by Wyatt Savage
“What’s going on?!” she shouted, checking her HUD.
“We’re beating them back!” Will shouted.
Jackie kept her back pressed to the car, waiting for her eyes to fully acclimate to the gloom. She’d only fired a pistol twice with her brothers, more than eight years ago. They’d been patient with her, even let her do a dry run with an empty magazine. Her hands had trembled when the gun was actually loaded. When she pulled the trigger, the recoil caused her to jerk the handle too far right, missing the target entirely. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone well.
Facing down the spindly creatures, she held the gun in both hands, just as she’d been taught to do. She made her mind go black, just as she’d always done when faced with an impossible situation. Being caught in between a violent confrontation between her parents prior to their divorce, for instance, or handling cadavers for the first time as a resident.
She was on the outside of her body looking in. She was one of the characters in Borderlands 2, Maya the Siren, questing alongside Will’s Salvador the Gunzerker. Her palms were sweaty and she panned the gun left and right in a short arc.
Something jumped and she fired. A bullet stirred up dust. She’d hit her shadow.
“You okay, Jackie?” Will asked, while keeping his eyes outward.
“I’m fine!” Jackie shouted.
Some thing, some things toiled in the shadows. She looked at her HUD. There were three yellow dots somewhere out beyond the meager spillage of light from the car’s high beams. The dots moved faster than Jackie had anticipated. She inched back closer to the taxi’s right front tire. Jorge had popped the hood and was fussing with something on the engine.
Will fired again, then twice more. None of the creatures had fallen.
More yellow dots appeared on her HUD. Jesus, Jackie screamed to herself, how many of the fucking monsters were out there?
A tapping sound filled the air and Jorge pointed. “There! There!”
Jackie followed his gaze. An image appeared on her HUD, a glowing crosshair.
“Voice?” she asked via Mindspeak.
“Yes, Jackie?”
“What is that?”
“A targeting reticle,” the voice replied. “Supplied via the gift of SecondSight.”
“What is that?”
“Another application.”
“What’s the targeting reticle for?”
“Targeting.”
If she weren’t under threat of death, she might have chuckled. Instead, she tried mentally maneuvering the reticle, but the crosshairs kept swinging wildly to the left and right. There wasn’t enough time to learn how to use the damned thing, so she willed it away. The reticle vanished and Jackie spotted one of the fiends, standing up on its hind legs, maybe four feet tall. The creature’s one eye rotated around, searching for prey. When it took a shit, Jackie closed her eyes and fired.
The shot struck the monster, wounding it. The creature reacted, snorting like a frightened deer before running for cover.
Jackie kicked herself for failing to kill it. A wounded animal would only be more dangerous in the chaos.
“You okay, babe?” Will asked.
Shut the fuck up, she thought. Stop distracting me. Jackie dropped into a shooter’s crouch, shifting her arms and using her left forearm to balance her shooting hand, like her brothers had taught her, moving away from the safety of the taxi. She tracked two yellow dots on the HUD. They closed on her.
The blood roared in her ears as she waited for the monsters to show themselves. Eyes on the HUD, she watched the yellow dots moving ever so slowly until they were right on top of her.
Where are you? she thought. Where the fuck are you?
Her eyes rotated heavenward, but there was nothing in the sky. Nothing overhead, nothing on the ground, and nothing in front or behind. She was readying to call out to Jorge and Will when she felt something. A quiver, a pulse of life, coming from underfoot.
She looked down and two forms exploded out of the earth in a geyser of dirt and debris. Jackie canopied her face as two monsters flew into the air with witchlike screams. Her HUD revealed the two monsters—one wounded from her shot and down three health points, the other fighting fit. They hit the ground and pinwheeled toward her.
She pulled up the pistol and fired three times in quick succession. One of her rounds pierced the belly of the wounded monster, releasing a gout of orange blood, the impact from the bullet whipsawing it back into the nothingness.
“Congratulations,” Jackie’s alien voice said. “You have killed a level one monster and gained twenty-five experience points.”
The other creature didn’t stop its forward progress. It dropped low, advancing with the shuddering gait of a newborn animal, then vaulted and ballooned like a spider into the air.
Jackie fired twice more. One round clipped the legs of the creature, but it soared over Jackie’s head and slammed into the hood. Jorge flinched and Jackie wheeled around as the monster hurled itself at her.
The monster’s legs struck her shoulder, knocking her back. She jammed the barrel of the gun into the thing’s gullet, but not before a bony protuberance with a hooked end lanced out of the monster like a syringe and jabbed her once in the shoulder.
-1 Health Point flashed across her HUD.
Jackie yelped and tried to fight the thing off with her elbows and knees, but it was slicked in a kind of greasy luminescence. Jagged purple lines crisscrossed the thing’s mouth, which opened, producing the kind of sickening sweet smell that fruit makes when it’s been left out to rot. The monster hissed and Jackie jammed her gun in the monster’s maw, firing twice, obliterating it.
“Congratulations,” her alien voice said. “You have killed a level one monster and gained an additional twenty-five points.”
She stumbled back, clutching her shoulder. She pulled her shirt down to see that there was a single droplet of blood near a wound that resembled a pinprick. Jackie thought back on her time in the emergency room at a large hospital in downtown Baltimore. She shadowed ER doctors and trauma surgeons, privy to all sorts of terrible acts of violence in one of America’s most violent cities. She’d seen gunshots, stabbings and hackings. She’d witnessed transfusions, patients intubated, and even a thoracotomy on a gunshot victim. A thoracotomy is a procedure where a scalpel is used to make an incision below the nipple and is then drawn down the torso, through layers of tissue and muscle before a rib spreader is inserted and cranked, opening the ribs, allowing the surgeon to observe the inner organs. Once she’d watched a bilateral thoracotomy, which involves the breaking of a patient’s sternum with a tool called a Lebsche knife. She remembered the headiness of watching the surgeon work, the sound of splintering bone, the penny-bitter smell of the blood, and the way the organs pulsed and glistened. Her wound was nothing like what she’d seen in the ER; it was a minor gash, but it hurt like hell.
Jackie lamented that she hadn’t brought a medical bag with her. She had nothing with which to irrigate the wound, apply antibiotic ointment, or dress it. Whatever had been on the end of the monster’s bony needle was undoubtedly inside of her now. Her skin crawled just thinking about it.
A sound rose behind and Jackie spun on her heels, firing a single shot that blasted the top off another monster. She was getting the hang of the gun on the fly, shocked to see that she’d already acquired ninety-one experience points as a result of survival time plus the points for killing three level one monsters such that her HUD reflected updated stats, including a reference to her injury:
Species: Homo Sapiens (Leon, Jaqueline)
Chattel: 5.7 mm pistol; Roundworm Parasites
Health:10/10
Level:1
Class:Mage
Kills:3
Vitals:BP – 125/80; T – 98f; RR – 15bpm
XP:91
Jackie waded through a stand of brush, wanting to ask about the updated stats on her HUD, but her eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom.
“I can barely see,” she
muttered.
“Once you acquire enough experience points,” Jackie’s alien voice said, “you can obtain the ability to see in the dark.”
“How is that possible?”
“All things are possible in the Melee.”
“I meant how would it be possible for me to see in the dark?”
“You can purchase night-vision capabilities.”
“What else can I buy?” she asked.
“There is no limit to what you may purchase if you have enough points.”
Another crab-monster ran at her and Jackie shot it. She blasted two others and then punted a fourth monster that tried to scramble up her leg, before it could jab her with one of its bone needles. This last creature ended up next to the taxi and Jackie pounced, taking out her anger and frustration on the thing, dashing it to pieces with the bottom of her boot until all that was left was an incredibly vibrant orange puddle of goo streaked with strands of bone and ligature.
Jackie looked up from the atomized monster to see Jorge and Will, backlit by the taxi’s high beams. They were staring at her in shock.
“Whoa. You’re pretty good with that thing,” Jorge said, pointing to the still-smoking gun in her hand.
She didn’t say anything and Will held up a hand. “We’re good by the way. Taxi’s fixed. Ready to rock and roll.”
Jackie nodded, dragging her boot in the dirt to wipe the orange blood from it. “Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As she rushed inside the car, she made a mental note that she was at a hundred and ninety-two points. She felt repulsed by her actions, but knew better than to ignore anything that might help her and the others survive.
7
Regrets
The three of them rode in silence, Jackie twisting her rubber band again and again, examining the map of the surrounding area displayed through her HUD, taking in the incredible number of participants and monsters. There was a bitter, metallic taste on her tongue that kept drawing her attention. She looked at her statistics on the HUD.
Species: Homo Sapiens (Leon, Jaqueline)
Chattel: 5.7 mm pistol; Roundworm Parasites
Health:9/10
Level:1
Class:Mage
Kills:7
Vitals:BP – 122/80; T – 97.9; RR – 13bpm
XP:194
“I lost a health point,” she said to her personal Noctem voice.
“Yes, you have suffered a wound and been infected,” the voice replied. “An infection is the invasion of an organism’s body tissue by disease-causing agents and—”
“I know what an infection is,” she replied flatly. “What kind of agent was introduced?”
“A robust bacteria with unique properties, including occurring in both crystalline form, in which molecules are arranged in a fixed pattern, and in an amorphous form where molecules are randomly arranged.”
“What’s the takeaway?”
“The bacteria will eventually lead to a form of necrotizing fasciitis—”
“Flesh-eating?”
“Yes,” the voice answered. “You will continue to lose a health point for every twenty minutes you remain alive. The bacteria has already begun the process by which a kind of parasitic roundworm will also be spawned inside of you. Eventually, you will be consumed from the inside out and until that time, you will be increasingly contagious.”
“How do I stop that from happening?” she asked. “How do I regain the lost health points?”
“You can purchase what you might call medicine. Rejuvs, medpacks, to restore some or all of your health.”
“How much do they cost?”
“The Rejuv that would best help boost your health points, at least for a short while, can be obtained for seventy-five experience points.”
“Okay, so I’ll buy it.”
“I’m afraid the Melee requires you to possess a minimum of 150 experience points before your first purchase, Jackie. You currently have 194 experience points, which means you only have forty-four points to utilize.”
“I need to keep killing things in order to heal myself, huh? Me, a doctor? You do get how ironic that is, right?”
The voice didn’t respond. Jackie chewed on the ends of her fingers, biting her nails with nervous anxiety.
“What do I call you anyway?” she asked.
“As I have made clear, I possess no formal identifier,” the voice answered.
“I assume you’re male…”
“My original species exhibited sequential hermaphroditism.”
“You could change sex?”
“Yes, like some of the species in your world. Clownfish and moray eels for instance. But I always identified as what your kind would call male.”
“You didn’t have a name?”
“The Noctem erased that from my memory cells.”
“Why?”
“Once a name, always a threat,” the voice replied.
Jackie considered the words. “Where were you from?”
“A planet that no longer exists.”
“Are you a part of this by choice? Did you volunteer to assist in the game?”
“I am not at liberty to answer that question, Jackie. Moreover, you are not at a level that would justify access to such sensitive information.”
That was answer enough for her. She decided to take control as much as she could.
“Well, I’m going to give you a name,” Jackie said. Off the voice’s silence, she added, “Simon. I’m going to call you Simon because you’re always saying something, y’know, like Simon says.” She smirked at this, rubbing her hands down the still-warm barrel of the gun, fighting to ignore the stabbing pain in her shoulder.
“May I say something, Jackie?” Simon asked.
“Yes.”
“I have participated in the Melee for longer than I can remember. I have had the honor of assisting tens of thousands of participants and you, by all measure and based upon my admittedly brief observations, rank in the upper echelon.”
“What does that mean? I’m not even level two yet.”
“There is an old Noctem saying,” Simon replied. “Some people find themselves in the Melee.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?’
“Why do you keep answering questions with questions, Simon?”
Simon was silent for several heartbeats, and then he whispered, “There is a part of your species that longs for this, a hardening of the spirit, you might say. After all, ninety-nine percent of the things your species has come in contact with are now extinct. Chaos and carnage are written in your DNA.”
Those words echoed in her head as Jackie looked over to see Will staring at her. “You okay, Jackie?” he asked, more worry than concern in his tone.
“Been better,” she replied, rubbing her shoulder.
“What happened back there?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were like an old west fighter or something, shooting at anything that moved.”
“I did what I had to do.” There was more to it than that, but she felt reluctant to admit how easily the shooting had come to her.
Will manufactured a smile, trying his best to connect with her. “You kicked some serious ass, babe. I’m glad we’re a team.”
“Thanks,” Jackie replied, not sure whether she really was grateful for his ‘compliment’ or not. He was talking about death and killing, or perhaps such extremes no longer mattered.
“You’re injured. I can see it on my HUD.”
He reached for her and she pulled away. “I’ll be fine, Will. Just a prick on my skin. All I need is to get some more points and then I can heal myself.” She laughed. “Either, I’ve got to stay alive for the foreseeable future, or…I have to start actively killing things instead of just defending myself.”
Her gaze wandered back to Will, who swallowed hard. She saw him examine his cellphone. He sent a text, using a WiFi hotspot he’d set up with the help of his HUD.
Then she used her phone to send a text to her parents. Neither his or her messages went through. Will tried to make a call to a number that Jackie recognized as Will’s father. A prompt on the cellphone’s screen read, “System Error. Call Failure.” Will turned the phone over. It was night and they were stranded in Mexico without the help of his influential father. They were on their own.
As they drove across the countryside, Jorge flipped on the radio. Most of the stations had gone to static, but at least one was still operational. The announcer was barking in rapid-fire Spanish, too erratic for Jackie to follow completely, so Jorge translated. The world was on fire, experiencing widespread outbreaks of extreme violence. The game had only recently started, and already, the dead and wounded were too numerous to count. Random statistics rattled around in her head. More than thirty thousand people died each year from gunshots in the States, and another seventy-five thousand were injured. How many had already been killed in a few hours as a result of the twisted Melee game? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Fires raged, cities were under siege from participants and monsters, and people were turning against people. Jorge turned the dial and found another station playing classical music that he left on. He let up on the gas and the taxi slowed, stopping in the middle of the road.
“What do we do?” Jorge asked, as the music played in the background.
“We need to get to the coast,” Will said. “Ciudad Altamirano.”
“That is two hundred kilometers away, amigo.”
“I know that.”
“Through a corridor that contains approximately five hundred thousand participants and at least a few hundred monsters if my screens are to be believed.”
Will nodded, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. “It’s the only way, Jorge.”
“What is in Ciudad Altamirano?”
“I know a guy with a boat.”
Jorge barked a nasty laugh. “A guy with a—y-you would risk our lives on a hunch?!”
“It’s not a hunch!”
Jorge cursed in Spanish, slapping the steering wheel. “I should never have picked you two up. I just knew, I had, what you call? A premonition. I should’ve left you back in fucking Toluca, and gone back to see my sister who—”
