I had propped my body up against the closest vehicle and was chewing on some samoas. This was not what I wanted to happen. Frank was facing four orcs at once, and I still wasn’t sure how he was avoiding most of those hits. At least this kept the orcs away from me. My leg was in pain; so much pain that I almost threw up the cookies. My leg wasn’t just throbbing; every nerve ending felt on fire. I hated this feeling and wished I could be anywhere but here right now.

  Massive amounts of gunfire came from behind me. This was combined with the explosion ahead of me. Cars laced with just enough explosives to turn them into giant grenades exploded outward followed by clusters of claymores to add more absurdity to the destruction. We caught several groupings of orcs in between all of the explosions were rained in blood and body parts.

  These two events finally gave Frank and Hal the help they needed to get away from the orcs. Leaving the orcs exposed put those reddish creatures into a kill box. No one stopped shooting until all the orcs fell over. I was thankful for the reinforcements, but it didn’t do much for my pain or my mood.

  Frank walked over to me, resting the bottom of his shield on the ground. “Neal, maybe next time you let someone bigger carry a shield.” Frank put on a small smile, and that somehow made it worse.

  “I’m never going to be a shield guy ever again. That was colossally stupid.”

  “You’ll learn,” were the only words he offered as shrugged and before he extended a hand to me. I took it gratefully as he hoisted me to my feet. I needed to lean on him to walk. We filtered back from what was once the front line, but now was just field of dead bodies.

  As soon as I made it back to our group Nora slapped me in the face, before proceeding to punch my shoulder and chest repeatedly. “Don’t be stupid. Pelotudo! Estupido!”

  Brittney shouted, “Stop it, Nora!” Brittney rushed to pull Nora away from me. It was touching really, Nora mad and Brittney jumping to my defense. Natalie ended it all though, as she came up to me, slapped me hard across the face, and then she just as abruptly kissed me.

  “What was all of that for?”

  “The kiss Mr. Cassland was for you being brave and charging that snake thing to save Brett. It was stupid, but brave.” She gave me the barest hint of smile. I saw Brittney nodding at that.

  “And the slap?” I asked. I was angry yet, I needed to know the answer.

  “That was for cosplaying as a commando, when you’re supposed to be the commander!” She stated as if it were completely obvious. That hammered home how dumb I felt. I now had slaps from two different women to reaffirm my own stupidity. I guess no matter how much intelligence a person gains they can still succumb to their emotional states.

  We stood there soaking in the emotion of the moment and no one said a word. We just looked at each other in turn. I was unsure if it was a comfortable silence or uncomfortable one, but I settled on necessary. Everyone needed a mental and emotional reset. This silence would have to be that.

  The silence was interrupted by, “Why are all you fuckers moping about? I am here with my host of reinforcements, to assist you!” Billy voice boomed at us far louder and more annoying than necessary. Billy never could read the room.

  Several of us looked at him while Nora vocalized our anger, “Billy, Eres un idiota!”

  Billy was about to respond with his Dora shtick, but Frank gave him this look that made him frown, “I thought nearly dying while fighting that stupid gut monster got me a free pass?”

  I tried desperately to get everyone on the same page and diffuse this, “Billy, did you perhaps notice some people are missing from the group at the moment?”

  “Like whom?” Billy’s response was more than disconcerting.

  “Joe for starters.” I blurted out, getting a little angry at Billy’s attitude.

  “Nah, I passed him on my way over.” He pointed back behind him at an angle towards the next street. Sure enough, Joe was walking over. He looked a little worse for wear, but certainly not as bad off as I was worried he would be. I feared he sacrificed himself to kill a spider, but that definitely was not the case. Without speaking a word, I motioned with my head towards Brittney, and then stared at him until he understood. Before Frank started to stare at him, he fortunately got the hint. “Oh, Fuck me sideways! What happened?”

  Brittney cried out at Billy, unable to deny her emotions, “He’s Dead. That big ugly snake demon ate him. And it winked at me while it did it. That sick monster deserved a worse death than it got. AAAAAH!” With the scream out, she finally allowed herself to return to sobbing.

  We let Billy keep that feeling of being a horse’s ass. It was very important that he felt that way for a minute or two, for Brittney’s sake, at least

  I looked to Billy and finally asked, “Why the fuck did you come out here? I felt better when I knew at least one of us was somewhat safe.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I fucked up. I had this whole thing planned in my head. I was going to come here with 400 troops at my back and save the day. Instead, I have about 60 total, which will drop with the squad escorting buses back towards Crestwood.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  His admissions, both about Brett and now about not having all the troops he had planned on brining was new for Billy. He didn’t like admitting to fucking up. “I’d say it’s the thought that counts, but I would rather 400 troops than the thought of 400 troops.”

  “Fuck, man. You’re right. That was not how I drew any of it up. And Brett was a great kid. This all sucks.” Billy was finally getting it. The weight of everything just piled on one another. He needed to sort of let the sum total sink in to fully appreciate the level of cluster fuckery.

  I took the opportunity to check back towards the battlefield, but the Orcs were still a few hundred yards off. It felt like every time we killed a huge bunch of them; it took them several minutes to gather their troops together for the next push. I don’t think they were prepared for us to have weapons that could negate their damage resistance. Nor were they expecting us to use wands and other items we found so readily. At least that was my impression from the time it took to gather any orcs that broke morale temporarily. I worried that, as we chewed through all the chaff, that the soldiers that they sent next wouldn’t be so easy to kill or break.

  I turned back to the group as Joe finally got in to join us, “Joe, how is our spider friend?”

  “Not our friend, and delayed.” That was classic Joe: terse, but meaningful.

  “Not dead?” I asked the question, with the impossible hope that he changes his answer.

  “No, coming with orc friends. We need to fall back.”

  “How far do you suggest we fall back? Trust me, I’m all ears at the moment. No plan is off the table.”

  Joe shrugged. He looked uncomfortable talking this much so he ventured the shortest reply he could think of, “After next intersection.”

  I turned back towards the orcs and saw a creature on a leash caressing an orc. Yeah, I kinda wish I could unsee that. I didn’t see what was holding the leash, and maybe that was for the best. Time to fall back. I went back to everyone else and raised my voice, “Finish any looting that we need to do of the dead orcs. One more healing potion for us, is one less healing potion for them. After that, we really need to fall back to just past the next intersection. Demo team see me before you go all crazy on the explosives.”

  People had already been looting and setting up the next batch of explosives. We didn’t really have time for anything special, so I had them just put everything on a 5 minute timer and hide it out of sight so that it hit in the back of orc lines. I still had a hand on the ax and was placing it in the closest Humvee when Will came up to me. He was holding several ability tokens and a class core.

  “Captain. I think you should check out the class core. It was from the snake creature.” I held the class core to me to see what it was. We desperately needed a new class for Nora and me.

  Lesser Snake-Bonded Flame Sorcerer (Basic Tier, Rare(mid) Rarity)

  Affinities: Snake, Fire, Arcane, Intelligence, Charisma, Abyssal

  I stopped reading it. I tried to see if I could incorporate the core, but I was blocked. If uncommon took two affinities in common, then apparently rare took three. Damn! Fuck! How hard was it going to be to find a class that not only hit my affinities, but hopefully expanded them to open up other doors. It was clear this wouldn’t work for me. Ironically, it worked for Nora. She had arcane, intelligence, and charisma. It also didn’t make Snake or abyssal requirements.

  “Hey Brittney and Nora, Will did a thing.” I said it without looking at them. I could feel their eyes on me as they jogged over. We were running out of time, after all.

  It was Nora that spoke first, “So, what exactly did little Will do?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed hard. “You know that Will is taller than you by over half a foot.”

  Nora rolled her eyes, “So, are you going to tell us?”

  “Will extracted abilities and the class core from what was left of the snake creature. Nora, you match up to it on arcane, intelligence, and charisma. It is rare, so you needs at least three affinities in common. This could work, and there is a certain amount of poetic justice to taking it’s class after killing it. Oh, and it is a sorcerer, so more spellcasting.”

  Nora looked to Brittney before anything else. She searched the girl’s eyes to make sure it would be okay. Brittney nodded her head in confirmation and smiled. Brittney merely said, “Poetic justice,” before running to her assigned Humvee and getting inside. Nora took the class core and followed immediately after her.

  We were out of time. We mounted up and fell back in as organized a fashion as we could, though we did have to get all of Billy’s vehicles turned around.

  It was only a minute or so before we had gotten to the next intersection, and we arrived to some of the militia guys already here shooting orcs that were approaching down the right hand street. That was vaguely the direction where Joe had gone to divert the spider creature. Maybe we should have fallen back earlier.

  We stopped our Humvee in the intersection and turned Will and his 50 caliber loose on the lead group of orcs. The heavy machine gun fire pushed the orc advance back.

  I used this brief moment to get out of the Humvee and try to direct all the others into a cohesive defensive formation. We didn’t have long, as the orcs coming down our street would be here soon enough. We needed to be pulled back behind the intersection so that we didn’t get overrun in the middle of the damn thing. While it was unexpected, Billy started helping me get everyone in position. He eventually stepped back to be on top of a Ram truck. He was yelling and directing vehicles into place. Harry and Jill also got out to shape the terrain with their concrete shaping, which fortunately extended to the asphalt covering our roadways. Small asphalt spikes were scattered throughout the area leading to our vehicles. All the spikes were pointed slightly outwards towards the incoming enemy. They hadn’t yet used their abilities much today, so we took what uses they still had remaining to make the ground just a little bit more treacherous.

  We gained a few extra guys who had shields, putting our total up to 9 shield bearers. We put them in three clusters of three. Each group had multiple people with melee weapons and large caliber pistols behind them to kill enemies when an opening was available. Vern pulled the last Humvee into defensive formation. Will never stopped firing while Vern backed the vehicle into its spot. Jill put one last bit of asphalt spikes down, and we set ourselves for the main force up the middle, as well as continually increasing numbers from our right.

  Billy brought us extra ammo, including 50 caliber rounds, and a tiny bit of explosives, but mostly he brought us hope. The hope is that if we are careful, we might get out of this alive. My last act before the next onslaught began was to try and convince Natalie that she needed to get back to the safety of Fenton.

  Natalie's response was, “Suck it up, cosplay commando. I'll only do what a real commander says.”