Chad stalked through the trash-strewn street lined with decrepit, condemned houses. Arnsburg, OH had been voted the worst town in America for the 17th year in a row. Not a place anyone sane wanted to visit, unless they had a specific reason, like Chad did. Focus, he scolded himself. The drop was somewhere ahead, all he had to do was grab it and call in his lift out of this hellhole. And then he could party like there wasn’t a next day. He looked around nervously. The neighborhood was so run down even the cockroaches must have fled, he thought. But the quiet was treacherous: the humans that lived here, if either word could even be applied in its usual meaning in this outlier case, were treacherous, cunning, and brutal, more like animals than men. But like wild animals, underestimating them and trying to go toe to toe with them on their home turf without something to even the odds would get you eviscerated. Chad checked his assault rifle: sleek, powerful, and very expensive. He advanced toward the direction where his heads-up display indicated the locator signal came from.
Up ahead stood a squat gray building. A few scraps of the Star-Spangled Banner clung to a flagpole. It might have been some sort of administrative building in better days. The signal came from there. He unsheathed his axe and bashed through the rotten plywood boarding up the front. Once inside, he realized two things: the signal came from above, and he had walked into a trap. Mocking howls came from outside, dozens of hateful voices. The animals were on his trail. He climbed to the roof and saw the fluorescent orange painted drop box. It had been placed under a wooden cross to which his predecessor’s mangled body was nailed. Around his neck hung a sign with the words "DIE RICH BOYS" painted on it. He ran towards the box, but the animals were on him already, rusty implements ripping at his body armor. His rifle barked, and a few went down; not enough. His axe severed limbs, cleaved heads; not enough. Eventually, a sledgehammer hit the side of his head. His vision turned sideways with a sickening crunch, then went black.
Chad swore loudly, ripping the remote visor off his head and throwing it on the ground. The crowd booed and hollered as his robotic facsimile in Arnsburg was probably being nailed to another cross. He didn’t mind the fortune lost for the android, but being taken down by those damn animals stung.
"Stop crying, bitch! Get some drinks in you!" his best friend Aaron shouted, slapping him on the back. Chad frowned, but Aaron was right. There was always another Urban Survivor League next year, and he knew his dad cared enough about his success that he would shell out for a new android and better gear. Hadn’t they relaxed the rules on fire-based weaponry? He grinned maliciously. All animals feared fire, after all.
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