The helicopter cabin was military surplus standard; an old UH-1 Huey with the canvas benches to sit on, open bay doors and even a pair of door gunners, toting the cargo out; in this case, it was four convicts.

Sanger was fairly sure that he wanted to kill one right off the bat, the mouthy wiry one with all the gang tattoos, bragging about what a badass he was back in West Virginia, cooking meth and running whores and what he did to get on this show. Over and over, trying to impress everyone else with his horrible career criminal record. Reality? The guy was a petty crook who eventually graduated to something big and got turned in by another toothless hick buddy for a reduced sentence.

Everyone was heavily armed, though the helicopter's crew chief had the key to the trigger locks in the form of an electronic device that would broadcast the signal. The criminal scum being dropped into the city were separated from the crew of the helo by a cage, though they were perfectly free to make a jump for it – if they wanted to die. The doors were open. Gunners, behind the cage, were there to keep the helicopter from taking fire from embittered residents of Baltimore intent on shooting down the criminals before they could land. Malleus, of course, was pimping the drama for more viewership.

“Yeah, boyeeee, this here’s gonna be great. I mean, shit, they’re givin us all this stuff to kill people and take their shit. We’re gonna be kings of this city and shit.” Huckleberry-Bob, so Sanger tagged him in his head, was making faces at the camera and arm-pumping with his Desert Eagle, clearly getting off on the attention he never got when he was being raised in the trailer park.

Huckleberry-Bob continued to wave the gun around and talk, but Sanger tuned him out even while looking at the man's weapon and contemplating the choices these guys, criminals mostly, were making. It was the dumbest gun in the world to bring to this shit, but the kid thought he was the alpha dog here when he compared his sidearm to the more staid options, like Sanger’s Kimber, a modified, custom 1911. The kid was all impressed with his Uzi too, but kept asking to look at Sanger’s Remington. And he kept ignoring the question. That stayed in a soft-case, strapped to his back, along with the ghillie suit and other supplies in an assault pack, which was military parlance for a knapsack sized pouch done up in the same camo as his outfit; Crye multicam. Unlike Huckleberry-Bob, he’d gone for the functional clothing, and opted for a ballcap in the same. He looked subdued compared to some of these leather biker psychos and flamboyant gangsta wannabes with that HK416 across his lap and dressed for war, but that was the point. This was now a war.

So the kid was a hick and no connoisseur of firearms at all. But worse, he didn’t shut up. It was the meth. Malleus was feeding the ‘contestants’ whatever they wanted to keep them happy. Most of them drank, doped up and amused themselves by masturbating to porn. Sanger trained for the mission, hours a day on fieldcraft, weapons, conditioning. He intended to survive it all, and maybe pull down a lucrative longterm contract with Malleus.

He was a skinny kid with methhead sores on his face, wearing an oversized Zed Handy t-shirt with ‘retro’ tattoo designs on it, and pants too big. He had that stupid gun shoved down his pants, and thought it was jaunty. He pissed off Sanger just by existing, and even more for Not. Shutting. Up.

Looking out, he could see the towering skyscrapers of the Inner Harbor and the smaller buildings of the residential neighborhoods; they were coming in from the southwest, coming down towards M&T bank stadium along I-95, with the huge overpasses indicating that they were in the built up area near Port Covington. He knew they were close, because camera drones were flying over head, trying to catch all the action; this show was a huge investment for Malleus, but not nearly as much as restoring Baltimore would cost. It was a decaying urban sprawl, a small cluster of financial office towers and cosmopolitan downtown that abruptly turned into run-down rowhouses and industrial neighborhoods, like the one they were flying over.

Then, Huckleberry-Bob blocked his vision, while machinegun-rattling away his observations in that loud, irritating, voice.

“Hoo dangy, lookee here, it’s big, ain—“

One kick was all it took; and Sanger was gratified to see two of them fly over to catch the sudden action.

One of the door gunners guffawed, “Damn man, you’re getting an early start on this shit.”

Sanger grinned tightly, like a death’s head, “Yeah, well I wanted at least a few minutes to enjoy the nice ride and the view. Quietly. Hope that one counted for my kids’ college fund though.”

He didn’t even look to the other two convicts for the rest of the ride, just closed his eyes.

--

“OUT! OUT! OUT!” the crew chief of the helicopter didn’t want to stay on the ground any longer than he had to, and the incoming fire from around them in the kiddie playground they’d used as an LZ confirmed that. Sanger was off the helo before it even touched down, head down and moving for the treeline, for cover. He’d done this sort of thing before in many air assault training exercises, and then for real in shitty third world countries. But this time, he was pretty sure he was on his own.

The rounds pinged all around him, but he couldn’t fire back, because the locks were still on the trigger. Instead, he dived for cover, waiting for the locks to come off, even as the chopper lifted off, door guns blazing away, and tried to lurch away.

But UH-1 hueys were notoriously thin-skinned, and the greasy smoke trailing behind it as the tail swung back and forth was an indicator that it was potentially doomed.

Great, maybe they’d go down and never click off the trigger lock.

He couldn't operate his weapon, but he'd brought smoke grenades along – he got one of these out of its pouch, pulled the pin and held the spoon in place with his hand for a moment before picking a spot and releasing.

But then, miracle of miracles, three beeps went off at the same time; he was in business. He brought the -416 up to his shoulder, the reflex sight, the Israeli kind, moving with his eyes to track any potential emerging threats through the bank of smoke that had blossomed from his grenade even as he fell back. Meanwhile, some of the guys he'd dropped with decided to fight, screaming and firing their weapons. Sanger just fell back – he had no loyalty to these fuckers.

Instead, he tried to get his bearings visually. He needed a good spot from which to start hunting. He'd spent six years in military prison, his kids didn't get shit out of him unless he performed here – college bucks for kills, that was the deal with Malleus.

No boys, you ain’t caught you a Josey Wales.

***

”An entire city turns into a warzone. Convicts, miscreants and normal every day people, forced to fight for their very survival on a daily basis. See YOUR cable or satellite provider about subscribing to the deluxe version of URBAN APOCALYPSE today, with all sorts of contestant interviews and point of view cams. Or go to our website! The first one thousand new members get a free Zed Handy t-shirt and a year’s supply of Budsteiner beer!”

Zaen was chuckling insanely the entire way there. He was a bit insane, as the people on the helicopter could tell. They heard what he was here for, and what he'd done in the past, so they were at ready to shoot him if needed.He had his Katana strapped to his back. He was going to be using that, a lot. As they hovered over the city, he could see people, most likely residents, maybe the criminals, were looking up to the helicopter. One fired at them, trying to kill everybody in the helicopter. The gunners quickly opened fire on the man, and he dropped dead. As they neared the ground, Zaen thought about what might happen in this arena of a city, most likely things that would make him happy. He chuckled when they landed, and they pushed him off. He waved goodbye to them and took out his Katana, unsheathing it. His eyes got wide with insanity and he sheathed it. He laughed very loudly, and then ran up to a building with a fire escape. he climbed up it and was on the roof. He looked over the city, This was going to be fun.

He jumped off the roof and onto another one. He was parkouring around the rooftops, it was like a large jungle with flat trees that you could run and jump on. He saw an alley, with a man sacredly looking around, definitely a resident. He thought to himself. He unsheathed his Katana quietly, then jumped behind the man, and sliced his head off. The man dropped to the ground while Zaen was holding the head. He turned it around and looked at it. He laughed, first kill of the day. He put the head in his backpack and grappled up to the roof again. he began running around the roofs, parkouring, hoping to find another victim to his Katana.

"Boy, someone's liable to get hurt," Freddie Jenkins said as he observed the sheer amount of flak flying through the air. In a different man, there would have been humor in that statement. Someone else would have been sardonic, rolling their eyes and talking out of the corner of their mouth. But to take one look at the massive and hirsute man, and seeing the furrows on his ridged brow, you would realize with a sinking heart that he was completely, utterly serious. There was absolutely no guile in the brutish man, who looked something like a grizzly bear crammed into a suit.

His eyes slowly took in the other people in the helicopter. He kinda liked the little guy who sounded a bit like Yosemite Sam- oh, wait, nevermind, now he's dead. Serious guy with some kind of machine gun or something, he seemed okay. And a giggling little goof with a sword.

Freddie, better known as Cro-Magnum, didn't really like any of these guys. They didn't seem too strong, and he knew that obviously the strongest person was in charge of anything. That's why he couldn't say no to Malleus- the guy ran a whole company! He could probably punch mountains apart!

On landing, Cro-Magnum took his time exiting the helicopter. He had never ridden in one before, and it had been kinda fun. It was too bad he had to get off now. He looked around as he loped along, hunched over. Let's see- giggling little goof with a word was slashing up some gunners. Serious guy was being serious. Who even was shooting at them? He felt distinctly unwelcome. Cro-Magnum patted his twin belt holsters. Good, his guns were still there. If the rest of Baltimore was this unfriendly he might need them. Didn't they know to be nice to guests? That's what Mom had always told him.

If they didn't want to play nice, he was just going to leave. He started walking calmly away from the battle, hunched over to the part that his knuckles brushed the ground as he walked.

From out of the shadows, a Baltimore resident charged Cro-Magnum, screaming incoherent warcries as he raised a baseball bat. Cro-Magnum didn't even break stride as he swung a fist the size of a canned ham at the stay-behind. There was a wet crunch as the man's skull completely caved in. Cro-Magnum just kept ambling along. These people weren't very nice at all.

The White Aryan Resistance was dropped in together.

Ever since their compound was taken down in a violent siege by law enforcement in 2022, the warden of Redemption Incorporated's Utah facility was looking for a way to get rid of the entire gang, lock stock and barrel. Malleus spent a year and a half negotiating a price for the entire militia, with the intention of dropping them off in Baltimore's, one of America's blackest and most violent cities.

WAR loved the idea. Wilhelm Heinrich (William Henry) Straussner, the leader, was finally getting the race war he always wanted. They were the first infusion of criminals into Baltimore; Malleus wanted a war in the streets, and they got it by sending heavily armed white supremacists into bad neighborhoods run by the Black Guerrilla Family. The anticipation of watching that storied street gang and an Idaho-based white supremacy militia had viewers glued to the feeds provided by the miniature drones constantly buzzing overhead.

The bombed out landscape of West Baltimore turned out to be a deathtrap for WAR, a maze of rowhouses inhabited by tough, stringy, pissed off ghetto residents that sprouted automatic weapons overnight, assisted by drops from Malleus. They weren't the most proficient with their weapons, but neither was WAR. The typical WAR grunt was a trailer-raised white person with a lot of bad tattoos that nonetheless enjoyed wearing camouflage as a militant fashion statement and toted a Kalashnikov and some other equipment. They were big, bearded boys and they got the idea that this was going to be an easy fight because they shot a preacher and a couple older black folks on their way in. WAR didn't expect organized guerrilla insurgency, but that's what they got. IED here, sniping there, grenades and molotovs over the fences. The confines of the rowhouses and the narrow streets, boxed in with parked junker cars and trash containers and other junk, created tight confines and no visibility that made Normandy's bocage look like a cakewalk. The locals didn't like the street gangs, but that was before the entire city was turned into a warzone. They'd joined up when it became apparent that a bunch of pissed off white supremacists were going to invade, and put up a surprisingly unified front -- they saw the way those fuckers shot the preacher, they knew they were violent and genocidal.

Weeks of fighting for the ghetto was wearing thin on WAR's supplies and it seemed like the locals had the shit (and drugs) stockpiled for the long haul -- the ghetto was trading their drug supply for more ammo and using it sparingly -- a lot of the traps were welded together from metal junk and cunningly built to kill while conserving ammo.

And then Malleus' next drop came...supplies in downtown. Compared to West Baltimore, Downtown was a doozy...and WAR, being mobile on bikes and pickups, came roaring in for it.

What Malleus didn't tell them was that the second drop of criminals came in. Crazy fuckers like Cro-Magnum and Cartoid. They weren't organized, but they were at least as crazy as WAR...

Sanger was trying to get away from these guys when he heard the noise of diesel coming from a ways off, and knew that there was nothing good about that situation. In the holding facility they'd been stuck in, they were given feeds of Urban Apocalypse, which was watched gleefully while a bunch of them shot up, smoked up or jerked off, but now the reality was hitting home -- they were dropped in place to create a spectacle for a TV audience that wanted to see someone die, and they didn't care who.

"Fuck," Sanger breathed.

When the chopper finally set down all Carotid could say was "Finally." He leapt out and sent a throwing knife into some druggies throat, Carotid cleared the distance and pulled the knife out with a spray of blood. After that he looked up and took in his surroundings "Now if I was copper wire where would I be?" he said to no one "Oh wait everywhere." He went running for a bombed out office building bullets ricocheting around him to lie in wait and set up traps boy was it good to be free to kill again.

When Carotid finally got into the office building it was pretty quiet almost eerily, but he was a man on a mission taking as much copper wire from the walls as he could "These will do quite nicely." He kept saying to himself while he worked, after he was satisfied with his work he set up his favorite trap a snare trap that would slam it's victims head on the ground before lifting them off the floor content to set up amongst some cubicles and the celling, he hid under a desk and laid in wait like a spider waiting for a fly.

Freddie Jenkins, better known by his nickname Cro-Magnum, continued to lope through the wreckage of Dowtown Baltimore, now beginning to resemble Grozny or Mogadishu more than any American city. The gunfire seemed to be dying down, at least for the moment, the few Baltimoreans that had turned out to offer resistance to the second drop had been repulsed or dropped. Cro-Magnum didn't know this, nor would he have particularly cared. His little brain was trying to come up with some sort of plan.

He didn't really know Baltimore. If this had been going on back in Alamogordo, he would've known every alleyway, every nook and cranny. In holding, Freddie had sat down in front of a map, staring at it for hours and hours, trying to memorize it. But now that he was down on the ground, surrounded by buildings and burning cars, he couldn't make it work. The ground wasn't yellow like on the map, it was really confusing him. Where could he go?

Though he usually got a blinding headache if he tried to think for too long, Cro-Magnum suddenly had what passed as a flash of inspiration in his book. A name half-remembered from the map. Pen Lucy. Of course! He had known a Lucy back in school. She had always been nice to him, until she moved away to Fresno in eighth grade. Obviously, Pen Lucy had to be the best place in all of Baltimore if they named it after such a nice girl.

He looked up at the roaring of engines, dozens of them approaching. Mom had always told him to stay on the sidewalk, so he was doing that when the souped-up bikes and pickups bearing the WAR militia roared around the corner, headed straight for the LZ. Great, Cro-Magnum thought. Someone he could ask for directions. He waved both hands over his head, trying to get their attention.

One of the stragglers, alone on his Harley-Davidson, saw the man on the side of the road. With an evil grin, he flicked the bike towards Cro-Magnum, free hand pulling the Ruger P89 from his holster-

-it was as though he had been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. All of the sudden, the Neo-Nazi realized his bike was no longer beneath him, traveling freely without him down the street. He was in the air, but he couldn't breathe. Had he been shot?

The white supremacist slammed into the ground, his bike innocently tipping over a good thirty feet further down the road. Cro-Magnum rubbed the palm of his hand, still sore from tapping the man in the chest as he drove past. "Sorry," he said to the biker, turning blue as he lay on the ground. "I didn't think you'd be able to hear me with that bike going. Do you know how to get to Pen Lucy?"

There were shouts up the road, a honking of horns. Cro-Magnum looked up to see a couple of the WAR trucks turning around, fingers pointed in his direction, rifles raised.

"Oh, dear."

Gord Bayfield was restless in his seat, his hands sweating and fidgeting as he waited in the dark gloom of the decrepit parkade. He'd been training for the past year, working in the simulator, learning how to drive something that, at that time, didn't quite exist. The first trial runs had shown that the simulator was off in a few areas, and never could quite convey the reality of driving nearly nine tons of metal around, even at low speeds. The vehicle was twitchier, the rubber compound a little stickier than predicted, but also a fraction slower in acceleration than anticipated. However, the top speed was mind boggling.

But this was not a test. This was not the simulator. Through the thick, transparent aluminum armor viewport, he could see the muzzle flashes of gangsters and regular people fighting to try and get to the supply drop. Blood was being spilled over more ammunition. Worries over his welding were taking a back seat, as his calloused, black hands settled on the tillers, gripping the grip-tape wrapped metal poles; twisting, drying his palms.

Something nudged him from behind, "Aye." With a nod of habit, his left hand reached out and took hold of the master power knob. A solid twist , and the silence of the vehicle was muffled by the groan of fans starting to whirr. He paused to pull down the light goggles from his forehead, as the air in the cabin stirred into a continuous draft. He'd found that his eyes dried quickly in the positive pressure and constant air movement without the goggles. The dash board was lit up, the volt and ammeter were reading solid from the battery bank, cabin pressure was at point-nine psi and climbing. He depressed the black starter button with his right thumb, and the small V6 turbo diesel shivvered into life. A dull, deep, droning, throb in the back of the vehicle. The tachometer, oil pressure, fuel pressure, intake temp and egt gauges all flicked to life, needing swinging and settling.

A voice with a sophisticated English accent rang in his ears over the comms, "Bloody Aryans, good number of the sodding bastards. Gordon," Ira refused to use the shortened form of his name for reasons that escaped Gord, "steady hands now, aye? Let us be off our pop! Grand fashion I should think!"

He had learned that Ira Wolstrum had a bit of theatricality to him, and that saying such as, "Grand Fashion", generally meant as loud, showy, and spectacular as possible. The younger man, if only by nine years, was as enthusiastic as ever, and sense only if you could learn to interpret his funny English. But, he was an ex-British Mechanized Forces Engineer, and knew his trade to a degree, which was quite reassuring. As Gord plied the levers to turn the vehicle on the spot, the semi-slick tracks rustled in the grit of the garage as the engine grew fractionally louder, its exhaust heavily muffled and the engine bay lined with sound deadening. Lined up with the exit ramp, he pushed the tillers forward, and the muted whine of electric motors built as he was pushed into the seat with modest authority as the torque hit instantly. At the bottom of the ramp, the tank pitched slightly to the left as it raced over a small pile of debris that would stop most cars dead, the suspension effortlessly handling it as the vehicle picked up speed, and then....Music.

The throbbing drums and bassline opening of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" began throbbing through the intercom, and the hull as Ira put the song on, max volume over the loud speakers.

Gord burst out laughing, even as small caliber bullets started sparking and plinking off of the ultra-high-hardness armor plating over the aluminum hull. All the tension was just destroyed, and refused to come back even when the music was drowned out by the massive 20x139mm rifle upstairs thundered its report.

Ira Wolsturm grinned devlishly, as the song came over the loud speakers. He could see through the gun-sight the confused expression on people's faces as the loud music started blaring over what had become a battlefield. He lined the barrel of the cannon-like rifle with one of the armored trucks of the Aryan Bigots as best he could, they hadn't yet managed to implement the gun stabilization programming, but with a bit of practice and luck...he squeezed the trigger under his right finger of the elevation control, and the cannon fired, loud and dominating, even inside the turret. Outside, the thunder was nearly apocalyptic. 20mm rifles little used since few had need of them, and even then, every last one of them paled in comparison to the LP139. The empty steel casing was ejected into the catch chute, where it rattled into a catch can beneath the turret basket.

The shot went wide, but the second struck solid; Punching through the 1/4" mild steel welded over the door, the driver likely never knew the shell detonated within his stomach. The blast punched the weakened driver's door wide open, as the truck carried on straight, before slowly veering off to the left, slowing down as it coasted into the side of a building. Two passengers staggered out of the back seat, bleeding profusely from the shrapnel wounds that tore open their flesh.

Suddenly the charcoal grey vehicle pitched forwards, it's tracks biting into the pavement and leaving a smoking trail behind it, veering slightly right. The music paused as a sudden, very English voice cried out, "Well that was duff as bollocks! You bloody sodomites best pucker your arses if that were the best you got!" As the tank settled, the cannon rang out twice more, far more accurately from a still and stable platform. A biker exploding into a fireball trailing pink mist and black smoke, and another truck hit int the engine, scattering connecting rods and hot, twisted metal into the cab behind it.