Chapter 5

"How about Backwood Concho?"

"What?" I asked. "What even is that? Is that racist?"

"Racist? How?" Coot seemed genuinely perplexed.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Sounds like an Indian thing."

"Crazy Branch?"

"Did you hit one on the way down?"

"Maverick Drillers?"

"Are you just putting any words together that you can think of?"

Coot huffed. "You don't have to be rude." He concentrated. "Hoof Hiders?"

"What does that even mean?"

His eyes lit up. "I got one," he held up his fingers and thumbs in a box, like he was taking a picture of a sign. "Death Soldiers."

"Well," I was shaking my head, "that was the best one so far, but still the wrong kind of message, I think."

"Savage Skulls?"

"Who hurt you, man?" I shook my head at him again. Then an idea struck me. "Oh, how about 'The Bonafides?'"

"Hoo boy, that's fancy sounding," Coot's face lit up with a broad grin.

"Alright," I agreed. "I'll enter that as our Gang name and we can finally get this party started."

After we had examined each other's embarrassingly low stats the idea of a gang name had struck me as momentous. This was my first major decision in my new life. This would be how I began to build my reputation, and everyone seemed to implying that reputation meant everything. The name had to be perfect.

Using the mental commands for my HUD, I found where Coot had told me the Gang menu was and began creating it. The instructions were fairly simple. The first Gang was free and if I wanted to start a new Gang in place of this first one it would cost me $200. The pricing was absolutely insane to me. Especially only having about $9 to my name and no job.

Please Enter Your Gang Name.

"Hey, what about Pink Flamingos?" Coot interrupted my thoughts with another name.

"Pink Flamingos?" I asked. "How is that a reputation builder?"

Gang Pink Flamingos Accepted.

Who would you like to add to your gang?

"No, no, no," I tried to find a way to undo the name, but it seemed to accept it instantly. "Are you kidding me? Dammit, Coot!"

I added Coot to the gang and sat back in the grass.

Before I said anything I let out a long and slow sigh. "Welcome to the Pink Flamingos."

When we made our way back to the farm, Coot explained the tiniest part of his plan to me. It wasn't much, but I wasn't against it. He was going to use the dynamite to create a diversion. While he kept the farmers busy, I was going to grab two of the horses and ride them out the front.

Coot managed to get a good look at the horses before he was killed in a “hail of gunfire and brimstone,” as he described it. Both of them were already saddled.

With any luck, Coot would jump on one and ride with me as they chased us. Hopefully, we could lose them and get back to the stables at Easter. If one of us died, the plan was to take the second horse and hide out for the hour as close to where Coot found me as possible. If we respawned and couldn't find the other, then we would meet back up in Easter.

If we both died, then we hoped we would spawn near each other.

The gang mechanics made finding each other the easy part. Once Coot joined the Pink Flamingos, his dot became a brighter shade of blue on my map and I could see him anywhere, no matter how close he was to me.

Now we just had to do the mission, and I had to put an insane amount of hope into a person who not only acted a little crazy, but also had died and decided coming back looking like an insane and very dirty hobo was a great way to start your second life.

I wasn't sure how well this gang thing was going to work out, but until I met someone else who wasn't trying to kill me, Coot was my best option.

The plan was for me to sneak into the back of the barn again, this time without getting caught, while Coot made his distraction.

"How will you know when I am ready?" I asked him.

"You don't know about party chat, yet?" He shook his head. "Of course you don't. Never mind. Open your HUD and think my name."

I did and a chat window opened in the top left corner. As I thought the words, they typed out on the screen. It was a simple enough interface to use, and I could already see some future ways we could use this, especially if we were in a more populated area, like a town.

A half an hour later I was back behind the barn. Well, mostly. I was expecting Coot to screw this up and I wanted to see what he had in mind for a distraction. I was hanging around the back of the barn when the chat window let out a ding that startled the crap out of me.

D0C70RC007 : I can't do my part until you are in position.

Damn. He was right. He was waiting on me. I was going to have to trust him.

I forced the fear rising in my belly back down and climbed through the window. I didn’t know if climbing through would make me visible on their maps for a moment or if trying to stay crouched was all that mattered. I came down in the same stall I had died outside of before and crept forward.

Gaps in the slats of wood that made the front door to the stall gave me a clear enough view of the rest of the barn.

A loud creak drew my attention to the ceiling. I looked at my map again.

Two of the red tear drops had little arrows inside of them that I hadn’t noticed before. There were two men upstairs.

The man who killed me before was on the opposite side from the stall I was in. There was a door there to the back. He was crouched behind it waiting for someone to come in. He was probably there before, too. When I came in like a bull covered in bells, he just turned and took me out.

D0C70RC007 : Wait for my signal and then get your horse and get out of here.

Sammy#0421 : What signal? I thought you were going to wave around the dynamite and get them to chase you.

D0C70RC007 : Relax. Minor change in plans. All will be well. Get ready.

I cussed. The damned old man was going to fuck this up for us and I was going to die again. Painfully.

Fuck that.

I was calling an audible.

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My knife was already in my hand when I pushed open the stall door as quickly and quietly as I could. I figured he would hear the noise no matter what I did, but I didn’t want anyone outside hearing it.

The door was just noisy enough that he did hear it, but I was already slamming into him with everything I had. Years of watching movies and CBS murder mysteries had stopped me from chopping down at him like Mike Myers at a family reunion. I ran at him with the blade at my waist and he seemed not to even notice it.

The blade went in, but he wasn’t down yet. In the real world, a stomach wound would be a life-ending event, but even that could take a while. He started bleeding out and fell to his knees, dropping his own knife.

Someone might say they weren’t proud of what happened next, but this asshole had watched me bleed out.

I kicked him onto his back. As he opened his mouth to shout for help, I dropped my knees onto his chest and slammed the tip of the blade into his Adam’s apple.

+5 XP Melee Kill

+10 XP Kill

+10 XP Silent Kill

Admittedly, the entire scene was too real. This man wasn’t dead and would return in an hour, but his corpse was still lying there as blood dripped from my blade and soaked into the hay and dirt that made up the floor. I was breathing so loud and starting to shake. I made myself get off of him and move away. I didn’t want to die again and hovering over a digital corpse while an idiot was outside waving around a stick of dynamite was a dumb way to die.

The horses we needed were each in stalls closer to the front of the barn. I moved in that direction slowly and still crouched, checking every stall and constantly looking up.

I was surprised that they hadn’t heard the tussle, but I figured that as long as I was crouched the game kept me in some sort of silent mode.

I could hear Coot talking outside and stepped up the door. From where I was standing, if someone came in they would knock me over, but no one upstairs could see me.

“Back off, man,” I could hear someone outside talking. “Or we’ll shoot you.”

Coot let out a cackle that was one hundred percent on brand for a toothless prospector.

“I don’t think that ye will,” he said. “Aged Dynamite isn’t the same as your regular variety. Aged Dynamite is meant to simulate what happens to dynamite in the real world, ya see. That means that this stuff,” he paused and I imagined he was holding up the stick he had shown me, “is more volatile, but, and this is where our new reality differs only a little, also has a bigger blast radius.”

“You’re level 6,” the first voice said. “You can’t have Aged Dynamite yet.”

“You sure are a smart one,” Coot laughed. “At level 6, I can’t buy it, but anyone can just hand me one.”

“What the hell?” I heard a voice shout from behind me.

In what was possibly the smartest move of that day, I didn’t look behind me and instead dove into the nearest stall.

Bullets riddled the door where I was standing. I heard Coot’s voice shout something and then an explosion knocked open the front doors of the barn. Wood rained down on me.

D0C70RC007 has blown himself up.

My ears were ringing and I almost missed the notification that Coot had died. I didn’t miss the notification and flashing red on my map telling me that I was now wanted by the local law enforcement.

Coot was gone and the front was cleared.The clock was running and I still needed to get two horses and escape without dying.

My pistol was in my hand only a moment before someone came around and into the stall after me. My firing was mostly on reflex and I hit him mostly because of how close he was to me when I shot.

As he was still falling over and the XP was tallying on my HUD, I fell back into the stall and reloaded. One bullet or not, I wasn’t going to waste the small amount of time I had while I had it.

I burst out of the stall not even looking out of the opened barn doors. One man was running at me from the back of the barn where I saw a ladder. That must have been where the first guy had climbed down. I fired at him three times, hitting him only once. He tackled me to the ground, anyway.

One good whack to the side of his head from the butt of my pistol rolled him off me. My gun boomed as I shot him in the temple before he could get to his feet.

Another man was above me and shooting down. He was missing a lot, and I figured he was either a bad shot or couldn’t see me. Either way, I returned fire until my pistol emptied.

More would be coming and I needed to reload my gun, but I also needed to steal two horses and get out of there. As if reading my thoughts, the plain brown one of the two horses burst out of its stall and then from the barn.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I dove into the stall that still had the black horse, jumped on, and tried to go after the other horse.

I kept spurring it, and it wasn’t moving.

Why was this happening now?

“Stop kicking me and ask nicely.”

“What?” my head and my empty gun spun around, looking for the voice.

“I’m the horse,” the voice said. “Just ask me nicely. You don’t have to kick.”

“Ask?” I didn’t have time for this. “Please?” I grunted out.

“Good enough.” Without another word, we were out the damaged barn doors and onto the road.

Before I heard them, I saw five red stars moving in my direction on the map. The horse, intelligent or not, responded to my every tug on the reins as if our original interaction hadn’t happened. I could see the brown horse in the distance. Ignoring the law, I leaned forward and kept after it.

The horse said something again in its male, ye feminine sounding voice, but this time I didn’t catch it.

“What?” I asked.

Louder, the horse said, “Reload your gun. I’ll catch Sandra.”

“Sandra?” I said as I began to fumble with my pistol. Then I stopped myself. “I just stole you. Why would you help me?”

The horse snorted. “They are shooting at me, too.”

I nodded and resumed reloading my pistol. For all my initial fumbling, when I committed to the task, my hands found the bullets and slid them in with a practiced grace I hadn’t expected. This was obviously a mechanic of the game, but the bullets whizzing by my head wouldn’t let me contemplate what that meant to me.

I twisted on the horse’s back and aimed down the sights. That was when I realized what I was about to do.

“They’re cops,” I said. “I can’t shoot cops.”

“Your perspective,” the horse huffed, “is very backwards. You just killed people to steal two of their horses. They are going to kill you.”

Again, the horse was right. This was where the line blurred. I understood that this was a video game but everything here felt real. Killing the men in the barn had been necessary, but I could feel that man’s death as my knife stabbed into his throat. I saw that look…

That was when I found my comfort with killing. The look in that man’s eyes and the eyes of his friends I shot weren’t the eyes of being betrayed by humanity. Those were the eyes of payback.

They weren’t saying goodbye. They were saying, “See you soon.”

Suddenly, everything felt just a little easier. It was less a murder and more a game of cards. I had won that hand, but I could lose the next.

My gun jerked in my hand as I tried to hit the sheriffs or marshalls or whatever chasing us.

“Take your time and aim,” the horse said. “You won’t fall unless I do.”

I focused down the sites and noticed my hands tugging toward the different silhouettes behind me. It took me a moment to realize that it was some sort of auto-aiming feature. I let it guide me through the turbulence and fired.

I hit the horse the lawman was riding on. It was better than if I hit the man himself. His horse collapsed and the rider hit the ground hard. I was already shifting to the next guy when his horse tripped on the first’s and they both went down.

“Yeehaw!” I allowed myself a moment of celebration because I’m a damned fool.

A bullet hit me dead center of the chest.

I grunted and leaned over on my horse.

“We’re almost there,” the horse said. “I’ll ride up beside him and you jump on him. If you hold my reins, you can pull me alongside you as …” he paused. “Are you bleeding on me?” He let out a loud huff and spit flew from his mouth. “Get some jerky from your bag. That’ll help you heal.”

The pain in my chest wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be, and I was able to maneuver to my pouch and sort through my inventory. Two bites of the jerky and my health bar on my HUD, which had dropped to somewhere just under half, started to crawl back toward the top. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but would be soon if I could avoid getting hit again.

“Wait,” I said as we came within ten yards of the other horse. “Did you say jump? I’m not jumping onto another horse.” Aside from the fears of missing and ruining this entire mission, I had no interest in bruising my butt.

“You’re no fun,” he sounded more entertained than annoyed. Was he joking with me or something?

I didn’t have time for this. “Any other bright ideas?”

“You have a lasso, don’t you?”

“Shit, no. Where do I get a lasso?” If he said my mailbox, I was going to scream.

“They usually gift new players one in the mail.”

I screamed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. The huffs between his words were getting further apart. On my HUD, I noticed that a smaller health and stamina bar had been placed next to my own and the stamina was nearing the bottom.

That had to be the horse’s. I needed to do this soon.

“I’ll get you close,” the horse said. “You grab the reins. Can you do that? Or,” he gave another loud huff, “do we need to discuss how short your arms are?”

“Shut up, you. Just get me close.”

A bullet grazed the horse. He let out a grunt but didn’t sway from his course as he pulled us up and next to the brown one.

The reins were bouncing, jostled by all the movement. On the fourth try, I snagged them and pulled the wayward animal alongside us.

“Alright,” I said. “Now what?”