Aria insisted on looting the other rabid greenskeeper’s body before we left and soon wore a trucker hat with a John Deere logo. We followed the holes, staying well clear of any golfers and caddies we saw. Other than a few hurled insults, their dots remained green and none of them attacked us. Thankfully, we didn’t spot any more of the greenskeepers. A few minutes later, the clubhouse came into view.

  It seemed awfully modest for a clubhouse, resembling a diner that happened to sit on a golf course rather than the palatial structure I’d been envisioning. A small fleet of golf carts was parked to one side, and it had a practice green on the other. We pulled our carts up to their brethren and dismounted. While the golf course hadn’t ever seemed loud or crowded, assuming you ignored the mowers, this place was desolate. No golfers, no caddies, not even a staff member. The wind blew a crumpled score card along the side of the building like this was the old west and it was a tumbleweed.

  “I’m unsure if this is better or worse than a caddie commenting on my ass,” Marko said.

  “How do you know they were talking about your ass?” Aria said.

  A light rain, real rain this time, started to drizzle down and we hurried toward the clubhouse entrance. Still suspicious, Marko briefly examined the door before opening it and a blast of air conditioning rushed out at us. We stepped inside to utter silence.

  You have entered Pine Ridge Sector Control Point.

  The clubhouse was completely deserted. The entrance and the wall to our right were largely made up of three quarters length, lightly tinted windows. A dining area crammed with booths took up a good half of the building, along with a long lunch counter fronted by stools bolted in place. It had a small kitchen, a display of putters for sale, and a narrow hallway leading off to our left. The cash register and credit card machine sat atop a glass counter filled with boxes and sleeves of new golf balls. The rain outside turned into a steady downpour and it was so quiet I could hear the drum of raindrops hitting the roof.

  “Do we just wait?” Aria said. “Where’s the win condition?”

  As though asking had summoned it, a message appeared.

  Defeat four waves of combatants to claim this Control Point.

  Challenge begins in five minutes.

  A countdown appeared just below the consolidation timer.

  “How many entrances?” Marko said.

  “I’ll check here,” Aria said, trotting down the hallway.

  “I’ll check the dining area,” I said, “You look in the kitchen.”

  I jogged through the dining area and found a second entrance in the back.

  “I have a door here,” I called.

  “There’s one back here, too,” Aria yelled. “I can lock it, though.”

  “Kitchen is clear,” Marko said, appearing out of the kitchen’s tiny pantry.

  “Can we use the golf carts to block the doors?” Marko said. “Or will whatever’s going to attack us just push them out of the way?”

  “We can flip them,” I said. “The carts aren’t that heavy.”

  “Better than nothing,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  We ran out to the golf carts, getting drenched in the process. I jumped in one and Marko sped away in another, driving around to the back of the clubhouse. I pulled up to the front door and, experimentally, tried to lift the cart. To my surprise I was easily able to push it over. The cart was heavy, but I’d become strong enough that I could manage. I shoved the cart right up against the door, used Blood Mist, and slid into the clubhouse through the cracks, reforming just inside. I glanced at my Matrix and saw it was down to 14/20. Marko’s Matrix was nearly full, and Aria’s was down by about a third.

  Marko came in through the back, dripping wet. He’d managed to tip over his cart as well, though it wasn’t as close to the building as mine. Aria popped out from the hallway, holding her ?korpion. We had about a minute and a half left.

  “That side has a couple of small locker rooms and an office,” she said. “No more windows, and I locked the door. It’s only wood, but it should hold up for a while.”

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

  “How are you not out of ammo for that thing?” I asked, nodding at the ?korpion.

  “I put in the clip from the Glock,” Aria shrugged.

  Marko looked at her and blinked.

  “And that worked?” he said.

  “Has so far,” she said. “It did gain the chance to jam.”

  He pulled out his own ?korpion and laid it on the counter, then placed the Glock down beside it. He popped the mags out of both and compared them, frowning. Looking skeptical, he tried putting the magazine from the Glock into the ?korpion and it clicked in place.

  “That should not have worked,” he said.

  “Fuckin’ magic,” Aria agreed.

  “Does one of you have an extra?” I asked. “I never managed to loot one.”

  Marko pulled out a second ?korpion and tossed it to me. I repeated the trick with the magazines and checked the timer. It was down to fifteen seconds.

  “Behind the counter,” I said. “Marko, you watch the back, Aria get the front. I’ll act as support.”

  We scurried behind the counter and took up our positions. When the timer hit one second, a boom of thunder echoed across the course, followed by a flash from a jagged streak of lightning. A storm siren began to shriek just as the timer hit zero. A series of thumps came from the windows as something hit them. Hail maybe? Nope, it was golf balls. I watched as a half dozen more balls slammed into the windows, the glass in a couple of them starting to crack.

  "That could be a problem,” Marko said.

  It was raining so hard that we couldn’t see anything beyond a couple feet outside. More balls pounded into the windows and one of them broke. With a roar, a mass of feral golfers charged the building, some beating on the windows with their clubs, others clambering over the flipped carts to get at the doors. A couple crashed through the broken window, stumbled over the frame, and were immediately lit up by automatic gunfire from three ?korpions. They dropped in place and more golfers started crawling over the bodies.

  A second window in the front shattered and a golfer pushed her way through. This one was a gobbek, wearing torn khaki shorts and a black-and-yellow checkered shirt. Aria fired at the golfer, and her gun made a clicking sound.

  “Shit!” she said.

  She pointed at the gobbek and grapevines rose up to bind her in place. Aria ejected the clip, pulled the charging handle, worked the bolt, and a single shell popped free. She slammed the mag back in place and readied the machine pistol before firing off a stream of bullets. The gobbek’s shirt turned red as rounds hammered into her, and her Health rapidly fell to zero.

  We kept up a steady rate of fire, interrupted occasionally by the need to clear a jam, and few of the feral golfers made it more than a couple of steps inside. One made it all the way to the counter when Marko’s gun jammed, but a few shots from my ?korpion turned the human’s head to pulp. The attack ended as quickly as it’d begun, blood and water running in streams across the floor, the acrid stink of gunpowder in the air, and my ears ringing.

  “That was just the first wave,” Aria said, turning her trucker hat around backwards. “Get ready for more.”

  “You guys ready for a foursome?” a voice called from outside.

  “I got some balls you can play with,” said another voice.

  “Just the tip,” said a third voice.

  Silence.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” one of the voices asked.

  “You know, they tip us after the round.”

  “Ehh, I don’t get it.”

  “I thought the metaphor was pretty obvious.”

  “Fuck it, let’s go!”

  Aria preempted their assault by chucking a grenade out the window she was guarding. The explosion rocked the building and blew out another three windows.

  “Oops,” she said.

  Barely seen gray shapes were bouncing toward us through the rain. Wait, what? Bouncing? One of them bounced straight through a broken window and another hit a window that was already badly cracked and smashed its way inside. They were gray-furred kangaroos with sickle hands and, somehow, leering expressions on their faces. The one who’d crashed through the window was bleeding and its nameplate said Creeper Kangaroo (97%).

  “Kangaroos? Really?” I said.

  “I hate this place,” Marko said, and began to spray them with bullets.

  I saw almost immediately we weren’t going to be able to hold the line against the shiftlings. They were getting through the windows far too quickly. When my gun jammed, I pulled out my tanto and started cutting. Aria waited until four or five got stacked up near the counter, then hit them with carefully targeted Besotted. They immediately turned on each other. Have you ever heard a kangaroo scream? You don’t want to. Body parts flew through the air, and I activated Absorption to top off my Matrix. Spiraling streams of blood sped toward me from all directions.

  Marko had given up on shooting and shifted forms. Now he simply punched any shiftling that tried to hop over the counter. I’m not sure what his Strength was, but kangaroos flew back like Aria had just Punted them. We were winning, but it wasn’t free. Each of us had cuts and bruises, and no one’s Health was over 80%. I missed a parry by a hair, and a sickle nearly lopped my arm off at the elbow.

  Bright, searing pain tore through me, and I hurriedly pumped blood into Regeneration to close the wound. The shiftling managed to make it over the counter while I was holding my arm together, and Aria had to root him in place. I sliced through the thing’s neck with my newly healed arm, and it fell, gurgling and spurting. Half the kangaroos were down, but it was getting ugly.

  “Fire in the hole!” Aria yelled.

  She tossed a grenade into the middle of the dining area. I immediately dropped to the floor behind the counter, curling into a ball with my hands over my head. Marko also hit the deck and pulled a shiftling corpse on top of him. I could see his toothy maw garbling out curses. Ka-BOOM!

  If the challenge had required us to defend without breaking all the windows, that grenade would have caused us to fail. Glass, body parts, pieces of dining booths, and even parts of the counter rained down on us. So much debris fell on me that I took a bit of damage. All I could hear was a high-pitched, humming noise. I peeked over what was left of the counter and didn’t see anything moving.

  Marko (Party): Aria.

  Aria (Party): Marko.

  Marko (Party): Aria!

  Aria (Party): Marko!

  Marko (Party): Maybe don’t do that again.

  Aria (Party): That’s fair.