Chapter 10

I walked back into the train station posing as a post office and went straight to Coot, pulling the old man into a hug and then stepping back.

“What happened to you?” I demanded. “No offense, but how did you last longer than Ken and Ed?”

Coot stared at me with confusion and that’s when I realized he hadn’t returned my hug.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

He shook it off. “Yep, boss, sure thing.” He took a breath and the serious look of ‘dazed and confused’ was replaced with that goofy grin that I kept associating with prospectors and henchmen from animated movies. “Uh, I hid.” He shrugged. “When you blew up, I ducked into the doc’s office, whistled for my horse, and rode it back to the train station.”

“Then how did you die?”

“Well, I wasn’t sneaky about it, now was I?” He shook his head. “No, I was not. The train had just pulled up, and I thought I could escape on that. Took a seat in a passenger car and let my horse race behind the train. Somebody up and saw me board the train and about a mile out of Easter they found what car I was in. I shot them twice but they got me, pop,” he poked the middle of his forehead. “Then I woke up not far from Easter. I reckon it spawned me so close because I was still considered part of the defending army for the raid.”

“Did you get any experience?” I asked.

Coot nodded. “I’m level 7 now.” He drew a pistol that I hadn’t seen before and I jumped back, grabbing at my own before I remembered that this was Coot, a member of my gang, and that we were in the safe zone provided by the post office being located in the train station.

“Easy now,” he snickered at me. “This was my big win from our helping that other gang with the raid. At level 5, I was able to buy this, but I ain’t had the money. I managed to get about $50 when the raid was done and could finally buy it.”

Fifty dollars? How the hell? Then I opened up my inventory and sure enough, the raid had deposited somewhere around $65 to me when it was done.

“We got paid for losing the raid?” I was shocked.

Coot nodded. “I’ll bet your britches that the pay gets bigger if you win.”

“What is that gun?” I asked.

“They call it a Volcanic Pistol,” Coot held it up so that I could look at it. It was boxier and larger than the Farmer’s Pistol, otherwise, it was just another gun that I knew next to nothing about. “It holds 8 bullets instead of the 6 of the starter pistol.” He leaned in. “And it hits hard. I shot a pig with it and the dang thing,” he cut his empty hand through the air, “went sailing.”

I was jealous, to say the least, but that jealousy was mitigated by my own success from the raid. While I hadn’t realized that good money had come from it, I was able to show Coot my new shotgun.

I finished my story and Coot seemed energized.

“We’re moving on up,” he said and then spun toward the mailman. “Come on, I want you to meet the job guy.”

He led me around the ticket booth to where a bench was against the wall. A man was sitting on the bench reading a newspaper. He was dressed just like the ticketmaster but didn’t seem to care anything for what was going on in the station.

“Ah,” he said without looking up from his paper. “I see the person who makes the decisions has arrived.”

“He’ll only talk to the gang leader,” Coot explained.

“Your friend says that you’re looking for work?” the man said. I took a moment to examine him. His name was Clarence Peabody. On my minimap he had an orange dot instead of the usual teardrop shape. I saw something in the manual that those were people I could go to for jobs.

“What kind of work?” I asked. “We won’t take just anything.”

He folded his paper and laid it across his lap before leaning back and throwing one arm up over the back of the bench. “Good. I would be concerned if you took any job without reading the fine print.” He was only looking at me, ignoring Coot. I wondered if all gang jobs were going to start this way. “I have a family from Saint Emile that wants to go from here to Aberdine. It’s a long drive, but the road is heavy with bandits. Getting ambushed isn’t just likely, it’s a foregone conclusion. This family is well-off, financially speaking, and have done nothing to hide the fact that they are traveling.”

“Well-off?” I put my hands on my hips. “They’ll pay well, then?”

“Well enough,” Clarence provided. “And more if they arrive in Aberdine unscathed.”

“How much?”

Clarence flinched. “What?”

“How much if we get them to Aberdine unscathed?” I repeated.

“Uh,” it was obvious that Clarence was more familiar with dealing with gamers and not someone looking to make a living, “the standard rate, after the, um, level of your success has been, uh, tallied.”

In other words, all jobs pay the same but pay less or more depending on if poor Susie RichGal makes it to the end of the quest without getting too banged up. I would be able to get a more specific idea of what to expect after I finished this first job.

And something told me that this wasn’t going to pay nearly as much as losing at the raid would. I hoped that I was wrong.

“Alright,” I agreed. “Where do we meet them?”

Clarence relaxed and lifted the hand that still rested on the back of the bench, pointing out the window toward the tracks.

When we met the traveling fancypants family from Saint Emile, they were already in the carriage. It wasn’t a wagon, that wasn’t a title that alerted people to this vehicle’s grandiose design. This was a legitimate, belonged-in-Sherlock’s-London, horse-drawn carriage. It was painted red with gold trim. Every edge was covered in gold paint. The horses were almost twice the size of Horse and Sandra.

I walked up to the side of the carriage and leaned into the window. Inside were two adults, dressed to the nines in fancy, Downton Abbey-like, black clothes. Between them sat the most shocking thing I had seen since entering this game.

A kid.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A boy, about ten years old, sat between what I could only assume were his parents.

“Um,” Eve had said there were no kids in these games and I was almost too shocked to continue. “Howdy?” It came out as a question. “We will get you folks safely to Aberdine.” I forced a smile through my surprise. “Please keep your arms and legs inside the carriage at all times.”

When I dropped back down, Coot was riding up to me on Sandra with Horse trotting behind them.

I got up close to Coot. “There’s a kid in there.” My voice was barely a whisper.

“So?” He looked as confused as I was shocked.

“So? What do you mean ‘So?’ I was told there weren’t any kids in here.”

“There aren’t,” he was smiling now.

“Then what the hell was that?”

“That was a literal NPC,” Coot explained. “He’s not a real person, just an artificial intelligence that follows the parental figures. He’s more like a pet than anything” He shrugged. “Half the time they aren’t real, neither.”

I let my stress bleed from me as quickly as I could and jumped up onto Horse.

As soon as I was on my horse, the carriage driver cracked his reins and our mission started. I had no idea how far Aberdine was, but I did my best to focus on the hills while also watching my map.

“What’s the plan?” Coot came up beside me on Sandra.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Get to Aberdine, collect the money and experience, pick another job.”

Coot shook his head before squinting one eye at me. “You might not know it, but I consider myself a bonafide judge of character.” He straightened and hooked a thumb under his overalls. “I would not go as far as to claim to be psychic, especially in no video game with my body long since being food for worms, but I do have a good eye for reading people’s faces and yours is screaming at me that you are thinking about the long game.”

He wasn’t wrong. My broadcast button was still going and I had to think about how to keep people’s attention. At the same time, if everyone watching heard my plan, they wouldn’t have incentive to stay tuned.

I smiled at Coot to let him know his intuition wasn’t wrong. “What do you know about the raids?”

Coot frowned as he thought back, probably to his manual but maybe to the one we were just in, as well.

“Not a whole lot,” he admitted. “Good for XP farmin’. Good if you like to get a little bit of murder going. Not good if you don’t like getting shot at. Why?”

“Adeline,” I paused, realizing not everybody was going to memorize the names of every gunslinger in this world, “the gunsmith in Easter, was still covered in mud and mess when I met her. That was more than an hour after the raid. Was she busy that whole time? Was she dead and waiting to resurrect? Or …” I trailed off.

“Or,” he was doing his squinty eye thing again, “does she get raided so much that she just doesn’t care about trying to clean up.”

“Exactly.” We were out of Easter now and starting down the same road that led to the horse farm from the first mission. I had a brief moment of concern that if those farmers saw us they might give chase, but then I remembered this was a game and that once the quest was done, I had nothing to worry about. Except, those had been real people, and they might hold a grudge.

I hoped not.

“There was still blood in the streets,” I continued. “Does the damage of the raids stop progress from happening? Can the people who have paid their dues and can no retire actually get a chance to relax?”

“Those are some big questions for a video game about murder and survival,” Coot said.

“But they aren’t big questions if we’re talking about something that’s meant to be fun and about getting a literal second chance.” I sighed. “How many of the people who have signed up for this did so to relax, but have since been trapped in a constant circle of murder and rebirth.”

“Damn, you’re morbid, boss,” Coot was laughing. “You’re not wrong, but they chose this. They made it to their level and they chose to say.”

“That doesn’t mean that they didn’t hope for better.”

“Alright, alright,” he was looking hard to his right and away from me. He shook his head and then turned back to me. “What’s to be done about it?”

“Does every town get raided?”

Coot nodded slowly, “I think so. I ain’t never left Easter, though.” He nodded ahead, “This here is an adventure for me.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “I don’t know what’s to be done about it,” I gave as an answer. “You asked what’s on my mind, and I told you.”

“You aren’t going to let this go, though, are you?” He was smiling and squinting again.

I shrugged, “Not likely.” I decided to change the subject. “What’s your deal? Why are you still part of my gang?”

“Well, that,” Coot started, “is a long-”

A bullet hit the side of the carriage.

“Do you see them?” I shouted so that the driver or the passengers might answer if they had. Coot shook his head and no one else spoke.

“There,” Horse whinnied.

I twisted toward where he had pointed his nose and there they were.

We were in a spot with gentle hills. You could see almost unhindered for quite a ways, but the crest of those hills gave mild cover to anything just far enough away. Horse had seen them as their heads were bobbing up and down on their horses and cresting the hill. They were coming up fast.

I leveled my shotgun, felt the pull of the auto-aim and decided not to fight it.

Blam!

Blam!

Neither shot seemed to have any effect even though it looked like I should have hit them.

That’s when I remembered that shotguns had different types of ammunition.

“Slugs for distance,” Horse seemed to read my mind. “You won’t get those until you level up some more. Save the birdshot for when they get closer.”

My hands seemed to know what they were doing even though I didn’t and broke the shotgun in the middle. It folded and the shells ejected into the air. I pulled two more from my satchel and put them in. When the automated reload released me and I had my hands back, I put the shotgun on my back with the strap across my chest. Then I pulled my Farmer’s Pistol.

It looked like me and this little pea-shooter still had some work to do.

I tried for a couple of headshots with no luck. Somehow, they were hitting the carriage from that distance, while on horses, and I couldn’t hit them at all.

“What’s the call, boss?” Coot said from behind me.

When I twisted to look at him, I saw that he was shooting over his shoulder. They hadn’t even popped up on my minimap yet, but there they were, sneaking up behind us on horses. Just from what I could see, there were four in front of us and four in the back.

“We gotta let them get closer,” I shouted to Coot. I said to Horse, “You said I could jump on a horse?”

“Yes, why?” He answered. We weren’t traveling fast, instead opting to match speed with the carriage, and his stamina had not been affected enough to notice. “You wanting to ride up next to one of them and steal a horse that doesn’t talk?”

I rolled my eyes, “I said I was sorry. Besides, a talking horse is weird. Why am I the only one who sees this?” I didn’t wait for his response. “Can I jump on the wagon?”

“Yes,” was all he said. He was obviously still frustrated with me, but it would have to wait until later.

“Let’s get up close to it then,” I said. I turned and shouted, “Coot, get on the wagon.”

Horse pulled me up next to the right side of the carriage. I shifted all of my weight to my left foot and slid my right from the stirrup. I was mostly certain that this was an automated thing, like getting on the horse or reloading my gun, but just in case, I wanted to be prepared for the effort.

I jumped.

My hands hit the side of the carriage and I realized that hanging from the side didn’t cost me any stamina. I could hang there, shooting with my right hand, or I could move to another location.

Coot came up on the left and did the same thing. His Volcanic Pistol was discharging into the distance, but our enemies were getting closer. I scooted up toward the front where the driver was and pulled myself up next to him. Sitting down, I switched weapons again.

“Stay with the wagon,” I shouted to Coot. “Shoot anything that gets near enough to die.”