Trigger Happy
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The noise was enough to blow out my eardrums.
At this rate we were going to pull in every monster in the area before we even got started. Still… we were clearing a safe zone while we were at it, so I figured it was fine.
“Remember when we used to go hunting in the woods, Dad?”
“I’m not that old yet, you little punk!”
They called themselves veterans. They said war was hell. I still remembered the dark looks on both their faces when they talked about it. And yet here they were, guns up, firing away like they were born to it. Maybe running for so long had just made them hungry for a little payback.
Bang. Bang.
Blood spilled across the floor. Fragments of parasites rolled and skittered. Mr. James’s combat boots crushed the black flesh underfoot as he strode past.
“Reload!”
“Take your time. They’re running now!”
The smoke was getting thick, though. Hard to even breathe—
“Achoo!”
Bang.
I was still rubbing my nose when a headless zombie simply toppled face-first onto the floor.
We’d pushed maybe ten minutes past the barricade. The wide plaza where three corridors met was now spotless—no. It was a sea of blood. The zombies were gone, sure, but leave this mess and you’d be breeding every disease under the sun.
“Let’s see… that last one makes sixteen?”
“I’m at twenty.”
“Showing off to an old man, you energetic little shit.”
“I’ve been failing to hide my gray hair for years. What’s so energetic about that?”
“You saying that for my benefit, James?”
My worries might as well have been invisible. Mr. James and Mr. Curtis just tossed banter back and forth, booming with laughter.
Still… what the hell were we going to do with all these corpses? Without a working ventilation shaft, burning them was basically impossible. Feeding them to the spider swarm carried its own risks. Hmm—
Speak of the devil.
“…Goddamn spiders.”
Probably because of what happened to Sarah. Both men’s faces went ice-cold in an instant. Thinking bullets wouldn’t work, Mr. James slung his rifle and started hunting for a steel rod the way I had—
“No. I’ll take them.”
Mr. Curtis stepped forward and thumbed the loaded rounds out of his weapon. In their place he fed in white cartridges marked AP in black pen, one careful shell at a time.
“What are those?”
“Specialty rounds.”
“Specialty rounds?”
“Mr. Curtis asked me to help make them.”
I’d been fretting over how to explain the stuff on the crafting bench, but the empty supply crates we’d broken down for lumber had conveniently given me cover with Curtis.
“Buckshot’s still a no-go unless we start using steel balls, so I’ve been testing loads that guarantee penetration as long as you aim true.”
“…Huh.”
Mr. James gave Curtis a strange look—something close to open resentment. Curtis just coughed awkwardly. Maybe he was sore that I’d given the ammo to Curtis first…?
“Uh, if you need some—”
“Quiet. They’re closing in.”
The glowing barrel swung forward. The spiders hissed and clicked, hauling their heavy bodies closer one deliberate step at a time. Cocky bastards, trusting their armor.
Not this time.
Thwack.
The round punched a neat green hole straight through the thick carapace. The spider’s legs wobbled once, then it collapsed flat on the floor.
“…Huh?”
“Hahaha! It works!”
The next round was already in the air. A wet crunch, and green blood sprayed everywhere.
“That’s a slug, right? Wait—no?”
“It is a slug. Modified a bit.”
Curtis was still laughing as the remaining spiders bolted, digging frantically through his pockets—
“Tsk. Fast little bastards when they want to run.”
They vanished into alleys and corridor mouths beyond the reach of our flashlights before he could fire again.
“…What the hell are you shooting that can do that? I thought even 5.56 couldn’t punch those shells.”
“This.”
I pulled a makeshift AP slug from my pocket and held it up. A steel nail with a nut welded onto the head. Instead of a blunt slug of metal, the whole point was a fat, sharpened nail designed to punch through and keep going.
“…A rivet head with a nut on it. Huh.”
“Your hands are unreal. You’re a walking factory!”
Curtis slapped my back a couple of times, still laughing, then swept the area with a quick look. No more movement. After dozens of rounds, who in their right mind would wander over? A single shot might draw scavengers or a rival group’s sentries, but a full automatic dump made people scarce. Even the wild dogs that lived by sound stayed away—and the Land Bats fled too.
“So. Want to poke around for supply crates while we’re here?”
“I’ll go check on Sarah. Leave her alone too long and she’ll start worrying.”
“Give the girl some alone time. Door’s locked. Tripwire’s set.”
“Trip wi—what?”
Curtis launched into an enthusiastic explanation of grenade mechanics. The idea had hit me earlier and I’d thrown together a couple of improvised pipe bombs—just pack enough powder and nails, wire a lighter and string so that tugging the tripwire lit the fuse. Instant man-killing trap.
“Ah, hell…”
“If you can use something, you suck the marrow out of it. That’s just manners. Right? Right?”
Curtis shrugged and cackled. James looked at him like he was a headache, then turned the same worried glance on me.
“I’m fine. It was fun. And I got a great show watching you two work.”
“…I think Dad and I need to have a talk later.”
Curtis had already claimed a spot, crowbar out of his bag and wedged into a crate seam.
“You’ll hurt yourself. Let me.”
“You go see Sarah. James—yeah, you. Get over here and help this old man open some boxes.”
James muttered something under his breath and headed back toward the base alone. I watched him go for a second before the insistent thumping of Curtis’s hand on the wooden crate pulled me over.
“I was worried we’d have to find a proper munitions bunker. Looks like I can stop fretting. You’ve got the Midas touch, kid.”
“Haha…”
All of it was the Crafter’s power, of course. While other classes were shitting themselves dumping trash ammo and hunting high-penetration rounds, a Crafter just clicked. Well—not clicked anymore. I was the one blackening my hands making every last one of these things…
“Still. Look at this lettering.”
Most of the paint had been scraped away, but the big bold U.S. was still unmistakable.
“Smells promising. With luck there’ll be guns and ammo inside. Lend a hand.”
Clear a nest of monsters and good loot always waited nearby—some kind of universal law. I put everything I had into the crowbar jammed under the lid.
“Nnngh…”
Creeeak. Snap.
Nails gave one by one. The lid finally lifted. I swung my flashlight over the contents.
“Whoa.”
Curtis’s eyes lit up for some reason. A huge smile split his face; his hands actually trembled. All I saw were iron lumps… and one ammo can?
“What even is this?”
I pulled the can free. .50 Cal…
Fifty caliber?
Wasn’t that anti-materiel sniper ammo?
“Decent haul. This is…”
“Decent haul?”
The old man’s shaking hands stroked the metal—slow, almost gentle, yet rough. With a grunt of effort he heaved the steel mass upright. No trigger, but it looked like some kind of machine gun.
“What you’re looking at, boy, was born before I ever went to war, and she’s still out there killing people to this day.”
“She?”
“Yeah. ‘She.’”
I heard “she,” but somehow the word “beach” was echoing in my head. My imagination?
“I heard one Marine put a round through a man’s skull at 1.4 miles with her. Accuracy’s one thing, but the real magic is what this bitch spits out.”
“Anti-materiel sniper rounds, right?”
“You know that much, at least. Even if you don’t know the gun.”
I didn’t. I’d never seen this thing in action. It looked like a mounted machine gun, but the only places those showed up in the game were armored trains or the bunkers of the Zeroth Reich. This wasn’t the same. Those looked like actual guns. This was just a block of steel.
“She punches straight through thin plate. Turns arms and legs into confetti through house walls. Watch a body take a hit and you’ll see everything a man ate that day come back up.”
Curtis nodded slowly, stroking the weapon like he was lost in memory.
“Ever fire one yourself?”
“…The only thing that ever felt better than this girl kicking in my hands was James’s mother.”
Yeah. His mouth had always been filthy.
“We taking her with us?”
“If you’re not taking her, you can leave me right here.”
Shit.
My muscle soreness still hadn’t gone away.