Ghouls'n Guns

by Jared Mandani

  “What do you think the portals actually look like?” Zeke asked.

  Davidoff smiled, recognizing the old recklessness in his friend. It was the same recklessness that had taken them to all those haunted houses, that had caused them to take part in harder and ever harder, terrifying games… that had brought them here today.

  “You want to find out?” Davidoff replied, and Zeke smiled from ear to ear.

  “Come on, then,” Zeke said and, not waiting for Davidoff, jogged over to the mouth of the alleyway. Davidoff followed, and the closer he got to the light source, the more uneasy he began to feel. It was like the unnatural energy was creeping over his skin, making every hair stand on end, making his stomach knot and turn over, queasy and awful.

  The light was cold and clammy and seemingly benign for the moment, though neither of the two young men doubted that it was powerful when roused. There looked to be a crack in the air from which all the light shone. It was midway down the alleyway, and completely separate from any tangible surface. Pixels stood around the crack’s edges, flowing outwards in sparkling delight. The light was pouring from somewhere else. A different reality, perhaps? A chaotic world in which the laws of nature were warped and bent?

  As they watched, the crack pulsed a couple of times, reminding Davidoff of some great, primordial beast heaving. The third time it throbbed, a couple of bolts of the same, sickly green light shot out, glancing against the ground and the walls, tearing through the stonework.

  “It’s clearly volatile,” Zeke remarked.

  Davidoff could only nod. It looked like the energy was barely contained, like it could burst at any moment, raging through this world of theirs. “We should leave it alone,” Davidoff murmured, though both friends were a little transfixed by the… portal.

  Portal. Yes, that’s what it is, Davidoff thought. It was not a rent, and neither was it a tear, an accidental split: it was a portal. A door between this mundane world of theirs and the other one, the chaotic world which seemed to wish them all such harm.

  With an effort of will, Davidoff tore himself away from the portal, turning around. “Zeke, Zeke!” he shouted then, noticing what had followed them. Two dozen zombies had congregated on the square, their eyes all on Davidoff and Zeke as they shambled along, painfully slow but relentless as the two had been distracted.

  However, this was not the worst of it.

  “What the hell is that?” Zeke asked, turning around and making a grab for his rifle.

  There must have been a zoo in the city before it fell. As the two friends watched, the ground shook beneath their feet and then a great, giant elephant crashed through to the square from one of the side roads. It was three times the size of any elephant Davidoff had ever seen, looking more like a mammoth from a picture book.

  It hefted its bulk into the middle of the place, squashing a couple of the zombies as it did so. There, firmly placed in the center of the crowd, it threw back its head and trumpeted loudly before lowering its eyes to meet Davidoff and Zeke. Its eyes were red-rimmed and furious, almost shaking under the pressure of whatever the creature had been put through to bring it to this point.

  “So the infection isn’t limited to humans then,” Zeke muttered, cocking his bolt rifle.

  “Just our luck,” Davidoff replied, badly shaken by this new apparition.

  The elephant’s skin was rotten. It was blistered in several parts and septic-looking in others, so that muscle and bone were exposed all over its body. One of its tusks was split in half and its red shot eyes each wept a rancid-looking pus. More than this, though, the zombies—so intent on pursuing living prey on which to feast—were forming up into shabby ranks around the elephant, ready to follow this great beast into battle.

  “What the hell is up with this game?” Davidoff asked, grinning. He had never seen anything quite like it.

  “Forget that. Rather ask yourself how the hell we’re going to get out of here,” Zeke said. “Look,” he added, nodding at the exits from the square. A handful of zombies were clustered around each, staring at them with dead eyes. Amidst their number were other animals from the zoo. A couple of zebras, one with its left foreleg hanging by a sinew, stood to their left whilst a shambling panther blocked off their escape to the right.

  “Well, then,” Davidoff said, pulling out his luger and one of his grenades. “I’ll run in close and deal with the zombies dead ahead. You blow that elephant’s brains out from here. Then we can think about the others.”

  “We’ll never be able to deal with all of them,” Zeke pointed out.

  “I know,” said Davidoff. “But we don’t seem to have too much of a choice, do we?”

  With that, he was off.

  Zeke’s bolt rifle began immediately, roaring every couple of seconds. He was a good shot anyway and his enhanced accuracy was showing itself now. Each shot pitted into the elephant’s giant head, making it trumpet in fury. It began to stumble forwards, but as each shot rang into its skull, it faltered for a few seconds, slowing it down.

  Davidoff checked out its stats and saw that they were daunting:

  Agility

  24

  Melee Weapon Skill

  29

  Ballistic Accuracy

  0

  Damage

  146

  Resistance

  98

  Initiative

  19

  Morale

  97

  HP

  1224 / 1500

  Skills

  Rampage

  Davidoff swore. The thing was quite literally a beast, but he was not expecting such high stats so early on in the game. He dreaded to even think what Rampage meant…

  He careered off to the right, moving in a wide circle around the zombies, drawing them towards him. There were a couple of outliers, standing away from the main horde and moving faster, seemingly with better agility than the others. Davidoff snapshot at the closest, hitting it in the sternum and crippling it. He did the same with the next as he moved around the pack, catching it in the shoulder with one shot and the groin with his next, downing it.

  Then, screwing up his courage, he ran in close enough to be sure of a decent accuracy and, just five yards or so away from the nearest few zombies, he pulled the pin from his grenade with his teeth and lobbed it underarm. The elephant was still moving towards Zeke, still shuddering as each bolt hit it—but after six more direct hits to the skull, it was still at HP 980 and closing on Zeke fast.

  However, Davidoff was a good aim. He sprinted away as fast as he could, and then he turned, just in time for the grenade to go off. He had managed to roll it to beneath the elephant’s front legs, the best position he could find.

  It exploded in a great blast, knocking a shockwave through the zombies, ripping the three closest to it fully to pieces and pretty much halving the HP of another dozen. Yet, the effect on the elephant was the best. Its left leg was ruined, buckled in on itself as the blast blew outwards so that the giant beast veered and fell, further crushing the leg until it was nothing but pulp and bone. Its gut had taken a great deal of the blast, too. Watery, pale blood coated everything, and most of the flesh on this side of its ribcage was gone, along with whole six foot long pieces of ribs. It rolled as it fell, squealing in a hellish roar and crushing seven zombies to paste.

  It still had HP 739, but it was crippled now, and unable to move.

  Davidoff then pulled out his new pistol and, with a gun in each hand, began to pick off the disordered zombie remnants as bolts tore through them from Zeke’s rifle fire. Davidoff ran around them further, completing the circle, before rejoining Zeke at his position in front of the alleyway’s mouth. “Good hunting?” his friend asked, grinning.

  “Yes, but that was just the start,” Davidoff replied.

  He had seen the others coming in as he ran around, picking off most of the first wav
e. It did not matter what tricks they could pull out of their sleeves; they could not take down the hundred plus zombies that were now coming for them from every side of the square.

  “What’s that noise?” Zeke asked, cocking his ear.

  Davidoff’s ears were still ringing from gunfire and the explosion, so he could only look around as his friend assured him that something was indeed coming.

  Then he saw it, roaring into the northwest corner opposite them. An open top jeep crushed through three zombies, barely slowing, and then skidded into the middle of the square, stopping just short of the elephant. There were three people aboard: the driver, a small woman with a shotgun in the passenger seat, and a man operating a minigun mounted on the jeep’s back.

  As the remaining zombies shuffled closer, the minigun set to work, mowing through them. It was not the most effective way of dealing with zombies—they could be riddled with bullets and keep coming, as long as they had HP remaining. But the minigun had plenty of ammo and plenty of time, as the slow-moving lines advanced. A little everywhere heads exploded and torsos erupted, legs were blown to pieces and whole ranks shredded.

  Davidoff and Zeke joined in.

  Zeke’s powerful rifle knocked every target flying, crippling HP and bodies alike. Davidoff ran up to a denser crowd of zombies overlooked by the jeep. The zombies were eleven humans and a great ape with one arm, growling low in its throat as its red eyes glowered. Davidoff threw another grenade, aiming it directly into their midst. It bounced off the ape’s stomach and rolled a couple of feet away. It detonated after a few seconds, tearing the ape apart and sending the remains scattering in all directions. Half the zombies were pulverized whilst the others all staggered outwards, buffeted by the blast. His advantage clear, Davidoff then finished off the last of the zombies with surgical precision, using his new handgun to blow heads apart.

  Then there was a ringing near silence and Davidoff crept back over to join Zeke.

  Many of the zombies were still animate, but they were all disabled now. The minigun died down and Zeke stopped pumping shots. The only sound was the elephant’s groaning and the sound of a car door opening and closing again.

  The small woman with the shotgun climbed down with something in her hand: a couple of sticks of dynamite bound together with black tape, their fuses all tied to one another. She marched over to the elephant, lit the dynamite with the click of a lighter and tossed it from a few feet away, getting it straight into the elephant’s mouth.

  Three or four seconds elapsed as she took to her heels, and then the largest explosion yet rocked the whole square. The elephant’s head disappeared and then rained down on the whole pile of dead bodies, viscera and brain matter and chunks of bone falling as mist.

  She walked over to Davidoff and Zeke as the others jumped down from the jeep and ran over to join them.

  “You crashed our party,” the woman said with a smile. Davidoff saw that the three were all player-led. They were avatars belonging to gamers like themselves.

  “Can’t complain, though,” the man said. “We’ve been tracking these animals down over ten blocks. They all escaped from the zoo.”

  “A mission?” Zeke asked, a little shell-shocked from the carnage.

  “Yup,” the other woman, the jeep’s driver, replied. “Objective one: kill the animals. And…” she brought out a couple of vials from her vest, like the ones Dr. Finkelstein gave Davidoff and Zeke. “Objective two: get samples.”

  “We’re on much the same kind of gig,” Davidoff said. “You heard of the warlocks?”

  “Only in passing,” the man said. “Mean fellas, if I’m not wrong.”

  “Well, we’re off to get blood samples from their camp in the north,” Zeke said. “You’d be welcome to join us. This game seems tough. We could always use the help.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” the first woman said. “We’ve got our own stuff to be getting on with. I’m Mara, though,” she said, offering her hand. Davidoff shook it and then Zeke did the same, then Mara introduced the other two. “Blight,” she said, nodding to the gunner, “and Jason,” she said, nodding to the driver.

  “Nice to meet you all,” Zeke said. “We should team up sometime, take on a mission or something.”

  “Sounds cool,” Mara said. “But right now… we made a hell of a ruckus and these streets will be crawling soon enough. We’d all best be getting on.” She looked Zeke over. “You’re an engineer?”

  “Yep.”

  “I hotwired our jeep there. It’s easy enough to do, and there’s a parking lot two blocks to the east. It might be worth getting yourselves some wheels.”

  So saying, they all turned and ran back over to their jeep. On the way, Mara took samples from the elephant and a couple of zombies, and then they all drove away.

  “Right, then,” Davidoff said. “Let’s go find a car.”

  ***

  They killed the gas a block away from the encampment, gliding to a quiet stop. The air around them seemed to crackle and the metallic, ozone tang of the alchemical power that pervaded the city was stronger this close to the warlocks’ home. As they drove up through the city, they saw many strange sights, and these sightings grew ever more bizarre the closer they came to the warlocks’ quarter. Everyday objects had been twisted out of shape, so that lampposts curved and swayed in the breeze, fire hydrants bloomed outwards like strange, metallic fungi and the roads themselves grew boils and blisters, erupting purulent asphalt. More and more things began to glisten and gleam with that sickly, unnatural light, and the shadows between the light grew darker and thicker, entirely more sinister.

  Organic beings suffered the same warping properties as well. They met the usual zombies, groaning and shambling around, but they also encountered ever more grotesque ghouls and even a few unfortunate mortal humans—AI led and helpless—sprouting extra eyes, or else sporting tentacles or tusks or any number of ludicrous oddities. They would have laughed had the sense of forlornness not been so pervasive. In truth, it weighed at their hearts, keeping them on their toes, keeping them uneasy. Whoever the artistic designers were for this game were clearly a group of sick bastards, Davidoff thought.

  They got out of the car and crept up to the block on which the warlocks had made their base. It looked well-fortified; the warlocks had erected a palisade around a central couple of streets, behind which they had set up their homes. Sentries wandered the palisade’s ramparts every so often but, all in all, the place seemed quite quiet, almost empty.

  “Weirdly empty,” Davidoff whispered, but Zeke shrugged.

  “What else can we do?” he asked. “We’ll get in and out, quick. You subdue one of the guards while I cover you, then we’ll take some of their blood and get the hell out of here.”

  Knowing they could only get in through stealth, Davidoff and Zeke spent a while creeping from patch to patch of cover as they skirted the perimeter, trying to stay undetected. Zeke grunted when they were about a third of the way around, however. He had spotted a loose plank. It was a weak link in the fence around the warlocks’ compound.

  They managed to pry a hole in the palisade and shuffle through, Zeke struggling to squeeze his massive bulk through. This was why Davidoff most often went for a smaller player in these RPGs: a slight sacrifice in heft and intimidation had always made tasks like these so much easier.

  Inside, all was indeed quiet. Everywhere crackled with that same, ghostly green light. It was pervasive, covering everything except for a few patches where bare electric bulbs contrasted the light with their own harsh glare. Davidoff and Zeke ran from the gap in the outside wall to an overturned truck, hunkering down against its protective bulk as they surveyed the area.

  The camp was hollowed out from the city, all buildings leveled bar a cluster in the middle. Odds and ends lay all about, remnants of the world that was. Twisted sheets of metal rattled in the wind and piles of bricks steamed slightly, unnaturally. “Look, just up ahead,” Zeke whispered, and Davido
ff followed his gaze behind them.

  There was some kind of strange ritual going on, partially obscured by a couple of low buildings. However, they could see enough. A couple of dozen men and women were standing around a central point, from which the brightest rent in the air they had observed so far was pulsing. It was a split, seemingly in the fabric of reality itself, and it made Davidoff queasy to look upon. Green light cascaded outwards from the tear in the air, bathing those present in its sickly glow.

  The men and women were not deformed, however, as Davidoff had expected them to be. Everything else within a half mile was twisted beyond all normality, and signs of corruption and mutation were present to a greater or lesser degree everywhere else they had been. But these couple of dozen people all looked good… too good, perhaps. They all had fresh, clear skin and bright eyes; they all looked to be at the peak of physical health and fitness, bursting with the vibrancy of life. They glowed in the light, their faces upturned, and their hands spread out, drinking it all in. They gloried in it and seemed to grow stronger by the minute.

  Just then, a noise rustled behind them, on the other side of the truck. Another warlock was coming their way. She was a young woman who had not spotted them, who was instead clearly focused entirely on getting to the ritual up ahead. Davidoff and Zeke looked at each other and nodded. She seemed easy enough; she would be their target.

  Zeke glanced around quickly, checking if there was anybody else about. But the guards were all focused on other parts of the palisade and nobody else was on the ground. “Go on then, I’ve got you covered,” he whispered, readying his rifle, and Davidoff set to work.

  Davidoff crept around to the back of the overturned truck. The woman would walk past it any second now. As he did so, Zeke rested the barrel of his rifle on one of the truck’s tires, ready to fire at anything that should come their way. Ready to fire should anything go wrong.