They made their way down the hill, sometimes stumbling over loose rocks and getting caught in stray branches and thorn bushes. They didn’t have time, and Kaden knew that one way or another, conflict was inevitable. It just mattered whether they could get to the craft wreckage before the scavengers, which would earn them valuable time, possibly to acquire some weapons before their competition arrived.
Kaden looked up from his mad dash down the hill. The cloud of dust was getting closer, the roar of the engines getting louder. He could make out two motor vehicles, one looking like a scrap vehicle with three wheels and the other being a more standard pick up truck. The wind lashed in his face, and he nearly tripped over a gnarly root, but luckily he managed to hop over it. Corporal, meanwhile, was moving over all the obstacles like a breeze. Must be their superior optical sensors.
After a few minutes of running, the duo managed to reach the bottom of the hill. Judging by the distance of the dust cloud on the nearby dirt road, they literally only had a few minutes before the scavengers arrived. Swiftly, Kaden ushered Corporal into the crashed storage room, where boxes of supplies lay scattered all over the cracked and bent metal floor.
There were a lot of goods. Packaged survival meals, textiles, basic resources like steel and electronic equipment. There was a lot to pick through, and for a moment, Kaden was slightly overwhelmed. When the ship crashed, it seemed the boxes seemed to fall and stack all over each other, where a treasure trove of resources were stacked up as high up as the ceiling. Quickly shaking himself from his awe, he picked up a nearby crowbar from a toolbox and tossed it to Corporal, who promptly caught it. Gripping his axe, Kaden hoisted a nearby fire extinguisher to use as a distraction.
That was when a familiar light illuminated itself in the corner of Kaden’s eye. Of course! The armory! Kaden was an idiot! If they were to defend the trove from raiders, they needed guns, not simple hand tools! The rumble of engines was getting ever closer. Voices even. Kaden waved a hand towards Corporal insistently, guiding him over to the armory door.
The armory was locked by a keycard slot, but unfortunately, he had no such card. Probably noticing Kaden’s panicked expression, Corporal pushed Kaden slightly to the side, ripping off the card slot and reaching in with his free hand into the electronics and wires. In a second, the big steel doors opened. Hacking ability. Obviously.
Inside, the armory’s storehouses of weapons were mainly left intact. Rows of gas operated machine guns and rail guns hung on racks all over the walls. Shelves full of side arms and bullets in another. Armor and tactical vests hung on hangers. Perfect.
Quickly nabbing two pairs of vests and helmets, he shoved a pair into Corporal’s hand who promptly put them on. Since Corporal only had one arm left, Kaden gave him a M1911 with a drum magazine. For himself, he’d be equipped with a 12 Gauge shotgun and a carbine. He could’ve taken the rail guns, but they took a few minutes to charge, in which minutes he didn’t have. Gesturing with hand signals, Kaden hugged the wall to the entrance of the armory, in which Corporal did the same, waiting for movement. They could definitely hear voices now, and the gunning of the engines had ceased.
“Good Lord!” a voice rang out, probably from the middle of the storage room. It was gruff and hoarse, possibly from a middle aged raider. “Look at this haul! Seems like some sort of transport vessel crash. It’s quite odd, there aren’t any bodies.”
“Don’t worry about no bodies!” Another voice responded. This voice sounded even rougher than the last. Like from someone who had chain smoked three packs of uranium cigarettes a day for twenty years. “If you find anyone here, kill them! They’re here to take our bounty. First, secure the area. I believe I heard some movement coming from the hallway. Could be some rat. Get going! I’m not paying you to idle.”
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Kaden gripped the butt of the shotgun, as the heavy stomps of boots came ever closer to the opened armory door. It was until a fat bald man with a white stubble beard and an eye patch lazily looked into the open armory door that Kaden made his move. Turning on his feet like a corkscrew, he swiveled to face the intruder, pointing the barrel of the shotgun at his face, his finger slamming on the trigger. He could momentarily see a hint of fear and shock from the man, before his face erupted in a spew of blood and bone fragments, as the buckshot blasted from the gun and ripped his face into pieces.
“Rufert!” A high pitched wail screamed out from the storage room. Peering from around the corner, Kaden fired a quick shotgun round, blasting a nearby box of copper plates. The man with the gruff voice ducked behind a crate, before popping up from and blasting his position with some pistol rounds. He looked nothing like he sounded like. His imagination of an even bigger rougher man was replaced with the reality of a thin and averagely built teenager. Possibly even younger than he was.
Kaden looked around the door to see no one behind the boxes anymore, until he felt a sharp spike of pain, as something hard hit him in the stomach. The snakey bugger had slithered around the walls and uppercut him in the chest, but not a moment too soon, Kaden heard a loud gunshot and a cry of pain. The attacker now had a bullet hole through their leg and Corporal’s pistol aimed at it. Taking this as his moment to strike, Kaden picked up his axe and rammed the teen with the butt of the axe into the bathroom across the hallway.
The door swung open, revealing a relatively sterile but disgusting room. Its original design of smooth porcelain tiles was covered in fecal matter and piss stains, with broken mirrors, lights, and tiles all over the room. Once Kaden had pushed him back, he knocked the pistol out of the man’s hand and prepared to strike him down.
It was then that the man bearhugged him, slamming his back into the sinks, causing him to groan in agony. His axe and his shotgun had skidded to the side, so his only hope was his carbine. Which was on his back. And one he couldn’t reach.
As they wrestled, with Kaden’s hands around the man’s neck and the man’s hands trying to pull and punch him wherever he could, Kaden remembered the bullet wound Corporal had given him, and therefore pushed the man’s leg to the side, causing him to fall to the floor.
That little window of time allowed Kaden to push the raider to the floor, get onto his back, before whamming the absolute shit out of him with the butt of his carbine. When it was clear the raider wouldn’t stop until either one of them was dead, Kaden ruthlessly dragged him to one of the opened stalls, its toilet contents full of murky brown shit. He remembered, It had been Taco Tuesday before the crash.
“You can’t do this!” The young man screamed, trying to get a handhold wherever possible. “I am the raider king’s son! He’ll have your neck and crush you to dust if I’m dead!” The teen thrashed constantly, trying to prevent his untimely demise.
“Then let your father pick you up, after he’s learned that his son had died from being drowned in a tub full of shit.” Kaden said coldly, before forcing the barely adult man’s head into the fecal sludge. Kaden felt slightly bad. The man tried to scream and wail, his arms flailing like a puppet, only to breath in toxic fecal sludge in the process. Kaden closed his eyes, pushing down even harder, just wishing for the spectacle to end. After a few minutes of pushing and resisting the urge to vomit, the raider teen lay still, his face fully supplanted in the brown sewage. Kaden looked at the corpse, before hearing gunshots outside the bathroom, realizing there was still a battle outside, and went out to help.
He found Corporal standing in a pile of five or six corpses, all of them either having a bullet wound in their heart or head. Kaden was obviously tired and slightly traumatized from his ordeal, but Corporal looked relatively calm. Just a blank and cold expression as they wielded that pistol of theirs.
“Are you finished?” Corporal asked, head not even turning toward him.
“Yeah,” Kaden said, his mind racing, lungs winded. “I had to drown him. He pushed me against the wall and knocked out my weapons. It was pretty bad. How’d you knock out the others?”
“Shot to the head or heart. It was very simple.” Corporal pointed the pistol to the corners of the room, as if imitating an encounter. “They would either show their chest or their head, and either one would be gone after I’ve seen them.”
Kaden huffed for air. “Is that all of them? Did we kill them all?” Corporal nodded, but held up a small metal box. It looked like a radio.
“Not all of them. While you were fighting, one of them radioed for reinforcements. They’ll be here in about two hours.”
Kaden laughed in between wheezes. “Heh. Guess my adrenaline won’t have the chance to go down. Let’s get to work, and then let’s get out of here.”