by Wyatt Savage
“This is gravy, baby,” Big Rig hissed, glaring down over the barrel of his gun at Kurtis. “Not only do I get to take your ass out, but I get points for doing it.”
He pressed his boot down hard on Kurtis’s chest, laughing, glancing from him to the Glock, believing that Kurtis was unarmed. Yet, Kurtis’s arms remained free, and in the fractured light of the prison courtyard he remembered what he had hidden in the cuff of his pants.
Big Rig racked his shotgun as Kurtis grabbed the sharpened chopsticks. In the instant before he was blown away into eternity, Kurtis plucked out the chopsticks with his right hand and drove both of them into Big Rig’s ankle.
A howl erupted from the inmate’s mouth. He blundered back like a drunken man and aimed the shotgun when the serpent-like head of the monster distended, two rows of saber-like teeth ratcheting down toward Big Rig’s head.
4
No Free Lunches
The monster’s mouth suctioned around Big Rig’s head, ripping the skull from his shoulders in the same manner as one might pull a weed out of the ground.
Kurtis grimaced as the monster devoured the decapitated skull in a single bite. He listened to the wet, sickening crush of snapping bone as the beast came back for seconds, eviscerating what was left of Big Rig in another bite.
This put the fear of God in the rest of the inmates, who scrambled for cover. Amid his revulsion, Kurtis experienced a spark of clarity. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He grabbed his sidearm and avoided the other inmates, cutting a path back toward the security doors.
A wounded guard was lying near the doors. For a moment, Kurtis had thoughts of leaving the man, and then he remembered how many people he’d let down in the past. Friends, family, an endless cycle of disappointment that had to be broken. Not this time. Not anymore. He’d do what Jimmy Mulvey had done for him. Kurtis grabbed the man’s hand and helped him up. There was no time for caution or deliberation.
“Run!” he screamed to the guard. “You need to run!”
The guard staggered to his feet and Kurtis helped him forward, scoping his HUD, which glinted with numbers, stats, and the identities of those around him. There were dozens of other inmates fleeing the terror. Kurtis and the guard lost themselves in the crush of people. The close press of people meant it would be nearly impossible to fight back if someone made a move to take Kurtis out.
Like a river crashing through a dam, the boiling mass of inmates smashed through the prison’s main doors. Bodies went flying onto the sidewalk. Carried along with the throng, Kurtis quickly found himself out on Van Buren Street, rolling across the blacktop. He gaped up at the prison, which remained imposing despite visible flames casting a lurid light through the structure’s slotted windows. Screams and gunshots still reverberated from within.
The other inmates ran left or began attacking each other for points. Kurtis motioned for the guard he’d helped to run. The man stood and pointed to the west and was shot in the back by one of the other inmates. Stumbling back, Kurtis detoured to the east, making his way for the parking garage. It was December and cold as hell, so he breathed into his hands, spitting out blood, keeping his head down, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. He dipped into an alcove on South Federal Street, catching his breath, fighting to get his bearings.
When he was younger, Kurtis knew the language of the streets. He had the ability to read sights and sounds, to discern meaning in the rhythms of the city. But he’d been away for too long. All he could hear now was noise: gunshots, screams, and the terrible howling notes made by things that seemed to be all around him.
Kurtis looked in every direction and noticed strange green clouds rising up into the air. He looked up and spotted what appeared to be a young boy in a window on a building across the street. The kid pressed his fingertips to the other side of the glass and then vanished in a burst of green dust.
“I need another map,” Kurtis gasped, backtracking down the street. “The city. I need to see Chicago.”
A map of the city appeared on Kurtis’s HUD.
“How is this even happening?” Kurtis asked, overwhelmed, but grateful to be breathing air, relatively fresh air, for the first time in a very long time.
“How is what happening?” the voice asked.
“How are we talking?”
“All participants have been gifted neural implants that are called SecondSight, which will assist you in playing the game.”
“I didn’t give you permission to implant anything.”
“Nevertheless, it has been done.”
“Where are you?’
“Inside of you,” the voice replied, which sent a shiver up and down the knobs of Kurtis’s spine. “We have the ability to communicate via an application called Mindspeak.”
Kurtis looked back at the map. There were red dots everywhere along with a dozen or so yellow dots.
“The red dots. Those are participants in general, not just other inmates?”
“Yes.”
A popup showed a never-ending list of names and faces. Kurtis heard shrieks and looked sideways, watching two gang-bangers chasing a middle-aged woman down the street with machetes. Beyond them, cars were on fire, people brawling, baying for blood, stabbing, hacking, and shooting each other. Others were riding around on electric scooters and dirtbikes, blasting away at anything that moved. There was smoke in the sky and the sound of helicopters and jet fighters streaking overhead. The worst thing, however, was the trumpeting sound that echoed in the distance. A note that no human or machine could possibly produce. It quickly subsided to a deep haunting ululation, like something a dying whale might make. Kurtis had no desire to stick around to see what was making it.
Against the clatter and noise, Kurtis hustled down the street and spotted the garage. As he ran, images of data whirred across his HUD. It was as if he was picking up wireless signals from all around. TV footage played, and Kurtis slowed and stared at the image of some CNN reporter with a caption that read: “Mass Violence Leaves Thousands Dead.” This changed to a series of rapid-fire images, a kind of mental newsreel: reports of active shooters; interviews with medical examiners; police; pleas for blood donations; monetary donations; the Mayor of Chicago making an emergency declaration. He closed his eyes and willed it all away. How the hell had things spiraled out of control so quickly?
He slipped under the signs pinned to the front of the garage, including a big green-and-white one for “Park” and the red-and-white ones for monthly and daily rates and immigration parking. Sidearm in hand, he inched down the decline into the darkened space. Examining his HUD, he noted that there were six red dots inside the building. The problem, of course, was that Jimmy Mulvey had failed to tell Kurtis what level his car was on.
The red dots were on the garage’s upper levels, so Kurtis continued on down into P1, the lowest level in the garage. He kept to the shadows, eying every vehicle.
There were bodies here too. Not only the garage attendants, who’d been stabbed and shot, but a number of commuters in fancy business attire, including a fat man in a three-piece suit who was hanging from the ceiling. Someone had skewered the man through the chest, run a length of nylon rope through the hole, and then hung him from the box of a commercial fan. The fan was on and the man’s body moved with it, sweeping left, then right. Kurtis turned away, doing his best not to gag.
Kurtis reached the end of P1 and cursed his luck. The Camry was nowhere in sight. The red dots were on the move, however, and Kurtis realized he’d have to go up. His only hope was that he’d find the car on P2 before the red dots found him.
Blasting back up the concrete incline, Kurtis chugged forward. Having been down in the witch hole for so long, he wasn’t used to this much exertion. His muscles throbbed and his lungs burned. It didn’t help that he was down 2 health points.
“How do I recover?” he asked.
“Can you be more specific,” the voice replied.
“How do I get my health back?”
; “You can purchase what you might call medicine. Rejuvs, medpacks.”
“Okay, I’ll take one.”
“They must be purchased.”
“How.”
“Points.”
Kurtis scanned his HUD, gaping at his stats, which read:
Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)
Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5
Health:8/10
Level:1
Class:Fighter
Kills:4
Vitals:BP – 121/80; T – 98.03f; RR – 12bpm
XP:121
He’d made progress, but not as much as he’d expected. “How much does the medicine cost?”
“Twenty-five points, but you cannot make a purchase until you have amassed a hundred and fifty experience points. At a hundred and eighty experience points, you can heal yourself and begin contemplating upgrades.”
“So I have to kill things to save myself?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon my French, but that’s fucked up.”
“That is the Melee,” the voice replied.
“I’m calling you Nadine now by the way.”
“What is the significance of the name?” Nadine replied.
“My old man was a Chuck Berry fan.”
“I am not familiar with Chuck Berry.”
“Y’know, great guitar player, father of rock and roll…”
Silence from Nadine.
“I assumed you knew everything,” Kurtis added.
“That is not accurate.”
Kurtis didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing. But he knew he needed to find the Camry fast.
“I talk and you answer, right?”
“Yes,” Nadine replied.
“Where’s the car?”
“Which one?”
“The Camry.”
“As I said before, there are certain things beyond my purview.”
Kurtis couldn’t remember what purview meant. He continued up, nearly slipping on a long, rooster-tail of machine oil, before rounding a corner in the garage on P2. He blitzed between the cars, hoping and praying that he’d spot the Camry. He weaved between rows of cars, foreign and domestic. There were a number of Toyotas, but none fit the description of Jimmy Mulvey’s silver Camry.
Screams filtered down from the level above him. Gunshots. Laughter. The echo of shoes and bare feet across concrete.
There were five red dots on his HUD now. One of the participants had been killed. Kurtis crouched behind a Mercedes SUV, making his silhouette small.
Shadows appeared on the gray wall out beyond his hiding spot. The sketchy outlines of human figures running through the garage.
Kurtis could see them now. Five level-one fighters at full strength. Four men and a woman garbed either entirely in black, or protected by football padding. The woman was Hispanic, the men were African-American. All were armed. Metal baseball bats, knives, and two of them had pistols.
Kurtis steeled himself, watching them pass, hoping like hell that he wouldn’t have to engage them. They kept on going and Kurtis breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the Hispanic woman stopped. She looked down. Something on the ground. She whistled to the others and pointed. Stabbed her knife at the rooster-tail of oil, the one that Kurtis had stepped in.
“Footprints,” Kurtis heard the woman say.
No, no, no, Kurtis thought. Go away, go away! He pressed his back against the Mercedes, ducking so that he wouldn’t be seen.
The men and woman started pointing and arguing. They began moving toward him.
Time and sound seemed to slow and then Kurtis saw that the five had stopped moving. Something had distracted them. The woman pointed back in the other direction and they turned. He breathed and slid down to the ground and sat on it.
The key FOB attached to Jimmy Mulvey’s keys. The one that was chirping Jimmy Mulvey’s Camry. “Shit,” Kurtis whispered.
5
Don’t Blink!
Jimmy’s Camry was in sight. Kurtis could see it on the lip of P3, just up the incline to his right, but the five pursuers reacted to the sound of the chirping. They sprinted back and stopped, six feet away from his position. Their panting hit his ears, and the smell of their putrid sweat mixed with blood forced into his nostrils, almost causing him to sneeze. He quickly clasped a hand over his nose and held it in.
Two of the men jogged up to the Camry and inspected it. Finding nothing, they returned to the others. The woman began cursing, barking orders about this and about that and then she remembered the oil slick again. Her eyes swung down and she followed the barest outline of Kurtis’s shoes to where he was hiding.
She spun around and opened her mouth to out Kurtis, who rose up out of the shadows. Before the five could react, Kurtis was on them. He screamed for her to drop her weapon and she stared at him, her expression unreadable. Then she dropped her hand and Kurtis shot her through the left eye. The men reacted and so did Kurtis, picking them off.
He blasted holes through the necks of two of the men, then gutshot the third. The last man, a young punk in a yellow hoodie with a nose ring, stared at Kurtis. A moment passed between them. Kurtis saw something in the punk’s eyes. Desperation. He knew the look. He’d been there himself once upon a time. The punk threw his baseball bat at Kurtis.
Kurtis ducked, then took aim at the punk, who zigzagged for cover, running out of the parking lot. Kurtis aimed at the man’s back and then pulled the weapon down. Something about planting lead in the back of a fleeing man for twenty-five points made him nauseated.
The smell of cordite tanging the air, Kurtis hauled himself up the incline as his HUD reflected his new stats:
Species:Homo Sapiens (Evinrude, Kurtis)
Chattel:9 mm G17 Gen-5
Health:8/10
Level:1
Class:Fighter
Kills:7
Vitals:BP – 121/80; T – 98.03f; RR – 12bpm
XP:199
He opened the Camry door, cursing that he was just shy of a hundred fifty experience points. He was getting closer to being able to heal himself. In his rush, he dropped the keys and reached down to get them. He plucked them up, but not before popping up the trunk. Moving to the rear of the car, he peered into the trunk, which contained a spare tire, a few bags of cat litter, a tire iron, some old CDs, and several Christmas wreaths. He closed the trunk.
Kurtis slid behind the wheel and leaned over, opening the glove box and rifling through it. A few candy bars, an owner’s manual, an ice scraper. A tiny square of laminated white paper hidden inside the manual fluttered to the ground.
The car’s registration.
He grabbed the registration and spotted Jimmy Mulvey’s home address. Jimmy lived in Mount Greenwood, a neighborhood popular with cops that was located about eighteen miles southwest of the parking garage. Some of his best customers had lived there back in the day so he knew the area well.
Kurtis ripped open one of the candy bars and the sugar rushed into his bloodstream almost instantly. He fired up the Camry but paused when he spotted a photo stuck near the drink holders, a photo of Jimmy with his arms around an attractive woman and a teenaged boy. They were smiling in the photo, back in better times. Kurtis took the picture and placed it face-down on the passenger seat. Then he slotted the car in gear and toed the gas, blasting down toward the exit out of the parking garage.
The Camry rocketed out of the garage, bottoming out on South Federal Street in a cloud of friction sparks. Kurtis cursed Jimmy Mulvey for buying a Toyota. Why the hell couldn’t you have bought something with some horses under the hood? Maybe a BMW or a Range Rover. But then Kurtis remembered Jimmy’s situation, how the guard risked his ass for thirty-eight grand a year. Thirty-eight grand with a wife and kid. Kurtis was grateful. The Camry would do just fine.
Kurtis sawed the wheel and was confronted by a gang of Melee participants. Most of them had their faces covered by scarves, looking like rebels in a backwater country’s civil war. They tossed bottles a
nd bricks at the car, and one of them fired several shots from a small-caliber pistol that cracked his window. Kurtis ducked and sped past them, cutting off the headlights.
Cars and buildings were on fire and Kurtis was forced to swerve past or drive over the bodies that littered the blacktop, which wasn’t easy with the headlights out. Reckoning it might be safer toward Lake Michigan, he drove east, only to stand on his brakes when he caught a glimpse of the lake. Or, more appropriately, what used to be the lake.
In its place was a vast, black wall, that stretched north-to-south as far as the eye could see, obscuring any view of the lake. Moonlight glimmered off the shiny surface of the wall.
“What is that, Nadine?” Kurtis asked.
“The wall.”
“I can see it’s a…who put it there?”
“The Noctem.”
“Why?” he asked.
“For purposes of the Melee.”
“What does that mean?”
“In order to survive the Onslaught, you must reach and climb over the wall in five hours and forty-one minutes,” Nadine answered.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“You will reach your journey’s end.”
Kurtis’s mouth was dry. He was caught up fighting through his confusion, doubt, and adrenaline, unable to fully process everything when something heavy smashed into the back windshield, spiderwebbing the glass. Flinching, Kurtis gaped back to see a quartet of figures in hoodies running toward him.
Stomping on the gas, Kurtis piloted the Camry down a side street, putting some distance between him and the other participants only to see something else, something that was so enormous that it made it seem like the entire sky had shifted. A black blob that slowly elongated into something much bigger. In the glow of the streetlamps Kurtis witnessed a beast rampage out of the nothingness, a creature that looked like the bastard spawn of an octopus and a praying mantis.
Its head, which was attached to a long, thin, submarine-like body, billowed with white tentacles that snapped at the air. The body was attached to four spindly legs, twenty feet high and as thin as javelins, that propelled it forward in long, jerky strides. Information concerning the monster appeared on his HUD:
