Chapter 13

Badlands Race

Erin was racing at top speed, pushing her car’s engine to its limits. The four cars pursuing her were beginning to slowly but surely gain on her. No matter how much she wanted to avoid it, the redhead would have to do something about her pursuers. In this situation, combat was unavoidable.

Doing a quick check on the area around the steering wheel, Erin was able to get an idea of the weaponry she had at her disposal. At the front, she had two standard machine guns that were meant for shooting down enemies at the front. Besides that, she also had a couple of weapons meant for pursuers. She had three bombs that could be dropped and would explode after a couple of seconds, along with a single smokescreen she could deploy. There was also a single nitro boost she could use to push her car to move at a far faster speed than normal, but would also make it harder for her to control.

In all honesty, her weaponry was very limited. If she were to take out her pursuers, she needed to make sure not to waste any of them, no matter what.

With a quick glance at her rear view mirror, Erin was able to get an idea of what she was dealing with. Out of the four cars pursuing her, one was a pickup truck that had a large and powerful machine gun at the back, another one was a dune buggy, one was a heavily armored humvee that had a couple of missiles on top of it and the last one seemed to be a sports car of some sorts.

Being the fastest in the group, the sports car was the first one to reach their target and opened fire. The bullets from its machine guns shattered the back window of Erin’s car and almost hit her as well. Had she not ducked her head, she would have been killed right away.

Seemingly bolstered by their success at hitting their target, the people in the sports car began to get even closer behind Erin’s car, hoping to raise their chances of hitting her with their shooting.

However, getting closer turned out to be a fatal mistake, as Erin deployed one of the bombs she had. The explosive bounced off the ground and hit the pursuing car, going right through the windshield and into the vehicle itself. The people inside barely had time to realize what was going on, before the explosive went off and blew them up.

”One down, three to go,” Erin said to herself. ”I doubt the others are gonna get careless now, though.”

The redhead was correct in her assumption, as the other three cars were now positioning themselves in such a way that they weren’t too close to get caught in case she dropped something on them. This of course meant that they didn’t have a clear shot, but they could still do significant damage.

The pickup truck was the next one to move in, as a soldier riding on the back prepared the machine gun and began firing. Bullets drilled through the ground and Erin’s vehicle, leaving sizable holes. Luckily due to the distance, the gunner wasn’t able to get a direct hit on the redhead herself, but damaging the car itself was also working in the favor of the pursuers. After all, they just needed to stop her from getting away and she would be as good as theirs.

Erin did her best to move her car in such a way that would get her out of the line of fire, while also positioning herself in such a way that she could drop another bomb on at least one of her pursuers. Unfortunately, they saw through what she was trying to do and kept moving around as well, keeping out of harms way.

Seeing how she was stuck without a chance to really fight back, Erin was starting to grow desperate. If this kept going on like this, it wouldn’t take long for her car to suffer too much damage to keep moving. She needed to figure out a plan and fast.

It was then that she remembered something from back in her old life, when the world she was currently in had been nothing but a game. Back then, there had been times she had been having issues while doing quests centered around the Western Continent due to raiders that would chase her down. Thankfully, her friends had given her some hints as to how better survive. One of these hints had been to use the environment to her advantage. What this meant was that she should be on the lookout for any natural traps around herself that she could use to lure her enemies into. These ranged from pitfalls to caves inhabited by large monsters that would attack those who got too close.

All, Erin needed was to find something she could use to her advantage. And luckily for her, she saw just what she needed.

With a determined grip on her steering wheel, Erin began to drive toward a cave she had spotted. If her assumption was correct, this would help her get rid of at least one more pursuer. She glanced behind her and saw that the three cars behind her were following after her like cubs their mother. It didn’t seem like they had realized what she was planning, which was exactly what she needed.

Now as she was getting closer to the cave, she needed to perform a sharp turn at just the right moment. Once she was close enough to spot hungry, glowing eyes with the darkness of the cave, she turned her car sharply, just narrowly missing the claws of a large beast that had come out of hiding to feast on her.

With a quick glance at her rear view mirror, Erin was able to confirm that two Cave Wargs had just come out of their nest. These were large mammal beasts that, like their name suggested, lived in caves. Their appearances was close to a bear, except their massive bodies were more slender and their heads very large and wide. Their large mouths had two rows of sharp teeth both on the lower and upper jaw. Their large eyes glowed with a faint green light and they had strong horns that curved backwards on their heads.

However, while the redhead had managed to avoid certain death, one of her pursuers hadn’t been so lucky. The dune buggy tried its best to avoid the hungry beasts, but was unfortunately too slow in doing so. One of the Wargs pounced on the vehicle, knocking it on its side. The people inside were quickly taken out of their vehicle, before being devoured.

Now half of Erin’s pursuers had been taken down with two still remaining. It seemed like her last stunt had angered the remaining soldiers, as they started to increase speed in order to get closer to their target, hoping to end this chase quickly.

The humvee seemed to be very keen on ending the chase, as one of its missiles was fired towards Erin’s car. The redhead was luckily quick enough to avoid the explosive, but things weren’t looking all that good for her. She couldn’t see anything in the environment that she could use on her pursuers, so either she would have to survive whatever attacks her enemies would throw at her or she took them out with what she had remaining.

Neither of Erin’s options seemed good to her. The two remaining cars would certainly be on the lookout for any attacks she could throw at them and her car had suffered so much damage that it was on its last legs. When put on a tight spot like that, all the redhead could do was pick the option that seemed the most likely to get her out of this situation alive.

The two cars were getting very close. Just a little more and they could tear her vehicle apart with their weaponry. With sweat dripping down her forehead, Erin waited until her remaining pursuers were close enough for her to initiate her plan that would hopefully save her.

The drivers on the two remaining cars noticed Erin dropping a bomb from the back of her car, similar to the one that had taken out their comrades driving the sports car earlier. Unlike their unfortunate colleagues, the two drivers were able to react fast enough to avoid the deadly explosive. The bomb went off behind them, bringing up a large cloud of dust. The two cars then moved in closer to their target, attempting to finish it all in one swift charge.

However, this was something Erin had anticipated. Before either of her pursuers could fire even a single bullet, the redhead released a smokescreen from behind. This sudden dark cloud took the two drivers behind her by complete surprise, causing them to panic. They were eventually able to get out of the smoke, but they no longer saw Erin anywhere.

Before the soldiers realized what had happened, machine gun fire from behind tore into them. It was only then that they realized what had happened. Erin had used the smokescreen to blind and confuse them, before hitting the brakes on her car, allowing her pursuers to go past her. With her enemies now on the front, the redhead could use her own guns to fire at them.

The bullets immediately tore through the soldier handling the machine gun on the back of the pickup truck. The driver of said car soon followed behind his comrade. The humvee was too heavily armored for the bullets to get through it, but they managed to hit one of the back tires, destroying it.

With her remaining pursuers seemingly taken care of, Erin used the nitro boost that was in her car. Flames shot out of her vehicle’s exhaust pipe, as it sped through the badlands like a bullet, quickly getting past the humvee and away from it. It seemed like the redhead had finally managed to get away.

Unfortunately, letting the humvee go with just a destroyed tire was a mistake, as the armored car fired one of its remaining missiles towards Erin. Even with her increased speed from the nitro boost, she was nowhere near fast enough to escape the flying projectile, which hit the back of her car and caused it to flip over. The redhead’s car fell down a small cliff and crashed at the bottom.

Some time later, the humvee finally made its way to where Erin’s broken vehicle was and found it laying on top of its roof as smoke rose from the underside. Two soldiers got out from the armored vehicle and walked up to the destroyed car with weapons at the ready. One of the two crouched down to look into the driver’s seat, but saw no one there. In fact, the car seemed to be completely empty.

With the focus of the two soldiers on the inside of the car, they failed to realize that there was still a single bomb hanging from the underside of the vehicle. Normally they would be stored inside and would only hang like this when the driver was preparing to drop them. The reason for this was that Erin had left the bomb like that before crawling out of the damaged wreckage and hiding behind a nearby boulder.

The soldiers never knew what hit them, as Erin aimed a pistol from her hiding spot and fired at the bomb, detonating it and taking out her last remaining pursuers.

However, while this gave a her a chance to breathe, her troubles were far from over. In her haste from getting out of the wreckage of her car, she didn’t have any time to take any of the supplies, like food or water, that were in the vehicle. Now they had gone in the explosion that did the same to anything that might have been in the humvee as well.

In short, the redhead was now bruised and battered with no supplies, armed with the minimum of weaponry, while the rest of General Lune’s troops were most likely hot on her trail and there were vicious beasts roaming around.

Nonetheless, Erin picked a direction and began walking. She could only try to use her memories from the game to try and find a settlement as fast as possible. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time until someone or something got her.