The five of us left first. We had to make our way far enough up the road to cross over without being in easy view of the front of the Stack Shack. Fortunately, there were several abandoned cars left on the road. People must have abandoned them and ran straight for the Mcdonalds. There were worse plans, though not many. To the North of the Stack Shack there weren’t a lot of trees until we got well past the road. Sadly, this meant us sneaking in ones and twos from car to shrub to signage to eventual tree cover. Five people doing this took a while, which is why I found myself looking at my watch. It was 10:45 AM. We had reached the point where we would not reach Fenton before the portals opened. I had to resign myself to that reality. Hopefully the military has a plan for portals opening up. It was a few more minutes of us circling behind the building to finally get ourselves in position.

  The back of the diner was not the war zone I expected. The vehicles behind the building looked unmolested. There were no trail of dead bodies. There were muddy footprints crisscrossing the area leading to and from the building. Given the fact that we hadn’t seen rain here in a few days suggested the invaders were teleporting in from a wet area. We all got in position, almost hugging the back of the building. I texted Frank that we were in position.

  I heard crashing from the other side of the building. That must be the sound of shield bash hitting the front door. The obligatory orc roar followed, and that was our signal to move in. We raced in through the back entrance. The brief back hallway had mud tracks crisscrossing the floors and enough grime to make you wonder how they ever passed a health inspection. Sgt. Jackson turned the corner at the front with our one highway patrol guy right on his heel. Gunfire started bursting out immediately. I was the last. I wanted to know what was happening, but I was last in line. It wasn’t a whole lead from the rear thing; I needed Jackson at the front as he was most likely to get the jump on the spell caster and bring him down. The patrolman had to be second so he could slow down the orc down. The police officer needed to be third to mark the orc. I didn’t want Nora to be last, so I put her in front of me. Sadly, this meant I could hear the gunfire echoing off the walls in this confined space, yet I could do nothing about it. The bullets wanted ever so badly to deafen me. Despite the efforts to deafen me, I could vaguely make out that the staccato of bullets from Sgt. Jackson came much faster than the other two. I kept an eye out the back of the building. If any of those sub 5 foot tall Wolf guys were nearby, now was the time for them to attempt to intervene.

  When I looked back forward Nora wasn’t there anymore. “Nora?”

  “Neal, I’m using camo to blend into the crates next to you. Stop talking to me.” After she spoke, I could sort of make her outline out against the crates, the wall, and my own pants. She was crouching with her rifle pointing behind me towards the back entrance. The back hallway was lit, but it wasn’t nearly as bright as the late morning sunshine. I glanced towards the gunfire, but kept my eyes mostly on that back door.

  The closest shooting stopped abruptly. Sgt. Jackson called out, “Clear.” We could still very easily hear gunfire from the front room. For the moment at least all was okay. I turned to go towards the back room, but an electric buzz started emanating from around the corner. It permeated the air. I didn’t know what it meant yet, but I doubted it was anything good. I went from goosebumps across my skin to singed body hair. The smell of the burnt hair combined with the smell of ozone everywhere to overwhelm the senses.

  Fuck. “Jackson, what’s going on?”

  “The symbol. It’s glowing brightly. Both the monsters are dead and partially on top of it. The body parts on top of the symbol look like they’re burning up, but there are no flames. I’d say something bad is about to happen. I’m not sure shooting the symbol is going to stop whatever’s happening.” Well at least he was thoroughly honest in his assessment. His observations sound like the kind of statements from someone that doesn’t freak out from anything.

  “Thanks for the info. If you had grenades, I’d say now is the time to use them, but we seem to be short on those.”

  “If only we had explosives.” The man almost sounded wistful. Not sure if I blame him at all. Grenades, C-4, other explosives. Having options would be nice.

  A glow emanated from the back room. It went from moderate brightness to near blinding in a few short seconds. I turned and looked apprehensively in that direction. That was the moment I was lifted off my feet from the impact of an arrow. It slammed into my shoulder and carried me over Nora’s concealed position. The room shifted as I was in the air. Things really do look different when you go full horizontal. I was frozen in that horizontal moment. The hallway with the crates, the grime, and the local hometown diner feel. I absorbed visually all of my surroundings as I asked the question: is this where I will die? Time sped back up. The back hallway was still where it was, but I was on the ground. In my mind I knew I was bleeding, even if I couldn’t feel any of it. Surprisingly, I had the presence of mind to look at my health. I saw that it plummeted from 18 down to 7. Damn, arrows can hurt a lot. I went to cry out, but my voice came up empty.

  Gunfire sprang up from where I was, as Nora came back in view. “2 wolf guys near rear entrance. Neal is down. Someone use the med kit in his backpack to seal up his wound.”

  “Contact on the symbol. One creature standing, 2 smaller creatures floating with wings.” Gunfire ripped out from direction drowning out any other words. I was faced down so I didn’t see the action so much as felt someone rummaging through my backpack. I was focused on my health as another point ticked away. I had a notification informing me of what I already knew. I was bleeding to death.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Warning: Condition Alert! Bleeding-Moderate

  You have the condition Bleeding-Moderate. This is causing you to lose 1 health every 10 seconds until you reach negative health. At that point you will go unconscious and, without intervention, die. Closing the wounds will remove the Bleeding-Moderate condition you have.

  This was so fucking unfair. I saw my health tick down to 6. I’m dying and I can’t get the words out. Th person above my back said loudly, “I’m going to break this arrow and push it the rest of the way out. Then I’ll see what I can do to stop the bleeding.” I thought I heard the sound of the arrow snapping, though I did feel something like a painful jostling of my shoulder. I definitely felt the arrow get shoved through the rest of the way. My health dropped to 4. Fuck! I felt something soft but thick getting shoved into my open shoulder wound. This guy was jamming something inside me. It felt kind of like I was being violated. Health down to 3.

  Warning: Condition Alert! Bleeding-Moderate downgraded to Bleeding-Lesser

  Your condition has changed to Bleed-Lesser. This is causing you to lose 1 health every 2 minutes until you reach negative health. At that point you will go unconscious and, without intervention, die. Closing the wounds will remove the Bleed-Lesser condition you have.

  I absolutely hated this. I was slowly going to die, and the only hope is that the bleeding could be completely stopped before I ran out of health. This is not the tabletop games and video games I remember. I was angry. ‘Dear system, you suck. You set us up for failure. You did not, and I repeat did not, give us the fighting chance with the system. So, Fuck You! Sincerely Neal Cassland.’

  I felt something soft and cookie-like put in my mouth. I heard Nora’s voice whispering in my ear, “Chew.” And so, I chewed. I thought all the magical cookies were gone. It was kind of a miracle that we still had any. The cookie induced respite allowed me to at least become aware of my surroundings again. Gunfire was sounding off all around me. I could see Nora had placed a cookie right in front me. It was thin mint. So, not the cookies we had before. When? How? I didn’t know, and at that moment I didn’t care. I reached to shove the other cookie in my mouth and saw the patrolman fighting off a little winged demon creature. He kept protecting his face while the little creature was clawing up the patrolman’s arms. Everything was going to shit.

  Gunfire rang out again above me for just a few shots. Nora’s voice then came in loud enough to project over the gunfire, “Back door is clear!”

  Sgt. Jackson Shouted, “Fall back!” Those words energized me. I found enough hidden strength to get to my hands and knees and crawl backwards towards the back door. I saw Sgt. Jackson rip the small demon creature off of the patrolman and slam it face first into the exterior wall. He shoved his pistol right up to it’s skull and repeatedly pulled the trigger. The first shot didn’t seem to do too much except make it screech. The second shot brought screams of rage in a language I didn’t understand. The third, fourth and fifth shots finally made it’s flailing stop. I was unsure which bullet ended it, but I wasn’t so sure it really mattered. Beyond Sgt. Jackson I saw the creature turning the corner, it’s massive mouth, taking up over half it’s body. Or was that it’s head? It was literally a creature with 2 short elephant looking legs and feet, combined with a round somewhat spherical body. The head and the body were all one piece. Reddish blotchy rocklike scales covered the head-body haphazardly. What the fuck was this thing. It was like a walking beer gut had a big ass mouth and small beady eyes. The police officer was hanging ass and legs out of the monster; his waist was impaled onto rows of enlarged sharklike teeth.

  I bumped into something behind me, and turned to find the crates from a few minutes earlier. I realized I had crawled backwards all of a few feet. Fuck. I wasn’t moving fast enough. The giant mouth monster was still trying to turn itself in the tight corridor. It was our only saving grace. I heard Nora shout, “Neal, grab your fucking rifle. We’re going to need it in a moment.” My eyes frantically cast about my immediate space. Fortunately, it was just a foot away and my hand grabbed for it. While I did that the highway patrolman fled past towards the exit, blood flowing down his arms. Can’t say I blame him; his arms looked like shredded chicken meat.

  “LEEEROY JENKINS!” Frank came into view slamming his shield into the gut-mouth creature. His shield looked like it was missing some of its edges. Frank’s shoulder was smashed up right behind the shield as he pinned the creature’s side into the rear wall of the building. Frank was bleeding from a few different wounds, including an arrow sticking out of his right leg. How the man ran hard enough to smash his shield into that creature all while having a nasty leg wound was way beyond me.

  I finally found words to speak, “Shoot that creature while Frank has it pinned!” I managed to grip the gun handle up into my hand while my other steadied the barrel. I slid to the ground and shot bullet after bullet into one of the creature’s short fat legs. Sgt. Jackson poured the rest of his pistol clip into the creature, released said clip, and loaded a fresh one in a single seamless cinematic motion. Yeah, we have to be in a video game all right. Jackson cocked the gun and immediately started firing again. He must have a 50 caliber weapon as well. Those bullets were tearing holes into the beast, thick ragged chunks of flesh started tearing loose. The beast didn’t have arms, but it’s short tentacles became active. They began squirming around Frank’s shield grappling with his wrists.

  “What in the unholy tentacle porn is this fucking creature?!” Frank’s body was straining to hold it in place while we continued to shoot the creature. One of those tentacles squirmed down around shield to find purchase on the arrow sticking out of Frank’s leg. The tentacle snaked around the arrow shaft and started plunging the arrow in and out of the wound. I think in some sick twisted way it understood the phrase ‘tentacle porn.’ Frank screamed in pain, yet he held on. Eventually I emptied my entire clip and Sgt. Jackson emptied that second entire clip into the creature and it slowly slumped down into the wall. It’s body seemed to lose any kind of bony rigidity and became a mass of mostly muscle. There was surely a skeleton structure inside of it, but it was clearly more cartilage and muscle than it was bone. Whatever it was, it no longer should be counted among the living.

  Nora jumped over my prone form to reach Frank. She quickly shoved two little cookies in his mouth. “Chew them. They close up wounds.”

  We survived. I broke out into tears. I could finally allow myself to mourn Chris for a moment. We survived, but Chris and many others didn’t. I was going to rid the earth of demons and portals, but for this moment I would cry.