckled, “I do have to admit that it has a sort of… primal charm.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” I said, my mind running a million miles an hour as I started thinking about just what the guys at our feet could represent, “Do you think there are more out there that are pissed with us over losing the base?”

  Pete shrugged at that and let a little smile creep across his lips, “Hope so,” he said before tapping his hammer, “would like to get to use this at least a couple of more times.”

  “Speaking of,” Brendo interjected, “should we be getting to work? I just know that Miles is gonna start yelling at you if we aren’t working.”

  “Heh, might have to knock him out too.” Pete half joked with an expression of faux curiosity.

  “You won’t,” I light-heartedly warned, “the last thing we need is to be another man down.”

  “True…” Pete trailed off as he clearly tried and failed to think of another way to convince me to let him knock out Miles, “Ah, well, s’pose we best get to work. What should we do with these?” he asked, prodding one of the bodies with his hammer.

  “Leave ‘em I reckon,” Brendo answered before I could, “won’t be here long enough for it to be a problem.”

  Heh, boy was he wrong.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m sorry,” Miles said, clearly not feeling sorry at all, “it just pisses me off a bit that Paul and I had to do all the real work while you three went off and hit some shit with hammers.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault that Zoey likes me more than she likes you.” Pete jabbed as Paul finished up with the last of the windscreen bars, “Besides, look at what we’ve achieved.”

  “Yes, a testament to your ego.” I joked.

  “And what was that bunker again?” Pete replied with grin, “Come on, this is great, and it means we’ll definitely be able to catch Chad. He’s still on the map, right?”

  “Yep,” Brendo said as he stripped away the few remaining vines at the rear of the bus, “and it looks like he’s still on the back of the Js’ steggie.”

  “Man, when that guy gets knocked out he gets knocked the fuck out,” Miles chuckled, the opportunity to make fun of Chad apparently returning some of his happier self, “how long until he gets up?”

  “If he gets up,” I clarified, “it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s already gotten up but has gone AFK to have a whinge about us in the forums.”

  “Yeah, he does like to kinda pile on the hate train.” Paul added somewhat disappointedly, “By the way, have you checked the forums? A lot of people are having a go about how we handled the loss of the bunker, and they’re absolutely slamming that fan-fic.”

  “Can we not call it ‘fan-fic’ when it so obviously should be called ‘creepy as shit’?” I asked as I fought the urge to look up the hate that was apparently being spewed my way, “Besides, it’s not like we can’t handle ourselves, right? I mean, look at those… dudes.”

  “What’s wro-oh…” Paul trailed off after following my gaze and spotting what I saw, “Oh, that could be a problem…”

  “You think?” Miles snapped as the rest of our group noticed what was gnawing down on the three bodies we’d failed to properly dispose of.

  “Raptors…” I muttered, “It’s always fucking raptors…”

  “Okay, so,” Pete whispered as he inched his way over to the bus’ door, “I’m gonna go ahead and suggest that we all get on the bus now.”

  “Are you sure we should be moving at all?” Paul asked between his teeth, “I mean, it hasn’t noticed us ye-eep…”

  Fun fact alert, ‘yeeep’ is now a word that is both forever in my vocabulary and memory as being both hilarious and an undeniable marker of doom due to the fact that pretty much all of us struggled to stifle a laugh after Paul had let it slip, followed swiftly by the raptor making its move on us with an unprecedented level of speed.

  By some sheer miracle, we all managed to pile into the bus and shut the door behind us, leaving just enough time for the blood-crazed raptor to slam into the side of the bus.

  “Well, good to know the armour wor-” Brendo started then stopped as the raptor let out its tell-tale call for backup.

  “Dibs on driving!” Pete shouted as he scrambled to the front of the bus and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Why are you s-whatever, just drive.” Miles said with no small amount of defeat in his voice.

  “Hold onto your hats, ladies,” Pete practically giggled through the bus’ PA system, “it’s about to get bumpy.”

  Bumpy was right as within seconds of me sitting down in the seat behind Pete we were slamming through the forest, the up-armoured bumper doing its work as we flattened trees and bushes alike.

  “They’re right on our tail!” Miles warned from the backseat, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

  “On the open road, maybe,” Pete replied through gritted teeth as we smashed through what looked like a pine but was about as wide as the bus and as brittle as glass, “but not through trees.”

  “Then I
’m gonna need some help!”

  Confident that Pete wasn’t going to get us killed, I decided to run to the back of the bus and give Miles and Paul a hand with throwing off the raptors by, you know, firing at them with my DMR.

  “Could really use a sniper right now…” Miles practically growled as our bullets did little to the raptor’s hides.

  “Can’t hear you!” Pete called back through the PA, “Busy driving!”

  “And why the Hell is that?” Miles snapped, “I mean, you’re the one who is most equipped to deal with dinos, so why aren’t you back here while I drive?”

  “Because you’d get us killed in nothing flat,” Pete sniped with a grin, “besides, you seem to be doing just fine without me.”

  Ah, yet another not at all subtle reference to the fact that they used to date.

  I tell you what, it was starting to grate on me, and that was only compounded by the fact that we had at least five raptors getting dangerously close to the back of the bus.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Brendo asked somewhat meekly from where he sat in the seats in front of ours, “Is there any room on that seat or..?”

  “Just make sure none of these fucks come up beside us, okay?” I replied with slightly more anger than I’d intended as I tried and failed to land shots on the aggressive dinos, “Also, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be ready to take Pete’s spot.”

  “Like Hell I’m leaving this wheel!” Pete shouted back with the excitement of crack addict with… well, crack.

  “I wasn’t saying it was going to be optional!”

  “Is that a threat, Zo?”

  “Not from me, no,” I said as I slid a fresh mag into my DMR, “but Miles on the other hand… Let’s just say that he looks to be getting a little annoyed with all this.”

  “A little annoyed?” Paul chuckled as he too reloaded, “He’s practically frothing at the mouth!”

  “I am not!” Miles squeaked defensively, “Whatever, shut up. Focus on the raptors.”