Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller

by Leif Kennison

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author's Preface

  Prologue

  One - Home

  Two - Nyla

  Three - for loop

  Four - Memo

  Five - Room 550

  Six - Press Enter To Continue

  Seven - error code 6675636b6564

  Eight - npc.enemy.stopcombat

  Nine - Return

  Ten - Dirty Shedders

  Eleven - int painResistance

  Twelve - The Grind

  Thirteen - BCZ White

  Fourteen - Burner City

  Fifteen - Kiting

  Sixteen - Alpha Testers

  Seventeen - White Peach

  Eighteen - Red Elixir

  Nineteen - Vagabond

  Epilogue

  A Letter to My Readers

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact author@leifkennison.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental. All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2020 Leif Kennison

  All rights reserved.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Dedication

  To my lovely wife…

  This book would never have seen the light of day without you.

  Writing this book with you by my side has been a blessing.

  I love you, my sweet honeycrisp.

  And to all of my creative writing teachers…VB, SD, RL

  Thank you for teaching and inspiring me.

  My journey couldn’t have started without you.

  Author's Preface

  Dear reader,

  First, thanks for buying my book. Your purchase helps support an indie author and enables the the creativity that isn’t always present in works made for the masses.

  I wrote this book during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t know about you, but when we got put on lockdown, it really felt like the world was ending. And it got me thinking: what if this really is the end?

  This book was inspired by a lot of things. I’m a gamer, and I love games like Project Zomboid, World War Z, Dying Light, and 7 Days to Die, just to name a few.

  I also love realistic sci-fi. I love knowing how the technology works. When a story is rooted in realism, it makes that much more immersive and accessible to me.

  Anyway, I really want you to have fun with this story. I also want you to help me shape the future of this series. So when you’re done with the book, let me know what you thought.

  There’s more to come. The possibilities are endless. Will Wayne get powers? Will there be advanced energy weapons? I’m very excited to continue the series!

  See you on the other side.

  - Leif Kennison

  April 9, 2020

  Prologue

  I am not a hero.

  I don’t have superpowers. I’m not wealthy.

  I am an ordinary man.

  I’m just like you.

  For most of my life, I was average at everything. School. Dating. My job.

  Then, the virus struck.

  Everything fell apart.

  Before the virus, I was just a system administrator.

  I never thought I’d pick up a rifle and become a crack shot. If you told me that I’d be running up fire escapes and across rooftops to escape zombies, I would’ve told you to get the fuck out of here. I never would’ve believed you if you told me that I’d be killing zombies or fighting the forces that put them here. There was no way I would’ve ever imagined that society would collapse. Especially not the way it did.

  People blame the virus.

  Not the first one. The second one.

  They say that the virus originated in Tunisia and Italy, but the truth is that it sprang up all over Europe and Asia all of a sudden. The virus swept through America too, social distancing be damned. Yeah, that’s what they called it. Social distancing. Isolation is what it is.

  The virus was one tough bastard. We didn’t know it in the beginning, but it can spread just from an infected person exhaling. Not even coughing—just simple breathing. From there, the droplets would survive in the air for six to eight hours, lingering there and being blown through the air for miles. It could survive on cardboard for up to a week, and hard surfaces for four to six weeks.

  Millions of people across the country died because of the disease. They perished terribly. They died coughing up blood, either suffocating because their lungs were destroyed, or they drowned in their own blood. The elderly population was devastated. But what surprised a lot of people was how many young people were dying off too. It was scary. Young people in high school and college, in the prime of their life. I still remember hearing the police scanner reporting all these DOA’s with a laceration to the head, bleeding all over the sidewalk. People were literally dropping dead.

  After the virus hit the big time, there was a huge push to put everything online. It started with schools. Kids were given laptops and tablets and kept at home to do lessons online. Restaurants had to close down, providing only delivery and takeout. Eventually, they even stopped takeout. Doctors started taking visits over a webcam instead. Online dating came to a halt. There was a huge increase in demand for delivery service people and cooks to make food. People stayed sane by streaming movies and ordering food. Businesses started shifting their operations online too. Instead of working at an office, people worked remotely from home—if they were lucky enough to keep their job.

  After the deaths started climbing up into the tens of thousands, state governments started cracking down on being out in the streets. Citizens were ordered to stay at home, and police would keep order. People were isolated from each other for years.

  The virus never died off. It was still infecting people for years after it started. People were scared. There was huge demand for bigger homes, people wanting to build their own castles—fenced backyards, houses with lots of rooms, and a big basement for storage. But by that time, most people were poor. They were out of work during the national lockdown. They had rent and other bills that were piling up. The stimulus checks just couldn’t make that all disappear.

  When the city started burning, it was easy for the government to activate the National Guard. They were already in place, supposedly helping with the construction of the new prisons and hospital, and cleaning public buildings like courts and schools. To provide “relief and aid,” they claimed. Soldiers armed with carbines patrolled the city in armored trucks. The heavy, lumbering vehicles that once rumbled on the gritty streets of China generations ago now barreled through the empty streets of Midtown Manhattan. It wasn’t long before the national lockdown became en
forced through martial law.

  And that’s when the city started to crumble.

  That’s where my story begins…just before the start of the Collapse.

  ONE

  Home

  I needed to make a sale today, otherwise I was going to be at risk of getting laid off. So I logged back into Salesplex, picked up my headset and clicked on the red button that said Call Lead.

  I always got butterflies in my stomach before a sales call. I’d been making them for about a year now, but they never went away.

  Salesplex threw up a script for me to follow, and seconds later the call connected.

  “My name is Wayne Kessler,” I said. “I’m a sales engineer at Immersiant and I have an appointment to speak with Sarah down at purchasing, could you put me through?”

  “Oh yes, she’s been expecting you. Please hold.”

  Then, Sarah’s face popped up in the center of my screen.

  “Hello!” she said. She had a lean, square-jawed face and dyed blonde hair. And from looking at the direction of her eyes, I could see that she was looking at the screen instead of the camera. I guess she didn’t have the new teleconferencing displays where the camera was behind the screen. I liked how I got to use some cool tech thanks to the company I worked for.

  “Hey Sarah,” I said, greeting her with a big smile. “It’s Wayne from Immersiant.”

  “Yeah, Wayne, good to hear from you. Look, thanks for sending all that information about the RealTwo. Can you just walk me through it?”

  “Absolutely, you got it Sarah. Why don’t you connect to my screenshare…alright, here we go. So, Immersiant makes immersive reality devices for the consumer market. As you know, because of the pandemic—”

  “—oh God, I can’t even remember what it was like before it hit. What’s it been, two years going on the third now, right?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I’m right with you Sarah.”

  Before starting my next sentence, I glanced at the little panel on the side of my screen that gave me some useful stats to quote.

  “Since the pandemic hit,” I continued saying, “the demand for in-home entertainment has grown over 800% since before it started. And since nobody knows when this nationwide lockdown is going to end, we forecast that demand is only going to rise exponentially as people exhaust other forms of entertainment. Make sense so far?”

  She nodded, but she had a poker face. I prayed that the script was going to do right by me.

  “Now,” I said, continuing. “There’s two problems that consumers face when they try to buy IRDs. Cost and space. Most immersive reality devices on the market now are just huge. They take up as much space as a king-sized bed. And they’re just very expensive. That means that the only people buying them right now are the wealthy folks who have big houses. Did you get a chance to set up the demo unit in your office?

  “Yes Wayne, I did, but I have to be honest.”

  “Sure, what is it, Sarah?”

  “We’re really skeptical about whether people are going to buy this thing.”

  “The hardware side of the business has always been bolstered by the software. So why don’t we hop into the game and I’ll show you everything. I have a feeling that once you see our launch title, you’ll see what we’re really working with.”

  “The game is called 28 Dayz. It’s an immersive reality shooter with deep character development and RPG elements. You fight zombies, loot, build up defenses, and survive for as long as you can.”

  “Okay, sounds interesting. With the pandemic, it sounds like there’s quite a market for this.”

  “That’s right Sarah, that’s what our market research says,” I said, nodding. “Are you familiar with MMOs?”

  “Yeah, of course. How many players do your servers support?”

  The truth was that the more people who joined the server, the more capacity there was. This was because we used the players’ spare CPU cycles, but headquarters didn’t want us telling people that.

  I said, “Over 1000 players on a server.”

  “Wow, that’s impressive. Let’s dive right in.”

  Sarah put on her RealTwo visor and went off screen to take her clothes off so she could put on the bodysuit. When she came back, she looked excited.

  “I’m all set, Wayne!”

  “Alright, Sarah, let me put on my suit. Then click on the link I send you, it’ll start the client and connect you to my server.”

  I got geared up, logged into the demo server, and waited for it to load.

  Moments later, both Sarah and I were in the game, standing in front of each other. We spawned into the default map, some generic city. And every time you started a new game, you had a randomized avatar. I’d already scanned her Facebook photo into the game, so she looked like her. But she had cyan hair, a ragged green tank top, black jeans, and knee-high boots.

  I hit the tilde key and typed in the command for third-person view just to check myself out. This time I spawned with the typical sales outfit—a tailored white shirt, trim navy pants, and a pair of well-shined brown leather shoes. Better than anything I had in my tiny closet.

  “Sarah!” I said, waving.

  She blinked and looked around, examining her surroundings.

  “This...this is amazing!”

  “Isn’t it? So let me walk you through how the game works.”

  I walked over to her so I could help her with character creation. The user interface elements are usually seen privately. So for example, if I pull up my UI, nobody else in the game could see it. But for the demo purposes, I could see and interact with hers.

  “Sarah,” I said as I walked over to her UI. “As you can see, when you start the game, you go into the character creation screen. You start with twelve trait points. There’s a list of good and bad traits. The trick was to balance out your character. The bad traits give you points, so if you load up on more bad traits, you can get more points to get good traits.”

  Then, I showed her a few of the traits.

  Nervous Nellie (+2 pts)

  +100% chance of getting Panicked

  Couch Potato (+2 pts)

  -2 Fitness

  I walked through making a character. Iris, an AI sales assistant in Salesplex, had pulled together a dossier about Sarah—her Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, what she liked on YouTube, her publications, everything. Based on that and her demographic data, Iris made some predictions about what she liked. Since it told me that she most likely enjoyed extreme sports and fitness, I showed her a trait I thought she’d like.

  Gym Rat (-4 pts)

  +2 Fitness

  “Sarah, I think this trait suits you pretty well, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled and nodded, giving me a thumbs up.

  Iris had also said that Sarah was likely brave, so it recommended the Pioneer trait for me to assign to her.

  Pioneer (-6 pts)

  -75% chance of getting Panicked

  Move faster through trees

  Increase mood when outdoors

  I remember the sales manual saying that it was usually good to let prospective clients choose one of the traits themselves, so I asked her to pick one, and she did.

  Farmer (-6 pts)

  +2 Farming

  Can plant seeds

  “Ever since the pandemic,” Sarah said. “I’ve wanted to live off the land, get off the grid, y’know?”

  “That’s a good choice, Sarah!”

  “This is off to a good start, what’s next?” she asked.

  “Now we get out into the world and survive!”

  I showed Sarah around the demo city. There were different spots to take the prospect, depending on what they were interested in seeing. I’d taken prospects to most of them. One spot was meant for thrill seekers. There, there were fast zombies that would chase them. Another spot was meant for people with pent-up aggression. There, we gave them a mass of slow zombies and a baseball bat. We had different spots for all tastes.

  Since Sarah seemed like sh
e was a thrill seeker, I brought her to the neighborhood with the fast zombies. It was a middle-class residential area, and there were two-story houses lining both sides of the street. The level designers had tried to make it with broad appeal—our target demographic were middle-class Americans. Anyway, I brought Sarah in front of the house with the sushi in it. It was a classic pale yellow house, two-stories with an attic.

  “Sarah,” I said. “The game’s goal is survival. And if you bring up your HUD—”

  “How do I do that again?”

  “There are two ways. Advanced users can eventually activate it just by thinking of it, but you can also do this.” I showed her the gesture. I opened my left palm and pressed my thumb into the center while pressing the back of my hand with my forefinger.

  She did it, and her HUD popped up in front of her.

  “See over there?” I said, pointing in the upper right-hand corner. “There are the moodlets. They’re icons that tell you what your character is feeling.”

  I pulled up the console by putting together three fingers on my palm and pressing three times. Then I typed in a command:

  /giveMoodlet hungry player.Sarah

  When it popped up on her HUD, I pointed at it and said, “And that one’s telling you that you’re hungry.”

  Sarah pursed her lips in disappointment.

  “Doesn’t the game simulate everything?” she asked. “Why does it have to tell me?”

  Iris threw up some blurbs for me to work with, and I started to explain.

  “Simulating physical sensations like hunger are in the works and may show up in a future beta version. I heard that the military-grade simulations have that, and we’re working on bringing all of that to the consumers when the hardware is up to speed for that level of simulation. Right now, we do have basic sensations like very mild pain and hot and cold, things that’ll really grab players.”