Chapter 12
My body smacked into the side of the train car, my fingers barely clinging on to the ledge. “Fuck!” I grunted. I just barely hung on, trying to pull myself up but my fingers not having enough of a grip. I started to slip. I looked over and saw the orcs were almost up, steadily climbin’ to the top of the train car. Who’s the asshole without the fuckin’ grappling hook? I thought bitterly, starting to panic, if these fuckin’ orcs make it up top first and have to come save my ass, if they even decide to, I’ll never live it down, I’ll never hear the end of it.
“Come on, you motherfucker,” I growled at the train and partly at myself, then, grinding my teeth together, I quickly pulled one hand off and swung it so as to get a better length of grasp and, once that hand had a more secure hold, I did the same with the other hand and was then able to push myself up on top of the train car. Once on top I let out a laugh that sounded more like a yelp and started to fuckin’ dry heave for a second, then rolled onto my back, breathing hard. That could have been the end right there. I closed my eyes and tryin’ to calm my breathing. This shit better be good. I swear as soon as I get my cut I’m gettin’ a plane ticket to a remote fuckin’ island with big titty native girls to serve me exotic drinks, maybe I’ll even take Grexy with the three tits, she’ll fit in, but where there’s no J-Maxx, no fuckin’ orcs at all, to get me to do this kinda risky ass shit…
“Yo, hob, it ain’t nap time! Let’s go!” an orc shouted over me, the sound of the wind and the noise of the train whipping his words away, making it difficult to hear. Shit, I didn’t know they were up already, I thought, my eyes shooting open. One of the orcs reached down to help pull me up but I swatted his big ugly ass hand away and got to my feet. Before I had taken that leap of faith off the Mustang, I had turned the duffel around so the bag was on my back and wouldn’t get crunched against the train if my jump didn’t work out as planned - well, it fuckin’ didn’t, so now I turned the bag back around to being in front of my torso again and I almost compulsively ran my hand over the package of sticky explosives again, making sure it was intact and undamaged. It felt alright, so I motioned for the two orcs to follow me over to the edge of the train car where it connected to the next car that was a handful of cars behind the conductor’s car. Our footsteps resounded on the metal, the sky was rushing above us like black dragon breath.
“I’m gonna climb down there and attach some sticky explosives to the coupling link right there.” I pointed down at it so the orcs could see what I meant. “Then when I get back up here, I’ll blow the fuckin’ thing, and it’ll kick like a motherfucker and keep goin’ fast for a bit, but then we can get in there.” I looked at the orcs pointedly for a moment and they nodded; I noticed they were sweatin’ hard, despite the wind created by the speed of the train. I was sweatin’ too. I nodded back and started to climb down the little built in ladder rungs on the side of the train car. When I reached the bottom, I had to restrain myself from tryin’ to peer into the blacked-out window of the train car door facing me. That’s a good way to get spotted and popped right in the fuckin’ face, I mused, smiling briefly that I avoided that pitiful fate and, ducking down, quietly unzipped the duffel bag and slowly slunk over to the slightly rusted coupling link that connected the train car I was on to the other in front of it. The wind was making my eyes water. I looked down at the strip of the sticky explosives, tore off three chunks of it that looked like little mushy bricks, and pushed them down on to sections of the train car coupler. There were miniature transmitters that I pushed into the sticky explosive pieces I had slapped on, and a little detonator that I carefully put into a pocket attached to my vest. Then, sneakily making my way back to the built-in ladder and up to the top, I motioned for the orcs to get down and hold on, and I did the same. I silently counted to three, then, holding on tight with one hand, I triggered the detonator in the other. After a delay of about five seconds, I heard the faintest beep, possibly coming from the transmitters I had stuck into the sticky explosives on the coupler, then BOOOOM!!
The front of the train car, that me and the orcs were clinging to for dear, sweet fuckin’ life from the top, lifted up several feet off of the train tracks from the force of the explosion, and was accompanied by a burst of fire and debris, the flames reaching so high it licked at my tense, strained knuckles. The train car in front, the one that had been connected a few seconds before, also bucked and jumped around on the train tracks, the back half of it crumpled in and on fire, before continuing to hurtle down the tracks with the rest of the front part of the train. The back part of the train, some half dozen or so cars including the one me and the orcs were on, continued on, conductorless, for a good five, ten miles, passing through a canyon and back into the desert before finally slowing down and coming to a stop completely, still some foul smelling smoke coming from underneath it and from the parts of it that had been melted by the explosion.
The two orcs that were with me got to their feet, and I heard a large truck pull up next to the train car, followed by a smaller one.
“Fuck, I thought this bitch would never stop goin’!” J-Maxx cried with joy, leaping out of his giant Tacoma, Maurice and Brock trailing behind him, their huge girth creating loud crunch, crunch sounds as they walked through the sand, “you girls alright up there? The fuck are you waitin’ for? Get down here!” I climbed down and the orcs followed. Skreech was running towards me, having hopped out of the Mustang, when J-Maxx came over to me, put his monstrous orc hand on my shoulder, not lightly but with some pressure, and said, “I nearly shit myself when you blew up that fuckin’ shit, hob. Did ya need to use so much?”
“It fuckin’ worked, didn’t it?” I snarled, looking up at the big, towering stack of camouflaged shit, looking at him hard in his dark, ugly orc eyes. “Take your fuckin’ hand off me, J-Maxx.” He kept it there a moment longer, keeping eye contact with me, then nodded and slid it off.
“Quite a hobgoblin you got there,” Brock said to J-Maxx, while keeping his eyes on me.
“You alright?” Skreech asked, having sidled up next to me.
“Yea,” I replied, then noticed something had caught J-Maxx’s, Maurice’s and Brock’s attention. I looked over to where they were looking and saw that the explosion had blown out the glass of the little window on the door of the train car, had actually pushed the door inwards some, but I couldn’t see much else. It looked like there was some empty space and then what looked like perhaps another wall—I couldn’t tell. Great, I mused, guess we’ll have to blow that, too. I rolled my eyes. Suddenly Maurice started dickin’ it over to the door, stretching his thick neck out as much as possible to get a glimpse of what might be inside. In the blink of an eye he was at the train, dashing up the stairs and reachin’ for the door handle. J-Maxx and Brock snorted derisively. I was watchin’ him with some amusement too, this fuckin’ orc prick was actin’ like a petulant little kid about to pounce on a mountain of presents and gifts, when I noticed a flash of dark metal from inside the train car’s blown out little window and then something small slightly protruded out of the window, nearly impossible to see in the darkness, and the next thing I knew there was a burst of gunfire from it that struck Maurice.
“Graaagh!” He stopped in his tracks and looked down in shock at the bullet holes that had just newly been made in his dark green flesh, the leaking punctures in his upper chest and where his chest met his bulldog neck. He dropped to the ground fast and did this weird fuckin’ backwards crab-walk as the two orcs who had been with me on the train ran up to him and dragged him back, with J-Maxx tryin’ to cover them, roaring and returning fire into the window from his Beretta. Brock had taken his Las Vegas Metro Police issued firearm in hand and also began unloading rounds into the window.
“What, did he forget that we still gotta tango with the guards?” Skreech whispered up at me, looking over at Maurice, who was bleeding and groaning in the sand.
I shrugged my shoulders. “How should I know?! Start shootin’ that fuckin’ th
ing!” I nodded at the shotgun in his hands. The little goblin hefted the shotgun and, moving up closer, started firing into the train car, making that rattling BLAM! BLAM! sound. The kick from it would slightly stagger a normal-sized adult human; it nearly knocked little Skreech’s ass down each time he pulled the trigger. Maurice was howling in pain, and his howls started to become interrupted at times with gurgles that didn’t sound too good. J-Maxx was becoming more and more enraged as he noticed Maurice’s condition deteriorating and the shots comin’ from his gun were startin’ to stray, hittin’ the door, the side of the train. I had to figure something out, and fast.
“J-Maxx!” I called to him, moving towards him, “yo, J-Maxx, look, I need you to keep coverin’. I’m gonna run up and blow the fuckin’ door, alright?”
“Make it fast,” the orc rumbled ominously. “If Maurice dies and we still don’t have that door open…” He grimly started to aim again, focusing on the little window, and firing. I nodded, ran over to Skreech and told him to keep it up, then, gettin’ low to the ground, I hustled over to the train door, then deftly went to the side so that the assholes inside would have to poke their guns all the way out of the window to be able to get a shot at me, and I quickly tore another small brick of sticky explosive from its plastic wrapping, rammed a transmitter into the center of it. I took it in one hand and slapped the sticky explosive as hard as I could to the door and where the frame of the door met the rest of the train car, hoping it would stick as I didn’t have the chance nor time to work it in, then I ran as fast as I could, as fast as my legs could move—my lungs burned like all hell—then dove into the desert sand behind J-Maxx.
“Get down!” I yelled, clicking the trigger on the detonator. J-Maxx, Brock, and Skreech ducked down, while still shooting at the train car door window, and after another delay of a few seconds, an explosion destroyed the door and its surrounding frame, blasting it inwards in an awful crunch and shriek of metal being unnaturally burned and torn asunder, which was immediately followed by the screams of a man, one of the security team on the other side of the door, who was struck by large burning chunks of shrapnel from the train car door and had been closest to the explosion.
The rest of the security team that was in the space on the other side of the door started to stagger out. They wore black uniforms from head to toe, black gloves and everything, with blue patches I didn't recognize and crazy looking gas masks. They were variously wounded and severely disoriented, bucking shots at us, and the orcs promptly lit them up, firing dozens of rounds into them in just a few moments, two of them dropping to the ground with blood spurting from their wounds, a third firing wildly in our direction. I began to feel the air change around me and out of fuckin’ no where, seeming to somehow come from inside the train car, a streak of lightning arced out towards us, causing the sand to sizzle and burn and start to smoke. What the fuck was that?
“They got a fuckin’ wizard in there! Fuckin’ bastard! Keep firing! Move in!” Brock shouted. He reached down and took something out of a large pocket on his pants. I couldn’t make out what it was exactly, but he attached it to his pistol and it dramatically increased the rate of fire. Another arc of lightning shot out at us, catching Maurice’s legs and shocking him so bad he pissed on himself, the liquid sizzling. The lightning caught another orc behind Maurice, tearing his ear and a slice of flesh around it from his head, the scorch from the lightning causing that side of his face to cook and emit a horrible stench.
This time I saw the direction where the lightning came from as it shot out from the wizard’s hands. Je had backed into the corner to the left, so I aimed there, only a little higher, hoping to catch the fucker in the chest or the face and incapacitate his lightning throwin’ ass. I fired four shots in quick succession. PARAP-PAP-PAP! Followed by the sound of shells clinking on the ground. From what I could catch glimpse of, he was a tall lanky bastard in a uniform like the rest of the security, but grey instead of black and with some kind of special gloves that right now were glowing like they were live wires. Before he could charge up and create his damn forked lightning again, I narrowed my stance like I was one of those revolutionary era fucks you see in duels, and pumped him full of lead. Straight to the heart. The wizard loudly groaned in defeat and must have slumped over because we all heard a thud sound in the smoky haze inside the cart, and no more lightning came out to strike at us.
“Nice shot, hob,” Brock muttered, impressed.
“Motherfucker…” J-Maxx rumbled to no one in particular, breathing hard, also going over towards Maurice, who was moaning and bleeding badly, his blood starting to stain and drench the sand around him, his eyes fluttering.
“Thanks, you all got some too,” I said. Nodding to Skreech, I headed towards the train car door, or at least, the gaping, scorched, smoking, bullet riddled hole where it used to be. I shot a look over my shoulder at the orcs huddled around their wounded, Maurice with the ragged, bloody holes in his neck and chest, the jagged, steaming slices the wizard’s lightning had cut into his legs, turning them into roasted chunks of orc leg meat, his comrade—Da Nutz, I think he called himself—with the missing ear and well-done cheek, and I couldn’t help but think as I looked back to the train car, this better be fuckin’ worth it, then, absurdly, the fuckin’ dragon better be offerin’ hazard pay to his top earners.
I waited a few moments for the orcs to talk and commiserate amongst themselves, then, clearing my throat, said, “I think we’re clear, let’s head in.”
“Come on, J-Maxx,” Brock said, irritated, pulling the other orc up and away from Maurice, who was clearly dying. “Let’s go see what we got, there’s nothin’ else we can do for ‘em right now.”
“One of you keeps an eye on him,” J-Maxx rumbled somberly to the two other orcs standing by Maurice, pointing at them and looking on for the last time at his dying friend, briefly meeting his gaze as Maurice struggled to stay lucid. J-Maxx, Brock, and one of the other orcs ambled over to me and Skreech, and we headed up into the train car, en masse.
I couldn’t believe my fuckin’ eyes. After briefly scanning the floor I took note of the dead security team and their jerk off wizard, slumped over with a grimace like he just took a vicious shit, which me and the others took some savage pleasure from.
Then my eyes looked up and saw another fuckin’ door! “You gotta be fuckin’ shittin’ me.” This door was much like the train car door I had blown in with the sticky explosive, except heavily reinforced and locked. They must have built this container into the train car, I thought.
“Fuck,” Brock hissed.
“Now what?” Skreech asked, looking up at me.
“Yea, Teek, now what?” J-Maxx repeated, sounding distant and strange.
“I don’t know, hold on.” I felt up the duffel bag still wrapped around my torso, touching on it frantically hoping to feel another small mushy brick of sticky explosive. I yanked open the bag so roughly that the zipper broke off and shoved my hand in, feeling around, but when I pulled out the wrapper that the shit had been packaged in, it was empty, little bits of residue from the explosives on it. Fuck, is that all it comes with? Maybe I did use too much, I thought. “I’m out of explosives.” The orcs and Skreech grumbled collectively.
“We could shoot the fuckin’ shit outta the motherfucker, and either put a hole through it or weaken it enough that we can punch through it,” the other orc with J-Maxx and Brock started.
“We don’t got time for this shit, we already been here too long,” Brock snapped quickly. “We’ve already made too much noise and we’re gonna have some unwanted guests show up to our party soon.” The orcs looked to J-Maxx, who grabbed the rifle that the orc beside Brock was holding and promptly started firing it into the door, the window, the frame, some shots ricocheting, some making small dents and holes. Brock barked and grabbed at the barrel of the rifle.
“J-Maxx what the fuck!” Brock roared. The other orc moved to intervene and put the moves on Brock, being blindly loyal to J-Maxx.
“Fuck you! Let...Go...Of...The...Fucking...Gun...Brock,” J-Maxx thundered, struggling with Brock, fighting and straining to force him to let go of the rifle barrel. The rifle stopped firing even though J-Maxx was still pulling the trigger—the fuckin’ magazine finally ran out, just leaving a little wisp of smoke creeping out of the barrel. J-Maxx looked wildly at Brock, then forcefully yanked the rifle barrel out of his hand, turned the gun around and started bashing at the the door, but while it dented some, it held firm.
“Fuck!” the orc roared, filled with impotent rage, slamming the rifle against the door so hard that the gun snapped into two useless pieces. Maglubiyet, I forgot how strong orcs could be when they were really pissed off. J-Maxx started kicking at the door with his prodigious boots, and the other orc pushed Brock outta the way and joined J-Maxx in goin’ at the door, kicking at it, punching it, even. Might as well have been fucking nuclear bombs going off inside with how loud they were.
Dungeons & Gangsters Page 9