Chapter 8

It was my plan, but I was more than happy when Ed started barking orders at his people.

"Jem, when the horses show up, I want you to count to three and then step out and between them. Use the horses for cover. Ken and I will come out behind you and start shooting toward the sides. We'll take out the raiders as they come around."

"Coot and I will go out the front and circle around," I added as the idea popped into my head. "We'll get anyone that is hanging back."

"Why can't I be the bait?" Coot asked in what I could only assume was his usual insane twist on being serious.

"Because you guys are lower level with worse weapons," Ed said. He held up his bolt action rifle with one hand and used the other to point at Jem's and Ken's weapons. "Also, I have explosive rounds. You likely won't have to shoot any of these folks."

"Are we going to whistle or what?" I was growing impatient. I was anxious and we were on the clock.

Ed nodded. We all whistled.

On my minimap, the icon of a horse, shaped like the horse from that old Operation board game, moved along the outside. I expanded my map and saw the raiders start to move closer to the station.

"They heard us," Ken said. "They are looking to see what side the horses go to."

The horses all did as we expected them to do and came to the trackside of the station.

They actually did it too well and I could hear Horse complaining about everyone crowding the door.

"Seriously, guys, how are they supposed to get out?" he let out a raspberry. "I swear, the AI is so stupid sometimes."

"They're moving," Ken reported what I was already seeing on the map.

Ken and Ed crouched and followed behind Jem as she approached the doors. Jem didn't crouch, bait as she was, and burst through the door with both shotguns out.

For all of Horse's bitching, the horses weren't crowding the door too much and Jem walked out with no cover. I saw her fire both sawed-off shotguns before Coot was tugging me toward the front.

We were crouched, too, and hoped that the Colossal assholes weren't smart enough to leave a lookout.

We came out and saw no one. I went left as Coot went right. The platform extended the direction Coot went, but I had to hop a railing and land in the grass. Again, I found myself worried that I could have flashed red on someone's map.

I didn't have time to check on the minimap and pushed my fear down. I stayed crouched as I moved quickly around the corner of the building.

My chest reverberated with the explosion that came. I felt it deep in my bones, or whatever code constituted my bones, and while I knew there was a sound to it, I didn't remember it.

The body blasted past the corner I was about to come around. It hit the ground smoking. A hole as big as my head had been put in the middle of the man.

What level did I have to be to get explosive bullets? I needed explosive bullets.

My ears were still ringing as I came around and ran toward where Jem should have been.

The horses were gone, and I could see the horse icon on my map off a ways past the tracks.

Where Jem had been now stood Ed. At his feet was her body.

"Fuck," Ed said when he saw me. "Jem is down."

"Damn," that sucked. I stepped toward her body, some remainder of living human emotions wanting me to check on her, when bullets started slamming into the train station walls near enough to my head for me to be worried.

Some guy was running at us from out of town and firing madly. I don't know if his plan was to drive us inside or to kill us, but he wasn't hitting anything of importance.

"He's the one that got Jem," Ed said. He started to raise his rifle, but somehow I beat him to it.

My pistol was up, auto-aim tugged me toward the center mass of this guy, but I had a flash of what I had seen Ed do earlier. I pulled up against the auto-aim and pulled the trigger.

The raider dropped as the bullet from my level 1 Farmer's Pistol put a hole in his head.

Ed smiled at me. "Good move, rookie."

I looked down at Jem again. "What do we do? Do we just leave her there?"

"Her body will despawn when we walk away." He shrugged at me. "Not much we can do."

That was when I noticed that, while Coot had managed to join us, KentuckyPaddler was still missing.

"Where's Ken?" I asked.

A hand popped up from the other side of a broken window from inside the train station.

"I'm here."

"He's crafting special ammunition," Ed said. It makes you crouch to do it, so you remain hidden from most people."

I could hear the clock ticking as we were losing this raid. There was no way to know how much time we had left before they killed their quota to claim a win, but waiting on Ken to finish making ammunition sounded like a horrible idea.

I whistled.

"Well," Horse said as he rode back up to me, "it's about damned time, don't you think?"

"What are you doing?" Ed asked.

"I can't sit around and wait to lose. Are you guys going to mount up or what?"

"What about Ken?" Ed asked.

"Ken's back in the station and safe." I called out. "Ken, do you have a horse?"

"Yes," he said without getting up.

"Great," I climbed onto Horse as Coot let out his whistle. "Catch up to us when you can." I turned my attention back to Ed. "Our odds of winning this are close to non-existent. I don't know the rules, yet, but from what I'm understanding, losers don't get all the experience that the winners get. Is that correct?"

Ed was climbing onto his horse. "Yeah, that's right."

I sighed and replaced the bullet I had spent. "Then the only way for us to maximize the experience we get is to kill as many of those assholes as we can before we die. So," I shrugged, "let's get to killing then."

I took off, letting Horse guide me off of the platform before I steered him back toward the main town.

"You resurrect if you die, too, right?" I leaned in and asked Horse.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Yes," his voice was especially whiney, "but I don't want to die, so try not to get me shot."

"No promises." I turned in Coot's direction. "Flamingos, let's ride."

I heard Ed behind us, "Flamingos?"

We came around to the front of the station and began the gallop back toward the main street of town. Instead of cutting through the auction yard, like before we stuck to the road to the right of it, passing another saloon that I hadn't known existed, and a church, before turning left on the main strip.

"Ed," I shouted. "The rooftops." With his rifle and more experience, he would be better suited for those.

"Coot," I pointed to the Sheriff's office, across the street from the church. "Porch for cover."

While he dropped from his horse and ran that way, I did the same and took off across the main drag to a building that had the gun icon on my map. I determined this to be the gunsmith and took cover behind some barrels.

When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw one of the strangest, and possibly coolest things I had ever seen.

Ed had jumped down from his horse and ran to the outhouse attached to the Sheriff’s office. He hopped up, pulling himself on top of it, and then used that same move to get up onto a ledge and then the roof of the Sheriff’s office.

And then he jumped between the rooftops. He went two rooftops before I had to focus on what was happening on the road.

That was when I saw him.

RadicalLarry19

Level 21

Profession: Mountain Man

He was in the middle of the street, running back and forth and shooting anyone in front of him.

I sent Coot a chat.

The old prospector came running over to me and handed me exactly what I needed.

A volatile stick of dynamite.

“Light it or shoot it,” when he saw my confusion at the shoot it part, he added, “you can just set it down or press it against stuff and it’ll stay there.”

“Thanks, now get out of here.” Coot didn’t need to be told twice and returned to the Sheriff’s office.

I thought about calling out to Larry, but I felt that would just broadcast that I was laying a trap. Instead of shouting my name and that he would never forget this day, I just took aim and started shooting.

He was all over the place and even auto-aim was having trouble tracking him, which was probably why he was all over the place. I didn’t have a lot of ammo left, so I took my time and waited until he stopped to turn around.

Then I shot him in the neck.

Blood gushed out like I had cut a running garden hose. His hand slapped up to cover it and he turned and saw me. A smile crossed his face, but there was nothing happy about it.

Then he reached into his bag and grabbed a bottle. When he pulled the cork out and drank it, the blood stopped leaking out. I tried to hit him again, but he dove behind a crate. I purposefully emptied my gun into the crate before making it click a few times.

I put a look of fear on my face and then took off, rounding the corner of the gunsmiths and hoping he was following.

The stick of dynamite dropped from my hand landing in the grass at the corner of the building. I flinched when it hit, half expecting it to explode then and there. Then I turned and ran.

Right into a set of stairs leading up to the second floor of the gunshop. It was the underside of the stairs, so I was too cornered to do much of anything, but there was only one thing that I wanted to do anyway.

I loaded one bullet into the Farmer’s Pistol and raised my gun toward the dynamite.

To my surprise, the auto-aim kicked in then too and pulled my aim toward the dynamite. I was aiming directly at it.

Then I just watched as the red teardrop came toward the corner. He could see me just as well as I could see him and he took his time, not wanting to walk around and get shot in the gun for his troubles.

Or, as it turned out, preparing his own trap.

A bottle with fire coming out of one end, a good ol-fashioned Molitov came around the corner and hit the ground almost directly at my feet.

Fire burst out and covered everything. It hurt a lot and pushed every thought out of my head as my clothes and body started burning.

The stairs and the wall caught on fire, too, and a thought managed to break through.

The dynamite.

I watched as RadicalLarry19 came around smiling and with his gun drawn.

My smile stopped him in his tracks.

Even being a digital person with pain being a muted memory of what it had been in my real life, it was hard to hold the smile. Something inside of me needed him to see it.

I fell to my knees and his smile slowly crept back onto his face.

His smile vanished when he saw me reaching for something on the ground. It was too late when he realized what I was doing, but he tried to shoot me anyway.

The explosion rocked us both.

My death picture that they liked to show every time that I died was of me, burned worse than Freddy on Elm Street, flying through the air.

I stayed alert through the resurrection process.

Resurrection was still a new idea, and I didn’t have all the rules down, yet. I wish I had found a moment to ask Coot where he had respawned when he had died last. It would let me know the chances of Larry spawning in the same place as me.

The moment that I felt grass underneath me, even without being able to open my eyes, I forced myself to my feet and slapped my hand against my holster.

When my eyes finished loading in, or whatever they needed to do, I spun around with my pistol, aiming in every direction.

+25 XP

That notification must have been from when Larry died. I should see him somewhere, at least on my map, but I wasn’t. It must be a random radius or with some sort of code or something that made it so we didn’t spawn right next to each other.

When I didn’t see anyone, I whistled and opened party chat.

Coot hadn’t responded by the time Horse arrived. So, I jumped on and rode into town with my pistol still out. I only knew of one place where I needed to go and that would be safe if any of Larry’s Colossal douchebags were still around. Horse and I poured on the speed and came to a graceless stop at the post office/train station.

By ‘graceless,’ I mean that Horse stopped when I wanted him to, but conservation of momentum was still a thing in this digital world and I landed face-first in the mud.

To my credit, that didn’t slow me and I dove into the train station.

And right into Jem.

“Hey now,” she said, trying to brush the mud off of me. “Deep breaths. I’m guessing you died soon after I did?”

I nodded, my eyes darting in every direction.

“They’re gone,” Jem explained. “They met up with one of their guys out that way,” she pointed out past the tracks, “and they just kept riding after that.”

The anxiety released from my every muscle and I fell into the nearest bench.

“What went down?” Jem was next to me in a second.

“Hasn’t Ed or Ken told you?”

Jem shook her head. “Both must have died after you then.”

I’m not some great orator who missed their calling, but I did my best to fill her in on how the plan succeeded, minus her death, and how we went to the center of town.

When I mentioned Ed on the rooftops, she started laughing. “He likes doing that. Something about the rifle and being able to see everywhere.”

Then I told her about RadicalLarry19 and my feud with him.

“Wait, RadicalLarry? You killed him?” She seemed surprised.

“Yup, why?” Her interest only piqued mine.

“He leads them,” she explained. “He’s the leader of the gang, Colossal Payne. We don’t know why, but he’s got some sort of hard on for Easter. He and his gang, somewhere upwards of twenty people, like to raid the town as often as possible. They get the XP, but it’s not about that for him. I think he just likes the easy kills of all the rookies who start here.”

It made me angry. I don’t know why, but all I wanted to do was shut him down. I needed to get better at this if I wanted to stop him.

“Are you going to join us?” Jem said. “You wouldn’t have to get rid of your gang, just switch to ours and when you wanted to do your own thing, start yours back up.” Her smile was genuine. “You give me ‘leader’ vibes, and I think that works well with us. It did with Kentucky, anyway.”

I laughed. “Your vibe-meter is broken. My plan got us all killed.”

Jem shook her head. “There was no plan where we would win that fight. Your plan took out the leader of the Colossals. That’s not a small thing to do.”

This wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed my mind. Joining up with Ed and his crew of Gladiat0rz gave us allies who had a working knowledge of what was going on.

“No,” I said at last. “I don’t think I will. Not yet, anyway. I want to do some things that might be hazardous to my reputation and I want to make Larry hurt. To do that, it might be best if we just stayed allies for now.”

Jem’s shoulders sunk, but she nodded. “That makes sense. Allies, then. Stick out your arm.”

I thrust my arm out, slowly and with confusion, but caught on when she reached forward and grabbed my forearm in a kind of old-timey handshake with her hand near my elbow.

“Grab mine,” she directed.

When I did, a notification popped up.

You are now friends with JemmyCloister.

“We can send each other messages now.” She saw my surprise and raised an eyebrow. “Did you not know how to do that?”

“Don’t tell me about the letter in my mail,” I held up a finger. “I’ve been busy.”

“So, what’s next for you?” Jem asked.

“Well, I’m going to check my mail,” I stood up and started walking toward the mail clerk.

A sudden memory popped into my head of Tyler. He used to replace the word ‘clerk’ with ‘jerk’ when it was just us. I don’t know why that hurt so much to think about.

I stopped to let my emotions settle down.

Then I added, “Then I’m going to start working on being the biggest pain in the ass that RadicalLarry19 ever had to deal with.”