by Arthur Stone
The safe was easy to find—and it was wide open. Not an unusual thing in this world. It wasn’t empty. Cheater found a side-by-side double barrel shotgun with three dozen rounds. Sadly, all of them were birdshot. A cheap weapon and near-worthless ammunition. He took them anyway.
Leaving the house as quietly as he had come, he returned to his boat and pushed off to a spot a few dozen yards from the coast, then drove the pole into the bottom of the river once more. Only about six inches of the pole remained above the deeper water. As long as it stayed in place.
Opening his mouth to start swearing at the beasts and draw them to his position, he changed his mind and went for his louder lure. Perhaps the shotgun would draw infecteds not just from the town but from the surrounding forest, too.
He loaded the gun and fired into the sky without a twang of greedy guilt. Birdshot shells were cheap. But they were loud enough, and all ghouls within a decent radius should hear the gun go off. After thirty seconds, he fired again for the sake of any creatures unsure of which direction the sound had come from.
Reloading the gun and setting it aside, he drew his bow and started tapping a kettle with one of his arrows. The new incarnation of the village dinner bell.
They came running. The raffler was first, of course. It burst through the thickets of trees and blackberry bushes, leaped to the shore, and stared and Cheater with an annoyed growl.
An arrow soared right into its mouth. From this distance, his Accuracy gave him a near-guaranteed kill.
Next, he took down a couple of the nimblest runners, then the dirtiest of the beasts that remained. The crowd was thinning out. Once they were all dead, he would approach the shore to collect his loot and his arrows. This had already become routine. March was a useful man to have as a friend, with a surprisingly good leveling system up his sleeve. The System cut down on the experience received when one of its toys killed creatures in droves from a place that was out of reach, but Cheater wasn’t about to complain.
Unable to take it anymore, one of the ghouls flopped into the water, awkwardly scraping at the water as he headed for the boat. There was no sense shooting the beast and potentially losing an arrow as both sank to the bottom. So Cheater waited for the infected to start climbing up the side of the boat and slammed an ax into the crown of its skull.
Only bubbles on the surface remained as evidence of its sorry attempt. Good thing I used the ax. That would have been the end of an arrow.
He nocked another arrow and frowned. The ghouls had abandoned the shore. Only a few of the weakest remain, staring as if the boat had hypnotized them.
Where had the others gone, and why? This had happened before. Infecteds eventually figured out that they were just being mown down with impunity and that they could escape the barrage. But that always occurred to them one at a time, never as a group.
Something was off. He didn’t really care what. His course of action was clear. This was the Continent. Whenever there was something you didn’t understand, you had to take immediate measures to improve your personal safety.
Setting his bow aside, Cheater grabbed the pole and heaved, pushing the boat away from the shore. Instead of rinsing the silt from the end as usual, he pushed again, and again, feverishly.
Neither seeing nor hearing nor understanding why, he somehow knew that trouble was incoming. Ghouls didn’t just run away like that. They were scared.
Not scared of the water. Not scared of Cheater and his deadly arrows. Scared of something much worse.
Something that would terrify everyone in this world.
An immense splash from behind soaked Cheater from head to toe. It was neither a boulder that had rolled nor a tree that had collapsed into the water.
Cheater pushed off again, and then again, and then could no longer feel the bottom with the pole.
He was out of the shallows. Now what? Grab the oars? No, bending down, picking up the oars, placing them in the oarlocks, lowering them into the water, that would all take too much time. So he didn’t bother to reach for them and rushed to the stern, trying not to pay attention to what was about to seize the boat. Gazing at the approaching horror might distract him from his own salvation.
Either March was a master at picking and maintaining outboard motors, or Cheater was just lucky with them. The engine started immediately, as always. Cheater kicked it up to full power and the boat surged up and forward. The swimming monster’s paw was just a few inches short of getting him. Instead, it splashed noisily into the water churned up by the propeller.
One second later, they were a few yards apart. Two seconds later, Cheater finally gave the beast a good luck.
The mere sight of the titan nearly stopped his heart. Were he to break down from cowardice, no one would judge him. The swimmer was a proper monster. Much of its body was covered by water, but what could be seen was enough. It outclassed anything he had seen before. Only the elite he had received the three pearls from could be considered a possible match for this one. But it had been too dark, too new, and too long ago for him to be certain.
Perhaps this was the final stage. From level 100 on, elites became a new class of, well, elite elites. Some deigned to call them dire elites. They were creatures weighing four tons and up and filled with the best of prizes. Pearls could always be found inside them, of several types. Killing such a monster was a hunter’s dream, but intentionally hunting them was little more than an advanced method of suicide. Their defenses could easily take a 30mm shell at close range and shrug off even larger calibers. Artillery was the only way to wound these beasts, and their speed and agility was such that an artillery hit was near impossible.
A team of the best shooters wielding heavy weapons and supported by players with the right skills might have a chance. Specialists who could reduce the effectiveness of the creature’s armor or slow down its speed, at least temporarily.
Even water could not stop it. Without the motor, Cheater would already be gazing into the blackness that came before respawn. He thanked fate that he had not encountered the monster in the village. Its acute senses, possibly supplemented with supernatural tracking or detection abilities, could have noticed him from a distance without the beast revealing its presence in return. His saving head start had been thanks to the terror demonstrated by the lesser infecteds.
The elite realized its prey had escaped and stood vertically, confidently, its feet planted on the floor of the waterway. Such an evil, burning look it gave Cheater that he checked his clothes for smoke. Or stains.
How did such a mighty monster get here? Elite elites needed so much food that they were rumored to live exclusively near the regional borders, where there was plenty of food from the cities that were brought in. This was the country. While you could do pretty well by devouring livestock and locals, other infecteds provided too much competition, reducing the food supply.
Or perhaps that location had given the elite little competition. Cheater had thought there were relatively few ghouls on that shore. He remembered everyone warning him to be extra careful near water because of the beasts’ unpredictable migratory patterns. He had seen what waterways were like here on that ride with Kitty. Perhaps this super-elite actively consumed lesser elites so that their feeding would not cause it to starve. And because it was hungry.
Cheater would have to keep the possibility in mind. He was sure this was not an isolated incident and that he would see the creature who was lord of this land once again. Especially since the elite now knew his scent and his face.
His leveling session was looking less hopeful.
Chapter 26
Life Seven: New Adventures
Cheater cut the motor. Although the electric one made almost no noise, he couldn’t use it too much while the cloud cover hung around. The weather had been awful as far as his attempts to use the solar recharge was concerned. Nor could he move covertly with the gas motor, so he would use the oars. Dawn was coming, and there was no hint of a breeze. Any sound would carry across th
e water like rumors through the media.
Sticking close to a wall of high reeds, Cheater moved a half a mile before setting the oars down on wisely-positioned rags, then started watching and listening. He had slain a good number of creatures here, a few dozen, including one trampler and four rafflers. The grasshopper had taken six arrows, and some of them had snapped as the beast rushed around in a rage, but in the end it was dead.
Now he was back to collect the arrows and gut the creatures’ sporesacs. Cheater had no intention of hunting the alpha elite. He would spend his time wisely and avoid it.
Visiting a beach speckled with corpses was not the best way to avoid an elite, of course. Carrion could attract anything. Infecteds were not the only candidates, either. Cheater had noticed something like a wolf the other day, feasting. Large predators could become infected with the parasite just as humans could, and immunes were rare. Thankfully the man had not needed to deal with the wolf, as the latter turned to leave, barely missing the approaching boat.
Everything here seemed quiet and calm now. He hoped to collect what he needed without any unnecessary adventures. Cheater had only left one field of battle unlooted—the one where he had encountered the king of elites. The creature was simply too dangerous for him to ever return. His caution was at its height, and he now only approached the shore when it was absolutely necessary.
Now was one of those times. The man wasn’t rich enough to ignore this source of trophies. What’s more, everything seemed to be calm. A ferret ran past a tree, and birds chirped happily. Both signs were encouraging. When monsters were near, smaller life forms usually hid.
He waited ten minutes, but noticed nothing to change his evaluation of the scene. Even the crows were unafraid, picking at the corpses, cawing their pleasure at all of the available meat. The scavengers would not be down here if infecteds were near.
A scavenger bird was also food. Fresh, living food. The temptation was too great to ignore now.
He grabbed the oars. He crossed the open area of the channel as quickly as possible, then hugged the reeds again for another hundred yards.
And Cheater was there. Filthy bodies lined the water’s edge. Flies circled in clouds, crows picked at the most accessible places, and nothing hinted of danger.
He moored the boat in a convenient inlet, plunging the pole into the sad at the bottom. Arrow at the ready, Cheater circled around the site of the massacre, trying not to scare the crows with any sudden movement. The birds ignored him until he got too close. Then they began to hop and flap around. They still didn’t fly, which he was glad for since that could attract a little attention, but he couldn’t stand off to the side forever.
Still he noticed nothing dangerous, so he moved to his most important task. Drawing his knife, he approached the first of their corpses, opening the growth on the back of its head in practiced fashion. Even though it was cloudy, the weather was still hot, and the smell of carrion flooded the area. Thankfully a dried-out sporesac smelled more like dried mushrooms than meat.
Damn. Unlucky again. One measly yellow pea. Into the plastic bag it went.
As he approached the next body, a crow took flight. In disgust, the birds flapped and cawed, settling on the power lines and watching Cheater’s actions with disapproval.
One more sporesac received a deep incision, but Cheater froze at the sound of an anxious magpie. It was off in the bushes on the slope to the water somewhere. At such a good distance away, it was unlikely to be reacting to Cheater. There was something else, but what?
Perhaps a rabbit, or perhaps a...
No, on the Continent you had to act, not guess.
He rushed to take cover behind the nearest bush. At that instant, the sound of a silenced gun reached his ears, from the direction of where the magpie had sounded. The bullet slammed into the body Cheater had been about to collect his prizes from. Then his invisible enemy began pulling the trigger again and again, shooting blindly at the undergrowth in the hopes of hitting his adversary by chance.
Something hit the side of his belt around his waist, then cut through his hair, then plowed deeply into the skin of the back of his head, striking bone. That one almost drained him of consciousness. His eyes grew dark, his stomach heaved, and his mind became confused. All he wanted to do was lie down and not move. Yet he managed to stay conscious. Gritting his teeth, Cheater crawled away, using the low bushes for cover. The boat was easy to see from up here, so there was no point in running to it. He had to escape the most dangerous zone before deciding on his next move.
The shooter continued expending ammunition as Cheater moved through an exposed area. But he soon reached more bushes, interspersed with dense, squat trees. As long as his opponent was not a sensor, he wouldn’t see anything.
Cheater examined his injury and determined it wasn’t fatal. Just a scalp wound. Its smell would become more attractive to infecteds by the second, and that was bad. When you were battling with players, NPCs, or aggressive bots, smells were the last of your concerns.
He was stuck in a dead end now. To the right, he’d come under fire on the exposed bank. This was the very reason Cheater had lured the ghouls there the day before; the place was an ideal location to get shot.
Whether the shooter was position in the water or up above.
Fifty yards to the left, this island of dense greenery vanished. Hundreds of yards of open ground followed, interrupted only occasionally by low bushes. The shore was shallow here, smoothly descending to the water with no small cliff-like dropoff, and for some reason no reeds grew here. There was no other cover.
And Cheater couldn’t go straight ahead. If Cheater rushed his attacker head on, all he’d win would be a thank you.
After getting whacked in the open.
How far away from the enemy? At least a hundred and fifty yards. Perhaps Cheater was an amazing shooter, but his weapon simply wasn’t intended to hit from that distance. His enemy was holding all the cards.
And since there was nowhere to go, the only thing he could do was construct some sort of defense here.
The soil was sandy and loose. Meaning that his best defensive line was yet another cry back to the World Wars. Time to dig a trench.
* * *
For an hour now, the enemy had made no sound. Cheater was growing tired of waiting as he crouched in his awkward, amateurish pit. The enemy’s advantage was too great for them to wait this long. They had seen that their prey was a man with a bow, and most people didn’t take such a weapon seriously. Nor did Cheater’s attackers have problems with ammunition, if the fifteen rounds they had shot at him were any indication. Why then were they waiting? Hoping he would die from blood loss and they’d find out via victory message? Or had they given up and were already miles away?
Probably not that last option. Most people didn’t like spending over a dozen rounds in vain. Why had they even attacked him? Did they shoot anything that moved? Were they jealous of his bow? No, even if they could read the stats of his weapon from a distance, they would have seen it was bound to him and thus pointless to steal. They might have assumed Cheater was carrying other, non-bound valuables, though. Or maybe they were just random people.
Stumbling on this massacre just now, when Cheater himself had returned. Now they wanted to loot the ghouls and his corpse both. Double the profit! These beasts were no elites, but there was a decent number of them.
Damn. Cheater would yank and deliver all of the sporesac innards to them himself if they would just leave him alone. But there was no way to negotiate.
He had to wait until darkness came. Then, even if they had night sights or other night vision devices, at least they would have lower chances of hitting him. And Cheater would have greater chances of escaping. He would go for the boat, push it away quietly while he was still in the water, and wait for the current to carry them a short distance away before climbing on board. That was the only plan he could devise.
What was that noise? A twig under someone’s boot? Or just a
dry branch falling from a tree? No, there’s no wind...
Cheater nocked an arrow and hastily adjusted the hat he had fashioned from pieces of grass and bush. His hair was already dark, and he hoped this would keep him from standing out against the forest backdrop. It partly covered his face, as well. Perhaps if his enemy had no sensor abilities and a low enough Perception, it would help. His stats screen had a column which displayed not only penalties but also buffs that could be obtained in various ways. The standard way to activate them was with Pleasure. But there were other ways, too. He had received +1 to this Stealth. All of this camouflage—his body hidden below the ground, his head covered, his avoidance of sudden movements—had caused the System to give him that bonus.
Something dark green flashed among the interwoven branches. It happened so fast that Cheater concluded he was just imagining things. But no, he saw movement. The enemy could stand it no longer and was approaching the place where Cheater had nearly gained a new hole in his head.
Apparently they didn’t know their victim had left the area long ago.
That was good news. Cheater selected a promising gap in the bush covering him and calmed his breathing and his thoughts as best he could. As soon as the crouching figure appeared, he confidently drew and released his bowstring.
Thud. A scream rang out in the thicket. Two guns started to sound. One was silenced, and the other was the recognizable sound of an AK. Despite the twang of the bow, his opponents could not determine where the shot had originated from. They destroyed foliage in the same location Cheater had been trying to move to earlier, before he found his new digs.
He released a second arrow, then a third, focusing on the sounds of gunfire. No attempt to get eyes on his enemies paid off. Furthermore, his hopes of hitting them through the dense vegetation were slim.
