If he wasn’t driving a ticking time bomb, he’d slam on the brakes and get it across without words that she could get out or shut up.
Jeffery whimpered, a burble-noise of blood in his lungs.
Boots flicked open his party members list on his HUD and tapped on Jeffery’s profile. Another twist of his wrist put it along the edge of his vision, to let him still see the road.
5 out of 220 HP. The bastard was barely hanging on. Now he’d lived to become a waste of meds, too stupid to jump out of the car when he saw the grenade coming.
Boots growled and grabbed the opiates from his pocket. He tossed them back over his shoulder and muttered, “Blyad.”
Painkillers in this game barely seemed to numb pain—at least, they didn’t do dick the last time Boots was shot. Mostly, they sped up health regeneration long enough to get you out of combat, if you had enough of them.
Now that useless prick was wasting his supply.
Boots tapped the half-melted steering wheel. He glanced in the side mirror, which was just a single shard of broken plastic, now.
No one was following them. Their attackers were either stone-stupid or didn’t have enough soldiers to risk chasing them down. Maybe both.
Mamiko’s radio buzzed and she answered it, quickly. Boots… Jeffery… grenade… blood, so much blood…
Boots heard Florence’s voice cut sharply through the static. His fingers clenched on the steering wheel.
Every time he heard her speak, part of his mind went back to that moment he was on his knees, Florence’s gun pressed to his forehead, that smug fucking smirk on her face. He got the hint without words: join up or get fucked up.
He chose the former, if you could call it choosing.
“Florence?” he said.
Mamiko nodded and pointed south. Her hands were scarlet with Jeffery’s blood.
“Don’t waste all my fucking pills,” he grumbled in Chechen.
Chechen was the language of his inner thoughts, but he used Russian when he wanted to be quasi-understood. At least that way they caught one or two words instead of absolutely nothing.
“What?” she said.
Boots waved her away. He had a thin pool of useful English words. He understood far more than he could speak, but he liked to let people think he was mostly clueless. It was always better to be underestimated by someone who could kill you.
The engine managed to hold together until they found Florence’s truck. She was speeding toward them from a nearby suburb which plumed smoke, just like the one Boots was fleeing.
It had been a simple strategy, but an effective one: burn out the rats and shoot them as they fled. Guess Florence never banked on the rats ambushing them back.
Boots slowed the jeep to a rattling stop just as the other truck slowed beside them.
For a second, the world was oddly quiet. Just the distant sound of crackling wood, Jeffery’s gasping, the car engines humming.
Florence leaned out the driver’s side window and said to Boots, “They still alive?”
He nodded, grimly.
Mamiko motioned at Jeffery and sputtered something.
Boots hoped it meant, this stupid bastard did another stupid bastard thing, and now we have to save him, but it was probably much kinder.
Florence flicked her stare over the jeep. “Can you drive back to base?”
Boots gave her a pretend shrug, like he didn’t understand.
“You. Base. Go. Got it?”
“Da,” Boots said, half-annoyed she didn’t tell someone else to take over driving this smoking piece of shit and let him get back to fighting.
Florence’s stare snapped to Mamiko, and she demanded something about the other players. Boots caught where and go and filled in the blanks around the rest.
Mamiko pointed back the way they came.
Florence roared off without another word, her face a mask of rage.
There were six players in that car, including Florence. Hypothetically, just one of their squads should have been enough to take out the targets.
But Boots knew something Florence didn’t. Levels, perks, skills—none of it meant shit when you had civilians fighting for you instead of soldiers. Soldiers know how to turn off that part of their mind that’s terrified of death.
Boots glanced at Mamiko and Jeffery over his shoulder. Judging by the horror in their eyes, neither one of them had figured that out yet.
He gave the engine as much throttle as he dared and told Mamiko, “We go. Fast.”
She took the hint and held on tightly to the jeep’s blackened roll cage as the jeep shuddered onward.
As he drove, Boots opened the recent kills list on his HUD. He expanded the level 3 player’s profile and pinned it to the left side of his vision.
This was an opportunity. Boots couldn’t stomach brown-nosing, even to save his own life. But he was wise enough to remind Florence why she still kept him around. If Clint managed to survive this, whoever finally killed him would stay on Florence’s good side for a few days, at least. She might even owe him a favor.
Obliterating a level 3 was a cheap price to pay for something that valuable.
CHAPTER 15
T
HE MAN’S HEAD SPLINTERED UNDER Clint’s bat like a dropped watermelon. As his skull fragmented and spattered out bloody bone-shrapnel, Clint caught himself grimacing down at his boots and thinking, Fuck, it’s gonna get all over me.
The thought seemed detached, somehow. Like it came from a part of his mind that couldn’t fully process that the wetness soaking his shirt was his own blood.
The kill notification read, Batter Up (+100 XP), but Clint barely registered it. His HUD was a flash of pure panic as he collapsed to his knees.
His health bar flashed in his upper left vision. 4/100 HP. It flicked down to 3 as he stared at it.
His first death had been so fast. He felt like he was watching this one happen in slow motion.
The man’s pistol was smoking, so he must have shot again. Clint wondered if he’d been hit twice, if adrenaline and shock would have let him feel that second bullet punching into his chest.
Clint tried to catch himself, and he swung his left arm up just in time to stop his head from cracking against the pavement. He was dully aware that he was lying on top of the man he had just killed, another body in a pile of bodies and blood.
2/100 HP now.
When he closed his eyes, he just saw Rachel’s face, the moment she saw the truck coming toward them. Her mouth opening, her eyes bright with terror: Clint, watch out—
Or maybe she was saying, Clint, don’t let me die. He couldn’t tell anymore.
Someone was running toward him. He could hear the slap of their shoes, their rustling backpack. He fumbled for his rifle and tried to get it out from under himself, but his right arm felt numb and stupid and useless.
“Don’t tell me you’re already dead.”
Malina. She was trying to sound casual, but worry warped her voice.
Clint tilted his head to squint at her. He cracked a smile. “You mean you’re actually worried about me?”
“I’m amazed, too.” Malina slung off her backpack and unzipped the front pouch. She pulled out a tin box with a couple pill bottles, a pair of scissors, gauze, bandages, a water bottle.
She popped the pill bottle open and pressed three pills into Clint’s mouth. Her fingers tasted coppery.
“Take these. They increase your health regen. Don’t try to get up yet, okay?”
Clint swallowed dryly. The moment he did, italicized text appeared under his health bar: +15 HP/min (4:59 remaining).
“I got fucking shot, Mals. Where am I going to go?”
“That’s the spirit.” She loosened Clint’s backpack strap as wide as it would go before easing it off his shoulder.
Then, moving methodically, like she’d done this hundreds of times, she snipped down the shoulder of his shirt and picked up the wate
r bottle. “This is just water, but it’s probably going to sting.”
“You don’t have rubbing alcohol or something?”
Malina scowled. “I’m sorry, which one of us is the nurse again? That kills everything, including healthy flesh, not just any infection. It’s a last resort.”
Clint almost argued about bacteria and how there was still a whole fucking bullet in his flesh.
Instead he grumbled, “If I go septic, it’s your fault.”
“Deal. Ready?”
Then, without waiting for him to reply, she poured water over the wound, which felt like liquid fire chewing at the edges of his skin.
Clint arched his back and growled, “Fuck, that hurts.”
“I warned you.”
“Yeah, you did.” Clint clenched his hands into fists and pressed them to his forehead. “Thank you, by the way.”
“Of course. We’re on the same team. And you’re carrying half my inventory, which is a perk I’d rather not lose.” Malina winked and pressed a wad of bandages into the wound in Clint’s shoulder. His skin seemed to throb under her hands. It was a dull pain, gentler than rinsing the wound had been.
“I think you got lucky. Looks like one bullet just grazed you, and the one that got you barely missed your lung.”
The pain pulsed hotly in his shoulder as he laughed. “Oh, trust me. I feel lucky.”
“It was smart of you to increase your health regen right when you leveled up. That probably saved your life.”
“What do you mean?”
Clint tried to lift his head to look at her, which made pain jolt down the tight-wound muscles of his back. He seethed and gasped.
“I told you not to get up.” Malina dropped a handful of blood-soaked bandages by Clint’s head and put a fresh layer on. The sight of his own blood made the world go woozy for a moment.
“You get skill points you can invest every level. Didn’t you know that?”
“No, because you’re a terrible tutorial-giver.”
“Shouldn’t need a tutorial to learn how to read your own HUD.” He could hear the grin in Malina’s voice. “It’s on your player profile. Just kinda point at your health bar and it’ll expand.”
Clint remembered the oh shit moment when that stats screen was covering his vision, and he just swiped at it until it disappeared.
“Well,” he said, “that makes sense now.”
“Damn. I really thought you were trying to be strategic.” She pressed lightly on his chest, and Clint tilted his body enough for her to wrap the gauze under and around his shoulder. “I was almost impressed.”
“We can pretend I was.”
Clint didn’t know if it was the painkillers or adrenaline, but now the ache in his shoulder just felt like a warm numbness, spreading down his arm.
“You get +10 every level for your HP or NRG, too. You should dump those in now. It’ll give us some breathing room. Your base HP regen won’t kick back in until I bandage this.”
Clint strained to get his good arm out from under his body. The pain stabbing through his shoulders made him gasp, but he lifted his left arm and tapped on his player profile.
There it was, in the expanded section that listed his attack, defense, HP regeneration, and stamina: a tiny notification that said 2 HP/NRG increases to spend.
He put them both into HP. Watching that number surge from 22/100 to 42/120 nearly made him cry in relief.
Clint put on a grim almost-smile and said, “How’s it look, doc?”
“I think you’ll live, if you manage not to get us shot. The bandage should make your base HP regen start working again, at least. Try to sit up. See how you feel.”
With Malina’s help, Clint pulled himself upright. He sat there flat on his ass, his bloody shirt cold and tacky against his skin, as he squinted up at the smoky sky.
Some insane part of him wanted to laugh. Surviving left him almost… giddy. It was a delirious kind of amusement.
“I think I’m okay,” Clint said. He tried to stand and instantly staggered. The tug of his backpack, suspended from his good shoulder, made his entire back ache like he’d been hit by a truck.
“Yeah.” Malina grabbed his good arm to keep him from falling. “You seem great.”
Clint leaned heavily on her as he caught his balance. His head had the skull-squeeze ache of a bad hangover. The world churned uncertainly around him.
“Your blood pressure is probably low. Come on.” Malina started for the house, and Clint stumbled beside her, trying to keep himself walking in a straight line. “We’ll get inside. You can take a minute. But only that. We’ve already lost enough time.”
When she talked that way, she sounded like a mother. Her voice was soothing as a cool cloth, completely unafraid, despite the fire and death all around them.
It put an imaginary version of her in his mind: alive, just a normal woman taking her kid to the park or a library or a museum, with no idea how her life was going to end.
Clint squinted down the street, even though turning his head made the horizon dip like water sloshing in a fishbowl. “Where’s Florence? She wasn’t with those guys.”
“I know. I’m starting to get the feeling they split up.”
Clint clutched the hallway wall as they walked inside. He blinked fast, as if squeezing his eyes open and shut would make his head better.
“I feel like we poked the wrong bear,” he said.
“Maybe. But think of the XP boost it got you.” She cracked a smile. “It took me a couple days to hit level 2.”
He cast a quick glance at his status bars: 72/120 HP and 75/100 NRG.
The extra health regen from the pills had worn off, but it was a small comfort to see his health bar filled above the halfway point again.
There was another message below his status now. He wasn’t sure if the pills’ message had superseded it or if he’d been so delirious he never noticed it until now.
“You ever hear of a grievous injury effect?” he said. The back of his throat tasted tinny with fear.
“Fuck. How long does it say you’ve got it?”
Clint watched the seconds tick down. He grimaced. “Looks like three hours.”
“Well, that’s not good news.” Malina blew a sigh through her teeth and frowned at her broken watch. “We’ll just move as fast as you can and… figure the rest out as we go, I guess.”
Clint rubbed at the knot already forming in his left shoulder from his backpack and his gun.
“We should leave soon,” he said. “It’s a little obvious where we are now.”
“You think?” Malina looked him over. “You sure you’re gonna be okay, tough guy?”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to be.”
She nodded grimly.
The longer he stood up, the steadier he felt. Every breath made his entire torso thrum like a massive bruise, and the world still wobbled when he moved his head too fast, but he was alive.
He could run. Maybe he could even fight.
Clint followed Malina out the house’s front door.
The plan laid itself out in his mind. They needed to get to the library first, find the way into Level 2, then leave Florence and her gang of bastards behind here to kill each other.
He just had to keep himself alive long enough to get there.
CHAPTER 16
T
ECHNICALLY, THE KID TOLD HIMSELF, it wasn’t cheating. Call it an experiment. A test of Death’s observational skills.
The kid was there, watching the fight from the center of the action, but nobody saw him. He was a ghost sitting on the empty air, all that grenade fire exploding around him, sparks tickling past his cheeks. But he was completely unscathed.
He watched Clint go down. With his developer HUD enabled, he could see the player information hovering over the dead.
The black dialogue boxes gathered like gravestones, all of them bearing the same inscription: 0 HP — soul transfere
nce in progress.
The kid grimaced. He remembered that feeling. Living one second and opening his eyes the next in the entryway to Hell, the ground below him just bones upon bones, and the great eyes of Death looming over him…
He shook that memory away.
The bastards were beyond his help, anyway. In a way, they had an advantage. They knew this was coming. They had a chance to fight back.
Clint lay at the kid’s feet, clinging onto life by only a handful of HP. He was just one sharp kick in the teeth away from dying at level 2.
The kid, like any good demon, considered it for half a second. If he’d been in a worse mood, maybe he would have done it.
But he had better uses for Clint than a bloody punching bag.
The kid slouched on the open air and flicked on his tablet screen. He pulled up his dev portal and opened Clint’s player profile. Technically, all the players stats and abilities were fully customizable.
Death had been clear about one thing: only the Lord of Hell could rig this game, because the game only existed for his own amusement.
But the kid didn’t become Death’s personal assistant by wasting perfectly good opportunities.
He tapped his screen and added a single extra HP to Clint’s health bar, raising him up to 4 for a few seconds. It wouldn’t be enough to save him, if his friend (who was now sprinting across the street, screaming his name) didn’t bandage him up quick enough.
But it was a test. Just how much would Death notice? How much could he get away with in here?
It would be clear enough. If Death bothered to check the activity log, he would see the damning action listed out plainly, linked to the kid’s moderator account.
He’d make up an excuse. Testing if a bug was fixed, forgot to revert the change. So sorry, but hey, he died in the nineteenth century — he wasn’t that up to date on technology.
The kid shoved his tablet back in his hoodie pocket, which he kept as a convenient bubble of extra space-time, just so he could carry around more things. The physics-code got a little buggy sometimes, but the game seemed to be maintaining it just fine.
9 Levels of Hell: Volume 1 Page 9
