Respawn: Lives 1-5 (Respawn LitRPG series Book 1)

by Arthur Stone

  “What a great guess. I’m in awe.”

  “Come on, Kitty, I’m not your enemy here.”

  Rocky got up, readying his rifle. For a moment he smelled trouble. Globes’s people who had previously been waiting in and around the parking lot had disappeared somewhere. But then he remembered the girl’s words, glanced up, and saw the pickup truck. He took a shot, imagining the bullet piercing the chest of the machine gunner.

  He didn’t see whether he hit or not. Immediately crouching, he moved a few feet down the wall. They didn’t shoot back in response, but who knew what the bastards might have in mind? “I think I got another one. The machine gunner in the pickup. But the others have disappeared. Hid themselves, probably.”

  “Yeah, maybe they’re off in the bushes,” Kitty said indifferently. She was staring at the rifle in her lap, cradling it like a baby.

  “Kitty, drop it! We’re still alive. We still have a chance.”

  Globes’s muffled roar mocked them from outside. It was muffled, farther away, but still there.

  “Hey, lovebirds, Romeo is almost here! Kitty my dear, your beloved approaches! Give yourselves up, you two, or it’ll be worse for you!”

  “And there goes our chance,” Kitty lamented, her voice barely audible. “Why are you still here, Rocky?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “I told you to go away.”

  “No way.”

  “I told you that yesterday evening. You remember.”

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the situation has changed a bit since then.”

  “But my decision hasn’t changed. Go, Rocky. Get out of here. You can even take this rifle if you want. I can’t shoot anything this big in my condition. Don’t worry, they might not even kill you.” Kitty yelled out the glass-less windows. “Hey, Globes! This is between me and Romeo. The rest of you scram! I’m kicking this zero out. He’s coming your way.”

  “Why would we want him?” Globes said, clearly bored by the prospect.

  “Kill him if you want. Do whatever you want with him. I don’t care!”

  Kitty returned her ceaseless gaze to the rifle, mumbling lifelessly. “Alright, you can go now. The worst that can happen is they kill you. And that’s not so bad. You have lots of lives left. This is goodbye, Rocky.”

  “Accept me back into your party.”

  “Why?” The girl’s ears perked up in muted alarm. The request disturbed her.

  “So we can use the chat.”

  “No, there’s no chat in our future. Go, get out of my sight, and forget that you ever met me.”

  “Give me five minutes, at least.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying. I’ll leave, if you want. But don’t do anything yet. Don’t blow your brains out yet. Give me five minutes.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because we still have a chance.”

  Chapter 28

  Life Five: I Hear You Calling

  They beat Rocky for a time, without any particular zeal, as if they were unreliable workers paid to do the job, and paid only pennies. Even when he, in an attempt to escape the hold of a pair of the bastards, spat a juicy wad of spit and blood into one of their faces, they did not significantly increase the violence of the assault.

  His torturers decided then that he had been sufficiently chastened and unceremoniously dragged him to their truck, standing him in front of three men. The one laughing like a jackal discovering a fresh elephant carcass, Rocky had already met. It was his old acquaintance, Globes. The two others, he had never seen before. One was unremarkable, a man you’d seen in a crowd or even on a stage and never remember again. Boring hair color, bland features. There was no other way to describe him.

  The other was a different story. No, he was no icon of beauty worthy of the cover of some glossy magazine. He was shorter and even thinner than Rocky, but if the latter was a massive hunchbacked savage, this one was a refined European lord discovering Rocky’s tropical island and claiming it for his queen. He was an aristocrat, age thirty to forty, close-shaven, with an unnatural-looking short hairstyle, a sleek, thin mustache, and a confident—even arrogant—gaze. Despite the height difference between them, Rocky felt like he was being looked down upon, not up at.

  He was too old for a Shakespearean Romeo, and he didn’t look one bit like an insatiable rapist, but Rocky knew who he was. The pervert who was the bane of Kitty’s existence.

  Globes was still grinning. “Well, whelp, you happy to meet this guy at last?”

  “Only whelp I see here is this husband of yours,” retorted Rocky, tensing up in anticipation of a new string of primitive re-educational efforts.

  But the thug just laughed. Then he asked no one in particular, “Have you searched him?”

  “Yeah,” answer one of the goons holding him.

  “What did he have with him?”

  “A Finnish rifle. Good make, worth a good deal anywhere. Plus a knife and a pistol. And some ammo.”

  “Wow. Your girlfriend sure is generous. Even gave you a good gun. What does she still have up there? What plans is she hatching?”

  “She’s watching a porno, actually.”

  “Hmm, that doesn’t seem like her,” Globes played along.

  “People change. Their tastes change, too.”

  “I see. So what’s the movie? Decent girls, or old hags like your mom?”

  “Nah, no babes in the movie. It’s gay porn. Oh, and I forget to mention: You’re the lead actor.” Rocky kept up the insults. His intuition kept telling him this was the right way to play the situation. And in this world, you trusted your intuition.

  “Can I just kill this clown?” asked Globes, again to no one in particular, and again still smiling.

  The white-haired man shook his head. He opened his mouth now for the first time, continuing to look into Rocky’s soul with his unbearably intelligent gaze. “No. Not yet, anyway. Later, well, we’ll see.”

  “Whatever you say. You just say the word, and I’ll be happy to,” Globes submitted.

  “You have doubtless realized who I am,” Romeo resumed. “And remember this, Rocky: I do not need you. I could let you go right now, or I could give you to these good people to play around with. They’d like that. So, make your choice. Will you be useful to us? Or would you like to experience the unpleasant inventions of my torturers?”

  Rocky stared into Romeo’s eyes, fighting back the pressure that they were pounding into his head. After a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “I’ll do whatever you want, as long as it benefits me.”

  “So I’m guessing you do not wish to suffer.”

  “Do I look like a man who wants to suffer?”

  “Some people are masters at hiding. But very well. So long as we understand one another. Enough of the formalities. Tell me, Rocky—what is Kitty planning? Does she have any more surprises for us?”

  “She plans to blow her own head off before your guys nab her with some cunning trick like last time. Kitty has no plans to be taken alive.”

  Romeo smiled wide and shook his head. “Time changes everything, except our Kitty. Just as cold as ever. Or perhaps not. What went on between the two of you? How did you spend your time? Your nights in particular?”

  Rocky shook his head. “She wouldn’t let me touch her, not like that. Not at night, not during the day.”

  The faceless man, who had not yet spoken until now, nodded. In a voice as unremarkable as his face, he pronounced, “He speaks the truth.”

  What? So Romeo had one of the people Kitty had called a “mental” with him. Their unique gift from the System gave them many abilities, in particular determining whether a person was lying or telling the truth. This must have been one of them. It was a disturbing circumstance, of course, but not disastrous. Rocky had no plans to lie. He had no reason to, either.

  “Indeed, our Kitty never changes,” said Romeo, satisfied. Rocky detected in his words that thirst for her, for the un
touched Kitty as his own, and the joy Romeo felt about this prospective competitor being no competitor at all. “So why did she send you out?”

  “She didn’t send me. She just drove me away.”

  “He speaks the truth,” the mental announced, in the same flat tone.

  “You of course knew you were not welcome here, so why did you come this way?”

  “I’m not particularly welcome anywhere, and you were close by.”

  “I see,” Romeo said with a nod. “You haven’t found your feet yet here. Globes tells me you shoot particularly well. He said you easily eliminated two of his men—and that their levels were rather high. Was that an accident?”

  “No. I can shoot well. Kitty often praised my shooting.”

  “He speaks the truth,” the mental said again.

  Romeo ignored him. “Let’s get a shooting range up for this kid. Quickly, now. I want to see what he can do.”

  Twenty seconds later, a dirty plastic bottle was set up fifty yards down the road. One of the grunts gave Rocky a pistol and barked at him. “You have one bullet. You move that barrel just a little to the right or the left, and I’ll tear your arm off myself.”

  Rocky accepted the gun and looked both ways. The pickup with the machine gun sat on the hill to the left. The machine gunner was still manning it, though he had no way of knowing whether it was the same gunner or a replacement. On the right, he saw a more formidable vehicle. It was a small truck with an armored, open-air body, and carried a pair of anti-aircraft guns. Their caliber was at least twenty millimeters, maybe more. The barrels were pointing at the edge of the forest belt stretching out further down the road. That was the closest place a threatening ghoul could emerge. Halfway towards the woods sat two massive black SUVs, grossly disfigured by the craftsmen of this world as they attempted to make them more survivable with sheets of steel, bars, and sharpened spikes.

  In addition to these four vehicles, there were about twenty grunts. Some were positioned farther away, some closer, all with weapons at the ready.

  What could one man with one pistol and one bullet do against so many? He wouldn’t even have time to aim at any one of them before the pistol was torn away from him, along with his arm, as promised.

  He stared at the bottle, a tiny target from such a distanced. He imagined the bullet from his pistol striking it right through the middle, raised his arm, and pulled the trigger.

  A direct hit.

  “Bravo,” a voice behind him said, accompanied by soft, slow clapping.

  As he returned the slightly-lighter pistol, Rocky turned around. With the confident, cool voice of a man who knew his worth, he said, “Your people are seriously tense. The pistol I’m holding is empty, but they’re still watching me like a whole pack of wolves.”

  “Only the vigilant work for me,” Romeo spat back. “Wait, what happened to your arm? Why is it bound up?”

  Grinning, Rocky gave what he hoped was a funny answer. “You won’t believe it, but a zombie bit me. They really exist, I swear it.”

  The prisoner’s joke even made Romeo laugh. The obligatory laughter of his minions joined his. It was still restrained, since people are accustomed to being serious when speaking with serious people, but it seemed the joke fit the bounds of local humor standards.

  The mental spoiled the moment with his boring pronouncement. “He speaks the truth.”

  “It looks like we have here an honest man,” Romeo continued, still smiling. “And honest people are very difficult to find. Tell me, Rocky, how would you like to work for me?”

  “What would I be doing? And how much would you pay?”

  “Bastard!” said Globes, amazed. “You should be kissing this man’s feet just because you’re alive and whole!”

  Romeo held up a hand. “Rocky and I are speaking here. No one else.”

  “Sorry, boss.” Globes shut up, but his eyes reiterated his words.

  The light-haired boss resumed the conversation as if nothing had happened.

  “Regarding pay, for starters, we will not kill you, and we will even stop beating you. Is that sufficient as an advance?”

  “Well, if it’s only an advance, I guess so,” Rocky said cautiously, trying to seem that he was much more interested in this proposal than in a quick respawn or a kidney bashing, but at the same time in a way that appeared dignified.

  “Then we have agreed on payment in advance. Your duties will vary, but generally you will only be required to do what you do well, and that is shoot. I believe you will handle your job nicely. No one will expect much from you at first. Forgive my directness, but by Continental standards you are insignificant. You need to grow. But you are a promising man, and we value such people. If you do well, you might even catch up to me someday, or even pass me.”

  A small fellow with massive headphones was sitting beside them. Clearly a radio operator. He inclined his head and announced in a squeaky, almost girlish voice, “Something in the forest.”

  “What?” Globe bellowed back. “Is it Catcher?”

  “No, they didn’t mention Catcher. It’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Jabba says he didn’t get a good look at it. Something fast and monstrous. Definitely an infected. Perhaps more than one.”

  Globes sped towards the operator and wrenched the headset from his grasp so violently that the man almost slammed face-first into the rough road. He shouted into the radio. “What’s going on there, Jabba?”

  The radio operator had, apparently, switched to speaker. From his backpack come an agitated, electronically distorted response. “Hell if I know. I didn’t see. But it’s fast. Very fast. Like, fucking fast. It’s big, too, but it whipped by nimbly, without breaking a single branch. It’s not a manmincer. Bigger. We’re coming your way right now. I don’t know what that was, but it saw us.”

  “Where’s Catcher?”

  “I don’t know. He said he was on his way here, but then fell silent. Maybe he took a wrong turn.”

  “Wrong turn?!”

  “It saw us, Globes. We have to do something.”

  “You’re in an armored vehicle, not a wheelchair,” Globes replied with growing irascibility.

  “No,” Romeo interjected. “Something is wrong. Catcher does not simply get lost. You made a lot of noise here, so all kinds of things might be on the way. Jabba only has an armored car, and against many kinds of elites, that’s not even a challenge. Tell him to get back here right away. We can take out whatever it is together. No sense risking his car. Good vehicles are hard to find these days.”

  While Globes copied the order in his irritated voice, Romeo turned back to Rocky with a cloying smile. “So our little one has decided to blow her head off today, has she?”

  Rocky nodded. “Yes.” She hadn’t said that directly, but he knew it to be true.

  “Perhaps you do not know everything about me, but I need her. And I need her alive, not dead. I like her, very much.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Indeed. She told you about me, I’m guessing?”

  “A few things.”

  “I’m sure she put me in an unfavorable light. Right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I doubt the girl told a single lie about me. I’m not a particularly nice person.” Romeo laughed, loudly this time, from the belly.

  “Nice people don’t make particularly good bosses,” answered Rocky, flatly. “Their job is to pay well, not to please everyone in the world.”

  “Well said. Now, tell me this: Could you help me take the girl alive?”

  “How would I do that? If I go back to her, she’ll fill me full of holes before I open my mouth.”

  “Theoretically speaking.”

  “That was a theoretical answer.”

  Romeo’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a slippery one.”

  “You know I’m honest. I don’t see any reason to be dodgy. Since I’ve already signed on to work for you, there’s no point in beating around the bush. Ju
st tell me what to do, and...”

  The radio operator interjected terror into every conversation within earshot. “Elite! It’s an elite!”

  A large machine gun started firing in the forest belt. Even from far away, it was deafeningly loud. Everyone present, without exception, turned their heads in the direction of the woods, and all of the mounted weapons prepared to fire.

  “Tell him to come back!” Globes shouted, no longer at the radio.

  “Jabba, get back here. Now!” the terrified radio man screamed out.

  The machine gun suddenly stopped its endless protest, and an incomprehensible sound came from where it had been. It sounded like crunching metal, but nothing more could be determined. Rocky guessed it was destructive, though. Only in The Iron Giant did sounds like that accompany acts of creation.

  “Shit. Jabba!” Globes yelled, taking the radio microphone back. “What’s going on? Answer, goddammit!”

  One of the gunners positioned a bit farther past the pickup with the machine gun swore loudly, releasing a spray of bullets at the forest belt. Rocky had no idea what the man had seen—and didn’t really want to know. After all, this was his moment. The most important moment of all. The one he had been waiting for. Everyone was staring in the direction of the sounds, ignoring everything else.

  He moved his hand over the tight bandage and grabbed the small sharpened rebar segments underneath. One would be enough for his plan to succeed, but he had brought two in case something went wrong.

  Plus, if not, he could always go for a second target.

  At this distance, his compensation could hit anything, no matter how laughable the weapon he used. And these weapons were far from laughable, despite appearances. They would execute his mission better than any bullet could.

  Looking straight at Romeo was a bad idea. That would be odd. All the others were staring at the noise. So he merely peeked, then shot out his hand, sending the sharpened steel on its flight. He rapidly repeated the gesture, towards a new target: Globes.

  The latter was paying no attention to what was happening to his left, his eyes riveted at the same point where everyone else was looking. He raised his machinegun and screamed, “Fuck, it’s a whole pack! Rome, stun them, quick!”