by Wyatt Savage
“Congratulations,” Sue said in regard to the man I’d shot. “You have killed a Level 1 participant and gained 25 experience points. You now have 183 experience points, 33 of which can be allocated.”
“For what?”
“Whatever you choose.”
A status message appeared on my SecondSight HUD, a collection of holographic images that floated in the air. There were magazines of ammunition, grenades, cutting instruments, battle helmets, a few pieces of ordinary body-armor, gloves, boots, what looked like a first-aid kit, and other items that could be obtained for minimal points.
Above these items were various other classes of weapons and gear that could only be obtained with many more points. Stuff like battle suits of all shapes and sizes, machine guns, rocket launchers, laser guns, jet packs, tanks, armored motorcycles, and all kinds of exotic weaponry that I’d never seen before, shit that looked lifted out of the pages of some science-fiction book.
“Medicine,” I said. “How much for the medicine?”
“Each Rejuv costs 25 points.”
“Can I trade points?” I asked.
“I do not understand,” Sue replied.
“Can I swap points with someone else?”
“Do you mean, are you permitted to gift points to another participant?”
“Yeah.”
A few seconds of silence, then Sue said, “I still do not understand. This is the Melee.”
“And?”
“It is every person for themselves,” she answered, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Maybe that’s how it is where you come from, but that’s not the rule down here,” I said.
“We shall see.”
“We definitely will.”
“You are not permitted to gift points to other participants,” Sue said.
I gazed at my SecondSight, mentally moving a cursor over the first-aid kit.
“Please confirm selection of Rejuv,” the prompt said.
I selected yes and the prompt noted that I had allocated 25 XP to buy the meds. I instantly felt a warm current flow over the entirety of my body, my HUD stats reflecting:
Species: Homo Sapiens (James, Logan)
Chattel:.45 AMT Hardballer
Health:10/10
Level 1:1
Class:Fighter
Kills:6
Vitals:BP – 120/80; T – 97.04f; RR – 12bpm
XP:158
I stood and felt better, boosted by the additional four health points, stronger, clear-headed, blood pressure down, temperature and respiratory rate normal, ready to run a marathon.
Dwayne and Lish moved slowly towards me, eying the dead man.
“You just s-shot that g-guy,” Dwayne stammered.
“It was him or me,” I said.
“But he was on his back.”
I glared at Dwayne. “Don’t tell me you haven’t killed anything yet.” Dwayne looked at the ground and I continued. “Well the rules are pretty simple, guys. You have to stay alive and kill things to get points to buy new weapons and abilities to make it over the wall to the next level. Either you do that—”
“Or you reach your journey’s end,” Dwayne said, cutting me off. “We know what the rules are, Logan.”
I noticed something hovering in the air behind Lish, what looked like a pallet. “What is that thing?”
“A holo-lift. I traded 50 points for it,” Lish said. “We can put our loot on it and it’ll follow us everywhere.”
Quickly and efficiently, we pulled everything of value off the dead men, including their weapons and gear and for some reason money and jewelry, which Lish stashed in a small backpack she’d taken off one of the deceased.
Then we made a quick circuit through the nearby houses and snagged anything we could find, including knives, things that could be used as weapons, material to start fires, and food of course, lots of food and drinks.
Once everything was stacked on the holo-lift, we retraced our steps back down the hillside.
We crossed over the trickle of water and trudged back up to the road where we’d been ambushed.
All the while, I kept my eyes on my SecondSight HUD, scanning the map, noting that the road to my brother’s house, the very same one that ended at the wall, was swarming with dots. There would be lots of enemies up ahead, both human and alien. If we had any chance of reaching the wall and finding a way over it, we’d have to go right through them.
Up on the road we inspected what was left of our truck. Having been burned by the Immolator, the machine had been reduced to a blackened lump. There was nothing of value in the thing, not a thing to salvage.
The Immolator’s truck, however, a Chevy Silverado that seemed bigger than a school bus complete with huge tires and metal scrap bolted to the side, was a different story. It was completely intact. We climbed up into the damn thing, finding that it reeked of piss, tobacco, and sweat.
There were empty snack bag wrappers, soda containers, and boxes of ammo littering the seats and floor, no usable chattel of any kind. Lish used her skills and a screwdriver to strip the steering column and pull out a cluster of multi-colored wires. Then she went to work, pulling out a red wire, tying it around a green one, until she was able to use the screwdriver to start it up.
“You actually know how to do that?” I asked.
She smirked. “You’d be surprised what I know how to do, especially after I got the alien implant.”
I climbed into the passenger seat and Dwayne took up a position behind me, placing his rifle through a shooting hole that had been bored into the side panel.
“We’ve got approximately four hours and forty-seven minutes, so where to?” he asked.
I pointed and we looked out to see it because it was visible now.
The immense shape of the wall could be seen in the distance.
It appeared to have grown taller and it was backlit by a series of eerie-looking lights, blobs of color that seemed to bob in the air.
“Yeah that’s not too weird or anything,” Dwayne said, shivering.
My SecondSight HUD flashed and I saw things approaching from behind us.
“Planes and helicopters,” Lish said, seeing the same thing.
Dwayne looked back out through the rear windshield. “Ours?”
I nodded. “Only question is whether they’re wearing white hats or black.”
Lish slotted the truck in gear and we drove at 25 miles per hour past the detritus of a recent firefight. There were a dozen cars smoldering on the blacktop including three police cars and an ambulance, and countless bodies lying in various attitudes of death that were being explored by small packs of dogs that were running down the street.
We slipped by all of this and stopped under an overpass which afforded an excellent view of the wall.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“We’re waiting to see how the show goes,” Lish said.
She pointed and I could hear the roar of jet engines overhead followed by the whop-whop-whop of helicopters.
One of my old man’s favorite movies was Apocalypse Now. What unfolded next reminded me an awful lot of the scene in the movie where the air cavalry folks attack that village on the river.
The inky-black sky filled with jets and copters that were moving as one toward the wall. My HUD reflected that the aerial assault was comprised of F-16s, F-35s, and an assortment of Blackhawk and Apache helicopters.
Suddenly, pinpricks of light flashed as they fired rockets, missiles, anything they had at the wall.
“Hell yes,” Lish said, kneading the steering wheel. “Let ‘em have it!”
Explosions detonated up and down the wall and I stared at the lights on the planes and copters, watching them grow smaller as they approached the wall.
And then the sky seemed to catch on fire.
The entire fucking sky in the distance became a sea of orange, red, and blue flames and the jets and helicopters disappeared.
All of the
m.
And the fires that had been spawned by their rockets and missiles slowly faded to nothing and winked out.
The wall remained however, untouched, looming down over everything like some kind of idol.
“How is that possible?” Dwayne said. “How can you – how the hell is that even possible?”
I looked over at Lish and the color had drained from her face. She didn’t say anything, just slipped the truck into gear and we drove off, headed toward my brother’s house.
24
With the holo-lift following us in the air like some kind of magic carpet, we cut down some side streets and watched groups battling it out across the suburbs, teams of fighters facing off, or getting attacked by other squads led by men and women who’d acquired various Ragetags. I could tell this because some of the fighters were sporting hi-tech equipment, or running and jumping faster and higher than any normal human.
I also saw several of the Noctem. They were hovering in the air over the battlefield, appearing to observe the fighting. I took aim at them and then Lish grabbed my elbow.
“Don’t do it,” she said.
“What?”
“Shoot at the Noctem.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“You’ll die. Whatever they implanted in us won’t allow us to attack them. Watch.”
The truck slowed and I saw a small contingent of armed men and women zeroing in on the Noctem. Say what you want, but they had serious stones. They crept up below the Noctem, raised their weapons and—
BOOM!
Their heads exploded.
“Whatever they implanted in us contains explosives. Try and kill one of those things and you’ll literally lose your head.”
“Lovely,” I said, lowering my gun, watching the headless bodies hit the ground.
Lish sighed. “They’ve thought of everything.”
“Sue?”
“Yes?” my SecondSight voice replied.
“Can we attack the Noctem?”
“No, there is a miniature explosive contained within one of the nodules implanted by the Noctem. If you try to turn your weapons against the Noctem it will detonate, opening your carotid artery or releasing your head from your shoulders. Death will be almost instantaneous. The only way to circumvent it is to reach your journey’s end.”
I cursed under my breath, then looked over to the others. “Maybe we need to figure out a way to combine what we have.”
“What?” Dwayne asked. “Like points?”
“We can’t combine points, but maybe there’s a way to do something else.”
“How many points do you have, Logan?” Lish asked.
“One hundred sixty-four.”
“That’s it?”
“I had to use some to get medicine.”
She looked over at me. “So much for that whole ‘all for one and one for all’ shit, huh?”
My face flushed. Shit. In all of the excitement I’d forgotten to even consider that maybe I could’ve shared some of the meds with Lish and Dwayne. Sue said that points couldn’t be gifted, but maybe there was a way to share the stuff you bought.
“Sue said we couldn’t share points,” I offered.
“Points and items are two different things.”
Dwayne snapped his fingers. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe combining loot is a loophole.”
I rubbed my face. “Wouldn’t they have thought of that?”
“Maybe they think all humans are the same. Only out for number one,” Dwayne offered.
The three of us brooded on this, driving through the darkness to my brother’s place on the edge of Annapolis.
Given the amount of crap littering the road and our fear that we might be ambushed at any time, we drove at thirty miles per hour. Dwayne had fallen asleep in the back and I was coiled like a snake on my seat, rifle at the ready. I didn’t know what the future would hold, but I figured whatever alchemy of good genes and sheer ballsiness had gotten me this far was the same that would help me track down my brother and get over that goddamn wall. Wishful thinking probably, but it gave me some hope.
I leaned my head against the window and began mentally scrolling through the databases that were part of SecondSight. Lish was right. There was an entire library of military and fighting tactics that could be purchased for points, everything from data on meta-knowledge (whatever the hell that was), up to histories on the Peloponnesian War, battles fought on distant planets, and guides on how to operate small arms, use knives, explosives, and a file on something called “Deep Survival,” a course on who lives, who dies, and why. That last one sounded pretty cool, but I didn’t have enough points to spare.
My head started to hurt, so I mentally shut it all down and just sat there for several seconds. Then I felt something in my pocket and pulled out the envelope addressed to me I’d found in the kitchen of my folks’ apartment. I was never one for cards or sentimental things, so I didn’t want to read it at first. But then it came out and I unfolded the damn thing and I saw my old man’s handwriting on a single sheet of yellow paper. We always razzed him about how neat his penmanship was, everything written at an angle as if he were leaning to the right on a desk when writing.
“We will miss you, Lo,” the letter began. “Seems like it was just yesterday that you were a child, swinging in the backyard with your brother. I remember those long ago summer days, playing catch, going to games, heading by GameStop and the mall to those pretzels you liked from Auntie’s.”
My nose was burning and my eyes were misty. I read on.
“I will miss holding you. I will miss carrying you and watching you walk down the driveway to catch the bus. I will miss having you next to us at night when you couldn’t sleep because of a storm or because one of your night lights burned out. I will miss you so much, my son.”
I was embarrassed by how much the words had choked me up, but I read the last few lines.
“Don’t worry about Mom and me. It’s our time to go on to that next great adventure and we know, we just know that we will get to see you again soon. But not too soon I hope. I’d never tell your mother, but I hope you and Sean make us proud. I hope you fight as long as you are able and never give up. I hope the aliens will look back with sorrow on the day they decided to visit our world. I love you more than words will even be able to express.”
Lish heard my muted sobs and glanced over. “You okay?”
I nodded, crumpling up the letter and shoving it back in my pocket. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m good,” I lied.
Lish tapped on the dashboard. “You mind if I ask a question?”
“Long as you don’t mind if I don’t answer,” I said.
I cut my eyes over and I could tell she saw my red-rimmed eyes, but didn’t say anything. I was grateful for that. A few bars of moonlight splashed her face. I’d never really noticed it before, but she really was beautiful, possessing the kind of nearly flawless features that would’ve been at home on a runway.
“What happened to them?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Your parents,” she said.
“The same thing that happened to everyone that didn’t fall inside the age cutoff.”
“Green powder?”
I nodded.
“You can see it,” Lish said. She pointed and flicked on the high-beams and if you looked, really looked, you could see little clouds out beyond the spillage of light. Little plumes of green that were rising up all over the place, hovering in the air.
“I think it’s their souls,” Lish said.
“You believe that?”
She nodded. “It’s reassuring in a way. I mean, I know the whole thing is fucked up, but it gives you some comfort that this isn’t the end of it. Maybe there is something better beyond this world.”
“There has to be.”
She smirked.
“What about yours?” I asked. “What happened to your folks?”
“Nothing.”
“They fell within the age cutoff?
”
“They were already dead,” she replied.
“Jesus, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be.” She flicked the high beams off. “They were miserable human beings.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth. They were more concerned with getting high than raising me and my brother. Fucking pill-heads. When I was twelve I went into foster care.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wanted to go,” Lish said, her jaw set in a look of grim determination. “They died six years ago. Dad had a needle in his arm and Mom sucked on the bottom of one too many bottles.”
“So all that stuff you said before about being spotless?”
“It was all bullshit,” Lish conceded. “I’ve got plenty of wounds, but they’re easy to hide. They’re all mostly up here,” she added, tapping her head.
I didn’t know what to say. She favored me with a sideways look. “Guess my sad story trumps your sad story, huh?”
“Are you gonna be pissed if I say ‘I’m sorry’ again?”
She shrugged. “Don’t be. What’s done is done. Besides, in some weird, fucked-up way, it prepared me for the game.”
“You and me are a lot alike, Lish.”
“How’s that?”
“We’re both survivors.”
A weary smile splashed her face. “For now.”
A box blinked on my SecondSight HUD and I looked up to see that we were within a mile of my brother’s house. I gestured to Lish and we exited the road, cutting down a one-lane artery that cut through the farmlands of Davidsonville, Maryland. We were close, only about a half mile away.
The road ahead was clear and the truck accelerated and then my HUD started blinking. I zoomed in on the path ahead, but before I figured out what was happening, Lish had started screaming.
I looked up to see something in the middle of the road.
