The pedovan was where they'd left it. Its keys were still in the ignition. The engine was still running. There was still enough gas in the tank. It was still playing that horrible musak.
"Savanah," said Necrobump. "You're up. Let's get out of here. I'm sick of this place already."
"Necro, I just wanted to ask. Has anybody ever told you that you are an anal retentive, control freak, jackass," Savanah said.
"Every day, Savanah, every day. Can you get us out of here or not?"
"Close the doors already, you are letting out all the hot air, what are you guys trying to do, invite the neighbors for a drive. Close ‘em, and let's get going then."
Savanah was in the driver’s seat. Dwight was at shotgun with the window rolled down and his M-16 resting on the window frame barrel pointed out. He was rapidly scanning up ahead. Lauren was still logged into the building's communication systems and was scanning for incoming and blocking any query's about I like big Booty. Mike-Mike looked on anxiously. There wasn't much he could do at the moment.
Jesus had extended the tripod on his minigun, and lay by the back door to the van, while Shrike was ready to throw the back door open the instant any sign of pursuit occurred.
The goal now was to get out the front gates and get as far as possible from this location. When they were sure they weren't being followed, they could go home and Necro would get in touch with the client to make sure the second half of the payment had been sent.
Savanah pressed down on the gas and reversed the Pedovan out of the parking lot. She took the corner, iced cream truck music blasting at the van’s top volume.
The security guard they'd passed coming in was standing at the gate with a hand gun drawn, and as soon as the van appeared the guard began shooting at the van. Bullets hit van’s radiator grate and one hit and shattered the front windshield.
Dwight was about to fire his M-16 at the guard, when something caught the periphery of his vision, he turned began shoot on fully auto while yelling, "Holly Shit, turn turn turn!"
"What?" Savanah said. She turned her head and saw what Dwight was shooting at.
About twenty feet away was the main gun, front plate, and turret of a fully armored, digitally rendered, M1A1 Abrams Tank, 120mm barrel pointed straight at them.
Frantically Savanah began turning the steering wheel of the pedovan but it was for nothing.
A shot rang out, BOOM! A depleted uranium M829A1 shell slammed into the front engine of the van. The engine exploded. The pedovan began to spin out of control and almost tipped over.
Mike-Mike threw open the side door, but the hatch machine gun on the tank rang out. Bullets ripped into Mike-Mike and threw him backwards in a bloody pulp. Some more of the bullets ripped through the walls of the van and Dwight was almost sawed in half by bullets cutting through his door.
Shrike acted without thinking and drew mana from Necrobump and threw a fireball out at the tank. The tank exploded in an inferno of fire.
"Good shot, Shrike. Lauren grab Mike-Mike's drop, Savanah you get Dwight’s. Give them their stuff back when you see them next after their respawns. Let's get moving."
The team jumped out of the van, by now without Shrike or Necro feeding the flames a rich surplus of mana, the fire was dying down, and now the Abrams tank began to move again. Necro could see a charred corpse hanging out of the hatch in the turret holding onto a now silent machine gun, but the turret was moving to take aim again. Someone must have reloaded inside.
"Shrike, hit it again!"
Power flowed out of Necro and into shrike again. His power reserve ran dry and he supplemented his mana from of the mana he'd stored in the diamond on the staff. Necro always likened the feeling of having mana ripped out of him as to being a bit like a cup of water someone had suddenly dipped a straw into and started to suck.
Shrike gestured and the earth under the tank opened up into a chasm. Without support the tank plunged into the earth and then the earth moved back, dirt and clay and earthworms and grass closing in around the tank. The front most part of the Tank treads were still visible as was the turret, but now all the machine of death could do was spin frantically trying to force itself out of the enclosing earth.
They left Mike-Mike's and Dwight’s shattered bodies in the van.
As a group, the team ran towards the front gate. Causally Shrike fired a single shot as she ran and put a bullet into the brain of the NPC guard at the gate – who up until that point had been ineffectively shooting his revolver at them. Mr. Sulla the Cat was nowhere to be seen.
Black Dahlia pulled up to front driveway, and Big Mike threw door to the second. "Get in," he yelled. Dahlia honked. And honked again.
They ran, but behind them the Tank that they'd plunged into a shallow earthly prison was rocking back and forth, and with every rock, it dislodged itself a little bit more from the dirt and clay and rock it had been buried in.
"Shrike, if that fucking Tank looks like it is going to fucking get out, do what you have to do keep it out of the game." Necro said between breaths of air as they ran towards the gate.
"What’s your mana supply like?" Shrike said.
"Good enough. Just do it."
They ran, and ran. It seemed like the run was taking them forever, when in reality was only a few hundred feet.
Just as they were about to make it to the open door of the getaway van, Necro felt an enormous amount of mana being drawn from his body and looked back to see the tank now having dug itself almost out of the dirt. The front end of the Abrams tank had risen up at a precarious 50 or 60-degree angle as the treads dug into the dirt and propelled the war machine upwards and outward.
Except that as the M1A1 tank hit the apex of its rise, where it could possibly transition in one instant from being positioned precariously riding up a hill of dirt, underbelly exposed; and the next instant falling back down towards them, ready to shoot off another anti-tank round and potentially destroy the second getaway vehicle. At that very moment a focused and concentrated gust of wind powered by the mass of mana which Shrike had pulled from Necrobump, pushed on the underbelly of the tank, and flipped it over onto its back. 54 Tonnes of Titanium and steel gracelessly toppled backwards and was rendered useless by Shrike.
“Want some more of that.” Shrike yelled. “The bitch is back. All bow before the wind queen. Lady of the Elements.”
The team got into the Van. Jesus Wept was the last person in, and he guarded the door minigun pointed outwards, watching for signs of pursuit. There was none.
"Where the hell would a place like this get a tank? That was a fully functional Abrams tank. Only national governments have access to those." Savanah said, voicing everyone's concerns.
"Way too much security for an average run." Necro said.
Black Dahlia sped to the end of the street. Then merged into traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, and proceeded to drive the speed limit, cautiously trying to look just like any other delivery van on the road.
"Whoo hoo!" Jesus Wept said. "Leveled up! Time to spend some skill points.”
"Gratz" said Savanah, Necro, Big-Mike, and Lauren
"Fuck-head" said Shrike.
“Don’t relax yet, we’re not completely out of this.” Said Necro.
“I think I will miss the pedovan. Here’s to the pedovan. I stole you from a dark garage where some creeper probably cared for you like he should have cared for the children he diddled. We only had you for about an hour, but your memory lives on inside of us all.”
“You are going to call the cops on the pervert, right Savanah?” asked Necro.
“Probably. I don’t know. Dwight and Mike-mike’s bodies are in the van, and the company we just raided will probably try to…”
BOOM!
The front of their getaway van blew open. The force of the rocket, or whatever’d hit them flipped the van on its side, and the van slid onward for a few more feet. The windshield was shattered. The entire front of the van was shattered. The engine was well… gone, it was still there, but it had been torn apart by the massive force of whatever had hit them. Most of the front cab was gone. Flames roared.
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A fractured and broken Black Dahlia had bounced forward as the flames and force ripped her body to shreds. Savanah was a burning mass of chard flesh.
Shrike pulled on Necrobump’s mana, and a wall of fire sprung up around five feet from the van. Then the fire in the engine and front seat died down. She tossed two smoke grenades out the back door, and threw a third through where the front windshield used to be.
Jesus Wept, because of his high strength and vitality scores, was the first team member to get back into action. He opened the back door and looked out and into the bullet from a sniper rifle which blew apart his second smaller head. Bits of bone and white and grey brain matter mixed with cerebrospinal fluid formed a splatter pattern across the exterior back door of the van.
Big Mike did a quick query of the area around them, “These aren’t NPCs. There’s at least three gaming raid teams out there. They aren’t even bothering to hide themselves from my hacks. The nearest one, is just waiting for us, to come out. The other two are converging from other side streets where they’d been waiting.”
“Thanks Shrike.” Said Necro. “That will only hold them for a short time. We need to get out of here. Someone grab Jesus’, Dahlia’s, and Savanah’s drops, they will want their stuff back. Savanah try create a rock barrier between here and the nearest building. We will use that for cover. Everyone, as soon as Savanah has the barrier up, prepare to run. ”
Once more, Savanah pulled Mana from Necrobump’s reserve. The diamond on his staff was almost empty now. But a wall of concrete and asphalt about three feet high formed between the van and the nearest house.
“Stay low, and move quickly. We’ve got incoming. When you get to safety, split up and make your way back to the guild headquarters. Don’t call attention to yourselves and try to use proxy Intra Server Gateways that don’t keep a log.”
Savanah was the first to run jump out of the back of the van, followed by Big Mike, Lauren, and Choirboy. Necrobump brought up the rear. But their freedom didn’t last long. Savanah made it perhaps a dozen steps when, one, two, three grenades landed on the side of the barrier that they’d been using for cover.
“Run” yelled Necro, who dived back into the van for cover. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lauren dive onto two of the grenades probably trying to shield Big Mike from the blast. Shrike ran forward.
The grenades detonated. Lauren became pulp as shrapnel tore through her body. Shrike, got hit mostly in the legs, and she fell forward screaming “Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers.” She tried to pull herself forward with her hands, still trying to make it to the cover of the buildings.
Choirboy who was still up and somehow unwounded, ran to her, and he and Big Mike grabbed hold of Shrikes arms, to drag her to safety.
A shot rang out, and a sniper bullet hit Choirboy’s head which exploded like a ripe watermelon. Big Mike, who at least Stats wise wasn’t so big pulled out his P-90 and started firing it randomly into the smoke, flames and blood, and hit almost immediately by a patchwork of submachine gun fire all over his body.
Shrike lay on the ground yelling “Motherfuckers, Motherfuckers.” Still trying to drag herself forward. There was nothing Necro could do for her. This mission had well and truly gone to fuck. And it was cold comfort that they would soon all be able to respawn and discuss all the things that had gone wrong over a cold beer in the comfort of their guild headquarters.
From the relative safety of the Van, Necro contemplated what to do and saw nothing. Machine gun fire rang out, and the under carriage of the vehicle was filled with holes. Necro dove to the ground, which since the van was up on its side, was one of the vans walls.
He crawled forward over Black Dahlia’s body, the fresh warmth of her blood in getting in his clothes and under his fingernails. Maybe he could get out the front shattered windshield. From the front, he could see some extremely well armored players, walking forward guns drawn, converging on the van.
Shrike yelled “Mother…” and a single shot rang out, and she was silent.
Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw that somehow, through some extreme act of luck, when the van had slid, they’d ended up on top of a manhole.
Once long ago, when Necro had been generating this character, he’d had dreams of being a Necromancer. He’d even named himself Necrobump because he thought that it sounded ominous and death like. Necro once had had dreams of raising eldritch horrors from the grave, and having them do his bidding.
That dream had only lasted a few levels. The problem wasn’t so much the skill of Necromancy, which in the world servers was an interesting spell direction. Rather the problem was that Necromancers as a whole were viewed as being Emo Poser Drama Queens. There might be a few normal Necromancers out there, but on the whole they were really a sad and miserable lot, who as a group actually wanted to be seen dressing in black, drinking fake blood, and sleeping in coffins.
It only took Necrobump about five levels to realize that he didn’t want to be associated with that lot. The thing was, he still had a few skills and spells that he’d picked up from those days. He could disguise himself as a corpse, sense dark mana, prevent resurrection spells, and lastly and most importantly he could raise a zombie.
Using the last of his mana, the diamond on the end of his staff shattering, Necro bump cast Raise Zombie on Jesus Wept. The Zombie Jesus rose and it didn’t even take three days. Necro commanded it -- open that manhole cover.
Zombie Jesus shambled over to the cover. Jesus Wept really was the strongest of them, but even he struggled as he lifted the brown steel cover. Lifting this barrier, broke all of the fingers in both of the zombies hands, but finally Necro’s undead servant managed to lift which guarded the path down into the sewers.
The smell of feces rose from the ground when the cover came off. It didn’t matter. Using the steel rebar that city maintenance workers used for a ladder, Necro lowered himself down into the sewer. Once he was in he silently commanded Zombie Jesus to replace the manhole cover, and then die again.
Necro was curious, though, so he didn’t rush downward and away. It was unlikely that anybody would figure out his escape route, and so he was probably safe for a little while. Besides there were some dangerous animals and monsters living in the Washington DC sewer system. He had a friend, Benny Profane who made his living hunting Alligators and Crocodiles down here. So he stayed and listened hoping that nobody would notice.
“… know, we’ve been here too long. Three weeks is too long for any job. And just waiting.”
“It paid well though.”
“I don’t know why we can’t loot the bodies. Part of the fun of raiding is the loot”
“Orders. Every corpse gets incinerated. We don’t touch anything. Every drop gets incinerated.”
“These guys must have really pissed someone off.”
“Who knows. They may have just been patsy’s. I heard another team had been offered the raid job too. Glad now they didn’t take it.”
Necro climbed down into the sewer system. A stream of shit, wastewater and urine made its way through the center of the sewer. The tunnel was high enough to stand in. Necro began walking.
A bell went off in Necro’s head. An alarm bell. It wasn’t the alarm that meant that his home had been entered, that stayed silent. Nor was it the alarm that meant, that the first alarm had been turned off, that stayed silent too. Nor was it even the alarm that indicated that the alarm which guarded the first alarm had been circumvented. No. In Necro’s paranoia, he’d installed an alarm which indicated that, the alarm which guarded the alarm which guarded the alarm that guarded the door. That alarm was ringing, and then it stopped… found.
Necro had other places to stay and lay low. He might be able to make it to guild headquarters but, a voice of paranoia inside of his head, kept telling him not to go there. This thing was too big, and whoever had planned this fucked up mission had money to burn.
It would be a long walk out of the sewers.