After the little radio chat, Bunden relayed the relevant parts of the conversation to Walter, and together, they grudgingly let the cat woman into their camp. Well, Bunden was grudging, but Walter definitely wasn’t. Walter was asking all sorts of questions, some if not all, the cat woman couldn’t even begin to understand.

As an olive branch between the two of them, Bunden told Walter to “bother someone else” this had the unintended side effect of Walter starting to bug the shit out of Bunden. But something important came out when Walter was questioning the cat woman.

“What’s your name.”

“I don’t have a name, but I have been called the white one before.”

Bunden interjected at this point.

“Well, the ‘White one’ isn’t a real name. I was thinking Snow White. What about you, Walter?”

“Yea, that doesn’t seem that horrible.”

Walter continued to annoy Bunden until the sun went fully below the horizon. Then it was sack time. Bunden kept the same watch pattern of just him and Walter on watch. He didn’t feel like sleeping when his back wasn’t covered by someone he felt wouldn’t backstab him the second he fell unconscious.

Walter bitched, complained, and sucked it up like a true soldier. But Walter insisted on Bunden being on first watch. So Bunden sat inside the cave with his rifle pointed at the tarp covering the outside. Bunden was accustomed to the noises of a night cave. The dripping of a leak we hadn’t yet found, the flapping of the tarp covering the entrance as the wind pushed against it. He was semi-conscious as he stared at the tarp. But, something woke him from his semi-conscious state.

Bunden glanced around. He trusted his instincts; they had experienced more than he will ever know. Snow and Walter were still asleep. Bunden noticed that Walter had left his MG3 pointed toward the tarp, with a belt in the feed tray. The sound was so faint Bunden almost missed it. It was a slight clack and rattle. It was out of place.

Bunden quietly moved over to Walter and shook him awake.

“Wha…”

The rest of Walter’s question was cut off as Bunden placed a hand over his mouth.

“Shhh”

Walter’s eyes were wide, but they were not looking at Bunden. They were looking at the tarp, hiding them from whatever was out there, but concealing it in turn. The small sounds and lack of sight made both of their imaginations run wild for what could be out there. Bunden turned to Snow and poked her arm.

Her eyes shot open, and her ears started rotating like radar dishes. Bunden put one finger over his mouth as she took in a breath to ask a question.

“What are you doing?”

She said in a slightly agitated tone like she didn’t think getting woken up in the middle of the night was at all weird. Bunden let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Bunden replied with a clipped and harsh tone but kept it below a whisper.

“Shut the fuck up. We got stuff outside, and we haven’t heard anything friendly sounds. So unless you want to fight whatever is out there from this small cave, I recommend shutting the fucking hell up.”

Bunden brought his rifle up to his shoulder, pressed the cross-bolt safety to the fire position, and got ready to fight for his life.

____________________________________________________________________________

After sanitizing our hands using the small strips of Clorox wipes we got from the MREs. I taught Kazamir how to make scrambled eggs and ‘bacon,’ I had no clue if the meat came from a pig or something else. Alexei woke up just as we were finishing up cooking. Probably from the smell.

“So, you're awake. You were trying to cross the border just like us…”

I was quickly interrupted by Alexei telling me to go fuck myself. Kazamir was just confused by the joke. I told Kazamir not to worry about it and went straight back to enjoying my bacon while it was still warm. I made up for my bad joke by tossing him a bag of bacon, the bag I got from one of the old empty MRE’s I still had in my pack.

He nodded in appreciation. Then he sniffed the mouth-watering smell of cooked bacon.

“I like mine a little bit crispy hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind, doesn’t matter what it is; it's better than those fucking veggie omelet MREs you made me eat.”

Alexei joked. We sat in silence for a while as we ate. All of us not wanting our food to get cold because we were talking. I finished first, so I decided to take a small nap. I propped myself against a wheel of the stolen cart and let my eyes droop, and my body go limp.

I got shaken awake by Alexei, he was telling me something, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying because I was still half asleep. I focused my weary brain on what was being said, and all the words began to make sense. Alexei had woken me up because he had heard something that sounded like distant gunfire. Just as he started to explain where it had come from, he was rudely interrupted by the sound of gunfire.

Alexei just shrugged at this interruption, gestured in the direction of the distant gunfire, and finished his sentence.

“Sounds like whoever is letting the .40 bang is still kicking.”

I sprung up onto my feet, most of the fatigue gone from my body as the thoughts of potential comrades being in danger filled me with energy.

“Grab your shit; we are going to help them out.”

In a matter of minutes, all of our equipment was packed up. But our campsite wasn’t. It was still obvious that someone had made this place a campsite, and there wasn’t much we could do about it, though, so I just told Alexei and Kazamir to leave it. When both of them said they were ready, I quickly checked them over and made sure that we had everything. Alexei was fine, Kazamir wasn’t.

It only took a couple of minutes to find and pack up the stuff Kazamir was missing. At that time, a really big shit show started up. It sounded like someone had access to an armory full of explosives and no officer to tell them, ‘no, that’s not a good idea.’ It got so bad we could feel the thumping of the explosions reverberate in our chests. Alexei turned to me and commented on the sounds.

“Seems like the weather is explosives with a side chance of high-speed lead. Maybe we should build a shelter instead of walking toward it.”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The tone suggested that it was a half-hearted attempt at best. I responded in a reasonable tone. After all, I would always like people to interject if they thought I was doing something stupid.

“Yea, but we came out here to find the rest of civilization. No matter if they are a bit primitive.”

Kazamir raised an eyebrow at that statement but didn’t say anything as I packed the final thing into his bag and handed the bag back to him.

I gestured for both of them to follow me and started marching toward the active warzone. After a few steps, I heard them start following me. I was expecting to have to walk way farther than we actually had to, but it turns out that the gunshots were coming from the other side of a mountain.

It had taken about 2 hours for us to fully get around the mountain, and in that time, the battle had died down. It had reached a crescendo when it sounded like the whole mountain was erupting around us. It had caused Kazamir to lose his footing and bruise his left leg on the rough mountain trail’s hard-packed dirt.

The trail took us around said mountain and dumped us on a long flat plain-like area surrounded by forest with a small river running through the middle of the clearing. A medium-sized settlement with a wooden palisade sat in the middle. I quickly moved our small group into the surrounding forest and began scoping out the area with Alexei. Kazamir only had iron sights, and I didn’t trust him not to start shooting if we saw gobs.

The terrain was pockmarked with blackened ditches that were the obvious aftermath of high explosives. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered all over the place. The pieces were more concentrated around the ‘shell holes’ even though I knew artillery wasn’t used to make them. That's what my brain auto-corrected them to. The whole scene looked like someone tried their hardest to recreate WW1 but with fucken goblins.

Kazamir was looking at the scene with grim satisfaction and a little bit of reverence. I dropped my backpack, then walked over to Alexei and told him to turn his radio on (we have to turn them off to save the battery life when they aren’t being used) and to watch Kazamir, so he doesn’t do anything stupid.

“Which means your going to run off and do something stupid.”

Alexei joked.

“Damn, is it that obvious? Looks like I’m getting too predictable.”

I joked back as I walked away. Alexei and Kazamir quickly faded behind leaves and tree branches as I walked farther into the forest. I snuck around the forest like a marine. Which is to say, I stepped on almost every branch I could. Even though it seemed like I was the only one in this whole forest. I still jumped every time a branch cracked under my feet.

I spent 30 minutes creeping around the forest, jumping at every sound, and constantly looking over my shoulder. Even though it was around 30 minutes. It felt way longer. Eventually, I saw a flickering light through the trees. I was relieved to finally find something, even if it turned out to be an enemy. Cause I would rather fight for my life, than walk through an empty forest with my brain making up unreal horrors.

I start moving closer toward the light. As I get closer, I start moving slower and tried to watch where I put my feet. As I got closer still, I started getting lower, from standing to crouching to crawling. I belly crawled in between two bushes that sat on the edge of a man-made clearing. I could tell it was man-made because there were old dead tree stumps scattered around the clearing.

In the middle of this man-made clearing, I saw the reason for the chopped-up trees. There was a sturdy-looking log cabin with more than a dozen make-shift tepee-like structures erected outside. I slowly reached down, grabbed my radio, and started to speak into the receiver softly.

“Moscow 1-2, this is Burgertown 1-1. You read me?”

“Roger Burgertown 1-1 I read you.”

“Ok, I’ve got a log cabin. It’s pretty big. It can probably hold 10 gobs, 15 if they really cramm’em in there. About 16 smaller makeshift tepee-like things. So at a rough estimate, they got housing for about 70-80 gobs.”

“Good, we now know they have a better housing market than New York. So get back here.”

“Rog, I’m heading out now.”

I glance down at the radio as I put it away. The blue number has changed. It was 17; now it’s 39. Well, that’s interesting. I was still thinking about what the change in numbers meant when I felt a sharp, crushing pain in my left calf. I quickly spun around onto my back to find a group of 3 goblins had stumbled onto me.

They were just as shocked as I was. Luckily, I was better trained than they were. I quickly raised my rifle, flicked the fire selector to full auto, and pulled the trigger without aiming too hard. At the point I had flicked the fire selector, they started to move toward me with their daggers drawn. I had knocked down one as he was standing on my left calf when I made my quick spin. Another one got hit with the first few bullets, with one clipping the top of his head, spraying brains onto his comrade.

The last goblin had charged, only slowing down when he got a nice coating of his buddy’s gray matter. But that didn’t slow him down for too long. What did slow him right down was a more accurate spray from me. I was starting to come down from the OH SHIT and was now moving down to a FUCK YOU ASSHOLE which I later decided was better.

With me actually starting to aim, the goblin didn’t stand a very good chance. Even though I only dropped him when he was less than a few feet away(about 1.5 meters) from me. The guy I had tripped had rolled away from me. I quickly placed a burst of rounds into him. Now the biggest problem was to get the fuck out. Looking around for a way out, my eyes land on my blue glowing radio. If I was in a cartoon, I would have a big ass lightbulb over my head at that moment.

I dived to the floor, snatched up the radio, and swapped to the fire support channel.

“HEY, TOWER, THIS IS BURGERTOWN 1-1. I NEED A FUCKING A-10 STRIKE!”

I didn’t have the time or patience to be polite. But the urgency in my voice must have told whoever was on the other side that I was in deep shit because a response came quickly and professionally. I could see goblins reacting to the noise by running around the camp, getting weapons, and putting on armor.

“Burgertown 1-1 roger that we got an A-10 in the AO were sending him over.”

“Thanks, Tower.”

About a minute later, another voice came on the radio. This one is gruffer than the other.

“Burgertown 1-1. This is Warlock ready for a strike.”

By this time, a little of the adrenaline had gone out of my system, and I had gotten my swearing under control.

“Warlock, this is Burgertown 1-1. I need you to hit an… shit, a wooden log cabin in the middle of a clearing with several tree stumps. You see what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, I see what you’re on about. Ok, get the fuck down and preferably behind something.”

I stayed lying as close as I could to the ground and crawled behind a tree trunk. I could hear the goblins shouting and screaming as the gun with wings made its presence known with its signature BRRRRRRRRT. I tried my fucken hardest to merge with the ground as I felt the vibrations from the rounds hitting the ground several hundred meters away.

The hail fire stopped for a second. Just long enough for my ringing ears to faintly hear Warlock over the radio.

“Bombs away.”

I wish I had the time to run a few thousand yards away. Because I was nearly deafened by the noise alone. The blastwave hit me like a hot thousand-mile-an-hour wind, and I could barely hear shrapnel pinging around me over the ringing in my ears. A piece of shrapnel hit right in front of me, kicking dirt clumps, and dust all over me.

It took me a minute until I could fucken hear anything. The whole time I lay there in shocked silence.

“Burgertown 1-1, you still alive!? Are you alright? Say something! Damn you.”

Came the pilot’s voice with a tone of concern.

“Yea, I’m here… uh. by the way, REALLY FUCKEN GOOD EFFECT ON TARGET!”

“Alright, good, you need another pass. Because if you don’t, then I’m RTB.”

The relief in the pilot's tone was enormous.

“NA, I’M ALL GOOD. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, MAN!”

I screamed into the mic cause I still had one hell of a ringing in my ears.

“Rog, I’m out, have a good one at try not to die.”

“YOU TOO BRO, HAVE A GOOD ONE.”

At that last parting statement, I decided to get the hell out of dodge as well. I got up, brushed myself off, and tried for a few minutes to get my radio back in its pouch with shaking hands. Once I finally got it in there, I started the walk back to where I had left Kazamir and Alexei.