Chedderfield

Chedderfield looked up at the jellyfish, trying to see what was going on, only to see that the same laser weapon that had shot at his feet was now torching the sky in all directions, the beam showing up clearly in the heavy fog created from the gunpowder of exploding shells.

As he was watching the beam, his attention was once more grabbed by the battle as an arrow struck his belly. His armor stopped it from penetrating, but the impact still felt like a fist to the gut. He turned to see the source. There, in front of him, standing atop a hundred dead hell-cursed, was a glowing-red four-armed monstrosity with a bow taller than he was. The thing used both of his right hands to draw back the massive bowstring as his left hands braced the shaft. A blue glow around his feet rose around his shin bones like tentacles, rooting him in place as he prepared to fire another shot.

Not waiting to see how much the next barb would hurt, Chedderfield Meat-Slammed into the archer, who loosed his arrow the second he activated the skill. As the semi-translucent rock armor covered his body, the arrow struck his right shoulder, shattering the protective layer and sending him spinning from the combination of the force of the arrow and the momentum from his Meat Slam. Chedderfield struggled to keep his balance and ended up tripping, rolling into the enemy and knocking the archer over in the process. Grabbing his sword tightly, he straddled the downed archer and then threw his entire body weight down with the blade. The sharp obsidian edges of the weapon sliced through flesh and cleaved through the archer’s skull before they bit into the ground beneath.

After he finished killing the skeletal archer and stood back up, he realized that, while the aftermath of the invasion had been gruesome, the battle was mostly over. Only two jellyfish remained in the sky, but both were crashing toward a spot just behind the base.

Suddenly, a blur jumped off the falling jellyfish, and Chedderfield raised a hand and shouted, “Crap! Get that one before it reaches us!”

Before Danielle or someone else could fire at the falling object, it sprouted green wings.

“It’s Arc!” Lucy shouted in recognition.

“And he must have Nguyen,” Danielle added from somewhere.

“About fucking time they appeared! Damn if they didn’t fucking scare the hell out of me, vanishing in the middle of the night like that!” Lucy cursed as she finished off the monster she was fighting and started to beeline straight toward the descending blur.

With the target identified, Chedderfield returned his attention to the fight, scanning the battlefield for his next opponent. The ground rumbled as first one then the other of the jellyfish crashed into the earth, thankfully both outside the nuclear plant’s walls, but his relief was immediately overshadowed by the hell-cursed the two crashing jellyfish released. Dozens of zombies and hell-cursed brutes poured out of the fallen creatures and began immediately rushing the base.

The gap in the wall had become a bottleneck, and both sides began to fire continuously. The regular zombies fell quickly to the barrage of bullets, but the brutes’ magic-enhanced bodies kept them standing, giving them time to reach the front line. Some of the more skilled soldiers showed off their abilities, and heavy laser fire, magical spells, and well-timed attacks from the defenders eventually took down the brutes.

Archimedes stumbled a few steps as he landed, his wings disappearing in motes of green light. Nguyen was cradled in his arms.

“Where have you been? We’ve been swarmed down here, and what? You two went for a romantic midnight stroll?” Chedderfield shouted as he cut through a straggling zombie.

“Brother, I wish it were just that,” Archimedes said with a shake of his head.

“What?!” Lucy cut in, her eyes blazed red and not from some skill activation.

“I mean, we were on a mission,” Archimedes started to explain.

“Yeah, and we know what you were on a mission for. Who sneaks off with a beautiful woman while everyone else is asleep?” Emma asked, her face splattered with the black blood of the undead.

“Will you two stop trying to get me killed here?!” Archimedes demanded.

“But, senpai, you said you’d take responsibility,” Nguyen said with a coy look, only for Archimedes to drop her to the ground as he had clearly decided the joke had gone too far.

“Look, Nguyen and I only need half the sleep you guys do, and the general sent us to find a few scouts, but what we found was a lot worse,” Archimedes began. “We saw the full force of the undead horde from the skies, and it’s coming in two directions.”

“You mean that army we passed when we were trying to sneak across the river?” Emma asked.

“I wish. That may as well have just been a single battalion. There was also another massive horde that’s approaching from the west. They were moving slowly but straight toward the base. I suspect they’ll be here by midday at the latest,” Archimedes explained.

“What of the scouts?” a voice barked from behind Chedderfield. “My men, what happened to them? Are they okay?”

Chedderfield turned and saw a tall man with a commanding presence, his uniform ripped and a bloody bone mace in his hand.

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“I’m afraid we were too late, Colonel Hooker,” Archimedes answered solemnly, lowering his head. “They looked like they had been dead for hours before we arrived. My condolences, sir.”

“Fucking shit! GA DAMN Son of a—!” The colonel cursed only to stop, take a deep breath, and then shake his head wearily. “I mean, thank you for your hard work. I look forward to a detailed report later.”

The colonel turned and started to bark out orders to his army, calling for medics, shouting for cards to be collected, and bringing order to the chaos of the aftermath of the battle.

“Was the scene that brutal?” Chedderfield asked as he looked over at the perplexed Archimedes. His face was twisted up a little and twitching slightly as he stared at the ground in front of him. “What did they do to the bodies for you to be looking like that, hermano?”

“I . . .” Archimedes took a moment, letting the first syllable hang there before looking up at Chedderfield. “I don’t know, man. I’m so confused.”

“About what?” Lucy had gone from angry to concerned as she leaned in and put her hand on his arm. “What’s got you so confused?”

“The mission . . . The mission, did we . . .” Archimedes looked over at Nguyen. “Did we fail or succeed? I mean, the description said to find them, discover what caused their delay, and aid them in their mission. Was their mission to scout? Was it to delay? Do we get credit for aiding them in their mission if they were already dead? It specifically says a bronze card for each scout aided . . . Is that because they each had different missions, or did we have to keep them alive for the reward? I mean, look at it!” Archimedes pulled up the mission text.

Scout the Scouts [Nuclear Power Plant Location]

Objective: Locate and aid the scouts sent to the southern riverbank.

Description: A group of scouts were sent to investigate unusual enemy activity and have failed to report in. Find them, discover what has caused their delay, and aid them in their mission.

Bring back my troops, I can’t afford the hazard pay if scouts start dying on the job.

Reward: Bronze card for each scout aided.

Bonus reward dependent on mission contribution.

“Oh my god,” Nguyen muttered. She looked over at Archimedes, her face equally perplexed. “You’re right. How do we handle this? Do we press for the reward? Is the mission automatically completed? Wait . . . will it complete when we give the proper scouting report to the colonel?”

“That must be it!” Archimedes’ face lit up. “We didn’t get our pay because we haven’t delivered a proper scouting report. We’ve only exchanged a few words. There was no way the scouts’ mission was just to say enemies are south of the base.”

“Are you two fucking kidding me?” Lucy looked rather upset, as if she were betrayed by the fact she had been so concerned a moment ago only to discover that her concern for Archimedes had been for naught.

“Seriously?” Chedderfield frowned, feeling the same betrayal as Lucy.

“No, no . . .” Danielle looked as equally concerned as Archimedes and Nguyen. “This is important. We need to understand how the system handles semantics versus intentions when creating and enforcing quests and rewards. We also need to know if there is some sort of auto-fail system that will kick in. Did you guys get any notifications about the mission failing?”

Archimedes scratched at his chin. “Not that I can remember.”

“Yeah, none here,” Nguyen agreed.

“Then if the mission did fail, we at least will know that accepting a system-regulated assignment won’t generate a failure even if the conditions become impossible. Conversely, if you manage to succeed when it’s clear the colonel wanted his troops back alive, we’ll know that the lettering of the mission is more important than the intent. This is a good find,” Danielle said as she continued to re-read the mission.

“I just kind of want to make sure I get my cards,” Archimedes said as he scratched the back of his head, “but sure, I’ll take credit.”

“So you guys say there are two massive armies coming to kill us, and whether or not you get your cards is the only thing we’re talking about?” Emma, who had just been watching the interaction, finally blurted out in exasperation. “Shouldn’t we be talking about how to get out of here before the big bad brute boys wreck this place and nuke the whole area?”

“What do you mean, ‘get out’?” Chedderfield asked. “We can take ‘em. This won’t be an issue at all.”

“You say that, but you guys didn’t see what we saw,” Nguyen started. “The army coming is bigger than anything I’ve seen, even bigger than what we faced at the stadium.”

“But this time, we have a fortified position,” Danielle noted but then glanced at the giant hole in the plant’s wall. “Well, we will have one when they rebuild the wall . . . but if they have a monster-processing facility, we have the needed corpses.”

“I’m staying, but even still, I think I need to point out that you aren’t comprehending the full extent of what Nguyen is trying to say. This isn’t a bunch of hell-cursed; this is an army. Not a mob of corpses, not a stadium of the undead. An army. Even from a distance, it was a black steamroller of death that destroyed everything in its wake and could be seen from the top of the jellyfish without an issue. I don’t know if we’ll survive,” Archimedes argued, his hand gesturing west past the broken walls as he spoke.

“Hey!” the former insurance salesmen soldier called out as he ran over, waving a right hand that now had a pinky finger missing. “The colonel needs to see you two right away! But it’s good news this time!”

“Who is he?” Chedderfield whisper-asked Archimedes as the man came barreling over.

“I’m Loman, William Loman. We haven’t met though, so don’t feel bad about forgetting what ya never knew,” the mild-mannered soldier said with a half-smile.

“He’s a nice guy. Was an insurance salesman. Now he’s a soldier,” Archimedes said, introducing Loman with some more context to the group.

“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you. What about that good news though?” Nguyen pressed.

“Well, you would not believe the luck we’ve had. I won’t lie. My son and I were just talking about how bleak things were feeling after the battle. I mean, he lost one of his buddies in the firefight and what have you, but then the colonel, he tells me”—he paused and leaned in, looking around for a moment—“that the guy who keeps calling himself ‘Humanity’s Steward’ has already heard of our plight and is on his way here even as we speak with a whole bunch of troops and weapons!”

“What?!” Chedderfield had to control his anger as he heard that familiar title. That was the self-righteous, bullshit bit of propaganda that Brad had somehow gotten his followers to not only use but spread to every adjacent group as well, getting throngs to treat that narcissistic, self-serving, egotistical prick like he was God’s gift to mankind, literally.

“I know, right? Who would have thought someone would show up when we need them” Loman grunt-laughed as he patted Archimedes on the back. “And here I thought that our day couldn’t get worse, but it looks like the sun is already shining!”

“It ain’t shining from where I’m standing,” Nguyen said, expressing her contempt and also pointing out the very literal fact that morning had still not risen on the fort.