“You hit?” asked Sid. He climbed down out of the sunroof.
“Yeah,” I replied, putting a hand under my shirt, wincing. My finger found a small hole on the side of my ribcage. “Not too bad. A through and through I think, but it would help if you wrapped me up. You hit?”
“Ah, I think my ear got blown off,” he said, holding one hand to a bloody mess on the side of his head as he doubled over in pain, “but the real problem is a gut shot.”
“Bad?”
It looked bad.
“It hurts like hell but it’ll bleed out slow, I should live for another couple of hours.”
Ah, not so bad then. I smiled. Maybe we’d make it out of Los Angeles after all.
As we sped up the street, I could see something walk into our way.
I jammed on the breaks and we skidded, squealing to a halt as we ploughed into the first couple of greenies, bumping over them messily amid roars of pain. The other car skidded to a stop behind us.
Furious, I flew open my driver side door as we stopped, weapon in hand, to confront whatever was going down here. Sid popped back out of the sunroof, grimacing, with both cannons out aiming front and center.
A short, stocky green man with pointy ears and a broad forehead, wearing spiked shoulder pads and holding an enormous axe, ambled up to me.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
I could see he had some vampires with him too.
“We are against the discrimination shown to the Bangladeshi.”
“What?” Then it dawned on me.
“Sid!” I yelled. “Sid, did you set the authenticated login to this world when you created it?”
Silence. Except for the growing whine of the approaching sirens.
“Sid?!” I asked again, looking back at him.
“Ah shoot,” he replied, wincing in pain. He looked down at the blood that was oozing from his gut wound. “I forgot.”
Dejectedly he banged both of his weapons down on the roof of the car.
These were obviously Comment Trolls. Without authenticated login, people could just connect into this world anonymously, which was fine if you just wanted to watch, but anonymity tended to bring out the worst in people.
With the massive audience we’d accumulated for this game, and with the login anonymous, we’d just attracted the mother lode of Comment Trolls. Hundreds of them were now blocking the road. They’d use the opportunity to broadcast their opinions, whether they had anything to do with this world or not.
“I’m sorry dude,” continued Sid, waving a gun in the air. “I was just so busy. My mother was over, I had a splinter set this world up…”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Perhaps I could reason with them.
“Dude, please, this is 1988 Los Angeles,” I complained to the lead Comment Troll. “We’re just trying to get out of here. There were no trolls in ‘88 Los Angeles, and no vampires either.”
I considered this for a moment. On closer inspection those were Forum Vampires he had with him. They could be useful.
“Maybe there were vampires. But come on guys, please.”
My dimstim stats were dropping as fast as our gameworld audience. I had to do something entertaining, and quickly. The head Comment Troll was right in my face now. He smelled real bad and had some butt ugly oily pimples going on.
“Master,” he growled at me.
Well, at least he was playing along in character. Not a total asshole, then. Perhaps there was an opportunity here.
“Master, we are sorry, but this is an open gameworld, and we have the right to express our opinions here.”
I nodded my head.
“Yeah, this an open gameworld, but only if you’re coming to get laid and get paid,” I explained in a sing song tone, smiling to expose my two gold capped front teeth and holding a West Side finger salute near my chest. “Look if you want to join the Bloods or the Crips I’m down with that, but don’t be a bitch and mess up our game, homie.”
I shrugged and held my hands up, wide eyed, shaking my head.
“Who are you to tell me what to do?”
“I’ll tell you who I am, my brother,” I said, bringing my .357 Magnum up between his eyes and pulling the trigger.
Curiously, it didn’t result in his brains blowing out the back of his head as it should have, but the bullet seemed to glance off his thick skull and ricochet in a splatter of oily blood and hairy flesh. I guess I’d never tried shooting a troll in the head at point blank range with a .357 before.
As I considered this, my left forearm exploded in pain. The troll standing next to him had swung his axe to lop off my left hand which I was lifting up to give the lead Comment Troll the finger with.
Blood spurted out of my severed appendage as I backpedalled away from the threatening horde, blasting away indiscriminately with my firearm. Sid was covering my retreat, picking off trolls and vampires as they advanced. They were tough sons–of–bitches, and we wouldn’t have made it except for the suppressing automatic weapons fire that Vicious and Willy added as we ran back.
Breathlessly we all rallied behind the GTO, and I ripped off my t–shirt and mashed my severed forearm stump into my leg, trying to wrap a tourniquet under my armpit. Sid leaned over to help me as Vicious and Willy continued to let go with their M–16’s.
“Where the hell is Martin?” I managed to pant out.
He should have been manning the rocket launcher. That would give those assholes something to think about. Sid ducked up to look inside the car.
“Aw man, I think Martin is dying,” he replied. He tightened up my tourniquet.
I wrenched around to take a look myself. Martin was writhing in the back seat, soaked in blood and whimpering.
“Goddamn baby,” I said, shaking my head. “Martin, what the hell?”
I turned back to Sid.
“Those guys were miles away, they had tons of cover. How the heck did he get so messed up?”
This was going to get a lot trickier with one man down, Sid barely functional and me missing an arm.
“You’re useless, you know that?” I yelled at Martin.
He whimpered back between the pain, “Sorry Bob, I didn’t mean to…”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re always sorry,” I muttered under my breath.
Sid stared at me disapprovingly. He was shaking his head.
“Dude, you shouldn’t be so mean to him all the time,” Sid reproached. “Talk to him, okay?”
I said nothing.
“Okay?” demanded Sid between the bursts of automatic weapons fire. “You promise?”
Rolling my eyes I sighed, “Okay, yes. You’re right. But let’s just get out of this first, okay?”
Looking back up over the GTO, I could see the trolls were reassembling and advancing by holding up their bloodied comrades in front of them as shields. They were fast too. This wouldn’t be easy. I looked around for the rocket launcher as Sid picked up an Uzi from the back seat and snapped in a clip.
We looked at each other, starting to enjoy ourselves. I was awkwardly trying to slide the launcher from the back seat, with my one remaining hand, to balance on my shoulder, when all of a sudden a massive burst of gunfire erupted from both sides of us.
