“We have to get out of here fast,” Braddock said. He still held the lifeless metal body of Boothe’s drone under one arm. “I think I can block this door.”
He rummaged through a compartment in his torso and came out with a kind of metal wedge. Kneeling, he jammed it into the tiny gap beneath the door, then with a quick kick, hammered it in further.
“That should hold for a while. I have a few more of these pitons. Keep moving.”
Boothe did as instructed, rushing down the stairs with Scarlett. The noise around him was overwhelming. Shots coming from above and below echoing in the small space. Mariko and Braddock returned fire from behind him, while Scarlett ran ahead, blasting several more bandits that were unlucky enough to get in her way.
Boothe leaned over the banister and looked down just as another bandit peeked out to fire a shot upwards. He didn’t have much time to aim, but fired down at the bandit anyways. The three-round burst hit the bandit directly in the head, making his skull practically explode in a cloud of bone and brains.
Scarlett ran ahead, moving faster than Boothe was capable. She switched from shotgun to axe, and swung like mad as she rushed down the stairs. The screams of the bandits were added to the screams of the children, until it was hard to tell one from the other.
Behind them, Braddock knelt to wedge another door shut, while Mariko aimed her rifle at a bandit several floors above. The children ran down the stairs as fast as their wobbly legs would take them. A small boy, with half his head balding, only a few strands of greasy black hair covering his skin, tripped and fell into Boothe’s arms. The boy looked up at him, but his eyes rolled lazily as if he could not focus. Boothe wondered, not for the first time, if all of this was pointless. They may get the children out of this place only to have them die elsewhere. Maybe they were all beyond hope.
Still, he picked the boy up - he weighed almost nothing - and carried him over his left shoulder, while still holding the rifle in his right hand. He ran along with the rest of the children as they came down the final few flights of stairs, past the hacked-up bodies of the bandits that Scarlett had slaughtered.
“I’m at the ground floor,” Scarlett said. “I’m going to need some help here.”
“Mariko, can you cover our backs?” Braddock asked. He made his way through the crowd of children, catching up to Boothe and Scarlett at the bottom of the stairwell.
“Yes,” Mariko answered.
Boothe handed the boy on his shoulder to an older girl whose skin on the right side of her face resembled melted candlewax.
“What’s your name?” Boothe asked the girl.
“Maria,” she answered confidently.
“Take care of him, okay Maria?”
“I will,” she said, taking the boy into her arms. “I promise.”
Boothe gave her a smile, then glanced through the doorway into the lobby. He had only enough time to see a dozen bandits hiding behind counters and pillars before they opened fire and he was forced to duck his head back to avoid the spray of bullets.
“Here,” Braddock said, handing Scarlett a grenade with a blue casing. “Flashbang.”
She took it and said, “On three.”
She counted, one, two, three, then tossed the grenade. A loud explosion and a burst of light came from the doorway, and they all charged in.
Scarlett howled and ran for the reception counter on the left, where three dizzy bandits hid. Braddock rushed to the right, taking cover behind a pillar and firing at two bandits who hid around the corner in another hallway.
Boothe fired at two more who stumbled out from behind pillars, blinded by the flashbang. Bullets ripped through both men, spinning them to the ground. One still moved, raising a gun towards Boothe, but then a shot from the stairwell tore the top of his head off, killing him instantly. Mariko knelt in the doorway, aiming her rifle out, blowing away any bandit who dared show himself.
“More behind us,” Mariko said.
“Okay, we need to move,” Braddock ordered. “Let’s get the children to the car.”
“Got it,” Scarlett said. She ran forward, her shape transforming into a blur of movement. Another Bandit hiding near the front door barely had time to scream before Scarlett swung her axe through his neck, sending his head tumbling off his shoulders.
“Move,” Braddock said, and all the children poured out of the stairwell, running across the lobby to follow Scarlett out the front door and into the streets of Oklahoma City.
“Which way, Boothe?” Scarlett asked.
Boothe pressed a couple of buttons on the side of his goggles to pull up the map of the area that he had saved earlier and said, “To the right, two blocks.”
The streets of Oklahoma City were not as decimated as New Wichita had been. Many of the buildings still stood - many still even had windows unbroken. The sides of the streets were cluttered with broken cars and rubble, but the middle of several roads had been cleared and seemed as if they were regularly traversed.
Scarlett and Braddock led the children down the streets, moving as quickly as they were able. When they had left the building, more bandits chased after them, then even more enemies appeared in windows and storefronts, firing shots.
The bandits didn’t seem to want to hurt the children, and focused their fire solely on Boothe and his group. Bringing up the rear, Boothe and Mariko both stopped for a moment and fired at the enemies behind them.
Boothe aimed high at a man hiding in a broken window across the street and squeezed the trigger. The last shot of the burst tore right through the bandit’s left eye and ripped out the back of his skull. Boothe lowered his gun and started running alongside the children again.
“Good shot,” Mariko said.
“Thanks.”
Then a sudden sharp pain tore through his leg, and Boothe fell to the ground. A bullet hole had appeared in the side of his left thigh, an even larger hole where the bullet had exited down near his kneecap.
Boothe takes 4 DAMAGE!
Boothe HP – 2/6
Mariko knelt and spun, aiming at the gunman hanging out of a high window in a nearby office building. She fired a single shot, and the man screamed as he fell out of the building and slammed against the cement several stories below.
“You okay?” Mariko asked.
Boothe nodded and got back to his feet. She put an arm around his shoulder helping him along as he limped behind the children. They were almost there. He just needed to get to the car.
“We’re here,” Braddock’s voice came from his headset. “Do you have the key, Boothe?”
“Shit, yeah,” Boothe said. “I guess I should have been leading, sorry.”
“Just get here fast,” Scarlett said.
Mariko helped him into the parking garage and down the stairs to the lower level. There, everybody had crowded around a large black van. It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but at least there would be room to hold everybody. He didn’t know what they would have done if the vehicle had been a sports car or something.
“Are you okay?” Scarlett asked. “You got shot?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Boothe said. “I’ll medkit, once we get out of here.”
He limped over to the van and used the key to open the rear doors. There were no seats in the back, only a couple of humps above the wheels. Immediately, the children began filling the space, helping each other and packing in close. Boothe walked around to the driver’s side and got in, then leaned over to open the passenger door as well. There was room for three in the front, so Scarlett slid to the middle, while Braddock sat in the passenger seat. Mariko climbed into the back with the children. Once they had squeezed everybody inside and shut the door, Boothe turned the key in the ignition and the van started right up.
On the way out of town, more bandits fired at them, but the van was heavily armored and the bullets had no chance of piercing through its metal. Even the glass was bulletproof, so Boothe drove through without stopping until they had passed the quickly spreading inf
erno of the First National Center and were clear of the city. The gunfire faded away behind them. Some of the children in the back sobbed, but most were silent and after a few minutes the only sound was the soothing rumble of the van as it rolled along the highway.
Then a notification appeared.
Cthulwho has left Atomic Massacre.
Interlude 7
Friends
“Scarlett, can you drive?”
“Sure,” Scarlett replied, uneasily. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just going to call Paul. I’ll be right back.”
I yanked the headset from my ears and tossed it down onto the desk. I turned to Foster, who had been sitting in the chair behind me watching quietly, enjoying the intensity of the Injector battle, the fight in the stairwell, and the escape from the city. Now, Foster looked uncomfortable and worried.
“You want to play a little?” I offered. “I’m just going to go to the other room to call a friend.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot,” Foster said.
“The drive is going to be pretty long, so you probably won’t get to do anything. Just yell at me if we’re attacked by bandits or something.”
“Okay, no problem. I’ll try not to get you killed.”
“Yes please,” I said, then I stood up and let Foster sit in front of the computer. I walked out of the bedroom and down to the kitchen, where a phone with a long spiral cord hung on the wall. I grabbed it and punched in Paul’s number before sitting down at the table and taking a deep breath.
The phone rang three times before Paul picked up and said “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Bran.”
“Oh, hey man. What’s up?”
“Why’d you leave the group?”
“Well. Yeah, some of my friends here started playing. They bought tickets online and formed their own cell. They needed someone to help them power-level, so I joined them.”
“Some of your friends?” I asked.
“Yeah, just some of the guys that I go to school with here. You know, Will and Travis, and a couple others that I don’t think you know. We would have invited you, but we already have a Techie. Sorry, man.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I just thought that we could play together, you know. Even though I moved away, we could still hang out in the game.”
“Sorry Bran. These guys wanted me for their team,” Paul said. I could imagine him shrugging. Despite the apology, I knew that Paul wasn’t really sorry. Things were different now. I had moved away and we just weren’t friends anymore, that’s all there was to it.
“Alright, well good luck,” I said. “Talk to you later.”
“Okay, later man.”
Paul hung up first. I threw the phone receiver as hard as I could across the room, cracking it against the kitchen wall. The plastic shattered, the phone fell into pieces on the tiled floor. I shouldn’t have done that. Dad would be mad. Despite that, I still felt like breaking something.
Instead, I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. My face was hot, my eyes burned. I had to calm down. Had to get control of this anger. It was fine. I was making other friends. Paul didn’t matter anymore.
After a minute, I took a trash bag from under the sink and swept up the remains of the telephone. I unplugged the cradle from the wall and threw it in the garbage as well. Then I walked back to my room.
“I’ll go check on him in a minute,” Foster was saying as I approached my bedroom door. “Oh wait, here he is.”
On the computer monitor, Boothe still sat in the same place in the middle seat at the front of the van. Scarlett drove them along the highway at a casual pace.
“You okay?” Foster asked, putting the headset aside.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just one of my friends decided that he wanted to play with a different group.”
“Sorry man, that sucks,” Foster said. “Oh, I used a medkit to fix up your leg.”
“Cool,” I said.
He got up from the chair and motioned for me to take my seat, which I did.
“It’s getting late,” Foster said. “I think I better head on home.”
I glanced over at the clock, which read 11:30. I didn’t realize how much time had passed.
“Alright,” I said.
“It was fun though. The game is cool. We’ll have to hang out again sometime, for sure.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Sounds good.”
Foster grabbed a pen from the desk and wrote his phone number on a Taco Bonito napkin. “Just call me sometime if you want to hang out. I’m usually not busy.”
“Cool,” I said.
I walked with Foster to the front door, leaving Boothe sitting in that van. Hopefully if something happened, my teammates would be able to protect me.
“I’ll see you at school on Monday,” Foster said, then he walked out to his car that was parked on the street in front of the house - an old yellow Volkswagen.
“Okay, see ya,” I said.
Foster gave a little wave before I shut the door. I hoped that he really did have fun. I hadn’t paid much attention to him while playing the game, then getting mad had probably made everything uncomfortable. I hoped I hadn’t just lost two friends in one night.
When I sat back down at the computer, Scarlett was pulling the van into New Wichita.
“I’m back,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“What’s up with Paul?” Scarlett asked.
“He found some new friends.”
“He’s a dick,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Hey, Braddock and Mariko, do you guys want to join our cell permanently?”
“Really?” Braddock asked. “What do you think, Mariko?”
“Yes,” she answered quietly, after very little contemplation.
“It sounds good to me too,” Braddock said. “Invite us.”
I opened the Cell menu and typed their names into the invite box. A few moments later, the notifications popped up on the screen.
Braddock has joined Atomic Massacre.
Mariko has joined Atomic Massacre.
“Cool,” I said. “Welcome to the group.”
In New Wichita, we contacted Victor through our headsets.
“What did you do?” he asked, angrily.
I clicked one of the available responses on the screen.
“We killed The Injector and rescued a bunch of children,” Boothe said.
“This was supposed to be a recon mission,” Victor replied.
“We couldn’t leave them behind,” Scarlett said. “You’re just going to have to deal with it.”
He sighed. “I’ll alert Todd. You drive over to Randy’s Garage, and he’ll show you the back way into the Eagle’s Nest. We can’t have you parading all those children through town.”
So Scarlett drove us to Randy’s Garage. There, the redneck mechanic Todd didn’t say a word, instead motioning us to the back of the building. He opened a garage door, and guided us inside. The garage was so small that the van barely fit, and I grew claustrophobic as he closed the door behind us. Then a lift activated and the floor moved downwards, eventually opening into a long corridor underground.
“Take a left in the tunnel,” Victor said through our headsets. “That will lead you back to the Eagle’s Nest.”
We drove down the tunnel for a few minutes before arriving at a small outpost, where a single guard sat in a tiny one-room building surrounded with windows. He stepped out and pointed us towards a parking spot.
“Not many people come through this way,” the guard said, his words appearing in a comic-book bubble above his head. “Need any help unloading?”
Mariko opened the back door and the half-mutated, injured children stepped out, some falling over each other as they poured from the vehicle.
“Oh my lord,” the guard said. He stepped forward and helped a young girl to her feet, then we all walked together towards the elevator that would take us up to the main floor of the Eagle’s Nest.
Befo
re we got there, the doors opened and Victor stepped out.
“Dear God, I had no idea it was so bad,” he said when he spotted the children. Something about the way he said this line made me not believe him. I wasn’t sure if it was because Victor was lying, or because the voice actor who played him was not particularly good – as if they had asked one of the game designers to read his lines.
Victor led us to the elevator and we went up to a floor that I hadn’t seen before. The infirmary was directly across from the elevator doors, and down the hall I saw offices and a large laboratory. We guided the children into the infirmary, releasing them to the nurses and doctors inside.
When they were all accounted for, Victor turned to us and said “You did good. I’m sorry I doubted you. Those children needed you, and you went above and beyond to save them. We’ll make sure that they are given the best care available and then returned to their families, if we can find them.”
A window popped up on the screen to choose a response from a list of dialogue options. I wasn’t all that interested in pursuing the storyline further, so I clicked “Okay, does that mean that we earned a bigger reward?”
“I think you deserve it,” Victor said. “Considering all you went through to get them here safely.”
The Mission Complete box appeared.
MISSION COMPLETE: The Injector
You have gone above and beyond the mission requirements, not only scouting the place out, but destroying The Injector, disrupting the bandit’s base, and rescuing the kidnapped children. The Eagles could not be happier with your performance; therefore you’ve earned extra rewards.
REWARDS: $1500, New Vehicle (Vandura), Extra Metaticket
Boothe gains 2500XP
LEVEL UP!
Boothe reaches Level 9!
Ability point gained. Skill point gained.
Assign available points.
“An extra Metaticket?” Scarlett said. “So we can invite somebody else to play?”
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 22
