Ready Player None

Chapter 12.2 - Kate "Girls With Guns"

Ow ow ow ow!

Jeez, that hurt.

Recoil as a concept was much easier to deal with in a virtual world where even basic avatars had the strength of a polar bear. And full armor. And energy weapons that went pew-pew-pew. In the real world, a matchup between a triple barrel 20-gauge shotgun and a stick-like girl arm was really no contest. I'm lucky I didn't walk away with a stump.

Unlike Mr. No Head over there. He's got a stump, it's just where his neck used to be.

I'm not sure what happened to Alex. When he signalled that he was going into the Trak, I was so relieved; shotguns aren't exactly pinpoint weapons to begin with, and the handmade shells with fragment shot are designed for stopping power, not accuracy. I didn't want to try to guess which was he was going to bolt. It would be just my luck to take out my brother instead of the angry sandperson with the farm implement.

Was I not supposed to fire all three barrels? I mean, they make a gun with three barrels, you kinda want to see what happens when they all go off.

I thought about it for a second, decided that firing all three barrels was fine when facing one person, but would normally need to keep some shells available in case other people showed up. I reloaded as quickly as I could. Do sandpeople have families? Friends? No idea, and not really important. A handful of homemade shotgun shells slid into their happy little homes and I was once again ready for up to three of sand mutants, if they decided to make the same mistake of coming after us, like Mr. Male Pattern Headlessness did.

Ugh, that's no good. How about Mr. Got-A-Good-Head-Not-On-His-Shoulders? No? I really need to lock down all the good names before Alex wakes back up.

People without heads bleed a lot. This is something I never had a reason to learn firsthand, until today; in-sim there was always blood but it generally stayed in a nice pool around the body. As I leaned over and watched, it was still dribbling out of his corpse, adding to rivulets flowing down the sandy hillside. Mesmerizing.

Stop staring at his body, Kaykay, it's not decent behavior. His eyes are up there. Behind a rock.

I'm done with all this, anyway. The smell is kind of foul, and we needed to get moving again, and for that I needed a conscious Alex. I went back to the Trak. A few taps on his peaches-and-cream cheek and I was rewarded with an unfocused pair of crazy goggle-eyes.

"What.. happened?" he panted, as he glanced around wildly.

I patted that cheek again lightly, and said soothingly, "Alex, it's okay, we're fine. The bad guy is dead. The Trak is still broken, but we're okay."

"I can't hear out of my right ear," he said, rubbing it, almost certainly without improvement, considering what I had done in its immediate vicinity a short time ago.

"Yeah, my fault, big gun go boom. The med unit can fix it. Speaking of which, we need to get moving. If the landslide didn't attract other sandpeople, I'm sure my noisemaker did."

"Sure fine, give me a second." He sat up and tried to gather himself. "I'm going to need you to lead for a while. Just load me up like a pack mule, and kick me if I wander off course."

"Ooo, that sounds like fun."

He had a shadow of a grin as he glanced over at me and said, "I kinda feel sorry for Mr. Headless No-Horseman over there."

Damn.

We already had most of the equipment parted out and in packs, so it didn't take long to get ready. The hard part was being sure about which way to go. We were going to have to follow the valley, whether we wanted to or not. Climbing the mountain face would have been impossible if we had the right gear, and weren't loaded down with supplies; as it was, the idea of climbing out was impossible-plex. Once we could get back on the delivery route, we should then be able to get in range of a Community and signal for help.

No idea if a Community would volunteer to send anyone out based on an unknown distress call, though. I know I wouldn't. No one was looking for us, no one knew who we were, it would definitely smell like a trap. We'll deal with that later.

This area might have been more difficult to travel back when it had a forest. It wasn't easy keeping footing, but you could at least see where you were going. I picked out a distinguishing something at the end of the range of night vision, and led Alex there. Rinse and repeat. We were making decent time, but my occasional checks of the ahaptic and its utter deadness said we were still far out of range of civilization. After a while, I could see the tendrils of dawn touching the eastern sky. I began looking for a good covered spot to wait out the next day. With no Trak, and no cooling, it was going to be brutal.

Alex was breathing heavily, and seemed to be dragging his feet. "Hanging in there, big brother?" I asked.

He said, "Sure, no problem."

I stopped, and asked "No, seriously, are you okay? I don't want you dropping over while trying to prove how strong and tough you are. We can take a break."

He stopped, too, and responded, "Really, I'm fine."

The foot dragging sound didn't stop. We had company.

I pointed in the direction of the last spot on the horizon I had picked out, a lighted area that was possibly a reflection off some old metal building, and loudly whispered, "Go! Go! Someone's here!"

He tried to move more quickly than before, but perhaps I had overpacked him a bit. My vision picked up some general motion, but nothing with a human outline. I waited a bit to see if I could get a clean shot, but honestly, if I waited too long I could get overwhelmed from multiple sides, as we had no cover. I fired one shot from the third barrel, which had pelleted shot useful for spraying a wide area. No reason to hold back, if someone was there, they were the enemy. If someone wasn't, well, at least the lead shot was one step closer to its original home.

I trotted after Alex, keeping an eye behind us. It was hard to see motion while moving myself, but it really felt like there were more somethings out there. The third barrel had been reloaded; I debated another splatter-shot but decided the first one hadn't done a lot of good.

"Those are actual lights," Alex said. "They're moving towards us."

"Great. Keep going!" I stopped, and tried to see how much time we had before the somethings would become actual targets.

"What if those are sandpeople, too? We'll be surrounded."

"Sandpeople don't have lights, dummy. They have to be from the nearest Community."

Convinced, he resumed his somewhat-quick march. I have to give him credit, even after all this distance he was getting faster, not slower. I guess I packed our stuff perfectly, after all.

A human figure appeared from cover behind me. I shrieked, and fired. It went down, rolling, bleeding, gurgling, tumbling away from me. I started to run away, not seeing anything else so close, hoping that Alex had made it far enough towards our rescuers that anyone else would be scared off. I didn't want to have to kill anyone else. It was not as fun as I had imagined.

We dipped through a low area, the horizon disappearing, but some glow coming from those wonderful lights was bouncing around above us. Arm in arm, Alex and I dug ourselves up the sandy cliffside. "We're right here!" I called out, both in relief at having been found so quickly, and to make sure they knew we were friendlies. I made it up onto level ground first, pulling Alex up with me with what little strength I had left. We could recover once we were inside.

The lights made it difficult to see who was in charge, and my night vision was worse than useless. I turned off the goggles to greet and thank the rescue party properly.

Alex said, "No, it can't be," and fell to his knees.

The people standing just above in a line were covered in rough clothing. They had scavenged head wraps and improvised protective gear. They said nothing.

Sandpeople.

The darkness from a heavy club bouncing off my temple was a relief.