Chapter 11

  “Lock them up,” Hayes shouted. “At their tent. Man the walls and call in the wagons!” He was in front of us now.

  He had said players. Players were attacking the fort. I could not let them lock us to that wall.

  Bear said it outloud before I could.

  “Coot!”

  Bear must have been still amped up after the fight, and I didn’t need to tell him anything. Suddenly, he was on his feet and swinging again as folks ran around. I wasn’t going to wait for Agent Hayes to turn around and leaped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck from behind. While I held him, he spun and fell to the ground trying to get me off of him, but I was not letting go. While we rolled around in the snow and dirt, I wrapped my legs around his waist for leverage and pulled back as hard as I could.

  Bullets peppered the ground next to us, but no one wanted to risk hitting the Redbriar agent.

  "Sammy," Bear shouted at me while I continued to slowly strangle our captor. A pistol landed in the dirt a few feet out of reach from my location.

  Hayes noticed it, too. All of his struggling shifted to reaching as he tried to get that pistol. Then his oxygen-starved mind reminded him that he already had a pistol. I risked letting go with one hand to grab it just as he reached for it.

  Then I tossed it over to the other one.

  If you're going to shackle me up, you're going to die.

  And I might just take pleasure in it.

  Finally, after what felt like years, Agent Dalton Hayes died.

  Dalton_Hayes has been killed by Sammy#0421.

  +25 XP Player Kill

  +5 XP Melee Kill

  +10 XP Silent Kill

  I released the corpse and huffed to catch my breath as I forced myself to my feet, that was when several differnt things about that notification struck me at once.

  The first thing that I noticed I didn't have time to ponder on. The second was that I even saw the notification. Kills still came across my HUD, even with the shackles on my ankles.

  I tripped and walked at the same time as I was getting up and grabbed both of the pistols. Let's see how many of those notifications I could pop back up.

  I looked for Bear as explosions and gunfire began to seep through my previously distracted mind. It sounded like Fort Pine Hollow was being fought on both sides. The wall that our tent was against had a smaller force, or maybe they had lighter arms. The front was getting his by just about everything. Explosions rocked the door, and I could see people trying to push through the wooden doors.

  "We need to help them," Bear was suddenly beside me with a knife. He was covered in blood and while most of it wasn't his, the large cuts on his face and jacket made it clear that at least some of it was.

  "We aren't helping anyone if we can't get into our inventory," I said. "We need to get the brush or a key."

  Bear crouched and started to reach for Hayes' pockets when the man vanished.

  "He won't have them," I said. Soldiers and a handful of the Redbriar agents were still running around us, but none of them seemed to have time for their fallen leader. "He's a player, and they weren't his shackles."

  That was the first thing that the notification of the agent's death had surprised me with. Redbriar Agent Dalton Hayes was a player. I had too many questions and it was clear that Bear did, as well, but we didn't have time for them.

  "The building is right there. It'd be quicker to just get the job completed."

  Bear shook his head, "It'd be quicker if we just shot each other."

  "We're still in a party," I said. "Or if we aren't anymore, I can't tell. Either way, you said you wanted to help them. If we shoot each other, that takes us out of the fight and we need to know what is going on." I pointed at the front doors where I could see that whoever was attacking was starting to finally make their way into the fort. "Besides," the corner of my mouth came up in a smile, "It's going to be way more fun to save our heroes." I pointed back toward the tent. "Find our witch. I'll get the brush."

  Bear was already running before I finished speaking. He hadn't even given me a chance to give him Dalton's pistol. Whatever. He seemed to like the close up fighting way more than I did.

  Even though most of them had all been there when the alarm had sounded about the attack, most everyone wasn't paying us much attention. They were all focused on this two-front attack. Something Hayes had said at the beginning was bothering me, and I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but I also had no time.

  Most everyone not noticing us didn't mean no one did. I fired several times, but I was trying to ration my shots. Any chance I had to slip by someone, I took, although seeing those kill notifications was popping a Pringle. Once you pop, you just can't stop.

  I finally made it back to the building that I had been thinking of as the 'war room.'

  Kicking in the door, I stepped in with both pistols and almost no ammo ready to take down anyone I saw.

  The room was almost entirely empty except for one person, off in the furthest corner to me, bent over and rummaging through a weapon locker. They weren’t wearing a uniform, so I assumed they had to be one of Haye’s men.

  If I didn’t have to kill anyone, I would prefer not to, only because I still wasn’t sure what my ammo situation looked like. I dropped into a crouch and tried to shuffle forward. For the second time that night, I was trying to sneak with my ankles shackled. This time was exactly as successful as the first time.

  Before I made it to the ivory brush, my shackles caught the attention of my quarry and she spun to face me, two sawed-off shotguns, held like pistols, at the ready.

  I brought up both of my stolen pistols, but not nearly fast enough.

  We stared at each other. Both of us not shooting.

  Then we started laughing.

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  We lowered our guns and ran to hug each other.

  The short-haired woman who was rummaging through Fort Pine Hollow’s leftover ammunition and weapons was none other than my friend, JemmyCloister. She was a member of the Gladiat0rZ gang, ran by another friend of mine, EdtheMund2021. Our gangs worked together on a few raids and I had found some decent friends with them. I had been hoping to either poach Jemmy to the Flamingos or convince her to be in both gangs.

  “You sure stepped in it,” she said as we broke from the hug.

  I nodded. “You have no idea.” I pointed outside. “Is that the Gladiat0rZ and Coot?”

  “Yes,” Jemmy confirmed. “When you two got grabbed, he could still see you on the map. He rounded us up and came to find you.”

  I pointed at the shackles. “I’d have called, but I’ve been having signal issues.”

  She frowned. “I knew the shackles could do that, but I hadn’t seen any of them before.” Her eyes lit up. “We should keep a set.”

  I agreed. These would be invaluable. “If you can help me get back to the witch in camp here, she can give us a key to get these off and I’ll give the Gladiat0rZ my set. We’ll keep Bear’s.”

  Her eyes lit up at that. “Witch? Linda is here?”

  “You know her?” I was surprised.

  Jemmy nodded. “Yes, everyone has to deal with her sooner or later. Either for a one-off job, or just for passive income. A lot of players who don’t want to earn money the standard ways, just hunt for precious stuff that she likes to sell her. She has, uh, unique stuff she can sell you.” She smirked. “The way your gang fights, she’ll probably be someone you visit regularly.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, let’s get out of here and help Coot out.” I scooped up the brush. I couldn’t access my inventory, so I shoved it into the jacket pocket and readied my pistols. I took one quick glance to see I had only 4 bullets left. 3 in Hayes’ gun and 1 in the one Bear tossed me.

  “I’ll lead,” I said, stopping at the door, “but get ready. If we get overwhelmed, I’m out after four shots.”

  She nodded.

  The door behind us, where we were walked through the first ‘tour', burst open and a man ran toward where Jemmy had just been looting. I thought about shooting him, but Jemmy just stared at him, smirking to herself. We could have killed him there, but he clearly was too distracted by the war.

  I shrugged and we pushed our way out into the cold again.

  As we stepped out and into the camp side of the fort, it was clear that we didn’t have too much to worry about. Everyone was either on the wall, fighting at breach points, or just dead. With minimal resistance we ran toward my tent. Glancing over my shoulder as we ran, I saw that Jemmy’s eyes were doing that distant thing we all did when we were using the chat menu. She was letting Coot know she found us.

  At the tent, Bear was laying on the ground, unconscious. Linda was sitting inside and knitting. Where she got the stuff to start knitting, I had no idea, and I certainly didn’t have the time to ask.

  “What happened to Bear?” I demanded as I dropped to the ground to check on him. Without the HUD, there wasn’t much that I could do, so I checked him over like I would a real person from the old world.

  “Your big man fell down,” Linda said without looking up from her knitting. “I assume because of the copious amounts of blood that he’s leaking.”

  Bear’s chest was rising and falling, so he wasn’t dead.

  “He needs a revive,” I spun to Jemmy.

  “On it,” she said as she dropped to her knees.

  Just like in the real world, a gun fight didn’t mean you dropped dead when you were wounded. In Wicked West, we could bleed out, go unconscious, or just be incapacitated. When that happened, you would be close to death and only minutes away, but a non-hostile character could revive you.

  The animation when we revived someone was ridiculous in its simplicity, but did the job.

  Jemmy dropped to one knee beside Bear and pulled a bottle from her jacket. I knew from experience that she didn’t actually have that bottle. It was just there for the animation. She uncorked it and waved it under Bear’s nose to ‘wake him up’, then she tossed the bottle aside.

  Bear sat up like he’d been electrocuted. Getting to his feet, he hugged Jemmy and thanked her.

  “That’ll do for now,” he said. “But without food, or a tincture, or something I’ll go down again pretty soon.”

  I tossed the ivory brush to the witch.

  “Key, please.”

  Linda slowly put her knitting down and reached for the brush. She picked it up and examined it like a jewelry seller trying to determine how many facets a diamond had on it. When she was done, the brush vanished.

  Then she reached into her many layers and pulled the key out. I was annoyed on principle, but I knew that this was just how the game worked. I snatched the key from her hand and bent to unlock my shackles. As they came off, I was almost blinded by my HUD coming back on. I had tons of messages, and it looked like Coot was trying to keep me up-to-date on the state of the battle, even though he didn’t know when I would get to read it.

  Ignoring the messages, I knelt and undid Bear’s shackles for him and handed them to Jemmy. They disappeared as she put them into her inventory. I did the same with my own then Bear grunted.

  “That was close,” he explained as he reached into his own jacket. “I only had about 20% health. I wasn’t going to survive a bad fart.”

  Jemmy, acquiescing to me for reasons I’ll never understand, asked, “What now?”

  I looked at Bear. “Now we let our resident stoner let us dip into his supply.”

  “What?” Jemmy’s face contorted with confusion.

  “She means that I’m a Mountain Man,” he pulled three bottles from his inventory. “Which means that it's time we bust out the good stuff.”

  Before we could take them from his hands, Bear pulled back gently. “These aren’t easy to make. I’ll be expecting help replacing the ingredients.”

  “Alright, grandma,” I said. “Give us the hooch.”

  Once I had it, I looked it over.

  Special Health Tonic

  Fully Restores Health and Reinforces Durability Greatly

  I yanked the cork and chugged it.

  My own health hadn’t gone below 80% but I watched as the bar turned into a much brighter and less opaque shade of gold and then a second bar slid in beside it.

  “What’s with the second health bar?” I asked.

  Jemmy answered after she drank hers. “That’s the part that mentioned your durability getting reinforced. All that means is that if your health was at 100% before, now its at 200%. It’ll take an elephant to take you down. At least for the next 10 minutes. After that, if you still have two health bars, the new one will go away.”

  Then she reached into her own inventory and gave us both a stick of gum.

  I looked at it.

  “Cocaine gum? Come on,” I said, “I was kidding about the stoner thing.”

  “It’s not like cocaine from the real world,” Bear said. “No addiction. All this does is give you a stamina boost for 20 minutes. Similar to the Special Health Tonic, you’ll get an extra stamina bar.”

  I didn’t need much more convincing than watching both of them shove a piece into their own mouths. Once I did, I saw that Bear was right, my stamina did the same thing my health bar just did.

  Bear was also wrong.

  He said this was nothing like real-world cocaine, but let me tell you, I never got this amped up in my real life. Suddenly, I was awake.

  I took three huge huffs of the cold air, grabbed one of my pistols and started for the wall.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Surprisingly, it was Jemmy asking the question.

  “We are uniquely qualified to lend a special kind of assistance to our friends. What kind of weird ammo do you have left, Bear?”

  He was quiet for a second while he searched. I was leading us back toward the war room, but only because there was a set of stairs leading up the wall there.

  “Two incendiary rounds,” he sounded disappointed. “That’s it.”

  I smirked, that was better than I thought.

  “Shoot the -” I stopped myself, both verbally and physically and spun. “Hey Linda,” I shouted “run, please.”

  She stood up but just stared at me with her confusion.

  I faced Bear again. “Shoot the tents.”