Arena Breakout: The Shattered Badge

(Dark Zone Breakout fanfiction. The protagonist is a local, there’s no System, and this is a new author’s first attempt. Please be kind.)

War crushed Kamona, and it also shattered the humdrum life of Saiga Tomil, a deputy in the Krik County police who had been content to coast through life. When the police chief fell in a pool of blood, a bloodstained badge and an equally blood-covered, unreadable map of a bomb shelter were placed in the hands of the 27-year-old “old hand.” He now had to face more than a hundred terrified refugees, twelve exhausted colleagues, and a handful of police firearms that could barely manage a few shots.

Ahead lay deadly mountain forests shrouded in mist. Behind him were the fires of a drawn-out battle and armed thugs taking advantage of the chaos. Saiga only wanted to keep everyone alive, but he soon discovered that in the apocalypse, the most dangerous things weren’t hunger and wild beasts, but the abyss of human nature closing in at every turn. When his companions die before his eyes, and bullets of vengeance are easy to come by, can he still remember that a badge’s weight is about more than stopping bullets?