FanStory.com - Hard Landingby Bill Schott

Background
Ben Baker, a low-level cabinet worker on the White House staff, has been sentenced to fight for his life in a northeastern forest. He must find and eliminate twelve others, before they kill him.

In previous flashback, Connors’ origination of the game was established, introducing the character, Cpl. G.I. Joseph.

North Vietnam DMZ 1973

Corporal Joseph sloshed through the rice paddies with both exhilaration and trepidation. Connors seemed to have released him to decide his own fate with a one-on-one battle elsewhere.

He was mostly naked, except for a faded, green, military-issue shirt with which he had diapered himself.

The bayonet, which Connors had thrown him, was proving useful on this journey to his destiny. Within the first hour of travel he had disturbed a nest of snakes. He was bitten only twice, though he could feel an effect on his breathing. He snatched one off his right calf muscle and managed to separate its head and glands from the body. It became his sustenance as he picked up the pace in the slow-moving fields.

After a second hour, to his reckoning, and as the sun was passing lower in the sky, he saw a grass hut. It was two or three times larger than any such lash up he'd seen on patrols, and stood as if a gateway from the fields to the jungle.

From within the hut, Joseph heard a wild shriek, as though the person within was being tortured. He squeezed the handle on the bayonet, expecting he would be fighting for his life in mere seconds.

Suddenly, a man came bursting through the wall of the hut. In his right hand was a bamboo stick, sharpened to a knife point but held backwards, as if grabbed in a hurry. On his left arm, huge and flopping about, was a crocodile.

"Oi chua oi!" screamed the Vietnamese. (Oh my God!)

Blood ran from the man's arm, as he went from running and falling in the foot deep water, to being on his knees. The full-grown reptile had pulled the man to a prostrate position with his head bobbing up and down below the water's surface.

Joseph acted instinctively and rushed to the man's aid. Throwing himself onto the six-foot demon, he buried the bayonet in its skull, between and behind its eyes, with the force that drove the blade through its brain. Pulling the knife out, he tried repeating the blow, only to find he did not have the strength.

Sitting down in the water, which covered his midriff, he could only watch the scene in front of him. The man who had been potential crocodile food, rose to standing. His entire left side was red with his own blood, and his lower arm was in tatters. He walked past the corporal and back to the hut.

Barely conscious, Joseph saw the blurry image of the man in front of him, who kneeled down and pulled the bayonet from the corporal's pliant hand.

Managing to muster a bit of clarity within the venom-tainted haze he was in, Joseph muttered, "Didi mao."
(Make it quick.)

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PRESENT DAY

Ben Baker has arrived at the encampment and left to rest. B.B Breefs, Orrin Bauxers, and a reporter from the local paper are enroute to the operational area. Tyler Angles died from stabbing and a fall as Tim Bends drops into the danger zone.

Tim Bends' day was not going well at all. After being caught leaking information on impeachable and treasonous events involving the President to a supposed news source, he found that it was a trap to catch leakers. The President's Chief of Staff, C.C. Connors, had a way of punishing people like Bends, which involved mortal combat with other undesirables. Initially, he tried to blame a colleague, Tyler Angles, but that only managed to get him included in Bends’ punishment.

Later, naked and about to be pushed from a helicopter, Tim killed his friend with a hunting knife. It didn't stop his being ejected from the chopper, but it did eliminate one of the dozen others he was supposed to have to kill later.

Falling from a helicopter was no joke. Bends had to flatten out quickly, pull the ripcord, and hope that his descent, naked as a jaybird, wouldn't involve a lot of trees. He dropped into the center of a forest.

The first impact with the top of the tree was jarring. His skin was severely shredded as he drove down through the limbs of the tall and limber pine. Half way down the tree, still fifty feet from the ground, he was stopped on the first sizable bough. Still conscious, he released the harness and began climbing down the rest of the way. Unfortunately, on a day of misfortunes, he slipped and slid down ten feet of the tree, rasping his face, chest, belly, thighs, and genitals against the unforgiving bark. He lasted another twenty feet, before passing out and completing the final twenty feet hitting the remaining limbs in his path to the forest floor.

Waking later in the darkness, he was several minutes trying to remember why he was there. Slowly remembering everything up to the parachuting, he realized that he had lost the pistol, knife, and water bottle.

Aching, covered in dried blood, and beginning to shiver with the night air, he could only move through the darkness hoping to go in the shortest direction to the encampment. Driven by pain, fear, and cold, he was unaware of the jagged roots and stones beneath his feet. He was growing weaker as he moved along. Feeling his moist stomach, he realized he was still bleeding in his lower extremities. Finally reaching his groin, he was shocked to find he had no testicles.

Tim finally stopped and fell to his knees. His one thought was to fold his legs up under him and hope that he could keep from bleeding to death.

In what seemed like only a few seconds, the dawn had arrived and he awoke. Blurry-eyed, he tried to focus on something moving in front of him. He hoped it was a deer or a friendly local out for a morning constitutional in the deep woods.

As the apparition moved closer, it became more defined as a human being.

"Morning."

Bends couldn't form words. He began shaking and uttering indistinct sounds. Looking down he saw that his lap was a goo of congealed blood. He had only one useful eye; the left was compromised from his fall. He could feel that his nose was only drawing air in from the right nostril. He knew his entire left side was raked to raw meat.

"You must be one of Conner's bad boys."

Bends could only guess whether he was dreaming or awake.

"My name is Greg. You could use a mercy bullet right about now."

Bends could only look at the pine needles in front of him and pray the bullet was coming soon.

"The camp is about a hundred yards straight that way. If you recover, you may find what you need to survive."

The stranger walked past the naked, bloody, and shivering man, leaving Bends alone again.

Bends waited what seemed like hours, then began crawling on his hands and knees in the direction of the encampment.