9 Levels of Hell: Volume 1

by Static, E. C.

“No, no,” he said, then remembered the phrase she had used. Simple and unexpectedly idiomatic, like most English phrases turned out to be. “I get you.”

  “Uh huh. And Boots?”

  He stopped in the open doorway.

  “Leave the whiskey. You’re supposed to be working, anyway.”

  Boots just winked and answered, “No English.”

  That would work out perfectly. He needed to go to the library to test out his theory on how to get to Level 2, anyway.

  And if he was right, he could pick his poison: go in it alone, or give it a day or two before claiming Florence’s prize.

  He walked off smirking, toward the library.

  CHAPTER 23

  C

  LINT AND MALINA SET OFF across the grass, bolting like rabbits trying to reach their burrow before the hawks come. It was raining in earnest now, and the ground was slick. They both crouched low as they ran, guns at the ready, over the playground, up the hill on the other side, toward the library parking lot.

  Clint braced himself for gunfire or a border guard’s warning shout. But they dove behind the car, and the only thing he heard was another low rumbling from the sky.

  “Do you think,” he gasped, “anyone saw us?”

  His stamina bar reflected 32/100 NRG. He felt like he was playing poker with a couple of twos and an old business card, just praying to any god that would listen that no one would look his way.

  Malina shrugged. “No one’s shooting, so maybe not.” She peered over the hood of the sedan and pulled a detached scope from her jacket pocket to look inside the dark-eyed library windows.

  “Looks empty,” she said. “But if we don’t get out of here before their party’s over…”

  “We may be fucked,” Clint agreed.

  “Right.”

  “Then we’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He glanced toward the library. His heart was huge and happy in his chest. Light as a bird.

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ll race you there.”

  Malina grinned. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  The rain sliced through the air. It rattled against the windshields and roofs of the parked cars. Thunder boomed overhead.

  At the very least, if they had to shoot someone, it would be hard to hear over the rain and the dull cry of the clouds.

  “Ready?” Malina said.

  Clint gave the school fence line one last nervous glance before he nodded.

  They set off together across that last stretch of parking lot. He kept his mind singularly focused on running as fast as he could. He shut out the pain, the fear of the sudden nearby roar of a gun, the stabbing in his lungs.

  Malina reached the building first. She vaulted through an open window in a single fluid motion, like she had done it hundreds of times. Maybe she had, since she started the game.

  Clint had to climb in awkwardly after her, ducking to avoid the dangling shard of glass in the window frame. Glass crunched under his boots when he hit the ground.

  “You’d better be right about this place,” Malina said, her breath coming in thin gasps.

  “Fucking tell me about it,” Clint muttered back.

  He scanned the dark room. The window let them in behind the collection desk. It looked as if a librarian had been here just the night before, checking out books to people.

  There were stamps and papers and a rolling cart of library books, waiting to be returned to their place on the shelf. If he ignored the bullet holes puncturing the computer monitor, he could almost pretend this place was real.

  “You know,” Malina said, as they stood catching their breath, “I definitely won that race.”

  “You cheated.”

  Malina scowled at him in mock offense. “How?”

  “By not having an actively bleeding bullet wound!”

  “Actively bleeding. You’re so dramatic.”

  Clint hefted his rifle in his left hand. Watching that vector switch from unarmed to the silhouette of the AR-15 was a small but instant relief.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “Do we even know what we’re looking for?”

  “Uh… a book.”

  Malina rolled her eyes and gestured at the library sprawling out in front of them, row after row of bookshelves. It looked like there was a second floor, too. Thousands of books.

  “Good detective work,” she said. “I can’t wait to look for hay in a hay stack.”

  “Right. One very particular piece of hay.”

  “I thought you knew what to look for,” Malina grumbled. “This was your idea.”

  “Don’t be like that. We’ll figure it out.”

  He punched her shoulder lightly. More and more, that was becoming a hug between the two of them: an elbow or a nudge, just a touch to remind each other that they weren’t alone down here.

  Malina didn’t smile, but she didn’t look pissed anymore, either. That had to be something.

  “Let’s split up,” she said. “Cover more ground.”

  “Yeah, okay. Just don’t get shot.”

  That made her scoff, a tiny stifled sound, like she didn’t want him to hear it.

  “You of all people shouldn’t be giving that advice,” she said.

  Clint grinned. He felt dizzy, a bit delirious. Some part of his brain wanted to start celebrating already. Just being here felt so close to victory.

  Together, they walked into the main library. The towering shelves seemed to stretch on endlessly, all of them full of books, the spines dusty. Some were too worn to read.

  Malina gestured at the dark first floor. “You go left, I’ll go right. If we don’t find anything, we go upstairs.”

  He nodded and did his best to look fearless as Malina ventured onward, leading with her shotgun, and disappeared around the lip of a shelf.

  Hay in a haystack. Malina was sure fucking onto something there.

  Clint crept forward, holding his rifle with his wounded arm. It was already aching like a son of a bitch, but he wasn’t willing to risk his life to avoid a few minutes of pain.

  The library was dim. Only a few flickering lights here and there persisted, but the building had a cool, evening darkness to it, like night was only a few minutes away.

  Clint wondered, as he stalked forward, if they would ever see a real night again.

  He tiptoed along the far wall, glancing down each aisle. Occasionally, he passed motivational posters that faintly reminded him of the signs in his elementary school library.

  There was a poster of a cartoon hen, looking out and shushing the room. Dried blood and brain matter dripped down from chicken’s beak, down the wall, soaking into the rug.

  Clint stepped over it and kept going.

  Through the shelves, he caught sight of Malina on the other side of the library, where there were small, black-windowed study rooms. Malina held a flashlight and shined it into the windows one by one, to see if anything was inside.

  Clint watched her, his heart pounding, hoping he was not seconds away from someone blowing her head off. Privately, he was grateful she was so much braver than he felt. His shoulder still throbbed too hotly for him to feel anything but low pulsing unease.

  They scouted out the library quickly: empty as a grave. Just books and dust and old blood.

  Together, they stood at the back of the library, where the stairs began leading up.

  “Now what?” Malina asked.

  Clint shrugged. “We could check for people upstairs?”

  “I mean, didn’t you see the book?”

  He squinted at the shelf nearest to them. In the gloom, he could only make out a couple of titles: Paradise Lost, A New Virgil Reader. The other books’ spines were too worn, lost to time.

  “Well. I saw some books,” he said.

  “This is fucking insane. You brought us out here with no idea what to look for.”

  Clint frowned at her. He had seen her stressed
and bitchy and exhausted, but this was the first time he’d seen her cool, calm facade really crack. Some part of him wanted to snap back, You don’t know what to look for either, but he stopped himself. Bickering wouldn’t help, anyway.

  Malina wasn’t angry. She was scared.

  “I’ll know when I see it,” he said.

  Above them, something clattered to the floor. A heavy, papery noise.

  Clint and Malina both snapped their guns toward the sound.

  “Looks like we’re going up,” Clint said.

  Clint and Malina softened their steps as they went up the stairs. They moved in wordless agreement, following a formation that was now as instinctive as breathing: Malina leading the way, Clint close behind her. He walked backwards, watching the space behind them, ready to light up the first shadow that moved.

  Clint held his breath, held his gun steady, and flicked his stare around the corners of his HUD, gathering the information he needed. 23 bullets. Still stuck at 80/120 HP, but he’d regenerated up to 32/100 NRG.

  He bit his lip and hoped that, whatever that noise was, it was only one person. He wasn’t keen on getting caught out with an empty magazine and a box full of useless ammunition again.

  The landing at the top of the stairs split in two directions where the second story curved in a U-shape above the main floor.

  Malina gestured to the left, pointed to herself, then pointed at Clint and nodded in the opposite direction. He understood well enough: split up. Start searching.

  Clint nodded and took off, his blood pulsing hot and fast, pushing him forward. He peered around the corner of each shelf gun-first. He moved quickly, even more quickly than Malina, and outpaced her sooner than he planned to.

  Time pressed in from all sides. He had to find the way out before Florence could catch up with them, before Rachel could somehow slip away. He saw nothing until he reached one of the last shelves, at the back of the second floor.

  There, in the middle of the aisle, a single book lay on the floor.

  He approached it cautiously. The book drew him forward inexorably, like a magnet.

  Clint stooped to pick it up, his eyes never leaving the wall ahead of him. He listened hard to the space behind him for any creeping steps, muffled breathing, the click of metal on metal.

  But he saw nothing. Heard nothing.

  It felt too easy. Like a trap.

  But Clint knelt down anyway and picked the book up. He turned the cover over and read the title.

  Dante’s Inferno.

  A new quest notification spread over his vision, and he heard himself laugh like an idiot. Like he had already won.

  CHAPTER 24

  C

  LINT WANTED TO THROW HIS arms in the air and cheer. An adrenaline rush had nothing on this hot shot of dopamine flooding him. He felt like his very soul was full of light. For a second, it all melted away: the pain, the fear, the fight to the death.

  He flipped open the book and flicked through the pages with his thumb, looking for a note slipped inside, a bookmarked page, something.

  The only writing he found was scrawled on the inside cover in pencil: EMBRACE HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. It was scratched over a map of Dante’s version of Hell.

  The first level had its name circled again and again: level one. Limbo.

  “This is Limbo,” he said. “Holy shit.”

  Before he could think better of it, he lifted his head and called out, “Malina! Malina, I think I found it!”

  “Congratulations,” came a voice from behind him.

  Male. Young. Not Malina at all.

  Clint whirled around, his gun moving with him.

  A kid stood there, the muzzle of Clint’s rifle inches from his nose.

  The kid stared up at him with a mixture of perplexion and mild irritation. His hoodie and jeans were impossibly clean for anyone who had been in this game more than a few minutes. He looked like he was barely out of middle school, and his dark, slender eyes regarded Clint up and down with unspoiled calm.

  “You probably shouldn’t shoot me,” the kid said. “You’d just waste a bullet and get some unwanted attention.”

  Clint tightened his grip on his rifle. “Who the hell are you?”

  Something moved over the kid’s shoulder. Clint flicked his stare up and saw Malina, stalking behind a far shelf, her shotgun aimed at the kid’s head.

  When she heard Clint yelling, she must have made her way around the thin walkway joining the two sides of the upper floor. Now she raised an eyebrow and nodded at the kid.

  The question on her face was impossible to misread. Want me to shoot the little bastard?

  “I know you’re hiding back there. Come out and say hello.” The kid turned toward her and offered a bright smile. One of his canine teeth was missing.

  Malina didn’t lower her shotgun, but she did step out from behind the shelf.

  “Who’s the brat?” she asked Clint.

  The kid looked at her, flatly, and answered, “He’s about two hundred years older than you and quickly losing his interest in helping you two.”

  “Well,” Malina said, “that’s not an answer.”

  “You’re two hundred years old?” Clint said, doubtfully.

  “Over two hundred years dead might be more accurate.”

  Clint and Malina exchanged looks. He could only give her a baffled shrug.

  “Sorry,” Clint said. “I’m used to new people in this game wanting to kill us.”

  That brought the tension out of the kid’s face. He grinned another wolfish grin and said, “Don’t worry about it. You’re the first players to find me here!” He paused, considered it. “Well, that’s not true. But the first lady just tried to shoot me.”

  Now Malina lowered her shotgun. “Are you the way we get to the second level?”

  The kid shrugged. “Maybe.” He nodded to the book. “That’s a bit better. I’m more of a guide. That’s a cheat sheet.” He laughed like the high tinkling of a bell. “Well, if you know your Dante, that is.”

  “Why the fuck would I know anything about Dante?” she snapped back at him.

  Clint put up a calming hand. “Chill out, he’s basically just an NPC.”

  “I don’t even know what an NPC is,” Malina muttered back to him.

  “God, you really are old,” Clint said.

  “No.” The boy scowled at them both. “I’m a restless spirit from the great unknown, thanks. I’m not a character. I have my own brain.”

  The rain hammered against the windows. Beyond it resounded the low bellow of drunks cheering and yelling. Far away and growing ever closer.

  “I think their stupid party is moving,” Malina said, anxiously. “Tell us how to go forward, kid.”

  “My name’s not kid.”

  “I swear to fucking God—”

  “Malina. Just take a breath, okay?” Clint gave her a sharp, meaningful look. It silenced her long enough for him to ask the kid, “What would you like us to call you?”

  The kid considered that for a few seconds. “Virgil seems appropriate for this adventure.”

  Clint clutched the ruined copy of the Inferno to his chest. “Virgil,” he said.

  In the only literature class he’d had to take in college, they had been assigned a few random excerpts from the book. He didn’t read them, but he had pretended to. That name brought back the memory of his professor scrawling and circling the word VIRGIL on the whiteboard.

  “That guy was in the book. He was like… he was the guide, right?”

  “You know your epic literature!” Virgil said, impressed. Although he said it as though Clint was the only little kid standing here, so Clint wasn’t convinced it was genuine.

  Virgil stepped up onto the air and hovered there like a ghost. “And like the guide from the poem, I’m only full of vague allusions and long diatribes.”

  Malina’s face flattened in a scowl. “So you won’t tell us how to get t
o the next level?”

  “That’s what the book is for,” he said and scoffed, as if it should be obvious.

  “Useless fucking guide,” she muttered.

  “I mean, I gave you the book. That’s much further than you were getting on your own.”

  Clint shushed them both and hissed, “Wait. Listen.”

  The library went silent as a cemetery, broken only by the nervous tiptap of rain.

  The party was closer. A car engine roared so loudly, it sounded as if it was on the other side of the hedge separating the library from the schoolyard.

  Malina jogged to the windows. She peered through them and said, “Shit. They’re right there. Some drunk bastards are doing donuts on the track field.”

  “Hope they wreck their car,” Clint muttered.

  “God, me too.” Malina squinted, one-eyed, only letting half her face show through the window. “Some guys at the hedge too. I think they’re looking into the building.”

  Malina ducked away from the window and pressed herself against the wall. Her expression made Clint’s heart sink. Fear darkened her face. Real fear, the mortal kind. She looked certain they were about to die.

  “We need to leave,” Malina said, urgently. “Right now.”

  Clint bit his lip, hard. He watched Virgil’s pleasant smile for any hint of what he should say next, but the kid didn’t give him a single clue.

  He held up the book and said to Malina, “We have to stop and look at this.”

  “Yeah, sure, okay. Let’s sit down and read a 1200-page fucking novel before the bad guys notice us and fill us up with bullets. Excellent idea.” Malina kicked at the bookshelf, sent books scattering across the floor. “You absolute dickhead.”

  “I’m not reading the whole thing, obviously.”

  “Sure, skim a 1200-page novel.” Malina looked at him like he was stupid as ditchwater. “Then when they come to kill you, you can write your last words in it.”

  Virgil started laughing again, delightedly. His pupils lit with a strange white light, as if he was staring at a computer screen inside his head. He clucked his tongue against his front teeth.

  “You don’t have much time. They’re close. But it’s not the drunks you have to worry about.”