The massive guilt of a good time
“The fuck do you mean?” Nova said.
“Gun it and haul ass down here,” Luke said, easing open the door to the alley. “We’ll cover you.”
“I’ll be dead before I get there. Can y’all meet me halfway?”
“I believe in you,” Luke said, in a tone of finality.
“Fine! But if they get me, y’all come find me when I drop back in.”
“Deal, bro. Come on!” Angel sighed.
Luke pushed open the door and aimed to the left down the alley.
“We’re clear. Push past me and get around the corner.”
Gradie stepped in behind Luke, pushed the door open the rest of the way with his back while aiming down the alley. The cluster of players at the ladder were mostly hidden by pallets and a transformer and obscured in the darkness. It had been a good idea to let Luke have the only nightvision.
Gradie pivoted, swept his gun to the right towards the end of the alley behind Luke, and rushed down it while scanning the brush and fence on the far side. He heard Angel stomp after him and the door squeaked and thunked as it swung back against Luke’s boot.
There were two dumpsters and a yellow barrier pole at the end of the wall. Gradie set up at the corner with his rifle aimed over the tops of the dumpsters, being careful not to flag Luke.
Angel came around and stopped somewhere behind him.
“What should I—”
“Cover my rear,” Gradie snapped, the adrenaline already bubbling up.
“Moving.” Luke stepped out of the doorway, eased it closed with one foot and dashed around the dumpsters towards Gradie, his steps as quiet as a cat. Gradie hadn’t yet gotten the hang of that trick. He got down in a crouch and aimed around the bottom of the dumpster as Luke took up his previous position on the corner.
“Back up buddy. You can’t see shit.” Luke said.
“I can aim at the muzzle flash,”
“I know, but I’ve got a job for you. Step back and get out one of those smokes and prepare to throw it ten yards ahead of me on my mark.”
Gradie wasn’t quite sure if this was just busy work but he backed up and started digging through his pack.
“It’s on me,” Angel said, and tapped his side with his left hand without taking his right off his rifle. He was aiming down the other way toward the front lot.
“Got it,” Gradie said on the comms, and crouched down behind Angel with a hand on the pin.
“Alright Quasar. Gun it buddy.”
“They’re gonna kill me the moment I start the engine.”
“Only one way to find out.”
The Honda started almost immediately and even from down the alley, Gradie could tell whatever spark-head had owned it was probably the type to detail the engine every month. It whined in that thin metal blade way that always made Gradie feel the engine was about to explode out of the frame.
Then he remembered none of it was real, just a trick of light and memory, and it all felt hollow and pointless, and he missed the Hardworlds dearly.
Then the gunfire started and his instincts kicked in.
“Shit!” Nova squealed down the grass and the motor roar morphed and moved as Nova shot out of the foliage towards them. Gunshots blended with the sound and bounced out of the alley and Gradie’s skin crawled, until a more familiar, friendly sound joined in.
Luke’s trademark doubles and triples cracked out and the casings jingled on the concrete. Immediately, the gunfire was cut in half.
“Smoke out!” he said between bursts.
Gradie shot up, stepped around and threw the smoke ten yards in front of Luke. It hissed and rounds cracked by his head.
“God damn!” Gradie rolled back behind the building, then scolded himself. He had said it out loud and Luke was sitting there like he was on a smoke break, popping away. Even in a god damn dork sim he couldn’t keep his cool.
“Come all the way around. Behind the building,” Luke said on the comms, calm and cool as a bottle in the back of the fridge.
“Don’t gotta tell me shit!” Nova executed a perfect drift around the corner so fast Gradie had to grab Angel and throw him against the wall as the bumper flew past him. The Honda screamed to a stop, and as its motor quieted, others roared into action down the alley.
“Go!” Luke opened the rear passenger door on his way to the front passenger seat and slid in before Gradie realized the car had stopped.
Angel dove into the open back door and Gradie crawled in after him.
“Drive!” Luke said, and Nova floored it.
They barely made it into the front lot before a SUV pulled out of the back alley. Gradie aimed his rifle at the back window but another one beat him to it.
Luke’s barrel sent upholstery flying and cracked the plastic speaker tops. Casings went bouncing around and once again Gradie realized how loud shit was without his earbuds. But at least in Gunmaze, his eardrums were apparently impervious. Luke’s feet were still between the driver and passenger seat as he shot the SUV’s tire to pieces.
“Holy shit. It's fucking crazy out—”
Angel was cut off by a deafening crash that sent the SUV wobbling as smoke rolled over it. The second vehicle had slammed right into them.
“They couldn’t see cause the smoke!” Luke laughed, and on cue another crunching noise bounced out of the alley.
“God damn!” Luke cackled. “It’s a fucking pileup!”
Gunfire cracked in the lot and the passenger side gained a few spider-webbed holes.
“Right! The lot!” Luke said on the comms. Gradie shifted in his seat, brought his suppressor up to the window, which took some leaning and squishing himself into the back rest, but before he could even fire, Luke’s barrel was already flashing above his head, blowing out chunks of the window.
“Jesus fuck!” Gradie said out loud.
“Sorry bro,” Luke said, actually pausing briefly between rapid fire triplets to shout down at him.
The wind rushed in with the smell of spent rounds and burning engines and rubber. Somewhere, a car was on fire. More gunfire cracked and flashed out in the dark, but the bullets fell nowhere near them. Something boomed on the highway. Orange sparks sprayed off a wheel well as a car went grinding off the ramp. Tracers flashed across the velvet black sky from the overpass to the roof of the store. The drop had drawn all kinds of players and only a fraction of them noticed the four man team as Nova killed the headlights and turned out of the lot at fifty mph. Luke let the momentum pull him back inside as he reloaded.
“Take the access road all the way down,” Angel said, pointing at the phone on the dash displaying the mapped route.
“But they’ll be above me on the highway,” Nova said.
“No one’s gonna be looking off the side, They’d have to be all the way in the shoulder. Just keep in the left lane and we’ll watch out the right. I’m telling you—”
“Which side are we going in on?” Luke asked.
“North,” said Angel. “Bean pinged a few helos half an hour ago on a fly by. Should still be there. Hey, hand me that camera drone out of my pack.”
The wind rushed in the windows.. Their voices were electrified, ecstatic. The gunfire clicked at their heels, faded into the wind. The magic of it all hit him suddenly. Here he was, in a non-real space, dream weapon in hand, playing a high speed open world game installed, miraculously, in the hardware of his mind. The possibilities unrolled around him, the depth of it all dropped out beneath him, somewhere rushing under the carpeted floorboards that bounced and rumbled just as they were supposed to.
And then the pseudo adrenaline faded without leaving anything, not the all over body drag dead tiredness of the real thing, to tell that it was ever there. He felt the seat under his ass and the gun in his hand in a general, abstract way. Just another projection of the Other. He wondered how Luke could stand it. Looking over, he watched him scanning the scenery with a smile while talking shit with the twins.
Because unlike you, Luke burnt the Hardworlds at both ends, he told himself. Luke’s been dropped in training for days, weeks at a time, pushing himself to the human limit, while you struggled to get a grasp of the basics. This is a breather for him, a break, a rest. For you, it’s just a distraction. Because you haven’t earned it.
Bullshit, he said, after a second thought. He had been busting his ass for days, reviewing the coin job mem till he could summon it even outside the vault, play through it all without missing a single shell casing. Philip had run him through five hundred different versions of every fight, setting up recreations of the woods; the covered parking, the warehouse, Eps drones and Luke and Lindsey shooting at him with every gun he could name.
Then why don’t you feel like you’ve gotten somewhere? What are you missing?
They turned onto the access road amidst wide flat land and distribution centers and fences, and a memory floated up at him, answering his question.
Another drive, with guns and excitement. Sam. He had avoided her, in his excavations of the Hardworld mem, even blocked her out with a darkened silhouettes in the gunfights, and done the same to the other team members, just in case the twins or Michael had any way of watching his playthroughs in the Vault. He was sure what he would find, disdain, annoyance, agitation at being stuck with the new guy, disgust at his obvious attraction. But would he?
He let his mind wander back, and found memory of her smile, her laugh, her voice, a calm, bouncing tone. How could that be, if she hated him? Maybe he had overthought her reaction to the kiss in the office. Of course she would react like that. Had he expected her to embrace him right there, in front of everyone?
He had to get out of here. He had to get back to the vault. A sudden anger at Michael for locking him out flared into a disgust with himself for squandering his time running over the same god damn fire exchanges, like they would ever reappear exactly as they were ever again.
He wanted to believe he had learned and grown in the Hardworlds, but the lessons and growth were nearly impossible to distill from the fleeting, dissolving memories, which he had only ever analyzed for their tactical importance in the vault. He felt as if he had been skating across the surface of the Hardworlds, pulled from place to place by the constant tug of “the objective”, much the way he was now flying over the curved ramp pretending it was a highway, on a foil of reality pressed like gold leaf over endless void. But while this world had no center, no inner core, no lessons or secrets, he was sure the Hardworlds did, and he couldn’t even remember how close he had gotten to them.
This is a waste of time, he thought, watching the fake diorama world go by, listening to the talk of spawnpoints and caches. This will never teach me anything.
What do I need to learn? Why do I need to grow? Can’t I just have fun? Why are you so convinced I need to change?
He didn’t have an answer for himself, so he clutched his rifle, glanced at his friends, and let the warm excitement, like seeing a weekend off or a night at a friend’s house stretching before you, flow freely again, and tried to ignore the sulking him waiting in the corner to cut it off.
“Look alive yall, shits about to get bumpy,” Luke said suddenly.
Gradie snapped back to it and found Luke motioning toward the front right side of the car as Nova, now wearing the single NVG, turned sharply off the access road and headed for the dark plane of grass between them and the distant twinkling flight control tower.
Angel and Luke braced themselves and grabbed the overhead handle, so Gradie followed suit. A second later they were bouncing around in the cab as Nova drove over the side and into a shallow ditch on the side of the road and out onto the field. Grass and dirt whipped the side and under carriage and the engine revved.
“Let’s see what we got,” Angel said. He rolled down the window and tossed a buzzing drone outside. His phone was stuck in the top of a controller and the screen showed the thermal camera’s view. As it ascended, Gradie got a look at the vehicle from above, a small white blob bouncing across the grey. It reminded him of EP, of his drone training in the clubhouse, and again, of that mocking voice and his own failings.
“Hey what’s this shit at my two o clock?” said Luke, pointing out the window.
The camera panned across the field to the right, and zoomed in on a gravel hopper surrounded by trailers, piles of dirt and fill rock, vehicles, and, somehow, a fucking tank.
“Is that an Abrahms?” Luke asked, pointing at the screen.
“Yeah,” said Angel. “And there’s the Chinook that was carrying it. I forgot about that. It spawns in with a fucked motor and you get to try and land it. Free tank if you get it, but it’s hard as fuck.”
“Shit, where do I sign up,” Luke said.
“You can get a token from the end game box, or you can buy—”
Rounds cracked through the air.
“Shit!” Nova cut to the left around a rise in the land and the gunfire died away.
“Wait till we get this chopper mother fuckers,” Luke yelled at the back window.
“Strips look empty,” Angel said. “Our best bet for a helo is on top of this building. We can get on the upper level if we climb up one of these boarding bridges.”
“Where the fuck is everyone?” Nova said.
“Airport meta’s kinda dead since they added in all the drones and opened up the airbase. Flying helos and passenger jets is too much for most players.”
“Shit, I’ll show em what a chopper can do,” Luke said.
“I’m flying the fucking thing,” Nova snapped.
“Rock paper scissors, or next kill for it?” Luke offered.
“You’re the marksman bro. How you gonna dome the guys trying to shoot us down if you’re on the sticks?”
“Don’t try and butter me up, man. Look, if there’s rockets in the tubes, I’m—”
Luke was cut off by a loud crack a few yards to their left, followed swiftly by the distinctive boom of a distant high caliber rifle. Nova hunched down behind the wheel.
“Shit. Sword, what the fuck!”
“I’m looking!” Angel yelled.
They had been driving down a slim road for a few minutes and there was a large employee parking lot under a hundred yards to their left and distant hangars and a tower off to their right. Farther ahead on the lefthand side, the airport spread, seen only by the sparse lights still lit among the terminals. Gradie glanced down at the drone feed and saw Angel swiping frantically on the thermal feed.
Another crack and a boom and something skipped off the road as they broke out onto the wide concrete plain of the strip.
“Can’t see any fucking flash,” Luke said, scanning with his NVG now in hand. “Just serpentine and maybe we can—”
This time, the crack was muffled by the sound of the tire exploding.
