Melee

by Wyatt Savage

“The aliens.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Jimmy?” Kurtis asked, thinking he was being messed with.

  Jimmy looked around as if to see if anyone was eavesdropping. “They appeared to everyone. They just, poof, materialized in the goddamn air and showed us things—”

  “What kind of—”

  “Terrible things, and then they told us about the game, ‘cause it’s gonna involve almost everyone in the world—”

  “Jimmy…”

  “’Course the game has its own fucked-up rules—”

  “Jimmy!”

  Through the slither of a peephole that Kurtis had, he could see Jimmy hesitating, mouth a-droop.

  “Are you shitting me?” Kurtis asked.

  “I shit you not, Kurtis,” the guard said, wide-eyed, a quiver in his voice. Kurtis had gotten to know Jimmy as well as one could ever know a guard over the last eighteen months, and he was tougher than a woodpecker’s lips. He didn’t brook discontent and he didn’t scare easy. “And that’s not all,” Jimmy continued. “Other things have started to happen. Strange stuff appearing all around the world. Black walls pretty much constructed themselves and split neighborhoods in half. These giant towers rose up out of the ground, spires, some people are calling them. And cargo containers appearing at random in the middle of cities...people fighting over them, not even knowing what’s inside.”

  Kurtis let out a derisive snort. “This is all a joke, right?”

  Jimmy’s face told him that it wasn’t. “There are people rioting and looting all over the country ‘cause they’re scared about the game, Kurtis. There’ve been bombing at military bases, airports, and it ain’t terrorism. It’s all over social media.”

  “I’m not exactly the social media type, Jimmy.”

  “I didn’t think you were…”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “’Cause it’s all coming to a head…tomorrow is when the actual game is supposed to start.”

  “This game of yours?”

  Jimmy nodded, wiping his forehead, which was covered with sweat. This was no prank; Kurtis could tell that he was scared shitless.

  “Well…, then I guess given my present predicament, I won’t be playing,” Kurtis replied, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Pretty sure you won’t have a choice, Kurtis.”

  The slot closed and darkness devoured everything.

  Melee Chicago Chapter 2

  Intruder

  Kurtis had nearly lost his mind in the first seventy-two hours he spent down in the witch hole. He’d seen phantoms climbing up and through the mildewed walls, as well as tiny boxes and grids wavering in and out of sight with no explanation. His head thrummed and his nose bled. The worst part was when he heard voices, including what sounded like a young girl whispering in his ear. Even at its clearest, the voice, which came from the air itself, was garbled and the only thing Kurtis could make out was something about the universe being lubricated with the souls of warriors.

  “Division,” Jimmy Mulvey had whispered to Kurtis when he was at his lowest point. “The only way to stay sane is to divide the day into four blocks of six hours.” That also included the one hour each day Kurtis was permitted to leave the hole for a brief and still-isolated respite in an open air six-by-six cinder block ‘courtyard’ with dried-up and hardened dirt. “Each block has to be dedicated to a different subject and you need to maintain strict focus, or else your mind will start to play hooky.” Kurtis had taken Jimmy’s advice and it was the only thing that got him through those initial dark days with a few sanity cells left.

  On the last day he’d ever spend in the witch hole, Kurtis focused on drumming, selecting the late, great John Bonham to work the first six-hour shift. His life was going to change no matter what on this day. What was the harm in a little indulgence to keep his edge before it all went to shit?

  Kurtis whipped around his chopsticks and began plumbing his memory, searching for the right licks. He’d been a damned-fine drummer in high school and community college, back before his life went sideways after running with a crew of pill-heads and Oxy slingers in Ford Heights.

  Working up to getting in the mood, he began beating out a variety of Bonham crossover triplets. He didn’t have a kick drum, but the sticks sounded good enough as he segued into a half-time shuffle, a lick from “Fool in the Rain” that was heavy on ghost notes and an imaginary high-hat. He dipped back into the triplets from “Good Times, Bad Times,” whacking them for two bars, before sliding into the beats from “Poor Tom”, a more obscure entry in the Zeppelin catalogue. He soundlessly repeated the lyrics from “Poor Tom,” substituting his name and changing it up, singing, “poor Kurtis, seventh son, always knew what the hell was goin’ on.” If only that was true.

  The hours passed and Kurtis worked himself into a lather, transitioning into beats from Jeff Porcaro, Neil Peart, and Carmine Appice, drumming until his hands grew numb. When this was done and the first six hours in the bag, he switched things up and began etching names in the brick walls.

  First was Dorthe Lauritzdotter. She was the one they’d originally brought in for questioning at the Vardohus fortress in 1662, the first witch cast down into the trollkvinnefengeselhulleta, the very first witch hole, the place where an accused was forced to await judgment. He’d memorized the names of the Norwegian witches from a book in the prison library, scrawling Ingeborg Iversdatter and Karen Iversdatter, along with Maren Olsdatter and many others. He liked the Nordic names. There was a rhythm to them. He leaned back, running down a mental list of names, checking hundreds off, wondering what the ladies had done to pass the time back in the seventeenth century.

  That’s when it happened. His big moment had come. Not much he could do other than wait and see just how bad it was going to be.

  A humming filled his ears, setting his teeth on edge, making the tiny hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand at attention. He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, the air was filled with little boxes and icons. There were words in the boxes, things like “vitals,” “kills,” “class,” “health,” “chattel,” “species,” and “sass?” The majority of the icons and labels fit together pretty well. He wasn’t a hardcore gamer, but he’d had his fun. But sass? He couldn’t wrap his mind around that one.

  After several seconds of trying to make sense of it all and get his bearings, as if it were just any ordinary game, the reality of it walloped him. He smacked his head and closed his eyes, but the boxes wouldn’t go away. With some effort, he found that he was able to mentally shift the boxes around, up, down, and sideways, stacking them, reordering them as if he were using a HUD, a heads-up display, in a full-immersion video game. Words filtered across his “screen,” scrolling out all at once:

  Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)

  Chattel:Wooden Sticks (2)

  Health:10/10

  Level:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:Not even one

  Vitals:BP – 121/80; T – 98.03f; RR – 12bpm

  XP:0

  Kurtis reached out his hand, to manipulate the words, only to find that they were holographic. His fingers passed right through, which was actually pretty cool in the aesthetic sense, yet not helpful in the slightest.

  He blinked repeatedly, attempting to will the images to make sense. Nothing changed, aside from a cursor with the words, “Do you have questions?”

  “Y-yes,” Kurtis stammered.

  Nothing happened. There was only silence in response.

  “Um…hello?”

  The cursor winked again. Before he could respond, a concussive note echoed from somewhere overhead, a deep resounding boom that shook the walls, showering Kurtis in dust and debris.

  The sirens and klaxons sounded next, followed by screams. Kurtis closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of men and women shouting intermixed with other noises, including the braying of what sounded like animals. What the fuck was going on?

  A status
message screen appeared in Kurtis’s view and read:

  Congratulations, the Melee has begun. You have entered Level 1, the Onslaught!

  Objective: Reach Wall #1

  Reward: 2000 XP

  Time limit: 6:00:00

  Penalty for failing to reach the wall: You will reach your journey’s end.

  Kurtis had no idea what that meant so he crawled over to the door and placed his ear to it. What sounded like firecrackers echoed in the distance along with more shrieks and a soulless howling.

  Fingers out, Kurtis grabbed the edge of the metal slot when something big crashed into the other side of the door.

  He flinched and collapsed backward, heart in his throat. He grabbed the only weapon he had, the chopsticks, which were canted at an angle. He began rubbing them against the stone floor, trying to sharpen an edge. It was the only thing he could think to do.

  The slot began opening with a rusty creak. Kurtis tensed, daggering the chopsticks, ready to plunge them into whatever awaited him.

  After several more seemingly endless seconds, the slot opened in full, and Kurtis watched statistics populate in his HUD, even though he wasn’t actually wearing a physical headset. The stats reflected the identity of the intruder on the other side of the door:

  Species: Homo Sapiens (Mulvey, James)

  Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5

  Health:2/10

  Level:1

  Class:Fighter

  Kills:2

  Vitals:BP – 143/80; T – 98.03f; RR – 18bpm

  XP:30

  It was Jimmy Mulvey. His face was streaked in gore and his eyes bulged.

  “Jesus…Jimmy, what the fuck is happening out there?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. Kurtis heard the sound of jangling keys and then the door opened and Jimmy was visible, slumped against the wall outside, clutching his abdomen with his left hand, trying to stop a coil of sausage-like entrails from leaking out of a nasty blackish-red gash. Kurtis fought the urge to vomit. He held out his hands as if to assist Jimmy, who shook his head.

  “It b…bit me,” Jimmy said, blood pooling between his teeth. “Fucking thing just up and took a chunk out of me like I’m a goddamn deer sausage...”

  “What did?”

  “It fell out of the goddamn sky. I swear…crashed through the roof…”

  Jimmy’s right hand came down. His face became slack and pasty. He flipped a ring of keys to the ground along with his pistol, extra magazine of ammunition, and his wallet.

  “You’ll need those,” Jimmy said, his wound making a sickening, sucking sound, as if it were a creature hidden in his belly fighting for air. “Spare mag has overpressure rounds in it. Better stopping power.”

  Kurtis slotted the chopsticks back in the cuff of his pants, reached over, and snatched up the keys, gun, magazine, and wallet. All three were slicked with Jimmy’s warm blood. He pocketed the keys and magazine as a young woman’s voice echoed in Kurtis’s ear: “Congratulations, you have acquired a nine-millimeter G17 Gen-5 pistol manufactured by Glock, Inc. in 2019. The weapon fires a 124-grain Parabellum-jacketed hollow-point round. You have fifteen rounds remaining in the magazine.”

  Kurtis dropped the gun and smacked his hands against his ears. His fingers trembled as his head shook in disbelief. This was happening, this was really fucking happening.

  “It’s the v-voice,” Jimmy sputtered. “You heard it didn’t you?”

  “I’m losing my mind,” Kurtis replied. “I’m seeing and hearing things.”

  “You need to focus.”

  “What’s going on, Jimmy?”

  “The game,” Jimmy answered, wheezing, fighting for breath, his life seeping away in a crimson puddle. “The Melee. There’s no time for tongue-clucking. It’s every man for himself, Kurtis. You get points for killing people and monsters.”

  “Monsters?”

  “Stop fooling around, Kurtis. I’m running out of time. Yes, monsters, real monsters.”

  A greasy length of what Kurtis thought was intestines, oozed between Jimmy’s fingers. Wet bloody tendrils dripped from his nose. “One of ‘em bit me.”

  “Let’s get going then.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Jimmy said.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “I got a silver Camry in the South Loop garage on Federal,” Jimmy said, wheezing. “You know where that is?”

  “I remember it.”

  “It’s got a Boston Red Sox sticker on the right side of the bumper and a faded kid-on-board sticker. One of those yellow jobbers. You can’t miss it.”

  A flick of a nod from Kurtis. “I need you do something for me,” Jimmy said.

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to go and get my wife and boy and protect them.”

  “Jimmy—”

  “Promise me you will.”

  “Jesus, yes, I promise.”

  “They’ll be coming for you in a few minutes. Rig and the others. The cells are open and they hit the armory. They’re using the situation to bust out, but they’ll likely want to take one last dance with you before they go. Tables have turned. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  Kurtis held up the gun. “I know how to use it.”

  “Figured you did,” Jimmy spat, blood gurgling over his lips. “But you need to learn how to use those boxes in your brain. You need to focus, you need to drop down into your zone ‘cause you can make things appear.”

  “Like what?”

  “Crosshairs, a targeting reticle. You think hard enough and it’ll come to you.”

  Kurtis tried conjuring one up, but nothing appeared on his HUD. “It takes some time,” Jimmy said. “You can summon up shortcuts, maps, all kinds of shit, and that voice, whether it’s male or female—”

  “Female.”

  Jimmy sighed, his eyes fluttering. “You need to listen to it and do what it says.”

  Gunshots echoed close by. Footfalls and harsh laughter followed.

  “Go, Kurtis,” Jimmy begged, pointing in the direction opposite the laughter, toward a long semi-dark corridor.

  Kurtis made a move to leave and then he leaned in close to Jimmy. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you always look out for me?”

  “Something about your eyes told me you were a good man once upon a time. The kind that maybe deserves a second chance.” Jimmy smiled. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Mortem ne timueris,” Jimmy whispered.

  “What?”

  “Remember those words. Mortem ne timueris.”

  “What do they mean?”

  Kurtis waited for an answer that would never come. Jimmy was dead. Kurtis crouched backward, then stopped and focused with as much intensity as he had when trying to kill twenty-four hours in the witch box.

  He opened his eyes and something strange and unexpected appeared in front of him—miniature crosshairs. He didn’t know how or why it had happened, but there it was. He quickly found that he was able to maneuver the crosshairs through his field of vision simply by willing it, up and down, panning left to right in a short arc.

  Somebody whistled and he looked over his shoulder. A man was staring at him from the other end of the corridor. An enormous mountain of a man with a bald dome of a head. He leered at Kurtis, rubbing a bloody stump of a right hand against the wall. It was Big Rig. He’d come to take that last dance with Kurtis.