METAVERSE GAMES: OMNIBUS

by William Kurth

  A large piece of concrete with rebar sticking out from it crashed to the pavement just meters in front of the JLTV. Andy’s eyes went wide. If he had not slowed when he did that huge chunk of cement and rebar would have hit the JLTV, possibly even puncturing the armor. Dozens of smaller cinder blocks, bricks, rocks and pieces of iron struck the JLTV.

  “Holy shit! That huge chunk that just missed us could have crushed the rig, even with the armor.” Keith bellowed.

  “Or worse, it could have hit the turret and taken out the Vulcan and me.” Logan chimed in before announcing “Flare up.”

  A second later, the whole street and the hundred-plus story buildings on either side were illuminated with an intensity that exceeded any place on earth where the noon sun was the brightest. The sound of the JLTV being pelted ceased as swiftly as it began. Logan spun the turret around to check their six. The blood from his face drained.

  “Andy, check our six from the turret cam!”

  Andy tapped the small window comprising one-sixth of the MFD screen, the other five windows showing different camera angles around the rig. Instantly the little window expanded to the full MFD display.

  “Man, that’s gonna be bad if it hits us!”

  There perhaps fifty meters behind them and one hundred feet in the air was a large refuse truck, strung perpendicular to the street and pulled at an angle. Andy studied the cables that held it from a crane sitting atop an unfinished building. Pulling it back and holding it was the second set of wires attached to another crane on the same building. If those second cables were released, it was evident to Andy’s eyes what would happen. That thirty plus ton truck, probably loaded with fuel, would swing down in an arc, like a pendulum and crush most anything in its path before sweeping it away. How the DEVO’s got that thing strung up there like that was a mystery; one they had no time to figure out.

  Andy’s eyes darted to the semi-truck a half block in front of them, then to the large concrete boulder now cratering the street in front of them. His mind raced to all the DEVO’s that had been around the semi-truck; even for a regular mob there seemed to be a lot of activity. Was that semi-truck the anvil and the refuse truck pointed in their path the hammer?

  Andy heard the hum of the turret as Logan brought it around. “I’m gonna blast through that semi before they cut that thing loose!”

  “Belay that!” Andy screamed loud enough that he didn’t need to use the comms for Logan to hear him up in the turret.

  “Copy that, but what the hell, dude. I’m thinking the flare forced them from the cranes. As soon as it goes down in a few more minutes they are gonna release those cables. Do you want me to waste another flare? Only five left.”

  “No, I’m backing out. I think they want us going that way and blasting through the semi.” Andy instantly regretted not packing more flares, but then he never expected to be this deep so late. Andy threw the rig into reverse and was intently watching the backup monitor when the whole windscreen in front of him glowed orange. Andy forced himself to ignore what was happening in front of him and watched the backup camera.

  The JLTV accelerated backwards. In the monitor, Andy could see DEVO’s by the dozens scattering with the rear lights of the JLTV. A half dozen or more were slow in getting out of the light and out of the way. The screeching and thumping of several dragged underneath loud enough to be heard through the armor by the occupants, even Logan up in his perch.

  “Holy shit, where’d they come from?”

  Andy angled his eyes up from the monitor as he slammed on the brakes, looking to Keith, who’s mouth was wide open with the orange glow of the explosions a full city block in front of them. Andy shifted his gaze in time to see a modified transit bus with iron bars welded all over it haphazardly driving up onto the sidewalk pushing other vehicles out of the way as it sought to negotiate around the now burning semi. Andy recognized who they were even if his teammates did not.

  “Is that a rescue party coming from the team for us?” Keith said, more like a prayer than a question.

  The answer came as mini-gun rounds fired from the front of the bus bounced off the JLTV, making Andy’s response of “fraid-not,” no longer relevant.

  In the turret, Logan swung the Vulcan’s sighting system to the bus speeding towards them. Rounds ricocheted off the front of the JLTV and the turret as he depressed the triggers. Logan froze, his thumbs on the butterfly levers, as his line of sight in the screen became obscured by the solid waste truck swinging down towards the street. The bus slammed to a halt and backed up, but it was too late. The refuse truck bounced into the large concrete boulder that nearly caved in the JLTV earlier, sending it careening into the front of the bus. It smashed right through the windshield and driver. Figures emerged jumping from the bus, but it was too late for them too as the large trash disposal truck slammed into the bus. Hundreds or even thousands of gallons of fuel burst forth from the refuse truck and ignited a moment later. What wasn’t smashed or crushed was now on fire. The few occupants of the armored bus who successfully jumped to get out of the way of the truck swinging toward them were now on fire; running around, trying to extinguish the flames or just to get away.

  “We got to go help them!”

  Andy snorted at his young protégé before he spoke. “Those are not team members, those are from an Outfit. They have no love for us, I can assure you.”

  Keith had never seen any of the Outfitters on any previous mission and often wondered if they were just another Dead Zone myth. The Outfits were not DEVO’s, but they were just as ruthless and perhaps even as crazed, at least in their zealousness in protecting their territories in the DZ. Their origin was a bit of a mystery. It was first thought that they were mildly affected by the virus or possessed some limited immunity. As time went on, it became apparent that they were, or at least most of them were, rational. At least amongst their kind and with their goals, which primarily amounted to keeping the city for themselves and all the trophies therein.

  Most medical experts believed the DEVO’s, as numerous as they ever had been, would die off eventually. While it seems a contradiction in terms; at some level, the DEVO’s evolved. They hunted for food. Organized, at least enough to set traps, and had leaders who directed those activities. They communicated with primitive grunts and yells but were effective, especially with sentries who remained on the lookout from the shadows starting in the late afternoon. The Outfits sought to lawfully claim all the city as their own once the things died or were killed off. To that extent, they would attack and kill anyone they found trespassing, or worse rob them of everything then set them loose at sunset.

  The Outfits, tribal in nature, had a hierarchy with ruthless leaders. The different factions warred with each other, although after one recent battle costing dozens of lives on each side, they agreed to a truce and established territories. Outfits were like street gangs, territorial and always looking to expand their reach and their numbers. They even recruited from the INFIL-teams, particularly those that were kicked out or failed to meet the strict requirements or others who could bring them resources from the outside.

  Common among the Outfitters was their lack of respect for authority, law or their fellow humans. They were the “one percent,” like the outlaw motorcycle gangs that many of them belonged to. Before they found refuge and a common brotherhood and sisterhood in the underground train tunnels and sewers that crisscrossed the city where they reigned. They rarely attacked the DEVO’s except when necessary or in self-defense, since the DEVO’s constantly hunted them, sometimes with success.

  Their DEVO posture was purely practical. They had limited ammo and resources. Unlike the infiltration teams who all existed “outside the wire,” they had to scrounge for what they could within the city. The exception being when new recruits brought in resources or they could gather things on the black market, itself a limited source as getting into the Dead Zone was not easy. Still, some people and organizations made a nice profit supplying them, but doing so at gr
eat personal risk if the authorities found out, not to mention the danger of just delivering it. The Outfits and the teams did have a common goal though: the acquisition of trophies.

  Watching what was left of the transit bus, refuse truck and the burning semi, Andy squirmed in his seat. What were the odds a crew of Good Samaritans would just drop in out of the blue.

  How the hell did they find out about the gold?

  Andy spun the truck around and searched for a new route to the Radio Building. All while tens of thousands of DEVO’s all around the JLTV slowly weaving its way through debris-laden streets. The creatures scattering from the UV Torch-Light system, screeching away in madness.

  Chapter Five

  “Tell me again how you found out about the location of the gold?” Andy looked at Keith, taking his eyes off the road ahead. Keith had yet to tell him how even once. But it was a way for Andy to start the conversation that he had wanted to have but was preoccupied with outside events, literally as he turned back to see scores of DEVO’s fleeing from the lights of the rig while occasionally a brick or some other object bounced off the armored body.

  Andy focused on the open road he just turned onto, accelerating to about fifty miles an hour, leaving the creatures far behind, or at least the group that had been trailing him, more would be ahead.

  The road, adjacent to the port on his right was separated from the street by a tall chain link fence with barbed wire on top. Beyond the fencing were large parking lots, railroad tracks and the piers stacked with shipping containers. A dozen or more large ships lay abandoned still tied to the docks. The massive cranes that normally would have worked around the clock lay still.

  Now, Andy had a relatively clear path ahead and took advantage of that to race toward the only place he thought they could survive the night or at least part of it. Andy hoped he could convince Mia, his on again, off again girlfriend to fly her VTAL out and get him. The problem was they were in the off again stage; she was unhappy that Andy continued to take on the dangerous deep INFIL’s after he swore them off.

  They had grown close and Mia thought it fun and prosperous to run resupply flights out to the teams during daylight hours and then only on the periphery of the huge metropolitan area. But she thought it overly reckless to hunt deep in the inner city where too many things could go wrong, like Keith getting caught up in the sinkhole deep downtown late in the day. It wasn’t just the risk, it was the time. Where Mia and others only did INFIL work as a hobby that generated some income, Andy lived and breathed it, as did so many others. A journalist by training and sometimes by profession, infiltration runs were his life, and everything else had become subordinate including Mia. If Andy was going to continue to spend nearly every hour that he could doing this, she wasn’t going to be a part of his life. Maybe the gold will change her mind.

  “Who are you kidding? You love the adrenaline!” He sighed under his breath.

  How much longer could he skate over the increasingly thin ice of the long shot survival odds? Hunting for treasure in the city’s labyrinth deep interior not to mention the maze-like industrial structures. The interior not only offered more challenges but far greater rewards than the outer residential areas where he grew quickly bored. Andy was one of those hunters who loved the rush of himself being hunted by an often-cunning prey and reaping the rewards for his efforts. God help him, he loved it so!

  The JLTV’s tires skidded nearly to a stop before Andy yanked the wheel hard to the right before releasing the brakes. Turning into the driveway, he slammed on the gas pedal. The twelve-ton rig bounced airborne before crashing through a steel gate, tearing it off the hinges before tossing it into the air as if so much balsa wood.

  Andy didn’t let up on the gas as the JLTV raced through a parking area where hundreds of semi-trailers waited to be “piggy-backed” on flatbed rail cars sitting on the tracks waiting for cargo that would never be loaded just on the other side of the pavement. Andy weaved the JLTV through row after row of the trucks and trailers before finding a break in between freight trains on the rails just beyond the parking lot. Leaving the pavement, the JLTV bounced crazily as it ran over one series of train tracks after another going airborne each time, its wheels spinning in midair as the bright lights gyrated on the terrain around it.

  “What the hell, man!” Logan whooped from the turret.

  Keith tightened his restraints and grabbed onto the handle on the cross bar just in front of the passenger door. An endless line of freight cars blocked their path a couple of train tracks over. The JLTV bounced into the air, flying over first one set of tracks than another. Andy yanked the wheel left and raced up alongside the train, which looked to be a mile long or more, passing by in a blur to the right of the vehicle.

  “I asked you a question, Keith.”

  “Sources and methods, man. You know I can’t divulge all of that.”

  Andy slammed on the brakes bringing the JLTV to a sudden stop in a cloud of dust in the dirt and gravel between the railroad tracks; dark large freight cars towered over them to the right. Logan spun the turret in that direction and rotated one of the two spotlights on the open rail car flooding the interior of the one to the immediate right. Cases of long rotted vegetables were strewn all around. Some rats ran from the light as did a couple much larger things that went out the open door on the opposite side of the car. Through it Logan could see more trains, cars, and engines. He decided to keep the lights shining through them to avoid any surprises.

  “What’s up, bro?” Andy ignored the question coming through his headset from Logan and instead glared at Keith.

  “How bout I release your ass from the team, and I do it right here!”

  “Look, Andy, I—”

  “Don’t ‘look Andy’ me! Against my instructions, you went deep into the city. Granted you got what looks to be the single biggest haul ever. But in the process, you cost the life of David and you endangered Logan and me. I put our chances at less than fifty percent now that your little outing seems to have caught the attention of the Outfits.”

  “The DEVO’s dropped the truck on the bus, not us!”

  “It won’t matter to them! Don’t you get that? How many times have I told you they will just as likely shoot you as they would a DEVO, even if it is attacking them and you are just standing there. Hell, even if you are trying to help them. The Outfitters, particularly the Crewmen whose turf we’re on, don’t just go out roaming around blasting through the DEVO’s. They mostly stay underground and come out to chase us down. But even then, if they think the DEVO’s will get us they will stay out of it. Then they come out and collect our stuff after we’re corpse food. Something else brought them out, and I think something is in those bags in the back and the probably melted one in the sinkhole.”

  “Andy, I got a tip. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t, man.”

  “What tip? From who?”

  “I can’t—”

  “I swear to God! I will you kick your ass out now and leave you here, you need to tell me what the hell is going on. I thought by now you would have enough experience to know this is not some arcade game, it’s for real, and everyone plays for keeps, me included. The only thing that makes us successful is that we adhere to the rules of the team. One of the most important of which is that you file a mission plan on each INFIL, no matter how minor. Not only did you not do that, but you also went into an area that you weren’t authorized.”

  “I’m sorry. There are a lot of personal complications that are affecting me. In no way did I want to deceive you. I wanted to make you rich, as well as me.”

  “So, what’s new? The trophies are the whole reason we come in here. Give me one good reason why I should not kick you out right here?”

  Keith took a deep breath, squinting out his window to the spilled cases of the decomposed produce laying on the tracks below the open door of the freight car. Graffiti was everywhere, one very appropriate message was spray painted in large letters on the side to the left of the op
ening. “Stay in the light!”

  Keith twisted his head back to the front windscreen. “There’s more.”

  “More? You haven’t told me squat yet, what do you mean there’s more?”

  Keith turned to stare at Andy, meeting his eyes for the first time during their uncomfortable conversation.

  “More gold, Andy. A lot more.”

  ***

  A bearded man with a barrel chest leaned over his pickup truck’s roll bar and leered at his target in the distance. His leather vest over the long-sleeve mock turtleneck creaked as he swayed. The vehicle he rode in was blacked out. It drove over the tracks with one set of tires just outside of the heavy gauge rail and the other two wheels just to the inside of the other rail; the light pickup truck recoiling against its suspension. Even at that slow speed, the ride was bouncy and rough.

  The man just behind him and to his right, shorter and less muscular gripped the mini-gun attached to the top of the swivel post bolted to the bed so the weapon could turn 360 degrees. The man had his back against the cab of the pickup truck, watching their six. Like the large man next to him he also wore a black leather vest over his black long sleeve shirt. A black, yellow diamond patch just over the left breast portion had a “1%” stitched into it in red. Other patches adorned both men’s vests. The largest artwork was the “Jolly Rodger” skull and crossbones on the back. The upper rocker above it read “Crewmen,” the bottom rocker read “What’s Yours is Mine.” Other patches indicated rank, name or more likely a nickname, and individual awards like kills made and not of DEVO’s, in the form of red blood drops on a white patch. The larger muscular man already had a dozen or more of the red drops that he was intent on adding to as he brought the binoculars up to his face. The illumination traveling through the optics bounced off his eyes as he spied the vehicle with the bright lights stopped next to the freight car at their ten o’clock position, several railroad tracks over. “Why’d they stop?”