I hated the apocalypse. The portals and the apocalypse in general just sucked. I hated the lupin. They were sneaky and killed people when they weren’t prepared. I hated the bigger demons. They could crush us with very little challenge. Most of all, I hated orcs. They were big and brutish, like the angriest mob of football fans anywhere. They were violent, like a bunch of drunken psychopaths. Worst of all, they were cannibals. They ate human flesh, and genuinely seemed to enjoy it. That incensed me more than other things. They were humanoid in shape and build, but ate us, other humanoids. It was beyond disturbing. It was just plain wrong.

  That wrongness was on full display in front of me. My knee-jerk reaction was to shoot things as much and as often to make them stop eating people. It was shocking, but I’ve seen this particular scene play out a few too many times. It wasn’t commonplace, but it was no longer a rare event. Nora shot one of the orcs in the back with a small bolt of fire. It was hit hard, so hard that it slammed into the two orcs next to it. The Orc had a flaming hole in his shoulder. Despite that, he got up along with his two closest mates and turned to face us. They weren’t in on the eating yet. There was a whole row of orcs we couldn’t reach that were tackling and biting into people. There were battles of people trying to shoot their attackers, and orcs ripping off limbs. The actual soldiers were nowhere to be seen.

  The scene was genuine chaos. These people had freaked out and lost any semblance of defense. I didn’t have any multi target abilities, so I used my one option and took aim. The closest orc, who already was missing a chunk of his shoulder and had a useless left arm, charged towards us. He moved so predictably that the images lined up nearly instantly. I pulled the trigger. I hit the orc in the leg, and it stumbled. It’s legs couldn’t quite find their footing again and the orc slid face first onto asphalt and concrete. Nora didn’t bother with magic at that point. She used her rifle to dispatch the orc in the top of it’s head. Mo and Hamm started firing into the orcs from behind. They only took critical shots. The number of head shots was impressive. I was thankful they were on my side. One of the two remaining orcs charging us fell to a shot from someone, though I didn’t know who. This left the one orc who ran straight for Frank and his big, but damaged riot shield. I sensed something about Frank, and had to guess it was him activating his shield bash right at the moment crashed into his shield. The timing was excellent. Frank had dug in low to the ground, and with the angle of the shield combined with his shield bash ability added extra vertical moment to the orc. It spiraled poorly over Frank only to land on it’s back. It was a painful looking flip, that had the added sound effect of crunching of bones against metal before bones crunching on concrete. Frank, quite coolly, chopped back with the enchanted axe and decapitated the prone orc.

  Things didn’t continue in quite the same cinematic awesomeness. Once the first six orcs were dispatched with such gruesome efficiency, they took notice of us. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Reward success with more orcs was the motto, right? A small wave of orcs started reacting in different ways. The first orc stopped chomping on a person’s open chest wound, to lift them up and use them as a body shield while charging us. Others made different, though equally heinous choices. One particularly large orc threw a small child at us like it was a fastball. I didn’t know if the child was dead or not already, and that only added to horror of it. Blood was flying from bodies as several more got turned into projectiles. I had played dodge ball before, and dodging people, or their body parts, wasn’t the same. I dodged back behind a pile of luggage. I started my ability and aimed at the orc charging us with his living shield. The images came together and I shot the orc’s foot. The orc then tripped over its own feet and landed on the human with its head in the person’s back. Nora nailed him with a fire bolt in the back. Hopefully the human survived.

  Two of the orcs had reached Frank. They looked overjoyed that someone wanted to actually fight them close up. As the lead orc got close enough Frank jumped forward while activating shield bash. I could tell better now, with the shield glowing faintly blue. The orc’s head snapped backwards as it mistakenly led with its face. Frank pivoted to slash at the second orc, who rolled out of the way. Frank was holding his own quite well. If we had one more person up front to help him, then they could do some serious damage. Multiple bullets hit the recently rolling orc, the deafening sound coming off to my right. I turned to see Natalie using a 50 caliber pistol. She smiled and said, “Forget diamonds, this is a girl’s best friend.”

  “So, all you need for gift giving is guns?” I shouted back.

  “Oh No! You give a girl jewelry! My father already took care of my immediate protection needs.” I had no idea how long she had been packing that. As soon as she was done with the one orc, she put the gun away yelled to her cameraman, “Get it rolling! This will be awesome footage! Maybe don’t focus in on half eaten children though!” She was far too pleased with herself in this, a warzone.

  The Cameraman immediately started filming the gun fight.

  We kept killing orcs, but the numbers were against us. We killed five more after the initial six, but there must have been over a dozen remaining. This wasn’t just some small grouping of orcs; it was well over two dozen. I shouted to Frank, “FALL BACK!” He tried stepping backwards, but he didn’t have much room. He slipped on blood and gore from the decapitated orc. He landed on his back hard, we all heard it, orcs included. They started converging on him. We fired right over his head to try and keep the orcs away.

  Finally, the first reached him and jumped down on top of him. Frank had his axe ready. He braced it against the ground and the orc slid onto the spike on top, and then onto the double sided axe blade. It got stuck part way down falling to it’s side wrenching the axe with it. It was still moving, but I didn’t know if that was convulsions or the orc still had fight in it. Mo was concentrating fire on the next orc to Frank, but despite getting hit in the face with a bullet it still leaped onto Frank. Frank saw it coming from the way his body shifted on the ground at least. The orc landed on top of Frank’s shield, only for Frank to activate shield bash at the same time. The orc’s already bloody face got smacked hard by the riot shield that gave us the crunching sound of breaking bones. Frank pushed his shield up and to the side to let the orc slide off. If it was alive still, it was at least so stunned that it was incapable of doing anything. Sgt. Hamm shot the next orc rushing Frank in the pelvic area. The orc stumbled forward and landed half on Frank, and half on the ground, it’s axe slicing into the gravel right next to Frank’s head. It tried biting him and clawing at him with its free hand. Frank’s armor thankfully kicked in sliding him lose of any holds. He used the opportunity to pull out one of his large knives and stabbed the creature repeatedly.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  All of this gave me enough time to use predictive aim on the next orc. The weren’t even attempting to dodge anything, so this one lined up immediately. I pulled the trigger and put a bullet in its skull. That didn’t stop it at all, just caused the orc to redirect itself and one of its friends towards me. Nora saved me by hitting the injured orc with yet another fire bolt. She must be running low on mana just like Frank was. I still had one orc rushing towards me. Without time to use my ability, I simply let loose the rest of the clip into it. Quantity really its own kind of quality, after all.

  3 bullets in, it dropped its club.

  5 bullets in it stumbled.

  10 bullets in it finally fell mid charge. It’s body crashed forward enough to smash my cover apart, exposing me further to the enemy. That moment brought a brand new reappreciation of enchanted weapons, ammo, and clean head shots. I really need an enchanted rifle. That would make so much of this go easier.

  Three orcs changed direction to rush at Mo and Hamm. They met a steady fusillade from the two. Both soldiers unleashed bursts of fire halting the three momentarily. One got hit in multiple locations and looked to be bleeding from everywhere I could see. The second lost his club to a bullet while the third tripped over dead human body parts they had previously thrown at us. The battlefield along the train tracks was getting quite cluttered with body parts of both humans and orcs. The humans that suffered at the hands of the orcs looked to have taken out a healthy number of them before they were overwhelmed.

  A thought occurred to me, “Hamm, where is the rest of your squad?”

  “Over a click south. Not our people. These folks are new.” All delivered calm, but with serious implications.

  I didn’t have an opportunity to respond as I had to focus on two more orcs that split towards me. The orcs couldn’t seem to dogpile Frank as well as they wanted. His armor was living up to its description. He was stabbing orcs with a large, enchanted dagger while they tried wrestling him. I guess Frank remembered to bring a knife to a fist fight.

  If these weren’t the people that were supposed to be here, then there is no way the perimeter is secured. Fuck! I had to change clips so I yelled out, “Reloading!” in hopes that someone could cover me for a few seconds while I pulled a fresh clip from my pouch. I still had a few more clips to spare, but would that be enough. I didn’t have time to think more, as an orc dove over what remained of my cover. My shoulder was struck first. The orc’s axe overshot me, but his head didn’t. His head, followed by the rest of his upper body slammed into me. I dropped both rifle and clip. Next my legs felt his knees cracking them. I struggled against the orc’s bulk. He had a foot in height and well over a hundred pounds on me. I wasn’t a small guy, at just under 6 feet tall, but this creature lunging at me was way more than my frame could bear.

  We wrestled on the ground, or more specifically he grappled my left arm to my side while headbutting me. It was too difficult to think, my head killed me. I needed something, anything. I put my one free hand in my pouch. I grabbed for something, anything. The pouch had a lot of space in the extradimensional pocket, but concentrating on pulling out something specific, took concentration, yet that was in short supply. I was on the ground underneath this creature that had just bitten down on my ear. In desperation I felt for anything of use in this situation. My hand gripped a handle, and I pulled out a machete from yesterday. I could barely pull it out of the pouch while being grappled. I reversed the grip while pulling it out of the pouch and stabbed down and away from me. He stopped biting me immediately and cried out in what I hoped was pain. I kept stabbing as fast as I could, in and out, and in and out. I screamed, “JUST DIE!”

  Its response was to scream in my face while trying to get a hand on my stabbing arm. He was on top of me, and I had nowhere to go, but I kept trying to stab me, even with his hand trying to stop me. I ended up leaving the blade inside it and twisting as much as I could while also hoping I could roll us over. My head was killing me, and I was bleeding. My legs were on fire, and I was having a hard time moving them. I did realize that this would be way worse if I didn’t have the ring of lesser force armor on, but I wasn’t sure how much comfort that was. It was keeping my injuries from being crippling, merely excruciating.

  Its movements started slowing down, and it screamed again, but in horrible pain. It was a death scream, or at least that's what it seemed like, given its body was just becoming heavier and less animated. I realized that it had more than a hundred pounds on me. I felt its weight give out and collapse on top of me. It took every fiber of my muscles, including some I didn’t think I had, but I pushed it off me. The smell was the thing that finally assaulted me. It must have shit itself or farted with its death. Combine that with the smell of a body that had yet to meet a good bath or shower, and I wanted to vomit all over again.

  I looked around to find that everyone else was finishing off their fights as well. Frank had several cuts through his thick studded leather armor, and a small knife was sticking out of his right thigh, but he was surrounded by dead orcs. He was breathing just as heavily as I was. Nora had an orc dead at her feet, while Mo and Hamm must have dispatched the rest. We survived. We would still need massive healing, but I first drank an orc healing potion and resisted the urge to spit it all out. We had been outnumbered and outsized, but we somehow prevailed. I know that the special forces guys did more of the work than the rest of us, but this felt like a fight we won through sheer determination.

  Frank and Nora both drank potions. Mo and Hamm were searching the orcs for anything, yet somehow Natalie was already over interviewing the human survivors.