Steven Strout ended up next to an old factory after high-tailing it away from his landing area. He’d hit a house, found jack-shit, and then run into an apartment complex that had a bunch of locked doors, and him with no way to break them open without creating a hell of a lot of noise.

His next stop bore gray slabs of concrete with rusted pipes jutting forth. It cut into the sunlight that tried to peek in from clouds far above. He moved with sure feet as he picked his way toward a shattered wall and found the interior. The building’s shattered ceiling provided some cover, but the factory looked like the bombed-out remains straight out of a World War II documentary.

Maybe it had been a waste station. As he had approached Steven had assumed the location had once housed a cannery, or maybe a shipping warehouse, but as he ducked through a hole the size of a Mac truck he reconsidered. Machinery sat rusting at intervals across the floor. Detritus littered the ground, and that was good for him because it would have betrayed any signs of footsteps. However, it would now work against him if anyone stumbled on the spot he had entered from.

The reek of mold and sewage met his nose, but he had smelled worse, far worse in his life. The worst had been when he’d been a cop and he had opened a storage container packed with the bodies of dozens of people from Nigeria who had tried to illegally sneak into the country. By comparison, this place smelled like paradise. There were some things you never forgot, like rotting bodies, and the fluids that had leaked out to create a soupy mass that was the worst stew ever.

But there was no time to sit around and think of the old days. He was here, in Chicken Dinner, and if he didn’t get his ass in gear and find some weapons, he was going to be one dead player. Just another stat for the streamers at home to track.

A noise somewhere deep within the building snapped his head around.

He spotted a piece of rebar about two feet long on the ground. Steven picked it up and found a small knob of concrete attached to the end, making a perfect club.

He knelt next to a rusted hunk of metal that had pipes running from the top to the floor. Steven closed his eyes and concentrated on the direction the noise had come from.

After a minute, he remembered to breathe.

* * *

Colin Lungren had located an old revolver loaded with .357 rounds. The wooden grips had a fine sheen, but the metal bore age marks and, if he wasn’t mistaken, an old bloodstain. He had found the chamber’s release along the side, slid it forward, swung out the cylinder, and inspected each round. They appeared to be in good shape and, just for luck, he had extracted each one and rubbed them on his pants in case they were wet. Didn’t guns have trouble firing if they were wet?

“Looky looky what the cat dragged my way,” he had whispered with a grin.

A bunch of assholes all looking for a way to kill each other and he had stumbled on a stash. Lucky him. The most luck he’d had in a dozen years of hard time. He had been looking down the barrel of a life sentence for a variety of crimes when the offer to join Chicken Dinner had come in. How many times had he wished he could get out and stretch his legs?

His home state of Oregon didn’t have the death penalty, a fact that he hated because if there was one guy who deserved to die, it was him. He could blame other people, situations, run-ins with the law, and an addiction to drugs that had left him a husk of a man, but he was the only one who could be blamed for killing those two young girls in a fit of PCP inspired rage.

The second floor of the old building had been a bust except for the gun. Through abandoned offices sparse with the remains of wood desks and chairs, he had moved, stopping to make a cursory search, finding that most of the drawers wouldn’t even open without some kind of leverage, and then moving on to the next room.

Colin had hoped to find food and water. Smitty had made it sound like they would find a convenience store full of goodies on every block, but so far, it had been a bust.

A beat-up convertible sat just outside of the building and that would be Colin’s next stop, because the red arrow had begun to point in the direction he needed to move if he wanted to avoid getting shocked. He crouched behind a desk and pulled out the device to confirm. The red had already closed in on his location and at this rate, he would be in the zone in minutes.

The car was red, beat to hell, and missing a door; it was the one thing he would use to move quickly. Upon first inspection, Colin had assumed it was just a piece of shit left to rust, and then he had spotted the keys sitting on the front seat.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The masochists who ran this operation were probably up there laughing. For all he knew they had drones monitoring the killings, keeping a steady feed. Maybe they planned to sell this as a show with the gratuitous violence blurred out. Hell, with this many games popping up, they could probably start an entire television network. Netflix for the violent. Hulu for the blood hungry.

Colin snorted at his own humor. He didn’t give a damn how this ended as long as he was the victor, but that required him to move on to a new location, somewhere safer, defensible, and with more weapons.

Colin swallowed and wished he had a bottle of water, or beer. Hell, he’d settle for a wine cooler or three.

He slid the tablet back in its pouch and moved on.

* * *

After Jethro Rowan had splashed down in a pond, because controlling a parachute wasn’t anything like action stars on television, he had stomped out of the water, shaken off his pants, and then when he had taken out his PDA the damn thing had stopped working.

He ran for a tree and ducked behind for cover. When no one blew his head off, he struck out for another tree, and waited behind it. After a few minutes of this, he decided that he was acting like one of those rookie players in the game who got his head popped in the first half hour.

Jethro wasn’t going out like that, no sir. He was a lean, mean, killing machine from Memphis Tennessee, and he knew how to kill thanks to doing a double tour in the United States Army.

Jethro had muscle where most people had flab. He could field strip an M4 in his sleep, and he knew how to stalk an insurgent and take them down with nothing but his K-bar. As far as players in Chicken Dinner, he knew he had been ranked right near the top, but there were still some tough customers 0ut there waiting to pop his head.

Still, being on the ground with no gear and no weapons was about as scary a situation as he had ever been in. That was when the factory had risen out of the countryside. He would find that place littered with gear, and so he had set off at a full run, until he had made it inside.

While he sat in a corner, alone and unmolested, he had taken out the electronic device and banged it against his hand a few times. The lights flickered and then came on as the tablet rebooted and came to life.

Then luck had really taken a turn for the good when he realized he had brushed up against a pipe, only to realize it was actually a gun.

Jethro studied the weapon in the terrible light and figured it was a Heckler and Koch MP5 variant, and it had a full magazine. Not only that, but it also had a long suppressor. While the suppressor wouldn’t make the gun silent, it would muffle his shots.

The gun wasn’t what he would have picked, but it was better than no weapon by a far cry. This was one of the most well-rounded weapons he could have hoped for, and it was a standard in large parts of the world. Unfortunately, outside of a cursory glance, he simply didn’t know the weapon that well.

Jethro blew out a breath as a shadow crossed the floor. Someone was in the factory and they had a quiet step.

No point in trying to wait this person out. He needed to move fast and fire first. If the other had a weapon, he didn’t know the first thing about getting into a gun fight except to try to hide, and there was no hiding in this game.

He rolled forward and came to his feet as quietly as he could manage. This was a process of maneuvering his body forward, trying not to crack his knee, and at the same time not shuffling around any of the debris on the ground, but he couldn’t help but make noise. He sucked in his breath as he stepped on a pile of old leaves or refuse. His face flushed and he thought about making a break for it. He could run pretty fast when his blood was up. Fear did that to a man and he was no stranger to the feeling of always watching his back in prison.

No point in hiding anymore. He had a gun and hopefully the other did not.

He crept toward a low machine that sat in near darkness, aimed the rifle, and waited for the person to appear in his sights.

* * *

Barbara Ouderkirk sat next to a burned-out Ford Explorer and considered her limited options. She had joined the game for a lot of reasons, and even though she hadn’t been rated very highly, she still felt like she could win. Over the last ten years, she had gone from being a peace-loving staunch defender of human rights to a taker of human life. It wasn’t that she had ever planned to get in the mercenary game, but after watching an entire village being slaughtered in Sudan, she had picked up a gun and gone to war.

It turned out that she was good at it.

Barbara was lean. She could run five miles and barely break a sweat. She worked her body just as hard as a man, and had the muscle to show for it. But she had done things, terrible things, while waging her own personal war, and those weighed on her conscience, so it had been like a bird coming home to roost when she’d applied, and was subsequently accepted into the game.

A bad drop, however, had set her back. She didn’t think her arm was broken, but her left wrist wasn’t going to be working normally anytime soon. Shit!

Over the last few minutes, she had observed two men sneak into the factory at different entry points, and she had a plan in mind.

Barbara didn’t have a weapon, not yet, and there were still forty players in the game. She could make a run for it, but this location had suddenly become quite the hotspot of activity. She knew guns, knew knives, and she was fairly certain that if she got her hand on a club she could wield it, but with only her left arm, that would be a bitch. Sitting here in civilian clothes was a long way from being fully armed.

Luck had been on her side; inside of the hulk of the Explorer she had located a knapsack underneath a genuine Kevlar vest. Inside the bag she had located a cache of frag grenades. Once she had on the vest, she had hung a pair of grenades from the front, but she kept one in her left hand. Then she hung the sack of grenades around her shoulder like a purse.

Barbara moved out to start sowing a little chaos.