Chương 105: 3.29 Holding Out for a Hero - Bonnie Tyler (4:21)

CrushDaddyXx LET'S GOOOOOO!!! Do you know how long I've been waiting for a proper large-scale battle? We've had the Reclaimer (you're all welcome for that btw), we've had monsters, we've had riots, we've had a dood get his face burned off with a flare gun, but this is the first time that Zeke has ended up smack dab in the middle of a genuine battle. Pale Regiment versus Black Teeth versus Shard Choir versus the Alderman's mercenaries. This is exactly the kind of glorious, over-the-top chaos that I signed up for.

Don't give me plodding along trips through the Glens where Zeke ponders his own mortality. Give me explosions!! Also… the Shard Choir? Seriously? Those dudes are unhinged. They're the only faction in Frontiers that makes the Black-Teeth look relatively well-adjusted. If Zeke survives this, somebody needs to buy that man a drink. SteelResolve ^Crush. Samesies. I'm also excited to see how Haynes handles the fight. He's an operations officer and not a strategy bro, so I think he's going to screw up somewhere.

The convoy fight was decent, but now he has to organize a prepared defense with limited ammunition. He's got a bunch of exhausted people on the outskirts, some wounded in the center, and three separate enemy factions all attacking his base. Zeke, I officially take back anything negative that I said about your story. The lore nerds have gotten everything they've wanted so far, and now you're providing for the rest of us. Unless you decide to end this whole story with "and then we won."

If you do that, I'll never forgive you. ShovelKnight22 What the hell is Haynes stopping for? That's such a stupid idea. The SECOND the convoy stopped moving, he surrendered the one advantage he had. All the driving they were doing was getting them closer to reinforcements, but once he parked the trucks he guaranteed that the Pale Regiment would be surrounded. SomePeopleCallMe_Maurice There isn't really a better option for them.

They weren't going to outrun the Black Teeth, especially after they adapted in the Dead Corridor. Every mile they went cost them a truck or a jeep. At some point they would have just become a long line of vehicles waiting to get picked off. At least a defensive hard point lets everyone concentrate their fire and beats dying separately. Wolololololo | At least a defensive hard point lets everyone concentrate their fire and beats dying separately | Does it tho?

They traded the Devro - an actual military base with walls and a watchtower - for an abandoned warehouse. That's a pretty shit trade my man. KnightsWHOsay-NIN-NIN I'm pissed that Zeke didn't listen to Castellan's advice. He straight up said that Zeke should stick with the Pale Regiment only as long as they remained useful, and then split off when they became a liability. As soon as Haynes decided to stand and fight instead of go through the Dead Corridor, that was Zeke's window.

Now he's trapped inside a siege with a bunch of people gunning for him. Nudvik | I'm pissed that Zeke didn't listen to Castellan's advice. | Castellan has good ideas, but why are they expecting Zeke to read a massive wall-o-text when the entire cast of Fury Road is currently barrelling towards Zeke? Learn some succinctness, dude… WilliamWickerness ^Nudvik. 2 sentences is enough for most plans, but Christ Zeke is literally in his 3746th life or death scenario.

Byte-Sized Castellan is writing military dissertations disguised as forum posts. It was always going to end this way.

By the time Zeke finished reading all that tactical analysis, he would have already escaped the convoy, gotten ambushed twice, took shelter in an abandoned warehouse, had a heart-warming convo with Jackie about her family back in The MIZ, survived another firefight, eaten lunch, complained that the lunch wasn't as good as he hoped, pissed off ANOTHER random faction out in the Deadlands, and then gave us all a quick update. AnywayHeresWonderwall It's funny because it's true.

Castellan starts with "hey, here's a quick thought," and then six thousand words later you're knee deep in the footnotes about some military campaign that took place in the prologue of Null Protocol. Castellan writes the same way Tolkien writes about forests. You need the background of knowing what happened three hundred in-universe years ago, and by then you've completely forgotten what his original point even was. Craaazzzzy How dare you besmirch the name of Tolkien. YOU TAKE IT BACK.

TrapG00blin Imagine Zeke trying to read one of Castellan's posts while Jackie is fishtailing around the place and someone is actively trying to climb onto the hood with a shotgun.

"Interesting point you make there, Castellan. I'll definitely consider appendix C after I survive this motorcycle trying to kill me." Blazer66 If it's possible to have negative in a stat I'm pretty sure Zeke found it with his luck. GrognarTheGreen Well… no use complaining about it now. The fact that Zeke is writing all this out means the battle already happened. We're basically just watching his story unfold one forum post at a time. EarliestSideCharacter Guess there's not much the forum can do in this situation.

Footballish It doesn't mean we're useless. Maybe there's a lull in the fighting or the Pale Regiment is forced to retreat again. That could be why Zeke is updating all of us. He might need help figuring out an escape route or maybe we can come up with another plan before he jumps into the next disaster. Jaestan I think Zeke should try and get a uniform or mask from the regiment. Being able to maybe hide amongst them might help later down the line… or at least give him more options. Chick8da_swarm Won't work.

Neither Frontiers nor Syndicate's Wake ever let you loot the Pale Regiment masks. Whenever you tried, they just dissolved in your inventory. There's some kind of, I don't know, anti-looting mask button or something on the side. What do you even call that? I've accepted that Severance Systems simply waved a magic lore wand over it and hoped nobody would think too hard. Otherwise, how would the Pale Regiment build an anti-looting thing into their mask?

How would the average soldier be able to take them off to eat without the masks instantly dissolving, necessitating them finding another one? TapRap | Being able to maybe hide amongst them might help later down the line… | A lot of people are probably gonna complain about this but I think this would be a fire arc. We are due for a spy arc. IridiumSky The Regiment back in The MIZ was pretty clearly angling to recruit Zeke, so it wouldn't be out of nowhere.

WhoShotIcarus Watch as Zeke finds some super-secret lore in the Dead Corridor and the forum blows up again. A place like that screams"There's something you're all missing!" but we've all been too confident dismissing it for too long. I know everyone here says they're lore experts, but - and it may sound hypocritical given my previous stance on Zeke's discoveries - I do enjoy how he keeps making us all look like fools.

It's gratifying, knowing all the unplumbed depths this universe has that we overlooked just because of preexisting biases, wrong conclusions, or this incessant need to dog-pile and harass every new account that tries to speak until they quit. Zeke's been a breath of fresh air, making us question everything. Gilar"Dead Corridor is super boring, nothing happens there…" Yea, right…

Basic pattern recognition tells me that Zeke will stumble on some epic pre-Fracture lore and then will have to defeat another Kaiju sized monster. Castellan_Mike (Primary) | Imagine trying to read one of Castellan's posts while bouncing around in the back of the jeep getting shot at. | Uh. Rude. All I'm trying to do is give the guy some options. I even asked everyone else to contribute ideas because I know I don't have every answer.

JimothyTheBarber Castellan's greatest weakness is that Zeke refuses to stand still long enough for him to finish typing. Oooo. Now that I think about it, that could be how Zeke is able to survive so many things. Every time death comes after him, he's already wandered into an entirely different disaster before the first ever finished trying to kill him. Z3ke (Original Poster) There's a part of this battle that I'm having trouble really explaining, and that's the Shard Choir.

Null really undersold them back when he first told me about them and said that I needed to stay away. Let me set the scene. I was with the Pale Regiment and we were as ready as we were ever gonna be. The trucks were all parked and the wounded were being taken care of and the soldiers were… doing whatever it is soldiers do before a big battle. They were fiddling with rifles or whatever. The Shard Choir was in front of us. I already told you all about that.

I told you about how they were in patched-together rags and they were carrying weapons that looked like they belonged in museums. That was just the rifles. A majority of the weapons were machetes and axes and lengths of pipe and whatever other heavy thing they could grab and carry. But Null didn't talk about the two most unsettling facts about the Shard Choir. The first was that they were creepily smiling at us like it was our birthday party and they were the serial killer clown sizing us all up.

The second thing was the chanting. It made my skin crawl. The Choir stretched out in this vast line of hundreds of people, and right when I thought that the battle was gonna start, they started chanting. It was hundreds of voices all rising together in a perfect, unsettling unison. I couldn't make out what they were saying because it wasn't singing and it wasn't shouting and the noise they made bounced off the concrete and reverberated around the warehouse.

I can tell you that it was a rhythmic droning that had the feeling of a prayer. Some of the Choir members laughed while they chanted while others cried. Tears ran down dirty faces. But that was only some of them. A vast majority of the Shard Choir were smiling at us. Not the nervous or angry smiles that some of you are imagining. These were peaceful smiles. They were contented smiles.

They were the smiles of a people who were strolling through a park in the middle of a beautiful afternoon, and NOT standing a few hundred feet away from a well-defended position. The chanting is what made it all click. Null had said that these people were insane and you all agreed with him, but standing there and watching this crowd pray with happiness at the thought of charging us, it all made me understand the why of how these people were so feared.

They were honestly and with surety convinced that death was a prize. Whatever weird god they worshiped out in the Rift Scar, whatever their priests claimed was waiting for them in the afterlife, whatever dreams had taken root in their minds, they welcomed it with the eagerness of a kid on the night before Christmas. How do you deal with that? How do you counter it? How do you fight someone hoping that you'll kill them? How do you frighten them away? I glanced down at the guitar in my hands.

I'd pulled it from my storage space when we were all getting ready. The Pale Regiment had their rifles, Jackie had her jeep, Elnor had his shotgun and… I had my guitar. That was it. That was my defense. A single guitar against a cult of raving maniacs. The only question worth asking myself blared up in my mind. What was I supposed to play? My brain started throwing out a host of terrible ideas and I tried to remember all the pdfs of guitar chords you all had sent me. Immigrant Song?

As awesome as Crush would think it was to charge into battle screaming about Valhalla, I wasn't so sure that Led Zeppelin was the best idea. What if, when I played it, I'd just pump up the Shard Choir? They were the ones who were the crazy cultists, not me. Raining Blood by Slayer? It was a definite possibility. How about Flying Whales by Gojira? It had potential, although introducing environmental metal to a battlefield filled with Pale Regiment in the middle of a siege might not be great.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I was floundering. Choice overload. That's what it's called. I remember a buddy of mine had come back from a several month long vacation - I think it was a vacation - where he was in Nigeria doing something. Man… I'm not a great friend because I can't remember what he was doing. Anyway.

He came back from Nigeria and we went to a Duane Reade and he just stood in front of the cereal aisle and blanked because he had trained his mind on the fact that the store he'd been in in Nigeria only had two different cereals. Now he had options and he couldn't make a decision. I was in the middle of the Pale Regiment defenses, staring at the death cult as they softly prayed for the privilege of dying, and my brain decided that this was the perfect moment for me to remember… the ending of Shrek 2.

I can't, for the life of me, explain the why of that. One moment I was staring out at the Shard Choir and the next my brain brought up the scene where Shrek was storming the castle while the Fairy Godmother was inside and singing and trying to force the happily-ever-after ending that she wanted. I would like to devote this song to Princess Fiona. I remembered the catapults and the fire and the gumdrop buttons and the massive gingerbread man and everything all congealing together into a single moment. And then…"

I need a hero." Of all the memories that my brain could pull up while I was waiting to get stormed by death cultists, it had to pick the climax of an animated movie that I'd seen, what, twenty years ago? I rolled my shoulders and adjusted the guitar strap and wrapped my fingers around the neck. Someone from the forum had suggested that I get some gloves because the last time I was playing I'd shredded my hands.

I hadn't had the chance to do that, which meant I was mostly just hoping that my hands would be good until I could get through this. And I was also hoping that I'd chosen the right song.

"Jesus, this is so stupid," I mumbled. I strummed and the first chords rang out across the loading area. They were surprisingly loud. They bounced off the concrete and the warehouse walls before eventually getting swallowed up by the chanting of the Shard Choir. I leaned into the music and let it push its way through me. Across the ways, the chanting of the Choir stopped and I wasn't fully ready for what that meant. Hundreds of smiling faces all raised up and stared at me with the same eerie synchronized moment.

Then came the screams. Hundreds of them. They screamed out in ecstatic release as they surged forward as one. Men and women in rags sprinted across the cracked concrete of the loading bay. Their weapons were raised and tears streamed freely down their faces like this was the happiest moment of their lives. Haynes shouted an order that was almost lost in the screaming and my playing.

"Wait for it! Conserve the ammo!" His voice barely managed to cut through the screams, but it did the job and the Pale Regiment soldiers didn't fire. They were waiting for the charging cultists to close the distance so every bullet would find a target. My hands were a blur and the music started flowing. I wasn't thinking about the next chord. Something else had taken hold. I was just trying to… I think the best way to say it would be to channel the energy.

That sounds like I'm a 40 year old hippie who owns a smoke shop and a haberdashery and who calls it a haberdashery instead of just saying that it's a hat store.

"Channel the energy?" What the hell is that? It's what I was doing. That's what. I played and the Pale Regiment held and the Shard Choir raced closer. 100 yards. 80 yards. 60 yards. Everything exploded. The sound that ripped through the warehouse was physical. It bounced off the concrete and reverberated and came back to me. It almost drowned out the music coming from my guitar. Bullets were fired and they created an endless roar that tore its way through the Shard Choir. The first rank of the Choir disappeared.

Just… poof. Bodies folded as bullets punched their way through them. I saw one guy spin violently before crashing into the pavement, his momentum carrying him a few feet before he stopped. The guy next to him just crumpled to the ground, like someone had found an off switch and flipped it. Massive gaps opened up in the formation and I couldn't help but think that, if I had been with the Shard Choir racing at the Pale Regiment, I would have turned and run by now.

If I'd just seen the people beside me getting shredded by the concentrated fire of people hiding under trucks, I would have turned around immediately. I wouldn't have cared if someone made some grand speech about courage under fire or called for us to make a dramatic last charge or told me to pick up the battle standard and continued on. Hells no. I would have been gone before anyone could stop me. But that's not what the Shard Choir did. They didn't even slow down. They ran.

They climbed over the dead without hesitation. One of the cultists was bleeding from his legs and he was dragging himself forward, clawing at the pavement with blooding fingers while still laughing. One of the cultists took three bullets to the chest, stumbled to a knee, looked at all of us gunning her people down, and then smiled. Then she stood up and kept charging as fast as she could. It was like we were in a zombie movie where the infected just kept coming.

Except these zombies were fast and smiling and chanting between snarls as if every step forward brought them closer to their god. I forced myself to keep playing, especially once I noticed that the music was working. I don't know how I knew it, but I could feel the music spreading through the defenders. Reloads were becoming smoother and some of the ammo carriers who were racing from the back lines to the front with extra magazines picked up a step. I'm not saying that anyone became some action-movie superstar.

We didn't have Rambo or Stallone or Schwarzenegger in our midst. It's just that… everything moved a little bit smoother. The entire defensive line had settled into a rhythm that matched my guitar. Every soldier was doing whatever they needed to do without wasting movement. We were going to win. That thought flashed through my mind as I saw the Shard Choir still charging at us and the Pale Regiment laying down accurate fire. We were going to win. Of course, that's when I heard the engines roar.

They were louder than the gunfire and the chanting and my guitar. My stomach sank before I even turned my head. Oh, come the fuck on, I nearly shouted before remember that that wasn't the next lyric in the song. But seriously. What the hell? Why couldn't anything ever go smoothly? Black Teeth vehicles burst into the loading yard from two different roads. Motorcycles screamed around the abandoned warehouse while dune runners bounced over the broken concrete and trucks poured through the sand.

Behind all of them came technicals with machine guns bolted into truck beds, followed by buses that were covered in rust and spikes and old blood. They weren't working with the Shard Choir. I don't think anyone in their right mind would coordinate with those lunatics. But the Black Teeth were using them. They'd waited and they'd let the Pale Regiment commit their ammo to stopping the suicidal charge.

And now, while everyone was focused on the death cult sprinting across the open ground, the Black Teeth came charging in. The Shard Choir charged us and the Black Teeth… they fought differently. The Choir only seemed to care about charging us. They ran smack dab into the wall of rifle fire with smiles on their faces. The Black Teeth weren't interested in any of that. They focused on our weak points and probed for exploits. The technicals were the worst of it.

They circled us like sharks and every now and then they raced forward with their massive mounted guns rattling away, sending rounds chewing across the trucks and warehouse walls before driving away. They circled us like sharks. Every now and then one of the technicals raced forward and the gunners in the back opened fire and then they peeled away before the soldiers could focus on them. The mounted guns hammered at us.

The bullets punched chunks out of the concrete walls around us and sent bits of rocks flying everywhere before the trucks disappeared back in the distance. Each of the passes they made forced us to duck lower behind the trucks, hoping and praying we wouldn't get hit. And while that was happening, the Shard Choir was still coming. The battlefield became pure chaos.

One second the Pale Regiment was focused on the Shard Choir, the next someone would yell about motorcycles on the left or a technical on the right and people would swing around to answer that threat before once again snapping back towards the cultists climbing over their dead. It was like trying to watch three different battles at the same time. The Black Teeth started to close within range.

Their trucks veered towards our lines just long enough for raiders to leap off and sprint the last few yards with clubs and maces and hooked poles raised over their heads. One of the Pale Regiment soldiers fired and I saw his rifle click empty and a Black Teeth raider vaulted over the truck barricade and smashed into the soldier. His club swung up and down, spreading blood everywhere before one of the other defenders shot him in the side.

He had barely hit the ground before another Black Teeth was climbing the trucks, screaming loud enough that I could hear him over the gunfire. Jackie was running around like crazy. One minute she was carrying ammunition towards the firing line with a crate hugged against her chest, the next she was dragging a wounded Pale Regiment soldier back to where the medics had gathered. Elnor was putting in work. Whenever someone got close his shotgun took them in the chest.

I saw one Black Teeth raider jump over the truck wall and then fall back and Elnor didn't even stop. He just calmly loaded another slug and kept his eyes peeled. There wasn't any panic in the man. He wasn't shouting orders or trying to inspire people or anything like that. All he did was shoot, reload, and shoot. I was still playing, desperately trying to add something to the battle and not knowing if it was working, when something caught my attention.

It would have been, not funny but maybe heartening if literally everything else that was happening wasn't so shit. A Black Teeth motorcycle tore through the battlefield and he was going way too fast. I couldn't tell if he'd hit a rock or a bullet had clipped the tire or what happened. All I know is that he was going fast and he was wobbling like he couldn't handle the bike and then he was suddenly plowing into the Shard Choir. The cultists fucking swarmed. That's the best description for it.

They were like piranhas in a fish tank and someone threw a chicken thigh in it. The motorcycle kept going and smashed into a few of them while the Black Teeth rider was pulled down and slammed into the ground. Clubs rose and fell over and over and over again. When it was all over, the cultists who'd been nearest to the riders were drenched in red. I turned away and forced my hands to keep playing.

My fingers found the strings without me needing to think too much about it, and every note I played rippled through the Pale Regiment lines. The magic was doing something, even with the fact that it was getting drowned out by the shouts and the curses and the panicked orders and the screams. A Pale Regiment soldier reloaded and the guy next to him jumped in and kept pouring firing into the cultists. They switched seconds later and when I saw it I thought rehearsed.

The engines roared and the gunfire was constant and the chanting was getting drowned out by the shouting. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw another few trucks pull up. For some stupid reason I could help but think - hope - that Haynes' message had reached the nearest Pale Regiment base. They'd heard our call for help. They knew we needed reinforcements. That stupid hope lasted three seconds, until the first mercenaries poured from the truck and started firing at us. How could I forget about the Alderman?

I still couldn't wrap my head around it. What the hell had I done to this guy? I'd met him exactly one time back in The MIZ. We'd had one conversation - if you could even call it that - in Riley's place and then I figured I'd never see him again. But no. The asshole had to cross half the Deadlands with a private army just to keep trying to kill me. His mercenaries started working their way towards us, but they were giving the Shard Choir a wide birth.

Whenever a group of cultists drifted too close, the mercenaries actually adjusted their route to avoid them. Both were after us and both wanted us dead, but clearly the mercs had no interest in sharing the same space as the lunatics. One of the Black Teeth trucks, tired of the probing attacks they were taking, decided to take a run at us. Its engines screamed as it charged, and I knew that the driver was trying to punch a hole through our defenses before unloading another wave of raiders.

The Pale Regiment tore it to pieces. Rifle fire shredded the windshield, turning the cabin into nothing but red. Rounds punched into the engine, trying to kill it before it could get close. Someone managed to hit the front wheels and pop them and the truck lurched sideways, tipped onto two wheels, and then rolled completely onto its side. It slid across the cracked concrete in a shower of sparks before finally grinding to a stop less than fifty yards from our position. Lucky. That was my first thought.

But just like when I thought the Pale Regiment reinforcements had come, I was once again wrong. The wreck hadn't reached us. It hadn't punched a hole in our defenses. But it had created a massive piece of cover sitting right in the middle of the loading yard. The Shard Choir barely acknowledged it. They simply climbed over the overturned truck and kept coming, crawling over it like ants at a picnic. But the mercenaries saw exactly what that truck was.

They sprinted forward and stacked up behind the wreck, using it as cover while they leaned out and fired accurate shots into our defenses. More and more Pale Regiment soldiers went down. The defenders shifted to replace them before the gaps could open, but I couldn't help but wonder how long we could keep doing this. The Black Teeth were charging and the mercenaries were inching their way forward and the Shard Choir was chanting. And then they weren't. The silence was a physical thing.

It cut through the battlefield. How, you might ask? I don't fucking know. It just happened. I didn't know that silence could be like that. There had been gunfire and engines and shouts and then it had all seemingly stopped like someone had reached across the battlefield and turned down the volume. There was silence and then a scream. But the scream was… orgasmic. I turned to the sound and it was at the far end of the loading area. Figures were walking out from the dust and sand. I want to say that again.

Figures were WALKING out from the dust and sand. Their steps were slow and deliberate. The Black Teeth announced themselves with cheers and screaming lunatics hanging off vehicles and the sound of souped up engines. The Shard Choir announced themselves with chants and creepy ass smiles. These things just walked. Even from a distance I recognized them. My hands fumbled and Bonnie Tyler decided to leave the battlefield and my mouth went dry and my entire body started shaking.

"Oh…" I whispered. My fingers were frozen against the guitar strings.

"No…" I'd seen them before. Back on the train. They had crashed through the windows. They'd been chasing me then. They'd chased me across the Deadlands and laughed and treated it like a game. And now they'd found me again. Smooth flesh where jaws should be. Two black pits where the eyes belonged. Empty but also pulsing faintly like something deep inside them was breathing. And the arms. They hung to the ground, impossibly long even while they stood still.

As they walked, those strange arms dragged lazily across the cracked concrete, leaving faint trails through the dust behind them. Hundreds of people from four different armies just watched. The Black Teeth looked more confused than anything. It was like they'd heard the stories but were having trouble pairing them to what they were seeing now. Motorcycles idled while their riders looked at each other, trying to decide what to do about these things.

The mercenaries started backing away slowly and carefully, as if they had just realized that they were in serious shit. But it was the Shard Choir who, again, were just the absolute worst. A laugh called out from them. One of the cultists stepped away from the rest of his people with tears streaming down his face. He walked towards the Eater with his arms spread wide, like he was greeting a long lost friend.

"My shepherd," he whispered. I know because the battlefield was so silent I could hear him from all the way across the warehouse. One of the Eaters stopped and its arm uncoiled. The limb stretched impossibly farther than it should have, joints unfolding one after another like someone pulling apart a length of meat wrapped around invisible wire. No. It was like one of those Fruit By the Foots. Except, you know, made of meat. It kept extending its arm until its hand rested gently against the cultist's chest.

It was just fingertips against his chest and the cultist smiled wider. His skin opened. His chest peeled apart in long, wet ribbons without any blood spraying anywhere. And beneath the opening, something soft and pale drifted upwards. A faint blue wisp floated out of the man's body and settled into the Eater's waiting palm. The cultist's body collapsed to the ground and cracks spread across his skin. It started flaking apart. Pieces of him broke away in the breeze until there was almost nothing left.

Nobody moved and nobody smoked and in the back of my mind I thought back to Corva and the Blooming Witch and their discussion about weight. My guitar slipped from my hands the same moment the entire Shard Choir dropped to their knees. They knelt as one. Some pressed their foreheads against the concrete and some raised their trembling hands towards the Eaters as tears streamed down their faces. Their earlier serenity had become outright ecstasy.

All I could do was stand there and shout, in exasperation, the only thing I could think.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!?" Randombullhitgo Ooh, so zeke+PR vs whoever that dude +Black Teeth vs. Corva + Eaters triple domain steel cage match at the glens with some dopeass music in the background (courtesy of Zeke)? I'm in.