Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 16 (Patreon)

“Give up, Carter. You can’t win. Might as well let me make this quick,” Craig chuckled. He stalked his way through the halls, and I wove through the door to the adjacent office as quietly as I could. I just needed to buy ten seconds. Once I had Deflect equipped again, I’d be much more confident facing Craig down.

I took a survey of my options. First, I could make my way out of the office. Most of the windows had been boarded up, but I could pry a few loose given time. Or I could make my way for the door.

But then what? Craig would still be a problem.

Should I fight him? The answer to that was obviously yes. He stabbed us in the back, murdered Ben, and then killed all the innocent non-combatants we were protecting when our backs were turned. Craig deserved to die. Not just to die, but to suffer as he passed. But I would settle for just taking him out of the picture.

So yes, I should fight him. But could I? That was the real question.

Ten seconds came due, and I recast Deflect.

I peeked my eye around the corner to get a good look at Craig. He fired a shot at me immediately. It would have hit me right in the eye if I hadn’t reactivated Deflect.

“Damn it! Is this thing fucking broken?” Craig cursed as he stared at his pistol.

I hadn’t used my Deflection for nothing, though. I’d gotten a good look at him with Examine.

Gunslinger Bandit (Craig) - Level 12

“After you’re dead, I’ll be top dog of this entire area,” Craig said once he had another round chambered. “I wonder how long it will take for those two girls of yours to come crawling to my crew for shelter? I was going to take in Bridget even after our little fight, but after seeing Sakura again? Wow, she turned into a real hottie overnight. Not tempting to me, mind you. I have high standards and demand only the finest bitches, with eager and submissive temperaments. But maybe she’d win the heart of one of my men who doesn’t care as much about a woman’s personality as I do. Although, I think it’d be funny to make the former head-bitch of our company the designated shit scooper of my new tribe. Imagine her spending every day hauling chamber pots out of the office that used to be hers every day! It’s going to be hilarious.”

I turned, pointed my finger, and shot Craig with Mana Bolt. Unlike his attacks, mine landed dead in the center of his chest and knocked him backward with almost as much force as one of Sakura’s baseball bat blows. It tore a hole through the bulletproof vest on his chest and bruised the skin beneath.

That one’s for you, Sakura.

At my current Caster proficiency, Mana Bolt was finally strong enough to function much like a bullet against weaker foes, like cockroaches and Fire Squirrels, but Craig was too strong to kill like that. But maybe I could whittle down his health points a little at a time.

Craig returned fire, but he missed again, thanks to Deflect. I had to keep him talking between every exchange. With a level disadvantage, I needed every edge I could get.

“How did you reach level twelve so fast?” I demanded.

Craig’s first reply was a bullet. It shot straight through the wall behind me and would have struck where my head would have been if I’d been standing. But I wasn’t standing. I was crouched along the floor and ready to run at the slightest hint of a whisper.

I glanced up at the hole. From what I’d seen earlier, he was firing hollow points. The office walls weren’t particularly tough, but the bullets still shouldn’t have that kind of penetrating power. Which meant he was using a class ability. It made sense that Gunslinger Bandits would have abilities that enhanced their bullets.

Now that I thought about it, it didn’t even look like Craig was aiming. Every one of his bullets had been hip shots. He shouldn’t have been able to hit a damn thing like that, and yet he’d nearly blown my head off every chance he could get. An icy feeling gripped my heart. Could I win this fight?

“Turns out, killing traitors grants way more levels than killing monsters,” Craig replied. “When I interrupted Ben and his little plan to ambush me, I was mad. Mad enough to do things I wouldn’t tell my momma, that’s for damn sure. I killed Ben and all his chumps.”

“You are a monster,” I spat.

Craig laughed. “Don’t take the high road. They were planning on killing me, after all. As were you. My man on the inside told me you were there for the meetings. I timed things just right so Ben would have all his weaklings gathered up but hadn’t gone to get you yet. I was still level nine at that point, you see, so I didn’t want anyone who could put up a proper fight. Not when I was busy power leveling.”

My heart leaped when I heard him talk about his man on the inside. We’d been betrayed. That was how all this happened. My mind flashed back to our meeting, and there was only one man who’d excused himself from our meeting. Michael.

“It was Michael, wasn’t it? The pest control guy?” I asked, reequipping Deflect to ready myself for another engagement. I turned, shot Craig, and then ducked out of the way just as fast.

“Ouch! Fuck you,” Craig snarled. “But yeah. It was him. Bit of a whiny bastard, to be honest. I told him he’d proved his loyalty by coming to me and that he could join my crew. Only when I brought him and the boys over to off Ben and his goons, he started blabbering about how what we were about to do was wrong. Pathetic. Why’d he tell me about Ben’s plan if he didn’t want to help me kill the dude?”

Poor naïve Michael. He’d been playing by the old world’s rules where there were courts to turn to and law and order to be upheld. All that was gone. It seemed Craig and I were the only people who truly realized that. For everyone else, it had yet to sink in. He’d tried to do what he thought was right, and in the end, it got even more innocents killed, along with any hope this survival group had for building a better future.

I recast Deflect, and we exchanged blows again. A bullet for a Mana Bolt. This time I hit Craig right in the head, and blood started leaking from his nose. Meanwhile, my scratches and singed clothes were from my previous fight outside. So far, Craig hadn’t even landed a scratch on me.

“Alright, screw you. I know you’re playing some trick on me. Don’t take me as a fool!” He looked around the office, and eventually, his eyes turned to Margaret, who still lay on the ground clutching her dead husband’s hand and quietly sobbing into his chest.

A smile spread across his face as he grabbed her by the hair and tore her off him. He lifted her off the ground with a fistful of her hair. She squirmed in his grasp and punched him right in the face. But Craig took the side of his gun and whipped her across the face.

“Don’t do that again, or I’ll have to really mar up that face of yours,” Craig spat. “You don’t want that. Your man is dead, which means if you want to survive, you’re going to need to press your tits together and pray you can find a new one. You’re a bit old for me, but maybe one of my boys has a mommy kink.”

“You murderer!” Margaret screamed. Craig sighed and whipped her across the face again with the side of his pistol. I shot him in the back of the head with a Mana Bolt while he was distracted, but he shrugged off the blow.

He kicked Margaret over and stepped on her back and head, pinning her to the ground while she thrashed and struggled. It was useless, though. Craig’s stats were so much higher than hers that she had no hope of escape when he had her pinned.

Craig pointed his gun at Margaret’s head. “Come out of hiding and face me like a man, or I’ll -- Awk! Stop fucking shooting me, and let me talk! I’ve got a damn hostage.”

I blasted Craig in the face one more time. I was tempted to do so again, but Craig pointed his gun at Margaret’s shoulder and fired.

A bang rang out from his pistol, and Margaret screamed in pain. Her thrashing stopped and was replaced by the sobbing from earlier.

“Next, one goes into the back of her head. I set that bullet to not cause too much damage since she’ll need that arm for doing laundry and cooking. But the next bullet I’m setting to kill, and it’ll blow her brains out her eye sockets,” Craig said. “I’m going to shoot her in ten seconds if you don’t come out and show yourself.”

Heart pounding with fury and disgust, I refreshed my Deflect spell. It looked like I’d wounded Craig as much as I could. Now it was time to see who between us was the strongest for real.

“Alright, Craig, we’ll play it your way.” I stepped out into the open, and Craig turned his gun toward me with a wide grin spread across his face.

But I had already used Power Jump, and he hit only empty air as I closed the distance between us. With two ranged weapons, we were evenly matched in a shootout. But I intended to turn our shootout into something a lot more up close and personal. I tore my sword free from its sheath and slashed at Craig while firing Mana Bolt from my other arm. The Mana Bolt struck his wrist, flinging it toward his chest and throwing off his aim for his other shot. Then my sword landed just where I was aiming.

I wasn’t sure if it was skill, planning, or just dumb luck. I’d been hoping to hurt his hand at least, but my sword cut right through his trigger finger, completely severing it from his hand.

Craig howled in pain. He pointed his gun at me, but nothing came out of it. Without his finger, there was nothing to pull the trigger. Craig kept waving his gun, unable to figure out what was wrong as he pointed his weapon at my face. I grinned and fired another Mana Bolt while slashing straight for his throat.

He ducked and rolled, jumping off Margaret and setting her free to crawl away in the blood and guts that covered the ground.

The two of us fought for real, and the intensity of our battle reached a new fever pitch. I hacked a dozen times in the span of a single heartbeat, and Craig waved his gun like a club.

I dodged to the side, finding his clumsy swings even easier to slip by than the Fire Squirrel’s fireballs. I could do this. I could put this bastard down once and for all.

The tip of my sword cut through his collarbone and got stuck there. Craig howled in pain. I tried to tear the blade free, but Craig’s other hand wrapped around my throat.

His muscles weren’t just for show. He’d probably started with an incredible strength score, and the integration had only let him push that stat higher. He picked me up off the ground as easily as he’d hauled Margaret off her feet by her hair.

I felt the blood pressure in my skull grow as he squeezed my neck with all his might and pointed his gun at my forehead with his other hand. He still hadn’t figured out why he couldn’t pull the trigger.

While he tried to choke me to death, I fired Mana Bolt after Mana Bolt directly into his face. The concussive shocks rattled Craig’s brain like yolk in an egg, and sooner or later, his skull was going to crack. It was just a question of which of us could hold out the longest.

I sensed my heath points starting to dip from his choke hold, so I used Mind Over Flesh to recover. Craig started whipping me in the face with the barrel of his gun now that he’d figured out it wouldn’t fire, and I felt something in my mouth shatter under the continuous blows. I spat out a mouthful of broken teeth at Craig, and he leaked blood from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes.

I finally managed to tear my sword free from his collarbone, and I thrust it toward his throat. The blood pounding in my head was too great to focus, though, and I didn’t manage a direct hit. Without Iron Will, I’d have fallen unconscious already, but the passive skill let me keep fighting a little longer. Whatever I’d struck made blood gush down Craig’s side in a crimson river that joined the pool on the floor, but it just wasn’t enough. He must have put some serious stats into Vitality to endure the beating I was dishing out.

I sliced at him with my sword, cutting deep gouges along his entire body. I knew my sword was incredibly sharp, even after stabbing a bunch of those squirrels and rats outside. But against Craig’s skin, I felt like I was cutting through planks of wood instead of human flesh. Maybe Sakura could have hacked her way through it, but I was lucky to cut grooves a finger deep in his flesh. That was how tough Craig’s body was.

I was doing ten times the damage to him as he was to me with his useless pistol as he whipped it across my face. But the raw power of levels couldn’t be underestimated. Crossing level ten seemed to be a qualitative threshold, since he felt even stronger than I thought he should be. Maybe he had more stats, or maybe his class granted him some special abilities I didn’t understand, but I realized then I wasn’t Craig’s match.

And yet, I had to kill him anyway. Nothing less would be acceptable.

In the end, neither of us broke the stalemate. In our fighting, we’d forgotten about Margaret crawling along the ground. She must have picked her rifle back up from where she’d set it aside next to Ben’s body. Now she knelt among the carnage and opened fire on Craig.

Bullets the size of my little finger shot out as quickly as she could pull the trigger, and three of them struck Craig’s side in quick succession. I sensed my Deflect spell trigger as one of them would have hit me, but my spell redirected it to slam into Craig’s wrist instead.

That finally forced him to drop me, and I fell to my knees on the ground, catching my breath while the pressure in my skull eased. My entire body felt like it was going to burst apart, and before the System, I probably would have dealt with permanent brain damage.

I used Mind Over Flesh again, draining mana to restore my health. I started feeling immediately, and my mouth felt normal as my broken teeth regrew, though the ability wasn’t instant, and it would take some time before I was restored to full health.

As bad as I felt, though, Craig looked worse. He looked like he’d decided to roll around in a rock tumbler, and purple bruises covered him from head to toe. Margaret’s rifle shots hadn’t even pierced his skin, but like my Mana Bolts, each of them must have felt like a punch. He walked unsteadily, and I knew he probably had the worst concussion imaginable.

I forced myself to my feet. Now wasn’t the time to recover. It was time to finish him off. He was still higher level than I was, and if I didn’t kill him now, who knew what kind of trouble he could get into.

I raised my hand, fingers shaking as I tried to aim. The spell wouldn’t activate, but that was probably because I could barely focus. So I said the words aloud to sharpen my mind.

My speech came out hazy and slow, barely discernible to anyone but me. “M-manza but...”

I fired again and again, whittling Craig down as he limped away. He yelled something, but I couldn’t make sense of the words.

That was when I came to a horrible realization. Craig wasn’t alone. He’d said he and his boys had been the ones to wipe out Ben and his allies. And yet I’d been fighting him alone? Where were the rest of his people?

My heart sank knowing the answer. While I was fighting Craig, they were busy ambushing the rest of the defenders trying to complete the settlement establishment quest. All those people I’d just saved were being slaughtered from behind by the people they thought they were defending.

And my own people were probably faring no better. Sakura, Bridget, Caleb, and all the others. What was happening to them right now?

“--Asses back in here!” Craig shouted, and I barely caught the last of his orders. But the doors to the rear office swung open, and a few haggard groups of Craig’s men streamed in, led by those two in prisoner uniforms from before. I noticed them coming in from the front and the side, the two flanks I helped. But nobody came in from the rear, the place where my companions were guarding.

I realized then and there that it was now or never. I had to take Craig down now, or I never would. So I rushed him, heedless of my wounds, still busy healing under the effects of Mind Over Flesh. The conversion of health points to vitality wasn’t instant and instead was more like an enhanced regeneration. It would take some time before I was back at full health, but I didn’t have time to wait. So battered, bruised, and half dead, I attacked.

I heard a scream behind me as someone grabbed Margaret and tore her rifle away. I was on my own.

I used Power Jump to leap into action, and I jumped on top of Craig’s back with my sword landing first. I stuck into his back, swinging there with my weapon impaled a hand deep into his body. He stumbled awkwardly, unable to reach for my weapon lodged in the small of his own back.

I pointed my hand at the back of his skull and fired spells for all I was worth.

“Manfa Bult!” I said around cracked lips, a cloudy head, and chips of still-broken teeth.

“Shoot him! Shoot him!” Craig cried as he turned like a whale with a harpoon in its side.

His goons heeded his call. A hail of bullets flew our way. I felt them pelt my back from head to toe. Deflect only blocked the first of them, and the rest struck home.

Craig was bigger than me, so even with my body between him and the rain of bullets, he still got struck a dozen times. But like with Margaret’s bullets, these didn’t pierce his skin. It was like he was getting hit with paintballs instead of real weapons.

But the bullets struck me. I felt them, even as I tried to hack Craig down with sword and spell.

“Argh!” Craig cried as the tip of my sword dug into his throat, sending out another gush of blood. His voice came out wet and sticky as the blood drained out of his throat, and one of his eyes was shut after one of my Mana Bolts struck it.

But Craig finally figured out why his gun wasn’t working and switched hands. He swapped his pistol over to his other hand, reached up between his own legs, and fired into my stomach. Somehow, the bullet he shot from that little gun seemed twice as loud as the guns shooting me in the back and three times as painful.

I tried to keep fighting, anyway. I had Iron Will, so I leaned on that skill to grant me the strength to stand. But it was no use.

Craig’s last bullet struck my spine, and try as I might, I couldn’t get my legs to respond. When Craig finally threw me off his back, I landed on the ground like a wet rag. I crumbled and lay in an awkward pile, rallying the last of my energy to fire one more Mana Bolt. I heard a dozen footsteps rushing toward Craig, running to his aid.

“Boss! That bastard did a number on you, huh?”

“Shut up and heal me,” Craig growled.

I struggled to fire a Mana Bolt again, but something was wrong. My vision blurred, and my body didn’t respond.

Craig cast me one last hateful glance, though this time it was tinged with a victorious grin. “He was a damn tough bastard. I’ll give him that.”

I tried to tell him that we weren’t done yet, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t activate Mana Bolt. I couldn’t do anything.

My entire body felt numb, and even the anger and fear I’d felt from the fight was fading. I was tired, so very tired. Drifting off sounded like a good idea, and at the moment, I felt perfectly at peace.

You have died!

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<Note>

Damn, Carter died. I guess we’re going to have to make Craig the protagonist, right? Sounds good? I know you’re all definitely 100% behind that.

...I really want to write a chapter with Craig as the protagonist just to troll you guys. I wish it was near April fools’ day. I was hoping to have a bonus chapter ready for today, but I've hit banging-my-forehead-against-the-keyboard stage again, so you guys will just have to deal with the cliffhanger. Sorry!