by Isaac Stone
Chapter 11
The dust began to die down and Kurt walked out from behind the rock to see what damage the bomb had done.
In place of the ruined building was a large crater.
The combined explosions destroyed everything that was left on the ground where the damaged building once stood. Before the mine had detonated, it was still possible to see the outline of a building and machine shop. Now only the scattered masonry fragments were witness to what was once in this location. At least Kurt had enough since to flip his helmet screen down when the blast took place. Now, the only data he received from the heads up display was a notice that Camper was out of the game. Big surprise, that.
Kurt turned around and looked at the others. They stood up slow and looked at the cloud that formed over the location from the dust and smoke raised into the air. Bits and pieces of what was once the building continued to fall, but nothing larger than a small rock. Kurt stood there and said nothing as a few pebbles bounced off his helmet, he was too busy looking at the extra points they'd just earned.
“Was that really necessary?” Lavon asked him.
“I’m afraid Camper is no longer with us,” Kurt explained. “Too bad, he was a good team member. But hey he was right about the big points bonus for destroying the objective,” It wasn’t funny and he knew it.
“On the bright side,” Detra brought up, “it does mean one less to compete with or split at the end of the game.” He was busy checking his rifle out for damage.
“If we don’t win the game,” Jesse added. “We get nothing. A bigger take for all of us if there is nothing at the end is still nothing. We could’ve used Camper.” She worked out get sand out of her weapon.
“I merely wanted to put a better spin on it,” Detra explained.
“I want to know why that timer was messed-up,” Kurt spoke aloud. “I know I set it right and it still delayed. Doesn’t make sense. Rashid’s company provided us with everything in those packs. Why supply us with defective weapons? Seems to me he wanted us out of the way for some reason.”
“Or someone screwed up badly,” Detra offered. “That would be my take on it.”
“You’re dead either way,” Lavon pointed out. “And I don’t see what the owner of Deathmatch gains with us out of the game, if they didn't want us they'd just pull the plug and ship us home without our supper. I’d pick door number two.”
While Kurt pondered over the defective timer, his radio began to squawk. He pulled it out of his pouch and brought it up to face level. Right now, he didn’t care if anyone heard it or not.
“Kurt here,” he identified himself. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with this time?” He waited for a response.
It came with speed. “This is Archie Saknesson, Game Command Central,” an angry voice stammered over the radio. “Did someone just blow up that building where we sent you?”
“Yes, they did,” Kurt returned. “It was me and I’d like an explanation as to why my land mine had a defective timer. I set it for five minutes and it didn’t explode for over ten.”
A stream of obscenities hurled from the speaker. Kurt allowed them to continue for a moment. When the speaker paused to catch his breath, Kurt took the opportunity to cut in on his tirade.
“So, where do you want me to deliver this code book, or is it still something you still need?”
“We’ll deal with it later, but right now, I want you to hook up with Moca’s Marauders. They’re another group two miles to the northwest. They were sent in to relive a group pinned down by enemy fire.” He gave Kurt the map coordinates. “I strongly advise you to get there in due haste. Hand the book to Mark Stevens, who runs the Marauders. And try not to fuck it up this time!” The radio went silent.
Kurt smiled again as he placed the radio away. “Appears I messed up someone’s plans, man the Command AI is really convincing, a foul-mouthed officer straight out of the history books,” he announced to everyone. “We've being ordered to sync up with another player group. They might be our competition, but the campaign scenario is still operating as if this is a big co-op battle.”
It took them another twenty minutes to make the trek down the road to the position given to Kurt. At least it was on the road, Kurt reflected as he walked. No one had any desire to venture further into that desert. The sun baked the energy out of everything it touched and he doubted it was a good idea to venture out into the wilderness in this heat. Regardless of what form you took.
As they traveled closer to the town, signs of habitation became regular. Most of these took the form of adobe dwellings, but some were made of brick. Once again, Kurt didn’t know if they were real or the product of the Ares wraparound simulator. He suspected the bulk were generic plastic frames used to mark out the position of the house and Ares covered them with an optical illusion to make them appear solid. They were in a hurry to get to the action, so no one bothered to check.
There next objective came into view as they walked down the road when Kurt spotted a man who wore desert camouflage. He stood next to a group of men in similar dress. There were at least five of them who stood out and off to one side. The sounds of gunfire repeated in the distance, and Kurt realized that he'd gotten so used to the sounds of war that he'd been operating since yesterday with that as just background noise. They really were running this as a massive co-op battle with a brutal PvP finish. Kurt noted that the man carried a classic M-16 automatic rifle. He was impressed; the thing appeared to be a real collector’s piece. He wondered if there was some way he could try it, but decided not to ask.
“Kurt?” the man asked him as he walked up to him. He nodded.
“Do you have that code book?” he asked again.
Kurt reached into his backpack. He pulled out the codex in question. Kurt held it up so the man could see the words “Code Book” printed on one side, and then handed it to him. The man thumbed through the book, shrugged, then put it in his own backpack.
“Stevens,” he introduced himself with an extended hand. “Mark Stevens. Did Command tell you I would be here?” Kurt nodded. He took the hand and shook it.
After Kurt introduced his crew, he turned back to Stevens. “So what do they want accomplished now? They weren’t too happy when I blew up that ammunition depot. We got the points for it, but I think the story mode has the AI scripted to be pissed about it.”
“Oh it was you that did that?” Stevens asked. He laughed. “Good for you, I’m a bit tired of this scenario and the way it’s turned out. More of a Nuke Town shootout kind of guy. Old school.”
He was a tall man, a good six feet six and covered in blond hair with a big handle bar mustache to match. Stevens appeared to be one of those people who could float out of any situation and escaped unscathed.
“Alright people, now that we've got the book,” Stevens said after thumbing through the codebook. “I need your help.”
Kurt turned his head slightly to the side. “Help? What do you need and what can you do for me?”
“I’ve got several boxes of shells you might want,” Stevens explained. He gestured to the side of the road.
Kurt walked over and looked at the green ammunition boxes. He unclipped one and opened it. Perfect, these were shells at least two of the rifles could use. Plenty to help them out, unlike that last place where everything was off spec.
“Four of my men are pinned down by sniper fire,” Stevens told Kurt. He pointed in the direction of the small group of buildings. “Can you go in there and take out the shooters? The damned hell creatures have taken a position on the top floor and my people can’t leave the other side of the plaza. You can have all the ammo you want if they get out unscathed.”
“Sounds good,” Kurt, said to the other man. He turned back to his group. “Okay, Skull Legion we’re down to the basics, but we need that ammo, so let’s saddle up and go.”
In a reverse “U” formation, they advanced to the two buildings that stood next to the plaza. This was part of a larger develo
pment, but they didn’t see anything in sight. The sounds of gunfire grew louder as they approached. When the team was fifty yards away from the nearest building, Kurt swung his assault rifle up and looked through the scope.
The plaza appeared before him in profile. Kurt could see the gamer squad trapped down on the main floor of the plaza. They were inside some kind of pavilion. It didn’t provide them much cover, as the bullets from the snipers tore through the roof on it. The pavilion did give them some visual protection, but that was about it.
As they approached from the other side, Kurt gave Detra the silent hand signal to advance.
“Yeah, I don’t see a problem with that,” Detra whispered sarcastically. He turned around and went forward.
Detra stood in the middle of the plaza and grinned back at every one.
Then he walked right into a sniper's bullet.
Kurt saw it happen through his scope. He had his rifle up to arm level and looked through the display in time to see Detra go down while gunfire rained down upon his body from the building overhead. There were twice as many hostiles than Steven had indicated, and they were coming from more directions than indicated. Meaning the snipers could have wiped out the gamers below at any moment, having flanked them, and were waiting for just such a rescue attempt. Damn that was advanced AI.
The only thing he could do was make everyone scatter and run for the cover of the buildings at the rear of the plaza. More gunfire came from the buildings and concrete from the plaza floor sputtered every place. Shards of stone bounced off his body and spun into the air.
They ran as fast as they could to get cover. In a few seconds, the Skull Legion covered the better part of the plaza, back to where they’d entered. Kurt could hear the hard breathing from his crew. He peered around the corner of a building to look up at the snipers, but couldn’t see a thing. Bullets that ricocheted off the wall and to the ground let him know the snipers could still see him.
“That leaves three of us,” Kurt told the two women. “I don’t know what these ‘screen berets’ did to get themselves into such a jam, but I guess they thought the real world would match the one they played behind the terminal.” He checked his magazine to make sure it was still loaded.
“Yeah, that was dumb,” Lavon told him. “And it cost us Detra.” She checked her rifle too to make sure it had a full round of ammunition.
Kurt looked at the upper part of the Heads up Display inside the helmet. It showed “Detra is Dead” and faded. At least he knew the man was out of the game. Right now, he was probably headed to the recovery room debriefing with the others who were out of the game. He had begun to notice that only head shots seemed to take out his comrades, and that despite numerous body damage he had seen on himself, his team, and others in the save points, it appeared that the head shots were the real killers.
Through his scope, Kurt could see the group they were supposed to rescue congregating on the other side of the plaza. He couldn’t think of a way to get them out unless they went into that building and eliminated the snipers. Right now, he couldn’t see any way to do that. If there was any way at all.
He turned to the women behind him. “We may have to go into the building the sniper uses,” Kurt informed them. “It’s the only way I can see to flush them out. That sniper can stay up there forever and the other group will be pinned down.” It was the only plan he had right then.
“Or we can leave and go to city center,” Jesse pointed out. “No reason to stay here and help that other group. What if we all are killed in side that building? Doesn’t seem worth it to me.”
Kurt was about to agree with her when the drone swung around the nearest building and fired point blank into the level of the building where the sniper had rained death down on them. The entire top of the building exploded. The rocket it launched detonated inside the room used by the sniper. Kurt stood there in disbelief as the glass and steel rained down from what remained of the top level of the building.
“Solved that problem,” Jesse spoke up as she watched the drone spin away and over the horizon.
“Where the hell did that thing come from?” Lavon asked aloud. “I didn’t even hear it approach.”
“Maybe Stevens called in a drone strike, if he was supposed to complete a quest by receiving the codebook, maybe he had extra points or coin to spend,” Kurt replied. “What bothers me is why they brought in the drone after we were sent in to rescue that group.”
The other team, which consisted of twelve game players, slowly made their way across the plaza. All of them had helmets on, a smart idea considering how hot this zone was until a few seconds ago. Pieces of the burning fragments of the top building littered the plaza as smoke billowed out from the top of the building.
For some reason, there was a commotion from the back of the group, which moved toward them. Kurt couldn’t see what caused it, but he had a bad feeling about it.
The group of gamers turned into a mob as they began to flee in his direction. At that point, Kurt was able to see what caused the commotion from their rear.
Dwarf zombies.
The entire backfield of the plaza swarmed with dwarf zombies. They didn’t have guns, but some of them carried knives and rocks, and all of them had the same face of tentacles and fangs that he'd seen on the other Nazi Zombies. It was plain that they wanted to kill the gamers they were after. Kurt didn’t speculate on the crazed mind that came up with this scenario. Instead, he dropped to the ground and yelled at the women to do the same.
“Get as many dwarves as you can!” he yelled at the women, suddenly feeling quite insane for having just yelled what he had.
Kurt flipped his assault rifle to single shot and began to fire at the advancing mob of hell creatures. They were green and dripped slime from the openings that could be considered mouths. He watched them go down as the gamers ran in terror from the fiends. The women opened up too and began to decimate the mob of dwarf Nazi Zombies in pursuit.
“Where did those things come from?” Lavon yelled to him. “I didn’t see them when we arrived.”
“I didn’t hear the drone either,” Kurt cried back to them.
By now, the first few members of the other team reached their position. They stopped and looked to Kurt for help since he barked the commands.
“You the Skull Legion that was supposed to get us out?” one young man asked him in a Philly accent.
“Yes!” Kurt yelled. “Now get down here with whatever rifle you have and shoot with us. We need all the help we can get right now!”
Kurt watched more of the zombie dwarfs go down as his rifle fired away at the advancing horde. Whenever one of the other groups tried to join up with them, he had them get down and begin to shoot at the dwarf NZ’s. Most of the other team made it over to their side, but a few went down when the dwarfs piled up on them and stabbed their forms to death. It was zombie dwarf hunting season and Kurt pulled the trigger every time one of the creatures was in his gunsight. This time a small hit counter appeared in the corner of his Heads up Display. It let him know how many of the things he’d taken out. Kurt didn’t bother to look at it as he was busy killing the creatures who attacked them.
The dwarf zombies eventually figured out that the gamers had guns and they didn’t. The mob stopped and split into two sections, each one spilling into the building next to them. For a minute, Kurt thought they might be in full retreat as he watched them through the scope. The dwarfs from hell flowed into the main entrances of the buildings to the side of the plaza.
However, it only revealed what was behind the dwarf NZ’s.
Kurt watched in shock as a squad of twelve new Nazi Zombies advanced toward them. This was the larger version in black torn uniforms with SS symbols all over them. But what really disgusted him were the weapons they possessed. Each one carried a vintage WWII Sten gun and swept the plaza with bullets as they advanced.
“We need to fall back!” Kurt ordered his group as more of the gamers they'd been sent to rescue were
mowed down. “Anyone got a grenade launcher mod?”
“Got one,” Lavon shouted as she jumped up in the air and began to fire with it.
Before Kurt could tell her to get back down, Lavon was on the advance with her rifle held at that shoulder. She slowly walked toward the squad of NZ’s as they came toward her. However, she was out in the open and a live target. Lavon was good, one of the best at Team Deathmatch, but Kurt was beginning to realize that while being a hardcore gamer afforded them the mental flexibility to immerse themselves in the game in a way that a true military veteran might not be able to without suffering from flashback trauma, they were still gamers. They were raised on Destiny and Borderlands and every other first person shooter where re-spawns and regenerating health bars were the norm, so they tended to fight as if they were Rambo, but in Killstreak, they weren't quite that overpowered. The game was sickeningly balanced, which made it challenging as hell.
Kurt could see her through the scope and decided to pick off the enemy before he needed to worry about her. He took out one of the monstrosities to the right with a single shot and watched it fall to the ground. Jesse, and a few of the other team, realized what he had in mind and began to fire at the creatures as they moved slow across the plaza.
Two things happened at the same time.
Lavon fired the launcher on her rifle and the grenade hurled toward the line of Nazi Zombies.
The second thing was a bullet found her the moment she sent the grenade on its way. Lavon went down with a head wound and Kurt’s HuD registered “Lavon is Dead”.
This was something he didn’t need at the present.
The grenade exploded in the middle of the NZ line. The beasts were either killed instantly or sent flying into the air with pieces of them falling away as they soared.
