Full stop pit stop
“Shit!” Nova slammed on the breaks.
“Ah hell no baby! Gun it Gun it!” Luke yelled from the back seat. The rounds kept zipping in through the windshield. Gradie was already kneeling on the floorboard and raised his gun to the windshield with the suppressor braced just over the AC vent and started firing at the distant muzzle flash. The suppressed shots were movie quiet, but they kicked Angel into action. He emptied half a Glock mag on full-auto through the windshield. Unfortunately, none of it even dampened the oncoming fire.
Nova had taken what seemed like years to transition from breaking to accelerating, but was finally getting some speed when the engine made a grinding noise and the van started going sideways.
“Ditch it! Ditch it!” Luke yelled. Nova cut the wheel to the right hard and dropped them into the drainage ditch.
Gradie bounced around in the cabin, and having taken his finger out of the trigger guard just before the crash, squeezed the grip on his pistol like it was his lifeline. Like some kind of magic trick, Luke was out of the van before it finished rocking.
“Give em the rest of it,” Luke said on the comms, and Angel fired off bursts of three and four rounds at the cluster of cars glaring under the fluorescence. About a second later, something exploded farther down in the ditch. Luke’s muzzle flash. He fired the 1911 in singles and doubles while barreling forward in a full sprint. Immediately, the oncoming fire lessened.
Suddenly, the 1911 went silent, and Gradie saw Luke fly face down into the ditch.
“Banned! You good?”
“Yep. Just reloading.”
“Move!” Nova drug Angel out by the collar as rounds struck the glass and frame of the minivan. Gradie had already moved out and behind the engine block, and was trying to study the muzzle flash and silhouettes for an opening.
“Be advised, four of them, at least, mostly pistols, at least one AR,” Luke said. The gunfire stopped abruptly.
“And their probably getting low on ammo,” Gradie said. Luke snickered.
“Yeah, let’s hope so.”
“What’s the plan?” Nova asked, fear in his voice. Gradie caught himself looking for the mini-map from Soulara to tell him how far forward Luke was, and its absence sent a shiver down his back.
“This isn’t a game,” a soft, withered voice said to him, but it was weak and barely there. He understood, as he stood there panting, reminding himself that there was no air or breathing here, why the makers had painted Killcity in hues of surrealism.
“I’m crawling up this ditch to the drainpipe,” Luke said. “When I get there I’m gonna open up. Ya’ll give them a few rounds to keep them occupied.”
Angel fired his Jericho three times until the gas station erupted in muzzle flash again and he dropped back behind the rear tire. The first rounds zipped through the back side of the minivan, but the next volley fell heavily around the engine block where Gradie crouched. Something clicked in his head.
“They’re aiming for the headlights. They can’t see us. Their night sight is washed out by the overhead lights.”
“Should we kill the headlights?” Nova asked.
“No. Give them something to waste ammo on. I’m gonna flank them from the field.”
“Wait bro, you sure—” Luke started.
“Moving!” Gradie said and sped in a low crouch back down the ditch away from the van.
“Shit, alright then,” Luke chuckled. Gradie put ten yards between himself and the van then cut into the field, a wide flat plane of tall grass and short shrubs and saplings that looked very Texas side-of-the-road. He found a natural gulley and moved across it, low and fast, as the gunshots echoed across the flat ground around him, towards the edge of the thick darkness that surrounded the gas station, roughly ten yards from the lot. He got low behind a five foot high shrub, and took aim.
“You in position?” Luke asked.
“Yep. About five yards, uh, below the gas station.”
“Target is north of us,” Luke said, sensing Gradie’s dilemma. You can check your phone for the compass and shit.”
“Got it.” Gunfire punctuated their conversation. Pistol fire. They were trying to see some muzzle flash before opening up with their one AR again. There was about ten seconds of silence and cracks before Luke spoke on the comms.
“All right boys, accurate consistent shots, on my signal.”
Gradie decided right there that he would rush them. Sitting still next to a bush was about as good as sitting still in the open, and the darkness would be his friend for another five yards. Besides that, he could only see one shooter from his position, the rest were shuffling somewhere behind the pumps and engine blocks. He stepped out and moved up slowly, his head just above the height of the surrounding scrub grass.
“Give them a burst, swordsman,” Luke said, his voice the same surgical steel cold tone Gradie had heard him use every time a gunfight got real in the Hardworlds, when the adrenaline and bloodlust burned his sarcasm away and exposed the frosty killer underneath. Suddenly, the air cracked and bristled.
Gradie was so close to the enemy now that the team’s gunfire was quieter than the cracks and whizzes of the rounds themselves, so close he felt he could wave his hand all the eyes and faces of the enemy would snap to him. But the bright lights of the gas station awning washed his position out into deep inky darkness. It felt like being invisible. All his gunfighting experience in the Hardworlds and the clubhouse training told him being this close meant you had to start shooting seconds ago, but the enemy continued on like he wasn’t even there. The fear and adrenaline rolled over his body, mixing with the immeasurable excitement of being unseen and unthreatened as God.
He watched the enemy players jump into action. They rose out of their cover to return fire. It wasn’t as disorganized as he expected. The guy with the AR, a short AK of some kind, was snug behind the t-post of the driver’s side door of one of the sedans, and right behind him another player stood with a pistol, scanning the environment and calling out targets to direct his friend’s fire.
Still, it was over in about five seconds.
Just as the enemy popped up and lay into the team, responding to Angel’s fire, a rhythm of doubles and triples broke out on the other side as Luke shot out of the drainage ditch and emptied his 1911. From the echoes bouncing between lot and gas station awning, Gradie could tell Luke was moving at under a full sprint, and though he couldn’t see him, he saw one player fall immediately and another scramble away from his cover, confirming that Luke was just as good at shooting on the move in a Gameworld as he was in a Hardworld. Maybe even better.
Gradie shot forward the moment he heard the 1911, and by the time the first guy fell, he was already putting two in the side of another one’s head. It was like being a ghost. With the noise of their own gunfire and the flash and violence of Luke’s assault, they had no chance to notice the Hollywood quiet slaps of Gradie’s .45 as he pushed in from total darkness. The last guy to fall even looked in Gradie’s direction and swept his gun from side to side, but apparently saw nothing but black as Gradie popped him in the face.
“I feel like a fucking ninja,” Gradie said.
“Yeah, that was some Splinter Cell shit,” Luke said. “Dibs on the AR.”
“We good?” Nova asked.
“Yeah, get the fuck up here. We’re taking one of these cars.”
The team of five had apparently stopped at the station to make Molotov’s. Their cars, customized Japanese sedans straight out of the 00’s, underglow and all, were arranged around a cluster of gas cans and liquor bottles. Gradie was about to ask why the bodies had dissolved into ashy burn marks on the ground, when another thought jumped ahead.
“Ya’ll think we can squeeze into that Supra?” he asked.
“Shit, but to nut baby. We can do it,” Luke said.
“Fuck that,” Nova laughed. “They already got the back seats out of this Civic DX for us.”
“Oh hell yeah,” Luke said. “The little troop transport that could. We’re gonna be hopping out on some mother fuckers.”
“Should we take any of the Molotov’s?” Gradie asked.
“I don’t want any of those fucking things in the car,” Nova said. “One stray bullet and that’s game.”
“I’m taking one,” Luke smiled.
Luke and Nova went back and forth about it while Gradie gathered up the last of the weapons and laid them on the hood of the Civic. Something in the light around him drew his attention to the inky blackness beyond, and reminded him of Philip’s gas station Othership.
“Damn. This makes me miss, uh, a certain someone’s craft.”
“Who?” Angel said.
“Oh shit!” Nova cackled. “I forgot we did that!”
Suddenly, it got dark.
“Jesus!” Nova hissed.
“I killed the lights,” Angel said. “Don’t want some other team to do to us what we did to them.”
“That ain’t happening, but I like where your heads at.” Luke took out his phone and switched on a red flashlight and gathered up the last of the weapons and ammo. Gradie tapped his own pocket and found he too had a phone. He took it out and swiped through the menu. It told him his token balance (increased from this shootout), his ranking, his team, and even had an option to buy “drops” from the shop. The token costs for those compared to his balance made his jaw drop.
“Aight, we ready to go?” Nova said.
“One sec, still checking back here,” Angel said, and Gradie saw a soft red light bouncing around in the gas station.
“You looking for doors?” Nova said, a slight teasing tone.
“Yes. And other weapons.”
“Bro I told you, even if you find a door, I’m not going through it. People camp those things.”
“The chances of that are even less than me fucking finding one, so I don’t know why you always say that.”
“A door?” Gradie asked.
“Yeah,” said Nova. “There are doors that lead to other doors like miles away. So you could walk in a gas station and end up downtown or out in a barn or something. But if you don’t know where its gonna lead, or if someone finds it and decides to set up and wait,”
“Who would do that?” Angel said derisively. “It would cost so many tokens just to sit there and not get kills.”
“They can put a camera on it.”
“Oh my God, you are so—”
Then the twins went at it as Angel came out of the gas station and they all piled into the civic that smelled, surprisingly and not surprisingly, like weed, and Angel handed something back to Luke and Gradie.
“Oh and here, found this under the counter.” It was a Mossberg shockwave. Immediately it soured Gradie’s mood.
“So where to?” Nova said, his phone stuck to the mount on the dash.
“Let’s get something that flies,” Luke said.
“Oh shit that’s right!” Angel said. “I forgot last time we had that helo.”
They reminisced about Luke’s antics with a chopper that apparently included flying under an overpass and crushing some guy under the rails one time, and decided to head for the airport. Gradie joined in at times and kept a good face, but his heart wasn’t in it.
The shockwave had reminded him of a distant memory, of a rainy night in a cluttered apartment, of Chinese takeout and long talks, of blue grey eyes and wet shining freckled skin, of another him and another world, and the one flying past him seemed like only so much low rez scenery.
