The gunshot didn’t sound close, but how far away mattered a lot to me. I had just started to shift to fear of the direction of the gunshot, but my thoughts were interrupted again by my phone ringing. Caller ID read Joe, so I had to answer. “Joe, whatcha got?”

  “Gunshots sound like they are from further down the road. At least that is what I think, any ideas?”

  “Yeah, we all slow down so we don’t drive directly into a gun fight.” I was more than a little afraid of what those gunshots meant: looting and lawlessness.

  Immediately, all three vehicles slowed down before we got to the main road that connected to a state highway. Joe was still on the phone with me, “Neal, I’m keeping as aware as I can be. It is likely the gunshots are coming from the gas station at the intersection before you turn onto the state highway. It’s just a guess, but the best guess I got.”

  “That’s fine. We aren’t running towards gunfire, we are just gonna roll up on the road to the edge of the tree line. You will hopefully tell me what’s going on.” I could see the tree line ending up ahead.

  “What the actual fuck are those?” were the immortal words of Joe. He wasn’t quite at the edge of the trees yet, and still completely blocked our view.

  “Joe! What do you mean?”

  “Neal, they look like red-tinged muscle-bound orcs. Oh, with small demonic horns coming out their foreheads.”

  “How many?” I remembered to put the phone on speaker immediately.

  “Three. One of them is smashing two cops thoroughly. The second one is smashing the police cruiser in the middle of the road. And the third is staggering behind the first two. He must have been hit by gunfire.”

  “Do we have room to get past them towards the gas station?”

  “Probably Not.”

  “Then let's stop and get out of the vehicles and bring rifles to bear.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt like they were dumb heroics. Despite that, our vehicles slowed to a stop to the side of the road just before we got to the front edge of the tree line. I looked at the others and saw unease on their faces. With us congregated just behind the tree line, all eyes turned towards me like I was somehow the guy with a military background.

  Frank spoke quietly, “Those demon orc guys look pretty big. Each of them is probably a little bit taller than me, and they are all jacked. Do we concentrate fire on one of them?”

  Joe surprised me by being more vocal, “I’ve marked the one who is now eating the officer’s ripped off leg. I will go back a few yards and line up a good shot while they are distracted with the cops. Everyone else aims at the one smashing up the front of the car. Hopefully, we bring those two down before the limping one makes it to us and bring him down as well with concentrated fire.” I smiled, “What he said. Unless you have any other suggestions, Frank?”

  “If they get close, I’ll drop my rifle and pop my shield taunt ability. I don’t think they need to know our language for it to work. I will work defensively while the rest of you try to get an open shot.”

  I smiled. “See, guys, I’m not the tactician. We have people who have actual skills to help with this.”

  They looked at me, probably more annoyed than anything. Fortunately, they all turned to check their rifles. Safeties were off, weapons cocked, and college grads so not ready to rock. We all positioned ourselves right at the edge of the trees, and fortunately, the ‘demon orcs’, as we had branded them, were smashing a second car. The scene, if possible, was even worse. This smaller car was not a cop car. A woman’s head was on the ground next to the car while the first monster was trying to rip the car door off its hinges. 2 kids were screaming in the back seat, trying to stay out of reach. The limping one was munching on one of the dead police officers, while the last monster was on the short trunk, trying to rip the roof off.

  These creatures were built like oversized linebackers: Big reddish tinted skin and small horns on their heads. They wore light armor, some sort of leather. The shield strapped to their backs told me they were set up to be melee specialists. The axes belted at their waists were decent sized, but not massive, given their body frames. Even at this distance, they were an impressive sight.

  A gunshot blasted to my left, and nearly instantaneously, the orc on the trunk flew in a strange jerking back flip off the back and out of sight. This alerted the other two, whose heads snapped first to their buddy, and then outwards looking for the shooter. My phone buzzed with a text. I looked down to see a message from Joe. “I don’t think he’s dead. My ability is still locked on him.”

  FUCK! I know that was a headshot. I’ve been hunting enough to know it was his head that snapped back first. If a solid headshot with high end military caliber bullet doesn’t down them, then what does? I had to force myself to mentally refocus on these creatures. They were out of range for my assess. Instead, I opened Fire on the orc that was previously dismantling the driver’s door off its hinges. The first shot took him in the shoulder, spinning him slightly on the spot. He seemed momentarily stunned by the bullet but recovered quickly. “Everyone, be careful of the kids in the car. They aren’t dead. I’d really like to keep it that way.”

  Each of us fired a tentative round at the orc creature. It couldn’t have been more than 100 ft from us. Surprisingly, we all hit the creature, but he was a larger target. These larger caliber bullets did make him bleed, though it didn’t seem like much. I was not sure if it was the leather armor they wore or something else, but a human would have been downed by such gunfire. He focused on us and charged directly towards us. I noticed behind him, the limping one howled up towards the sky above before also breaking into a charging run, his injury seemingly forgotten.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  We poured more gunfire into the lead orc, the noise cancelling out any hearing I might have. He started slowing down about halfway to us. He had at least 10 bullets in him. By every measure, he should be dead already. I poured one more shot into him, piercing his gut for my second time and probably the 4th shot overall. He stumbled over his own charging feet and fell face first. Our victory was short lived as the previously limping orc was almost on top of us. I got up from the prone position I was in and tried stepping backwards and tripped over something. I fell flat on my back with a small rock angled into my ribcage. The vest didn’t stop the wind from getting knocked out of me. I still couldn’t hear anything; the gunfire had temporarily deafened me. The orc creature was rushing right at me. I pulled my rifle up to me to fire, or at least I thought I did. I must have dropped it in all the falling backwards onto my back. Stupid fucking realism. I felt paralyzed at that moment. My rifle, my defense, was not on me. I looked ahead and felt for my hip holster. The orc leapt above me, and I closed my eyes, bracing for my death.

  The deep slashing death I anticipated never happened. My hearing returned just to hear a crashing sound overhead. I first cracked open one eye to see legs wearing camo pants flying horizontally across my vision. ‘Big legs’ was the first thought that came to mind. I opened my other eye to see the boots flying overhead. “Frank?” I looked over to see the result of horizontal hijinks. The big reddish orc was pinning Frank underneath him. Frank's riot shield was crushed into his body, while the orc's axe had buried into Frank’s hip.

  A high pitched “NO!!!” bellowed from further to his right. Followed by, “Get The Fuck Off My Man!!!” he heard her rapid footsteps before seeing her cross into his view. Frank and the Orc were struggling, but Frank was slowly losing that struggle. The Orc’s left hand had gotten over the top of the shield and was slowly squeezing his throat. All that was interrupted by Nora. She shoved her rifle in his ear and repeatedly pulled the trigger until no bullets or Orc ear canals remained.

  Blood was everywhere. I struggled to a sitting position. Another gunshot soes off behind me to my left. I looked towards Joe, but his eyes were fixed forward towards the smashed cars. I quickly followed where his eyes were pointed. The head-flipping Orc that didn’t want to stay down was down a second time. From this distance, there was no movement, so I turned back to Joe. “We good?”

  After a really long pause, “Still not dead, but definitely dying. You don’t brush off two headshots that easily.” Joe got up and padded forward towards the orc thing. Once he went a little over halfway, he aimed the rifle down towards the prone creature and punched in several more shots. “It’s finally dead.”

  The rest of my senses flooded in. The sounds hit hardest: the crying and screaming kids, Nora sobbing and grunting while pushing a dead monster off of Frank, Frank’s groaning from the stab wound, the heaviness of my own breathing, and the pounding staccato of my heartbeat. I turned to a groaning Frank. “How are you, buddy?”

  Frank’s stoicism lost, “I’m fucking bleeding with an orc’s axe in my side. So, I’m doing fucking fantastic, Neal!” He grimaced in pain with his words, like each one made it just a little bit worse than before.

  “Glad to know you’re in good spirits, Frank. Billy, grab a first aid kit. Chris, help Nora with the now extra dead orc. Joe, double check that both those other orcs are extra dead.”

  Billy couldn’t stop himself, “And what are you going to be doing, Neal?” I wasn’t sure what the issue was.

  “Several things. First, I need to use my assess ability on each of the orcs as well as on the kids in the car when we can help them get out. Then we need to loot the dead orcs for anything valuable or even potentially valuable. We don’t have detect magic much less identify. Hell, I don’t even know if their armor is magically enhanced. It sure would explain why large caliber bullets are less than half as effective as they should be.”

  Finally, I got to use my assess on the monsters. First up was the one Nora cleared out the ear canal of. I concentrated on the orc and thought about assessing it. Within moments information came to me:

  Abyssal Orc Grunt, level 3 (Dead)

  “Well, Fuck. They are Abyssal Orcs. Their class is called grunt, and the earless guy is level 3.”

  Frank laughed, only to wince in pain, “Earless. She did more than that. But sure, we’ll go with earless.”

  “Chris and Nora, don’t forget to loot the body for any potential healing potions. I can see a level 3 enemy potentially having a healing potion.” I moved out of the wood line and to the orc that died mid charge. I had to leave the looting of the earless orc to Chris and Nora. I wanted to be there for Frank, but as bad as his injury was, it didn’t look fatal. Granted, what do I know about what could potentially be fatal or not? The most fatalities I have seen were with ducks or deer, and that is very different than this. I flipped the Orc onto his back and was splattered with blood for my efforts. The concrete was already covered in blood; this just allowed it to flow out differently. I checked pouches and pockets thoroughly to find a small vial with a symbol on the stopper. Please let this be a healing potion of some type. I got up and ran back to my friends in the woods. “I’ve got a potion. I am not sure if it’s a healing potion or not. If Frank isn’t feeling good or we are worried about internal bleeding, then maybe we should chance it.”

  Nora looked up from a pale Frank, “We need to chance it. That axe cracked his hip bone with a glancing hit. How are we going to fight these things? How many bullets did we put into each creature?”

  “I get it, use the potion but keep the stopper on top. It has a symbol, so we can hopefully start to figure out their language if we piece together enough symbols.” She took the offered vial, pulled out the stopper, and slowly fed Frank the potion.

  Frank sputtered after being force fed the potion. “Fuck, if that is their idea of a healing potion, then next time let me die. It tastes like ass. Please, someone, get me a water bottle.”

  Nora pressed one to his lips. “Here you go, babe. Drink up. We have your injury cleaned out and bandaged.” She pointed to his waist area where his vest was peeled off, his shirt was up to his chest, while his pants and underwear were down halfway to his knees. “I’ll keep you monitored until everyone else checks out everything.”

  I found myself turning away from the scene. It could have been all the blood, the nearly decapitated orc, or my buddy, partially naked and completely exposed. It most definitely was one of those reasons. For those, and potentially other reasons, I turned myself back towards the rest of our impromptu battlefield, and said over my shoulder, “So Frank, how exactly does ass taste? And whose ass did you taste to make that determination?” I sped up after that, not waiting for an answer.