The zombies close in on me, their dirty, long fingernails feet away from grabbing me and pulling me into their jaws. I can’t waste any more time. I pull the shot of adrenaline out of my pocket and unscrew the top. While running, I manage to swallow the fifty milliliters of liquid in one violent swig. The liquid doesn’t actually exist, just like all the items in Deadwave, but the game is able to trick my taste buds into thinking that a distinctly sweet and metallic liquid has made its way down my throat. I instantly feel its effect. My avatar runs faster, widening the gap between me and the zombies, and begins to rocket up the stairs without feeling the burning in my legs and lungs.
The scope of the forest comes into view as I climb higher and higher on the staircase. On either side it stretches for miles and miles, seemingly an endless maze of thousand-foot-tall trees and zombies roaming the landscape. Even the staircase itself is a testament to the magnitude of the forest. It spirals around the center of a tree, its wooden planks circling around it five feet on either side, making one misstep a fatal mistake.
The pounding of my feet against the wood blocks out any other sounds from reaching my ears. It is impossible for me to tell if anyone else is waiting at the top to kill me—I’ll have to wait and see.
Holy crap, this is high. I’m not dumb enough to look down, but I do look to the sky, where the once insurmountable tops of the pine trees come within view, and the long, skinny first branch of the tree pokes out from the bark dozens of feet above me. My fear of heights kicks in a bit, and I’d be lying if I said the thought of falling doesn’t make me want to pee my pants.
I continue to run, the wooden platform, high enough to pierce through the clouds, feet away. I raise my knife, the blade pointed directly in front of me, my senses hyper alert for any sign of a zombie, person, or anything else trying to kill me.
It doesn’t take long for something malicious to appear.
The body of a player stands atop the stairs, and I run in a zigzag pattern in an effort to dodge the onslaught of bullets directed at me. They clearly have no clue who or what they are shooting at, which makes it all the much more enjoyable when I stab the knife into their neck upon them charging forward, causing the gun to fall from their hands. Only two of the bullets manage to connect with me, and my health is still around 400 points, which means I can easily take a few hits from this unfortunate being.
In two seconds I dismember their head from their body, causing it to roll off the stairs and free fall to the forest floor below.
Except they dropped an item the moment before they died.
It is a grenade.
Shit. I pick up the pistol from the lifeless body and sprint forward. Kicking the grenade off the staircase will be of no use; it will likely blow up immediately upon impact with one of the avatars’ bodies. I have to run for my life.
I dive to the right after sprinting up the final few steps, hoping that the foot-thick board of wooden planks will protect me from the explosion. If only that happened.
The second the grenade explodes, a violent ringing thunders in my ears and the wooden platform shakes. Half of the platform up to my waist has caught fire as the area directly around it lands in chunks all over the treehouse village on the treetops.
My health drains to 200 points, but only four players are left alive. One more spot and I will guarantee a berth in the semifinal tournament. One more person needs to die.
I stand up, my night vision goggles covered in an array of bright greens as the fire burns through the wood around the staircase. I run away as fast as I can, what looks like a Bahamian village in the air coming into view.
Lights that had long ago run out of fluid stretch between the array of wooden structures that have pine needle roofs. There are about six small identical structures in a semicircle, each with only one room and a window looking out at the expansive landscape.
I raise the pistol in the air, seven bullets still left in its magazine. Even if by some miracle I happen to be the only one up here, zombies will inevitably begin to spawn. But soon a figure emerges from the darkness, their movement outside of one of the huts and out into the middle of the platform highlighted by a green flash on my night vision googles. They have no way of seeing me behind the cover of darkness. I have to fire.
I rapidly press down on the trigger, delivering five bullets, three of which connect with them in a second. I charge forward, erratically moving to the right to dodge some of the gunfire. There is no way I have enough bullets to kill them; I’ll have to do it with my knife.
But before I can let its sharp blade make contact with one of the avatar’s appendages, or even attempt and tackle the player before they run away, a round of gunfire unloads on the avatar. It collapses to the floor, dying upon the impact of the bullets.
Now there are only three of us left.
My eyes dart around, trying to search for where the person could be, but they come up empty. The person must be behind the cover of one of the huts. A surge of adrenaline and anxiety courses through me as I approach the side of one of the huts, hoping to spot them through one of the windows and attack them from there. They must have night vision goggles. They must be able to see me too.
I continue to scan the entire platform, my eyes trained on the blaze that has begun to ignite a few of the trees, the pinecones sending the fire into a fury. A few growls and mumbles penetrate through the eerie silence. A wave of zombies, what appears to be four of them, have spawned on the far side of the platform. I quietly approach them, hoping that by fighting them I can lure my opponent out of the shadows.
I walk forward, keeping my body as close to the side of the hut as possible, my skin brushing up against the wet, moldy wooden planks that line the walls. Then the distinct feminine outline of Riva’s avatar appears from around the corner. She already has a shotgun locked and loaded; its barrel is pointed directly at me. There is nothing I can do to stop the inevitable. She pulls the trigger, not even hesitating for a millisecond, and its metal shards splinter through the flesh in my chest. She fires again before I can pull a bandage out of my bag or fire back myself. The next moment, everything goes black.
I have been eliminated.
Chapter 22
It still stands true that the feeling of the crowd cheering never gets old, but when I lose, it’s always bittersweet. They aren’t cheering for me, they are cheering for the people still alive, I remind myself as I walk off the stage, not bothering to look around at the crowd and make eye contact with any creepy suited men, which will only kill my mood even more.
Jake is backstage to greet me, a wide smile on his face even after he sees the angry expression in my tight lips and taut facial muscles.
“Dude, you did it!” He hugs me right after I hand my helmet to one of the stage technicians, not seeming to care that I am dripping in sweat.
Somehow him saying those words in such an ecstatic fashion makes me feel happy for a fleeting moment.
“Bro, liven up, you made it. You’re in the play-offs!” He slaps me on the back, urging me to follow him backstage. I didn’t expect him to, but he tears up once we are out of sight of everyone else.
He knows what this means to me, even if I refuse to be happy about it. He knows how close I am to my dream. Except I don’t know what to say back to him.
“I want you to win,” he says through tears, his arm around me in my own personal dressing room, which had been set up from makeshift plywood before the event. “I want you to feel like this was all worth it. I gave up everything for this, too.” He smiles. “I have always looked up to you, you’re like my older brother. I mean, you always were a grade ahead of me in school, but I really used to idolize you when we were younger. In many ways, I do now. But this feeling is different.” He laughs, and I notice the stain of a blue liquid on his tongue. “It’s kind of like I’m your parent, living vicariously through you. It felt like we did that. It felt like we won even though we lost. We have hope.”
“We are family.” I keep my
voice low and calm, trying to keep my muscles tense so I don’t break down. I have a rule where I don’t cry in front of people, and another rule where I don’t cry alone because the tears may never stop if I let my mind go there. “We are brothers. And we have hope.”
My words still haunt me as I walk down the path with Riva. The string of moments that followed me coming out of Deadwave and into this world play over again vividly in my mind.
It feels like I’m back there in that stadium talking to Jake. It feels awful.
He then asked me to hang out tonight, to talk about life, about our futures, about how we all are supposed to get out of this mess. But I told him no. Or more accurately, I told him I already had plans with someone else.
And just like that I abandoned him. Just like that I ignored him, like I always did to my mom. Like my dad always has done to me. And as I held Riva’s hand, walking through the beautiful grounds of Millennium Park, I couldn’t help but want to run away and call Jake. I couldn’t help but want to tell him how much he means to me. That I love him, and that I’m scared too. That I want to get out of this together.
But feeling love and showing love are two very different things.
“Is something wrong?” Riva glances at me, a nervous tone to her voice.
“No, no.” I say it in the almost panicked way that only someone who does have something wrong would say. “Everything is all good.”
“O-kay.” She utters the word in two distinct syllables. “You just haven’t been as talkative as normal. Usually that means something is up.”
“Nothing is up.” I smile and pull her close, my right arm around the arch of her back and my left hand brushing over her cheek. We both look right into each other’s eyes, and she purses her lips in a cute yet unconvinced way.
“I promise.” I smile. “Things have just been crazy lately. I have a lot on my mind, I guess. And yeah, I just, yeah. I thought this would feel better.” I pause and look around her for any movement in the bushes of flowers or any dark figures moving on the expansive field where crowds gather to listen to concerts. “I thought that getting to this moment, both of us now moving on to the play-offs, would be the best feeling in the world. But I still feel like the same person. I feel like in a way, nothing is different. I did it, and I still feel the same. I still feel scared.”
“You are preaching to the choir. It feels great, but I thought it would be even better given how much I sacrificed.” She sighs, pulling me in her direction as she continues to walk down the path. The moonlight above bounces off her dark skin, illuminating her impeccable hair and the bright glow in her eyes as she looks up at the skyline of Chicago. For the most part, the skyline at night is dark, with the majority of the residents in this city forced to leave after automation of service jobs and tech jobs caused a city already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy to collapse.
The streets were filled with riots for months, riots not about racial injustice but about the lack of clean water that resulted from Chicago’s crippling infrastructure. Thousands contracted awful parasites and accrued permanent damage from the heavy metals that managed to leech into the water from the pipes and industrial waste.
This city is gone. Just like so many places in America. Just like this entire country. In a way, Deadwave is blind to all these problems; we are forced to spend half our days in virtual worlds, the money and fame making us somewhat immune to the problems of the real world. But the problems are here, and the whole system is on the brink of destruction. We as a society neglected our problems for too long, and now they have metastasized into a deadly case that may have no cure.
“You don’t feel unbelievable?” I ask, my voice carrying through the brisk night air. It is just the temperature where, if one is used to San Diego like I am, where the temperature rarely dips into the fifties, it is cold. “Like, you won. You freaking won. That’s awesome. You’re the number-one player in the world right now going into the play-offs. How does that make you feel?”
“Not gonna lie.” She smiles, looking to the right at the massive stage surrounded by large metal sheets with varied curvature that gives it a modern, almost futuristic feel. “If I think about that fact alone, yeah, it does feel awesome. Like, that thought makes me so happy.” She seems to skip through the air her next few paces. “But when I think about the bigger picture.” She pauses and looks at the row of perfectly trimmed evergreen trees lining the path. “Yeah, then it all hits me. That being ranked number one doesn’t change everything about my life. It doesn’t make my dad better; it doesn’t heal my mom’s broken heart. And it doesn’t even change anything about me. I look at myself in the mirror and I’m the same Riva as before, but I’m okay with that. I don’t want to change.”
“If I were as beautiful as you, I wouldn’t want to change, either.” I put my arm around her as she rests her head on my shoulder. Good thing we are the only people in this park, or else we would be that young, horny couple that I always dread seeing.
Riva insisted that we go to Millennium Park on our first unofficial date, even though it is closed this late. Apparently, it has always been on her Chicago bucket list, which totally sounds like a Riva thing to have; she always has her life together. At least, it seems that way.
“Wow, Sam, don’t get too creative with your compliments.” She puts a hand on my chest and kisses me on my cheek. That simple action is enough to send a rush of endorphins through me. “But seriously, I don’t feel any different. And I’m okay with that. I am happy with who I am. I wouldn’t want a number in a game to define me. One day, when I lose, and lose a lot, I would never want that to crush me.”
“God, I wish I could think like you.” I look at her with admiration. She is literally the embodiment of what I wish I could be as a person, but consistently fail to match. She knows she’s flawed, and her life isn’t perfect , like everyone’s. Yet she’s okay with it. That’s perfection in my eyes. “I have never met anyone like you. No one wants to believe that. Everyone gets caught up in how the world sees them; they always forget who they are, forget what they think of themselves. I guess I have done the same. And I just realized how stupid that is. Because at the end of the day, that changes nothing.” I can’t stop my voice from cracking as the emotion and thoughts I always force to stay at bay push forth. “It changes nothing.”
“It’s a freeing feeling.” She outstretches her arms as if the entire park, the entire city, is within her grasp. “No one can define us. No one can stop us. I am me, and you are you, and no one can take that away from us.”
“See, that’s exactly why I feel chained.” I sigh as we make a left down the path, the famous Bean sculpture directly in front of us. Even amidst the infrastructure of the city falling apart, schools closing, and the police department undermanned, the mayor insisted that the grounds of this park be cleaned every day. He wanted it to give this city hope, that one day everything would reach the new millennium of progress like this park. The hope is all gone now.
“I’m not happy with myself, like you are.” I bite my tongue, attempting to hold back a round of tears from forcing their way out of my eyes, and from saying anything more to lead me into the pit of my past I refuse to fall into. “I don’t like myself. I hate myself. That’s why I always search for meaning outside of me. I search for validation from the world. If I believe what others tell me, if I believe the numbers I produce are somehow a reflection of me, then I can get through the day. Get through it believing that all the things my dad told me when I was a kid, and all the things I tell my own self now, are lies.”
“Sam, you are amazing.” She wraps her arms around me, kissing me on my neck, which certainly makes me feel amazing. “You have to believe it. I have known you for a year now, and really gotten to know you over the last week, and you seriously are a great, caring guy. I hope I can help you see that. ’Cause in my eyes, there is no reason for you to not be happy with yourself, to not love yourself.”
“I have no clue how to do that.” I
sigh. “People always talk about self-love as if it’s this switch you can magically turn on inside you one day to start feeling good about yourself. There’s no way it’s actually like that.”
“It’s not. It’s a process, and a long and hard one. But it all starts with a mind-set.”
“What’s the mind-set?”
“You need to derive your happiness from within yourself.” She says it like it’s the most logical thing in the world, even though I have been told since the day I have been born that a stable job, big house, and lavish vacations will make me love life. “Nothing outside of you can contribute to making you a truly happy person. With that mind-set, you then have to search for happiness every day. You have to find things you love about yourself, and then look at your flaws, accept them, until you begin to love them too.”
“You still make it sound so easy.”
“I’m not saying it’s easy.” She leaves the warmth of my body as she sits down on a metal bench to glance at the Bean, a reflective large metal sculpture shaped like a bean that is dozens of feet long. The few stars that speckle the night sky are visible, their light refracting off the Bean along with the light from the lanterns that line the sidewalks. “But I’m also not saying that there is a step-by-step plan to suddenly achieve this. For everyone, the process is different; the biggest thing is being committed to it. Being truly committed to finding and loving yourself, and to not be afraid to be vulnerable with your own self.”
“That’s so hard.”
“It’s not. I promise you it’s not. Once you get the fear out of your head, it becomes so easy.” Her eyes widen as I sit down next to her, the passion in her voice infectious. “I used to be scared for years. I always believed what my mom told me, what all the bullies told me at school. Then I finally started to listen—not to my dad, although he said great things to me—but to myself. I finally decided to unapologetically be who I am and learn to accept and love myself for it. And after a lot of pain and grit, I can say I am finally there. And once I got there, everything took off with Deadwave.”
Deadwave Page 16
