by David Payne
The black mass had now swamped the camp, and were on their way to the river.
“Goddamn, this is working.” Said Ted.
I peered through the holes in the iron windscreen. Those down by the river were trapped. Some had the idea of running along the river bank but the swarm was too wide. There was no escape. Others stood their ground and fired their weapons.
Bursts of red immediately appeared among the black sea, the damage power of the rifles more than enough to obliterate single rats, but in terms of putting a dent in the horde, they were as well using a pin prick.
They only had one option. They threw their rifles down, turned, and dived into the river.
I held my breath. Fuck, we hadn’t thought of this. Were the rats all going to drown? My question was soon answered.
The topless marauders now swam for their lives, their arms hitting the water multiple times a second as they made for the other side. Now if these had been regular rats then this would surely have saved them, but these were zombie rats.
The first wave arrived at the river’s edge, and I expected them to either stop or tumble into the river, but something else happened altogether. The launched themselves from the bank into the river and onto the swimmers. I looked on in amazement as they flew like little black missiles, their undead senses driving them thoughtlessly to their prey, tearing into the bodies as soon as they latched on with their tiny but deadly teeth.
The air was filled with multiple screams, to join the screeching of the horde.
The river was now a thrashing mass of bodies trying desperately to fight off the rats. Some went underwater, hoping to drown the rats, but they did not reappear. Dead rats did not need air and could not drown. I saw flailing arms entirely covered in rats as they disappeared. It was a slaughter.
The river now looked like some nearby factory had spilled red dye into it. The blood in the water kept the rats coming, throwing themselves in even though now there were hardy any bodies left to fling themselves at, their tiny mouths snapping at the water.
A black river flowing into a red river, it was like…what did you call it? I couldn’t remember the word for when two rivers met, but that was what I was looking at.
I lost track of time, we all did. But at some point the black river was no more, and the red river had turned back to clear water. No rats, no squeaking, no marauders.
“I don’t see any movement”, I said to the others.
“Me neither”, said Ted.
“I can’t see anything”, said Sara.
Tentatively we opened the passenger doors and stepped out. I immediately looked down to the ground to see that there weren’t any of the vicious rodents scurrying about, but they had all been drawn to the river. There were none, but I was looking at what had once been the guard that Ted had shot. Stripped of any flesh, he was now just a grinning skeleton. I picked up his rifle next to him.
AK-47
Class 5 item
Weight: 4.5kg
Damage: +20
Ammo: Empty.
I threw the gun back down in disgust. Ted chortled.
“Don’t worry kid, we’ll get you an AK sometime. Now I reckon what we’re looking for is in those vans.”
He was right, the two white vans surely had plenty of equipment and hopefully the antidotes that we needed. But then as we were approaching them, we heard a door slam shut. We spun round to be confronted by General Harper.
The huge man was topless, revealing a bitten and bloody torso, some rats must have gotten a hold of him before he got into the car.
He actually had hold of a headless rat in his hand, holding it up toward us.
“Did you bring these here? Or were they coming after you?”
I was wondering if we should give him the honest answer, as Ted opened his mouth.
“Led him right to you ‘General’. We think you have something we want you see, we need antidotes. Maybe you can help us out.”
“I see.” The General threw away the headless rat. “As a matter of fact, we have much antidotes.”
“Well, maybe you can spare some”, said Sara. ”You don’t have any men now, you won’t be needing all of it.”
The General smiled.
“I could do that, however, there is a principal at stake here. You are responsible for the deaths of all my men. I cannot let that stand. So if you wish to take anything of mine, I am afraid it will have to be over my dead body-literally.”
“I’m out of ammo”, said Ted, looking to Sara.
“Me too”, she replied.
Both out of ammo and the one gun I had picked up was empty. Great. I pulled up General Harper’s stats.
General Harper, Marauder leader
Level 10
Mana: 35
Strength: 25
Endurance: 25
Speed: 8
Agility: 7
Willpower: 20
Intelligence: 10
“He’s too strong for any of us individually”, I said to Ted, reaching for my nail. Shit, it must have fallen out when I was charging across the woods.
The General was backed up against one of the vans, with a confident smile on his face. We were the ones who had to come to him to get what we needed, and he was smart enough not to let us draw him into the open so we could surround him and take his back.
The three of us approached the man mountain warily. Ted had his knife brandished. I so wanted to get some hits on this brute, but the smart thing was to hang back and let Ted draw first blood since he was armed. Sara must have lost her weapon too, fighting off the rats.
“You know, you all don’t look to healthy, you’d best be quick.”
“I’ll keep him occupied, said Ted, “the two of you get what we need.”
Ted suddenly lunged at the General with his knife, but the marauder leader was ready. He raised his leg and rammed what must have been a size eighteen combat boot right into the chest of Ted, sending him hurtling back, somersaulting over several times.
So focused was I on this display of power I was rooted to the spot for several second, then remembered I was supposed to be sprinting round to the back of the van. But I was too slow. The General stepped in front of me, grabbing me by the lapels and smashing a huge right fist into my face, sending me sprawling onto my back. My head was ringing as my nose began to fill with blood.
I saw in the bottom of my screen that my mana was down to seven. Fuck that was a hell of a hit.
I sat myself back up on the palm of my hands to see the General swinging his mighty arm repeatedly at Sara. She was ducking and diving, brining grunts of frustration from the General as his fists pummelled the air. His mana was down to twenty nine.
She was making him swing and miss and tiring him out, using her speed and agility to her advantage. But he would only need to catch her with one blow to seriously deplete her mana. All our mana had to be getting dangerously low right now.
I could not let her fight the brute alone. Ted was still winded, desperately trying to suck some air back into his body so he could get back in the fight.
I needed a weapon. My fists would not be able to do much more than a damage point at a time, if that. I had an idea.
I picked up a small rock by the car and hurled it thought the window. Quick as I could I reached in, to grab the deadliest looking shard on the seat. Sara was till swinging and missing.
“Any help here would be nice guys.”
He finally caught her, right in the face with a right just like he had me, slamming her to the ground, her nose broken, her lovely features splattered in blood. She had to have taken a real hit to her mana.
Shard of glass
Class 1 item.
Damage: + 2
Weight: 0.2KG
It was digging into my hand and drawing blood, but I was able to ignore the pain as I approached the General.
“You should have stayed down my friend, it would have been easier on you, but I must admit I do like your spirit.”
“Maybe you won’t like it so much when I shove this in your throat.”
I feigned a lung at his head. He instinctively brought his arms up, allowing me to slash at his stomach, the General cursing as I slashed a huge red line right across his chiselled abs.
General Harper Mana: 26
The confident smile had disappeared from his face. He was mine, this end level boss was about to get his ass kicked, just like all those I had kicked over the years. Ultimately they all fell before me.
He swung, I slashed, his wrists were soon criss-crossed with red as he desperately tried to grasp for me.
“You motherfucker, I will snap your fucking neck.”
And then the cavalry arrived.
Sara was bloody but not beaten, Ted had gotten his breath back.
As he General threw at me, Ted was able to get a slash right across his forehead, bringing a crimson tide down over his face.
He was all mine. As he swung blindly with one hand and tried to wipe the blood from his eyes with the other I could sense Ted was poised to deliver the killer blow. But I needed to be the one. I had to kill him, I had to get that extra life. I stepped in front of Ted, shoved Sara aside and I plunged the shard of glass right into the General’s neck, the red spray hitting my face.
He collapsed to his knees, gurgling, looking up at me unbelievingly though his bloody eyes, before collapsed face down.
General Harper dead.
Collect an extra life.
I stood there for several seconds, savouring the exhilaration. Another one bites the dust at my hands.
“Satisfied Kid?” Said Ted.
“So much for letting me have the extra life huh?” said Sara.
I looked at them both.
Fuck. I let my shard of glass fall to the ground.
“Asshole”, said Sara. “after all I did, you shove me out of the way to get an extra life?”
Yes. I had. It was the behaviour of an addict. One who could not control himself. I had to be the one to get the kill. And now I was at three lives while Sara was at one.
“Ok”, said Ted, “let’s see what we can see in this van.”
____________
Perfect. We had discovered the vials in a blue cooler, a veritable treasure trove of the stuff. It was labelled ‘Zombie virus antidote’, so we had assumed the marauders labelled things properly and injected the stuff into ourselves. It was usually so sweet to see that green mana bar shoot up the way, I could feel the virus leaving my body as the serum did its stuff. But right now, nothing felt so sweet.
“Now this is what I am taking about ladies and gentlemen”, said Ted.
Down by the river banks we had gathered up all the rifles. It now occurred to me I could have ran down to the back, got one, took it back up and shot the General, rather than getting into hand to hand combat with broken glass.
Now we had more weaponry that we could carry. I picked up the shotgun.
Shotgun
Item class: 5
Weight: 4kg
Ammo: 10 slugs
Damage: +20
“Told you we’d get you a gun eventually kid. I’m sticking to my trusty old AK, got plenty of ammo for her here as well.”
Now I was armed with a shotgun (though I still didn’t have firearm ability yet, perhaps Ted could teach me) and I had found a huge machete as well. There were also medical supplies and plenty of food, we had truly had hit the jackpot.
“Z at twelve o clock”, said Ted.
“I got him”, replied Sara.
I looked up to see a zombie stumbling toward us in between the cars. He was a walker, so not too much of a threat. Sara strode up to him with her new find knife to dispatch him.
As Sara got close, from the side I noticed something odd about this zombie. His shirt was all torn up and I was sure those were wires sticking out of the side of his stomach. I squinted. Was I seeing things right? Zombies were flesh and blood, not robots, you couldn’t yank their wires out…
“Sara get the fuck away!”
I charged toward her, my shout distracting her, making her turn her head just as she had the knife raised and was about to go for the kill.
Just as the zombie reached for her, I leapt forward, slamming into him with all my body weight and bringing him crashing to the ground. He instantly sank his teeth into my neck, the pain just barely registering for the briefest of moments. I had the sensation of an immense force blowing against my body from below, the world turning white, before it went dark.
_____________
“FBI! Let me see your hands motherfucker, let me see your hands!”
I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. I should still be in the game. I knew what had happened. That son of a bitch player-killer, whoever he was, had made a suicide bomber out of a zombie and sent him our way. It was evil genius when you thought about it, and I had lost a life, not wanting to see Sara get perma-death. But I still had two lives left, I should be faced with the ‘Do you wish to continue?’ screen.
But what the hell was this? I was, as far as I could tell, in the real world, with FBI agents in their blue jackets with the yellow writing pointing a gun in my face.
The helmet had been stripped off and I was spun around and shoved against the wall, my hands pulled behind my back. I was then handcuffed and marched out of the room.
The scene in the corridor was chaotic, FBI agents slamming working girls and heavies to the wall, or restraining them face down on the floor, reading them their rights as those being arrested turned the air blue.
I then set eyes on Tony being marched up the corridor by two agents, one of then yelling right into his face.
“Nice move beating the shit out of anyone who pissed you off Tony. You do that to enough people and you’re going to get at least one person who come to the cops, illegal gaming or not. Shame you weren’t a bit smarter, maybe you could have kept this little operation from us a while longer.”
“Sorry man”, said Tony as he was marched by me, ”never did get that temper under control.”
As he was taken out of sight, no doubt to spend a very long time behind bars, a woman walked up to me. She was small, blonde, her hair tied up, and she was looking at me almost as if she knew me.
“You do look familiar-Joe?”
“Yeah…how do you…”
She was dressed in plain clothes, simply jeans and a t-shirt, and didn’t look like one of the agents, but then she was handed what looked like an ID tag that she hung around her neck.
‘Special Agent Sara Jones’, it said.
She reached up and took my head in her hands, her palms feeling so warm on my cheeks as she looked right into me with those blue eyes.
“You gave up one of your three lives. That’s the sweetest thing that anybody has ever done for me.”
The agents on either side of me laughed.
“Sara?”
She nodded her head and was just about to respond when we were distracted by the commotion now occurring in the corridor.
“Fuck you pig! I’ll fucking kill all of you, get your fucking hands off me!”
It was Vince, and it was taking four agents to haul his immense frame out.
“Well, well”, said Sara, “Mr Player Killer himself.”
“He was the player killer?”
“Yes. The mob needed an honest way of killing players so they didn’t have to pay out the million dollars. Player killing is, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, ‘ungentlemanly conduct’ but it’s not cheating. Mr Psychopath here was suited to the role. My guess is we’ll be able to pin at least five murders on him, in the real world that is.”
“Were you…undercover?”
“Ha ha! I don’t know if undercover is the word now is it? Everyone was pretending to be somebody they’re not in that world weren’t they? I guess you could call it undercover. I was to stay there for as long as I could, stay alive to see what I could see, find out everything that might be of interest to the government in that
game, maybe discover where some other gaming dens were at. But then I got blown up, despite your best efforts, and we made our move. So here I am and there you are Joe-in handcuffs. Let me guys.”
She took my arm and led me up the corridor to join the other illegal gamers, gangsters, drug dealers and hookers they had rounded up. What company I was in.
“You know you were wrong about one thing?” I said.
“What’s that Joe?”
“Ted. Ted wasn’t pretending to be anybody he wasn’t.”
“No, I guess you’re right.” We walked in silence for a minute or so, and then she added. “And thanks to you, he might have a shot at winning the game.”
“You didn’t pick him up?”
“No. He must be in another den, in another part of the country, one we haven’t found yet.”
“So he’ll still be in the game?”
“Yes. And thanks to you he’ll still have two lives left. Not sure if he’s the only player left or no, but either way, he’s a tough son of a bitch. Maybe he’ll stand a chance of winning that money for his kid, or maybe we’ll get to his den before that. Who knows?”
Another minute of silence.
“Is that a smile on your face Joe? You know, you have a real spring in your step for a man who’s about to go to jail.”
“I guess I do Agent Sara Jones. I guess I do.”
THE END
