by Alex P. Berg
The nearest of the new zombies rushed the stairs, screaming and clawing at the air.
“Hold it off,” said Paige, holding firm.
“What?”
“Just do it!”
I retreated toward Paige’s position, kicking the thing as it neared me. The couch zombie bum rushed the first, creating a four-armed flailing mass of crazed rage.
“Pull the trigger,” I said.
“Not yet!”
I slashed with my machete, shearing bits of flesh off the arms. I retreated into Paige’s legs. The third zombie stumbled into the others at the base of the staircase.
A crack ripped through the air, turning the zombie’s brains into a piece of flesh-toned wall art.
I turned, the smell of burnt powder thick in my nostrils. “Nice shooting, Pai—”
I chucked my machete at Paige’s head while simultaneously pulling her tight against me, missing her but impaling the zombie who’d crept up behind her right between the eyes. The thing let out a wheezy groan and toppled, bouncing off the steps a few times before joining its pals at the bottom.
Paige gulped. “Uh…thanks.”
“No problem.”
She pressed up against me, her arm around my shoulders and the entire right side of her body pushed into my midsection. My flak jacket acted as a shield between the supple flesh of her breasts and my torso, but no such barrier existed between her curvy lower half and my man bits.
Paige gave me a raised eyebrow. “Rich…there’s something hard poking me in the rear.”
“I think that’s your shotgun.” I shifted, trying to dislodge it from between us.
Paige smiled. “You, uh…sure about that?”
“Yeah…this is getting uncomfortable. You’re already inside my head. I’m not sure we need to ratchet the relationship up any further.”
“Fair enough.” Paige pushed herself off me, steadying herself on the step above. “But don’t say I never try to cheer you up.”
“Seriously? Awkward,” I said. “Now let’s search this place before any more walkers show up. You’ve proven yourself adept with that shotgun. I’d rather you keep it loaded.”
Paige smiled again. “Was that a thinly veiled allusion?”
“Seeing as you’re the one with the gun, no,” I said. “Come on. Let’s move.”
11
I knelt on the edge of a hotel rooftop, bits of crumbled concrete crunching under my boots as I cast my gaze at the ruined cityscape below. The clouds had parted over the last hour, liberating the world’s large moon to bathe the lands below in a mellow, bluish white glow. The temperature had cooled somewhat, but not enough to keep my brow dry or my heart from beating heavy from exertion. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, and a rhythmic thumping of rotors hinted at a hulking metal bird nearby.
I tapped the side of my head twice to bring my HUD up. I checked the map, looking for the markers we’d set in place to indicate the position of Lars’s former party. The map moved over my vision as I twisted my head.
I stopped when the markers aligned with a building down the street, about a block away—a retail store of some kind, perhaps a grocery or hardware supplier. I pointed it out.
“That’s the place?”
“Gillian’s Superfoods Plus. Appears to be.” Paige stood next to me, nodding. She’d traded her pump action shotgun for a leaner, meaner black combat version with a folding stock and an eight shell magazine. An armored dirt bike jacket now covered her black tank top, and she’d strapped a katana with an enameled steel sheath to the back of the ensemble.
She wasn’t the only one who’d upgraded. I’d moved my machete to my belt loop to make room for a Marks and Sons semi-automatic pulse rifle with an extended barrel and a high-density ninety kilowatt hour battery. The sucker could make zombies dance like methamphetamine-fueled Extros at a rave, but I’d already drained the battery to less than a third of its original capacity without finding a suitable replacement.
Luckily, I didn’t need it thanks to the baby I now held in my arms. A fully loaded, fully automatic modular assault rifle, equipped with a reflex sight, visible laser, extended magazine, spotlight, and grenade launcher—but that wasn’t all. Some crazy as nails modder had bolted a spinning buzz saw to the end of the muzzle, activated via a secondary trigger set to the side of the main firing mechanism. The whole thing hung loosely around my neck thanks to a skull and crossbones guitar strap someone had jury-rigged for the task.
Paige looked across the expanse between us and the shop. “Doesn’t look too bad. Street seems clear. I say we move in quick, making as little noise as possible, and hopefully we’ll avoid any confrontations that could draw attention.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Want me to lead?”
“With that new toy of yours? I definitely don’t want you behind me.”
I smiled. Though I’d taken my time warming up to the game, the addition of Buzzy McFaceripper to my arsenal had definitely upped the enjoyment factor.
I stood and shifted the rifle to my side, letting it hang fully from the black guitar strap that reeked of stale beer and death metal. I hooked my feet over the edge of a safety ladder, lowering myself rung by rung in the caged portion at the top before eventually reaching the open section below, at which point I slid down it with my hands and feet at the sides, skidding down in bursts to avoid rope burn on my hands.
I hit the ground and immediately transitioned into a light jog, my feet skipping over the cracked pavement below which glistened under the combined efforts of the moonlight and a sheen of dew. I heard a light thump of feet behind me and checked to make sure Paige followed before continuing at a brisk pace down the street. I stuck to the middle, in plain sight should anyone be watching but far from any potential lurkers or cars equipped with hair-trigger alarms—which they all were. Apparently every car in the game had seen its security system serviced by an auto technician with a vendetta against carjackers and a severe case of Parkinson’s disease. Realism, my ass.
I closed on the front door of the greengrocer, pausing as I waited for Paige to catch up. When she did, I wasted no time, swinging open the front door and stepping into the breach, activating the light on my assault rifle as I did so. The glare might attract zombies, but lacking a non-infrared set of night vision goggles, it was my best bet.
I swept the beam back and forth as I waded towards aisles laid bare by the grime-caked hands of scavengers. Tin cans stripped of their labels littered the floor, some covered in a long since evaporated slime, others wallowing in seas of corn dust, cereal ground to powder by the mindless shuffling of undead feet.
I heard a howl and pivoted. A zombie lurched at me from underneath a checkout counter. I pulled on my trigger, sending high speed lead tearing through its corpse.
Two more howls. I spun left and right, firing hot death into the skulls of shamblers, my rifle thumping into my shoulder with every round fired. Paige’s shotgun ripped through the air. Blast. Pump. Blast. Pump. Blast.
“There’s a safe house in the back, I think,” she called. “Let’s move!”
I spurned my legs into gear, flying down one of the aisles with Buzzy at the ready. Rotting faces reared up out of the darkness, flashing me their rotting yellow teeth and bloodshot eyes. My rifle sang, the whip crack of the gunshots taking first billing to the steady melodic tinkle of the shells bouncing off the tile. My muzzle glowed from the steady discharge, hot and vicious.
The safe house door materialized in front of me. I rushed it, but an enormous corpse moved to block me—over two meters tall and at least a hundred and fifty kilos. I swapped my trigger finger to the side, sending the saw whizzing into action. I lunged and howled, swinging the spinning blade in a wide arc. Spin. Slice. Jab. The enormous herker disappeared in a cloud of blood and entrails.
The safe house door imploded under the force of my boot heel. Gristle and ichor dripped from my face as I dashed into the room. I cut loose with a p
rimal scream, holding up my weapon to the skies and feeling a surge of adrenaline flow through my veins with a burst of masculine, virile power.
A quintet of individuals sat on an L-shaped couch, staring at me, nonplussed. The one on the end, with shaggy hair and an air of disinterest, took a sip of his beer and flicked a finger at me. “Who the hell is this douchenozzle?”
Paige hopped through the door after me, smashing it shut, locking the deadbolt, and sliding a wooden slat into place behind it for security.
I shifted from my action hero pose to a more traditional stance. “This douchenozzle has a name. Rich Weed, and I’ll let you know I just sliced and diced my way through hordes of slobbering zombies to get here. So show a little respect.”
The wannabe punk rocker brushed the hair out of his eyes and took another sip of his beer. “Uh…yeah. On easy.”
“Easy?” I glanced at Paige.
She shrugged and gave me a reluctant smile. “Well, what did you expect? That I’d set it to expert right off the bat? The only games you play on a regular basis are tile-matching and repetitive tapping sorts of things.”
My stance drooped into more of a slouch. “Oh.”
The emo dude gave me an idle wave with his beer hand. “Seriously, bro, we’re not interested. We’ve already got a party, and we’re way out of your league.”
“No,” I said, lowering my rifle to let it hang from the strap. “That’s not why I’m here. We’re looking for someone. Two someones, actually. Paige?”
“PinkOniGirl and DreadMysterio59,” said Paige. “That you?”
A girl in the back with a metallic purple bob that swept across her forehead lifted a hand. “I’m Oni. That’s Dread.” She pointed to the side of the couch, where a muscular dark-skinned man with an oriental dragon shaved into his millimeter-length hair sat. “What do you want?”
I thanked my lucky stars Dread wasn’t the guy with the beer. “We’re here to ask you about Lars.”
“Who?” said Oni.
“XXEliteForce420XX.”
“Oh, right. Leetforce,” said Oni. “He signed off a few hours ago. What of him? You, uh…joining him in a party?”
I glanced at Paige. “A few hours ago? You’re sure?”
Dread and Oni shared a similar glance as the one Paige and I had. Dread narrowed an eye. “Look, man. Richweed or whatever handle you go by. We’re Leet’s friends, but we don’t hang out with him all the time. Whatever you had going on, that’s between the two of you.”
“I’m not here about a missed connection,” I said. “Look, I don’t know how to break this to you, but…Lars? Leetforce? He’s dead.”
“What are you talking about?” said Dread. “We ventured into a few high level areas and had some close calls, but nobody died. Besides, are you dense? We already told you he logged out.”
“I don’t mean in game,” I said. “In real life. He’s dead.”
Dread snorted and waved a hand at me. “Get out of here, man.”
“Told you,” said the punkrock dude. “Douchenozzle.”
“No, seriously,” I said. “I didn’t come here to meet Lars, or Leetforce. I’m not a gamer—”
“Obviously…” muttered one of the other couch crew.
“—I’m a private investigator. Leet’s mother—real mother—hired me to track him down, to try to reconnect with him after spending several decades apart out of fear of personal interaction. We tracked Lars to his apartment but couldn’t contact him, either physically or via Brain missive, so we set up some surveillance systems and eventually found that Lars was, well…dead. He passed away weeks ago if the state of his body is any indication.”
“His mother wanted to reconnect?” said Oni. “That’s really sweet. My parents have never shown the slightest interest in me. I mean—ZOMBIE!”
Oni pulled a handgun and unloaded two rounds, one after the other, through a window at the side of the room. Cracks radiated out from the bullet holes in the glass, the pair so close together to be virtually indistinguishable. On the other side, the zombie who’d stood there groaned and slid down the pane, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.
“And that’s how it’s done, noob,” said the emo dude, taking another sip of his beer.
“Hey, I may use more ammo, but I get the job done,” I said. “Besides, it’s not as if your girl over there couldn’t have done better. She wasted a bullet when one would’ve sufficed.”
“It’s called a double tap,” said Oni. “Learn it. But that walker got us off topic. What I was going to say was, regardless of his family situation, there’s no way Leetforce is dead, especially if the person you found croaked weeks ago. He was playing with us a few hours ago.”
“Seconded,” said Dread. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
I glanced at Paige.
She shrugged. “Their stories match Princess’s servenet logs.”
“What about Leet’s behavior?” I asked Oni. “Had he…changed at all? Behaviorally, I mean. Within the last few weeks.”
“No,” said Oni. “Look, this must be some sort of mistaken identity situation. I’m telling you, Leet’s fine, physically and mentally.”
“What about you?” I asked Dread. “What do you say?”
He snorted and rolled his eyes.
“Dude, you’re clearly not going to believe us,” said the beer-infused malcontent on the end. “So go ask his girlfriend, instead.”
“Girlfriend?” I said. “Lars had a girlfriend?”
“Leetforce has a girlfriend,” said Oni. “Seriously, what world do you live in?”
I understood now. She meant in game. “What’s her avatar?”
“TriumphCat. She’s—” Oni adopted that semi-glazed look indicative of someone accessing their Brain. “Oh. Never mind. She’s playing Strike Force Zeta, and if I remember correctly, her clan is bombarding the Silurian base today. You’d get slaughtered out there. I’ll send her a message. Tell her to meet you in the hub world if she gets a chance. But you have to promise me something first.”
“What?” I said.
“Don’t be creepy,” said Oni. “You know, talking about Lars this and that. I mean, seriously, dude. Get a clue.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “But only if you answer me one question first.”
“Being?” said Oni.
“How do I get out of this game? I’ve kept my eyes peeled for glowing portals without seeing even a hint of one.”
The couch crew stared at me with a bevy of raised eyebrows. Some of their jaws dropped. Paige slapped her forehead.
I gulped. “Did I, uh…mention I skipped the new gamer orientation?”
12
I sat on a park bench in the aptly named Princess City, the sprawling metropolis that served as Princess Gaming’s most prestigious and luxurious hub city. Tall oak trees and maples, some reaching thirty meters into the sky, cast shadows over the lawn that stretched in front of me, while skyscrapers ten to fifty times as tall pierced the sky behind them. The trees failed to shade me, sitting as I was at the side of a running trail that circled a pond before dipping back into the trees, but I didn’t mind. Unlike Cetie, the air was deliciously brisk. A breeze blew gently but consistently, enough to cool me to the touch but not enough to muss my hair or whip the edge of my guayabera into my face.
“I wonder if it ever rains here,” I said.
Paige, sitting next to me on the bench, shrugged. Like me, she’d ditched her gear from Marked 4 Death, reverting to her monochrome tank top and garish leggings. “Probably not. If people want rain, they can get that in one of the innumerable sims and games available to them. The hubs are supposed to appeal to as many people as possible.”
Off in the distance, flying cars whipped to and fro in the aisles between buildings creating multi-tiered stacks of traffic ten and twelve layers high. Tubes snaked between the tops of the skyscrapers, each of them shooting passengers through their innards like hig
h speed nonaqueous waterslides, and levitating trains whisked back and forth along elevated rails, carrying gamers and NPCs alike to all stretches of the city.
All the varied methods of transportation were completely inefficient, of course. They weren’t science fiction, but no sane civil engineer would ever design such a system in real life. The power expenditures for flying cars were absurd, levitating trains had been phased out in favor of sealed high speed vacuum pods ages ago, and personal transport tubes, as fun as they seemed, were expensive, created logistical nightmares, and chafed terribly. Not to mention all the methods of transport were entirely superfluous given Princess’s portal fast travel system—which, as if turned out, I could access from anywhere at any time. It was how Paige and I had moved from Marked 4 Death to the serene tranquility of the park.
I almost remarked that it would’ve been nice to be a Princess programmer, not having to worry about real world concerns like energy usage and urban planning when creating massive hub worlds, before I remembered that programming was never as fun as using the end product. Besides, it wasn’t as if the programmers didn’t have to adhere to certain rules and regulations, including the plastering of Princess Gaming promotional materials on virtually every surface. On the faces of skyscrapers, billboards, floating in mid-air via enormous holodisplays, even on the very bench we now sat were the various Princess slogans. ‘We get gamers!’ ‘A haven for Intros!’ And my favorite: ‘At Princess, the only rule is—have fun!’ Every single display popped brightly in bubblegum pink and showed Johnny Masters and his cheesy, plasticized smile. Some of them even had him firing his trademark finger guns.
A portal sliced through the air not ten meters from our bench, and out of it stepped a suit of power armor, a meter and sixty tall, lacquered blue and gleaming in the sunlight except where covered with thick, green viscera. The suit stepped toward me, surprisingly lightly given its size, and paused two meters out. The tinted hemisphere of the suit’s helmet retracted with a puff, disappearing into the headrest at the back. From its shadow emerged a woman with tan skin, dark eyes, and long brown hair held back in a pony tail.
