by Arthur Stone
“I get it. So you’re a criminal, then.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
“It’s obvious. Where’d your low Humanity score come from, then?”
Moron. You don’t know what you’re talking about! And you’re still chatting, even with these fucking psychos after us!” So much not worrying.
The police car was high end. It had quickly made up for the time it lost on the turn. It would be up on them in a minute, if that.
“Should I hold the wheel again?” Rocky offered.
“What for?”
“So you can shoot at them again.”
“At a police car? Thanks a lot, Rocky. Really want to drive me into the red, don’t you?”
“I don’t get it. You were just out there shooting at people.”
“Yeah, at some random digi who attacked us first and clipped our car. But this is a cop. They have the right to pursue you, and you can’t shoot at them until they shoot first. The penalty for shooting one of them otherwise is about as high as shooting an immune who’s done nothing to you. Of course, that only applies in their cluster—outside of it, the penalty is negligible, and further away from it, you might not even lose anything.”
This Humanity rating must have meant a lot. The girl had shown no remorse before as the beat-up cops and even shot digis dead, but now she was as lawful as the judge from My Cousin Vinny.
“So what about the cops at the ATM?” Rocky reminded her.
“I didn’t kill them. You can disable them, that’s fine. But not too much, or the Machine might punish you. Bad omen.”
“Are there any good omens in this world? The cops are catching up to us, by the way.”
“Take the wheel.”
“I thought you said...”
“Just take the wheel, moron! Or you’re gonna take us straight into our next life!”
Kitty leaned out and took one shot, then returned to control of the vehicle. Rocky had barely held the wheel at all. The patrol car, which was going around the slightest turn possible, suddenly veered off through a low barrier and demolished a hot dog stand, then stopped short against a storefront.
“Shot the tire,” Kitty explained quietly. “Risky, but it doesn’t usually decrease your Humanity, as long as you don’t cripple any of them. Get your pistol ready. There’s a bridge coming up, and who’s there is anyone’s guess. Digis love bridges. Might as well call them bridgeys. Anyway, if those guys said anything over the radio, the law might be waiting for us.”
The car pushed out of the old alley, and the road widened significantly, merging with another and then curving down towards the promised river. Well, few would call it a river. Few would even call it a stream. More like a brook. Still, they couldn’t drive across it. Even an ATV would have trouble, since the brook’s banks were tall and steep.
There was a bridge across them, though. A tiny, two-lane bridge. A patrol car sat in front of the bridge, perpendicular, and the cop who had emerged was taking aim at them.
“Get down!” yelled Kitty, spinning the wheel.
The car squealed and fishtailed in unpredictable zigzags. The pistol cried out, one round after another. Despite the short range of the shot, only the fourth round hit, bouncing off of the car’s side.
“Shoot through the window! Shoot! At the sky, at the ground, anywhere, just shoot!” screamed Kitty.
She could have left that last part out. In his position, Rocky was unable to see anything. There was no way he could aim. He held his arm out the window and pulled the trigger. Of course he didn’t hit anyone, but the rhythm of the adversary’s shots was interrupted. The cop must have gotten nervous.
Still, their car absorbed a few more rounds before Kitty announced, “Alright, we’re past them.”
Rocky pulled his arm in and straightened up. “The car alright?”
“How should I know? I don’t know anything about cars.”
“They hit us a few times.”
“Cars are made of metal. They don’t bleed. As long as it drives, we keep going.”
Rocky looked around for damage. He couldn’t see anything, but he did catch a whiff of gasoline. The middle of the car shook violently. He was getting used to that, but still voiced his displeasure. “Careful! This thing’s no Jeep.”
“Just the cluster boundary. Even on level ground, you almost always shake when you cross it. Get used to it now.”
“Why does that happen? Some kind of force field?”
“Nah, nothing like that. There’s nothing between them. You don’t notice a change in the air. Just a straight, even crack in the pavement. Sometimes it’s narrow, sometimes it’s wide, and one side is often lower than another. This causes landslides sometimes, but not too often. I did once see a cluster boundary that cut off a gas pipeline. The gas all ran out and caught fire. Now that was something. The fire grew so tall you could see it for miles. How’s your knee?”
“We can drive for a year if we want to. My knee wouldn’t mind that at all.”
“No way. We’re getting out soon.”
“Why? The tank’s nearly full.”
“Rocky, some infecteds in these parts call cars ‘food trucks.’ They can hear the engine from a couple of miles away, and they can outrun us, even when we’re in a tin can like this one. The beasts almost never get tired, they don’t mind bullets, and their claws can rip the armor off an APC. Some can even take out a tank. You can drive on yourself, if you want. I’m going on foot. Better for your Health and revive count.”
“A tank? Are you overexaggerating again?”
“Underexaggerating, if anything.”
“What a place. Maybe I should go on foot, too.”
“Good call. Take some lifejuice. Your knee needs it. Come on, drink. Always keep an eye on your spore meter. Keep it topped up at all times, but never overdose. That’ll push your regen to the max, meaning your knee will heal faster.”
“I have a tough time believing this sludge will help my knee.”
“You’re an immune. You could rip your leg off and it would grow back in a few weeks.”
“Now you’re overexaggerating.”
“No, you can even grow it back faster than that. But you need a healer for that. A person with a special ability. Those guys are in serious demand, so they’re hard to get. It’s pretty good work. You sit in a stable, with basically no risk to yourself, just healing injured people and helping others with their abilities. I’m the unlucky one here. No magical lazy skill here, so I have to hang out in the wild where no girl belongs. SHIT!” Kitty shouted, veering off the road yet again.
The reason was obvious. Tracer rounds bounced off the asphalt in front of the bumper, showering them with debris and sparks. A spray of bullets covered the road. It would have cut them to ribbons, if Kitty hadn’t swerved.
Despite the sudden maneuver, the car was still struck. The trunk was devastated, the rear window shattered into a thousand splinters, and the smell of burning gas filled the cab.
Rocky risked a peek out the window and saw a helicopter flying overhead. He was about to tell Kitty that they’d hit the gas tank when the machine gunner began firing, even at his awkward angle.
The bastard hit. Several bullets pierced the roof, and one or two pinged loudly off the back of his seat, making his ears ring. It felt like one or two hit his flesh, too.
Kitty screamed. It wasn’t a scream of rage or fear. She had been hit, that much was obvious.
Rocky asked, nonetheless, as he tracked the helicopter, which was turning to make another pass. “You OK?”
“Alive,” she barked back. “Don’t let me distract you!”
Distract me from what? Rocky added some information that he thought was important. “The bastard’s turning around.
And our gas tank is hit.”
He didn’t have time to finish. A mortal sigh emerged from the rear of the car, and a suffocating chemical smoke flooded the cab. Tongues of flame licked the broken glass.
“Great!�
�� Rocky twisted his head, looking for any way out of the car and away from the incoming bullet storm.
“Hold on!” Kitty turned onto a tiny, barely visible trail that cut towards some woods a short distance away. Even a bicycle couldn’t have managed to take this trail at any reasonable speed. But the decision was the right one. The helicopter was unable to adjust its turn to follow them, and the shooter could hardly see them. He shot off a few volleys, but they missed widely.
“Fucking vulture! Kitty, we’re going to burn alive in here!”
The car heaved over a bump the size of a tree stump and nearly flipped. But that wasn’t the driver’s fault. She was trying to get around an unexpected obstacle, a cow carcass surrounded by three hunched diners in dirty clothes. The infecteds didn’t even react, but Rocky, in turn, had no time to react to their indifference. A sound like a muffled explosion came from under the hood and under his seat.
A few seconds later, the car was dead. It wasn’t going anywhere now.
“That’s it!” Kitty said through genuine tears, stumbling out of the open door, her grace and agility nowhere to be seen.
Rocky jumped out of his side, rushed around the front, and froze in front of the girl sitting in the grass, trying to think of what to do next. She was holding her right leg, trying to stop the bleeding from under her knee with both hands.
“Moron! What are you doing? Run! Run as fast as you can, and maybe you’ll make it!”
“What about you?”
“Are you blind? I can’t run on this. They shot clean through my femur! Run! Into the forest!”
Rocky turned and evaluated the lazy speed at which the helicopter was turning towards them. Kitty was right—even a man in full health would have little chance of escaping. The trees were sparse and offered little cover, so the bird of prey was in no hurry.
And with a one-legged companion, he’d never even reach those trees. On his one, it was possible.
He knew the girl was right, but he crouched in front of her and insisted. “On my back!”
“What?”
“You’re light. I’ll carry you.”
“Dammit, godson, quit fucking with me. Run! You said you would follow my orders. Why do I have to keep repeating them?”
“But...”
Kitty shoved his shoulders forward. The move made her fall on her back. She grimaced, holding her bloody knee to her body.
But Rocky wasn’t running anywhere. He didn’t see a point to that. He would hate to leave her here, and he would hate to go on without her even more. If they were to die, then they could die together. And respawn together. The helicopter was in no hurry. Its targets had been immobilized and were visibly harmless. They couldn’t flee over the open field. Rocky pulled the door open.
The rifle he happened to pull out of the case first was not good for situations requiring quick shooting. It held five rounds at a time. Kitty had made sure the weapons were loaded when they packed them. That didn’t sound like the best way to transport them, but now Rocky loved her foresight.
Five large-caliber cartridges were now at the ready. They could have hunted elephants with this ammunition, which more closely resembled tiny artillery shells than bullets.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough of them. They should have taken ten times as many. Five rounds was nothing. But Rocky had to push forward. He raised the weapon and pulled the bolt back, then released it forward, chambering one of the pointy-nosed missiles.
The helicopter was coming straight for them, and the crew obviously intended to hover right over its victims. Ideal conditions for a massacre. Even when it was farther, Rocky could see the two chairs behind the windshield. One held a man limp enough that he might be dead, while the other, the pilot, wore the same patterned uniform as the machine gunner. There was no way the police had called these guys in on the radio. They were just a couple of crazies with a passion for vertical violence.
Right now, Rocky had a passion for playing at violence, too.
Too bad the game would be a short one.
It would only last five rounds.
Rocky pressed the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, took aim at the cockpit, exhaled and held his breath, and smoothly pulled the trigger. The recoil was more powerful than he expected, but in a flash he had another round in the chamber.
Another shot. Another shot. And another. The recoil was too violent, the sound was hurting his ears, and there was no visible damage to the copter, but the pilot was reacting. The bird was approaching more slowly now.
As Rocky pressed the trigger for the fifth time, he noticed the helicopter’s glass start to crack and break apart. He might have hit the front of it a couple of times, which he hoped was making the crew nervous.
Rocky discarded the empty rifle and pulled out the shotgun. It wasn’t the right weapon for this scenario, of course, but it was better than trying to tackle a chopper with his bare hands.
But he didn’t have time to aim. It was all over in a flash.
The helicopter suddenly decided to accelerate its descent. It was roaring so loudly now that Rocky’s ears hurt almost as much as when he shot the rifle. It swerved its nose toward the earth, its tail poking up preposterously high in the air as it wavered and threatened to flip sideways. Before he had time to blink, the bird’s flight ended in disaster. The rotors hit the earth first, slicing out a fountain of dirt mixed with cut grass, followed by shards of the rotors themselves.
It was over in a moment. The helicopter fell with a deafening crash, rolling onto its side and shaking like a turtle trying desperately to right itself. A flash followed, and fire engulfed the chopper in a matter of seconds. Rocky felt a wave of heat against his face that pushed him involuntarily backwards.
Rocky didn’t understand what had brought the helicopter down, but he wasn’t about to complain. The flying machine gunner and his house had disintegrated. If you had told me it was only by the help of God or Satan, he wouldn’t have cared. They were safe from the bird.
He was happy to be alive, despite the fact that less than a minute ago he had been determined to send himself to another revive.
Now those who were going to send him there were dead.
The ghouls—the trio of infected enthusiastically digging into the tattered side of the cow—never moved. Their appetite had been cut dramatically short by a fragment from the rotor blades. Two were done for, and the third had lost the lower half of its body and now grumbled plaintively and floundered about in a pool of its own abnormally black blood.
Rocky made sure that the other side held no threat then, wincing at the unbearable heat, hurriedly pulled out the first-aid kit from under the driver's seat. He put out the fire licking at the second weapon case, but the bag was gone, consumed by the inferno covering the back of the car. Nothing else could be saved, as far as he could see. Time to tend to Kitty.
Clutching a shotgun in one hand and a first-aid kit in the other, he headed for the girl, who hadn’t moved.
Personal victory: unknown lunatic destroyed. Level 2. +5 Accuracy progress points. +1 Speed progress point. Personal victory: unknown lunatic destroyed. Level 2. +5 Accuracy progress points. +1 Speed progress point.
He paid no attention to this new batch of text. His thoughts were as muddled as boiled porridge now, the events of the last few minutes driving away any possible comprehension of the letters in front of the eyes. He ignored the explosion behind his back, too, as well as the noise of what sounded like a couple of gunshots. The helicopter and the car were both burning, and many things inside both could react noisily to such a rapid climb in temperature.
Kitty sat on the grass, clutching her wounded leg, still trying to stop the bleeding. Her face showed muffled but intense suffering—not surprising for a person who just had a bullet pass through her shin. But that wasn’t the primary expression in her eyes.
Kitty was surprised. Amazed, in fact. Rocky could never have imagined her looking so stunned, in fact.
He sat in
front of the girl and frantically looked through the medkit, explaining, “We’ll wrap that up with these bandages and then figure out what to do next. I pretty much have the whole evening free.”
“Rocky?” Kitty interjected, her voice betraying as much surprise as her expression.
“Huh?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“What do you mean, Kitty?”
“You’re kidding me.” She looked at him with her signature belittling sarcasm.
She was still Kitty, wounded or no.
“I wanted to talk about your leg, as it’s obviously the most pressing issue, but...”
“Rocky you just five out of five bullets, from a rifle you’ve never shot before, into the head and chest of a man piloting a flying helicopter. That’s an impossible feat for players much stronger than I am. And you’re not even strong. You’re just a moron. What is different about you? I have to know, Rocky.”
Chapter 17
Life Five: Kitty’s Forecast
A fallen tree lay across the road. Stepping over it would normally be easy, but that was assuming you were on a nature walk, enjoying the chirping of the birds and the new spring blossoms with a serenely dumb look on your face.
That was not the current situation. Rocky was carrying a shotgun, a rifle, and ammunition, but all of that was small change compared to Kitty. The girl clung to his shoulders, dangling her legs and holding a second rifle in her arms, with a look on her face like she was actually in control of her situation. Rocky had little faith that she was. Her wounds would have prescribed her to months of painkillers and bedrest in the real world.
She was light, but not a featherweight, and their cargo was significant. Rocky wasn’t about to risk his balance stepping on a log. He was starting to go around when Kitty stopped him. “Let’s take a break. Sit for at least five minutes. We can’t let you exhaust yourself.”
The man didn’t argue, despite how much he wanted to escape the helicopter crash site and its column of smoke beckoning to curious infecteds for miles around. Kitty was dead right. He couldn’t let himself become exhausted. This wasn’t a run through Central Park. A new terrifying scenario could crop up at any time. It was best to be at full strength when that happened—but failing that, at least not to be dripping in the sweat of exhaustion.
