Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG

by James T. Witherspoon

  “So your name is really Scarlett?” Foster asked.

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “I couldn’t come up with anything creative, so I just went with my real name.”

  “It fits,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She smiled at me.

  After we had finished eating and the conversation began to die down, Scarlett said “You ready to follow me over to my house?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Foster and I got back into my car and we followed behind Scarlett’s blue Ford Fiesta.

  “She likes you man,” Foster said. “You guys should be dating for real. I saw the way you were looking at each other.”

  “We weren’t looking at each other in any way.”

  “Oh yeah you were. You were looking at each other like you wanted me to leave so you could have some alone time.”

  “No we weren’t,” I said with a laugh, but I would have been lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

  Scarlett’s house looked like something from a television show. Two stories, painted a light blue, with a perfectly manicured lawn and two new cars parked in the driveway. It made the house that Dad and I lived in look like a shack in comparison.

  I parked the car behind Scarlett and we followed her into the house, where a white dog the size of a small polar bear ran towards us, tail wagging. Scarlett had talked about her dog on the phone before, but I hadn’t expected him to be so big.

  “This is Noki,” Scarlett said, kneeling to give the dog a hug around his neck. “He loves people, so he’ll probably follow you around sniffing your butt for a bit, but eventually he’ll leave you alone.”

  I gave Noki a scratch behind his ears as he sniffed my shoes and legs.

  “You don’t have any cats, right?” I asked.

  “No cats,” Scarlett said. “I’m a dog person.”

  Just another reason for me to like her.

  We went into the living room and met her parents. They were both at least fifteen years older than my dad. Scarlett’s father, a tall balding man with a thick mustache, introduced himself as Al and shook my hand with a tight grip. Her mother was named Angela and wore a house dress and a smile that seemed like it had been chiseled onto her face.

  “We’re just going to go up to my room and play a game,” Scarlett said.

  “Okay honey,” her mother said.

  “Keep the door open,” her father added as we started up the stairs.

  Scarlett’s room was perfectly organized and about three times the size of my bedroom. The walls were decorated with movie and video game posters and a ton of Beanie Babies, placed on shelves and inside display cases. Her desk was against one wall, with her computer on top of it. An empty card table was set up next to the desk and instead of an office chair in front, there was a comfortable looking sofa. A minifridge sat in the corner nearby.

  Against the opposite wall, Scarlett’s bed looked to be about twice as thick as my own and was covered with at least twenty pillows. A phone sat on the nightstand next to it - the same phone that Scarlett used to talk to me every night.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “I need to call my dad and let him know that I haven’t been murdered yet. Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure,” Scarlett said.

  “I’ll start carrying the computer up,” Foster said. I gave him my car keys and he left the room.

  I stood next to the phone and dialed home. Scarlett sat on the end of her bed, only a couple feet away from me - close enough that I could smell her coconut shampoo.

  “Hello?” Dad answered.

  “Hey Dad, it’s me. I’m here safe at Scarlett’s.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked. “How is it going. Is she everything you hoped she would be.”

  I looked over at her. She looked back at me with bright, gorgeous eyes, smiling.

  “Yep,” I said.

  When I hung up the phone, Foster walked in with the monitor in his arms and put it on the card table.

  Scarlett stood up and said “Yeah set up the computer there. I’ve got the internet cable ready. There are drinks and snacks in the fridge if you guys want anything. I got your favorites, Bran.”

  It took us about an hour to get everything hooked up and connected properly to her home network. I learned that Scarlett knew far more about electronics than I did, and she eventually shoved me out of the way so that she could get on my computer and set it up herself.

  “I had to do all this stuff at the office too,” she said. “Glad I’m taking all these tech courses in college.”

  It was about 3PM when we finally got everything ready and sat on the couch next to each other. Foster pulled an office chair up to my side and watched both of our screens at the same time.

  “Sorry man,” I said. “I know you’d rather be playing.”

  “It’s cool,” he replied. “I’m just happy to be here, you know?”

  “I’m happy you’re here too,” Scarlett said.

  We logged in, and met up in the Palisades conference room. The place was more crowded than I had ever seen it. The chairs were filled, and dozens of players stood along the walls and between the rows, preparing for the final confrontation against Orion.

  Scarlett and I exchanged excited looks.

  “This is awesome, right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s perfect.”

  Level 14

  The Dome

  1

  “Every one of you will be important to the upcoming fight,” Victor said. He had come down from New Wichita, along with most of the remaining Eagles, to join in on the final battle. “Abigail will keep a small team here at the Palisades for defense, while the rest of us leave together in a convoy towards Dallas. There, we will wait outside the dome, providing a distraction for our infiltration team, Orange Horizon.”

  He pulled up a map of the interior of the dome, along with several images that Chaotic Decay had taken of the surrounding areas.

  “Here,” Victor said, pointing to a marker on the map, a mile outside of Dallas, “is where the infiltration team will go in. Using old maps, we found this entrance to the underground tunnels that go through downtown Dallas. We feel that sending everybody through would be a mistake. The bandits likely know about the tunnels and have them monitored. I have no doubt that if an army were sent through, Orion would pile defenses at the exit, funneling our forces into a small space. Or he might just collapse the tunnel entirely.

  “Instead, we will send Orange Horizon in alone. They will make their way through, hopefully without drawing attention to themselves, and come out inside the base. There, they will get to the dome controls here,” he pointed to another marker - a building about fifty yards from where the tunnel exited inside downtown Dallas. “When they lower the dome, the rest of us will charge into the city and bring the place down. Our surveillance shows that Orion himself has turned the remains of Reunion Tower into his personal base of operations and rarely leaves. Again, this is a funnel point. Only a few people can fit inside the elevator that goes up to the top of the tower. So, while we are fighting Orion’s men below, Orange Horizon will take the elevator to the top of the tower and challenge Orion himself.”

  The crowded conference room had been completely quiet during the instructions. Now Victor turned to them and asked. “Are we all ready to do this”

  As one, they yelled “Yes sir!”

  Before they left the conference room Boothe grabbed Cthulwho by the shoulder. The tentacle-faced mutant turned, surprised.

  “Hey Paul,” Boothe said. “Good luck, okay?”

  “Thanks man,” Cthulwho said. “Hey, I’m sorry about how everything went down.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you around. Go kick some ass.”

  “You know I will,” Cthulwho said, then he went to join the rest of his team.

  Fifteen minutes later, vehicles began pouring out of the parking garage, driving in a line down the highway towards Dallas. This time, Atomic Massacre piled into the Falco
n together and jumped in line along with the other vehicles. It was like a parade, with everybody hanging out of windows and standing up in their seats, waving and celebrating.

  “What happens if we lose this?” Braddock asked. “What if nobody is able to kill Orion and all the players die?”

  “Then, I guess it’s game over man,” Lucas said.

  It took about fifteen minutes for the dome to come into view and another ten before all the vehicles were clustered outside of it. Orange Horizon had broken away from the convoy two miles back and headed towards the tunnel. Now the rest of them just needed to provide a distraction.

  This was not a problem. There were at least two-hundred players and NPCs here, primed to fight. They yelled and laughed and called out threats to the bandits inside the dome. They shot at the forcefield, their bullets soaking into it ineffectively. The noise of it all shook the ground.

  Even though they knew that death was coming on a massive scale, the players were all happy. There had never been this many in the same place – it was a huge party to most of them.

  Boothe parked the Falcon close to the dome, where they could see clearly through to the other side. What was once congested downtown Dallas, with huge imposing skyscrapers, now looked similar to New Wichita. The interior of the dome was filled with ramshackle buildings made from whatever could be found. There were several collapsed skyscrapers, lying on their sides or leaning against other structures, repurposed as housing for the bandits. From the center of all this mess, rose the Reunion Tower.

  Boothe looked up, wondering if Orion were up there now also looking down at them. The most identifiable building in Dallas, perfectly recreated in the game. Except of course that the sphere that sat atop the tower had been ripped open.

  Bandits lined up on the other side of the translucent barrier, laughing and taunting the Eagle’s inability to get through. There were at least a hundred of them, all armed to the teeth. Among them were more of the mutated rhinos, minigun armed robots, and a few mutants with strange differing anatomy. They had nearly as many people as the Eagles, and they also had the defensive advantage. There were plenty of places for them to take cover and the buildings also had defenses of their own. Turrets sat on top of some, swiveling to aim at any intruders.

  Even if Orange Horizon succeeded and brought the barrier down, Boothe wasn’t sure that the Eagles would even be able to win this fight.

  “How long do you think it will take them to get to the controls?” he asked Braddock.

  “Judging by those maps,” Braddock said. “About thirty minutes.”

  It had already been fifteen, and when fifteen more passed, Boothe waited anxiously for any sign of the barrier lowering. The Eagles around them still shot at the dome, testing its defenses, but it soaked up every bullet, fizzling the lead into particles, never weakening.

  When fifteen more minutes passed, Boothe began to worry. The other Eagles also looked at each other with nervous glances - something was wrong. Orange Horizon should have made it by now.

  Then Boothe noticed movement in the enemy forces. The bandits separated, making a pathway for a vehicle to approach. A large truck, with corpses tied to the outside of it. Only, as it grew closer, Boothe saw that they weren’t corpses at all - they were still alive.

  Cthulwho was chained to the truck’s grill, and his teammates were all strapped to the side. He was bloodied and beaten, his head hung low, and his armor was ripped open. His arms were pulled back and hooked to the hood of the truck and his feet were tied together at the bumper. A gag was wrapped around his mouth, and another had been stuffed into the hole in his throat. The other members of his team, people who Boothe had never bothered getting to know, had been similarly treated.

  The truck pulled up a few yards from the barrier and the driver stepped out. Orion himself, come down from his tower to greet them. He stood seven feet tall with those great bull horns on his head rising another two feet. From head to toe, he wore polished steel that gleamed in the sun.

  As he approached the barrier, the gunshots and the talking from the Eagles died down to complete silence.

  “You have come to my home,” Orion said, pacing. His voice sounded mechanical and scrambled, like Darth Vader speaking through a box fan. “You have come to take what is mine. Do you not understand that you have had your chance with this world? When you and your people had the power, you chose to fill the air with pollution, to clear the land of trees, to create nuclear weapons - all for the sake of green pieces of paper. You wish to return the world to the way it was?”

  He slammed his fist hard against the barrier, sending rippling bolts of energy through it.

  “No! We will not allow that to happen, will we boys?”

  The bandits around him cheered.

  “We will take the world from you! We have no need for your institutions, or your laws! This is our world now and we will kill every one of you that stands in our way!”

  He spun and pointed his left fist directly at Cthulwho.

  “Starting with these!”

  “No!” Boothe yelled.

  A boom and a puff of smoke came from Orion’s wrist, then five small rockets shot out. They arced through the air, seeking their victims - one for each member of Orange Horizon. Boothe watched as a rocket slammed into Cthulwho’s chest.

  Cthulwho’s eyes grew wide in fear, he threw his head back in pain, then all at once, he and the rest of his team exploded.

  2

  Orion let out a deep mechanical laugh, then turned and walked back through the crowd of bandits who were pumping their fists in the air, cheering his name.

  “O-ri-on! O-ri-on!”

  Above the heads of all the bandits, his gleaming metal horns moved away from the barrier and back towards the Reunion Tower in the center of the dome.

  A hand came down on Boothe’s shoulder, startling him.

  “Come with me,” Victor said, standing outside of the Falcon. “All of you.”

  Boothe stepped out of the car and the rest of his team followed. Nobody spoke, still in shock at what they had seen.

  When they were away from the dome, Victor spoke to them in a hushed tone.

  “Do you want to try to accomplish what Orange Horizon has failed to do?”

  “You want us to go through the tunnels and lower the dome?” Boothe asked “Now?”

  Victor nodded. “Orange Horizon was able to kill some of the guards before they were captured, and those enemies have not respawned yet. Orion won’t expect another attack immediately. It’s a huge risk, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get another shot like this. If we can’t lower the dome, we are stuck outside, and Orion will likely block up the tunnels completely. We need to take him now, or we might as well go home.”

  Boothe looked to the others.

  “Let’s do it,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah,” Scarlett agreed. “This is what we wanted right?”

  Braddock shook his head. “Orange Horizon failed. And it will be even more difficult for us, since they are now on the defensive.”

  Mariko put a hand on the robot’s shoulder. “Don’t be a chicken. We’re going.”

  “Okay,” Braddock said. “We’re going.”

  “Good,” Victor said. “Come with me, I’ll drive you to the tunnel entrance.”

  Victor led them through the crowd, then stopped at another vehicle. Hugo, the leader of Chaotic Decay sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Atomic Massacre is going through the tunnel now,” Victor said. “When the dome comes down, you and your group lead the rest of the troops into battle.”

  “Got it,” Hugo said, then gave Boothe and his team a little wave. “Good luck guys.”

  Victor took them all to a black van that was parked in the back of the cluster of player’s cars and drove them away from the dome, towards the entrance of the tunnel that they had seen on the map earlier.

  “Each of you,” Victor said, turning in his seat to point towards the back of the van, “get a clip
of armor-piercing rounds from the box back there. We were only able to make a small amount from the tungsten you recovered and Orange Horizon already took some of them, so you only get one clip each to use on Orion.”

  Mariko took out a single clip for each of their weapons and handed them out to the group. Boothe slipped the magazine into a pocket on his vest, so he could easily switch to it later, when they made it to Orion. If they made it.

  “I’ve been watching you for some time now,” Victor said as he drove. “I expected you to be the team that finished first in the time trial. I was a bit surprised that Orange Horizon beat you.

  “We got sidetracked,” Boothe said.

  “By the injured gorilla?” Victor asked.

  “How do you know about that?”

  Victor smiled and shrugged.

  “That bit about ‘enemy respawns’ earlier,” Boothe said. “You know this is a video game, don’t you? You’re not an NPC?”

  “No,” Victor said. “I’m not an NPC.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Victor Larson,” he said. “Apocalypse 2020 is my game.”

  After he let that sink in for a moment and when nobody else said anything, he continued. “It’s all been a kind of experiment really. Take a relatively small group of people and put them into a huge game world with a finite story and permadeath. How have you liked it so far?”

  “It’s way different than anything I’ve ever played,” Boothe said. “Intense, but fun. And I’ve made some great friends.”

  “Good,” Victor said. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”

  “The classes are not balanced well,” Braddock added. “Some of the abilities feel useless and there are not enough equipment drops.”

  “Yeah well,” Victor said, his smile dropping into an annoyed frown. “Leave a suggestion on the website.”

  “So what happens when we kill Orion?” Scarlett asked.

  “Orion is the final boss,” Victor said. “So when you kill him, the game ends. The servers will save the characters that survive and the world as it is into an instance that you will be able to get back into whenever the next game in the series comes out. Then the world will reset, so that other people can play.”