My face lit up with a smile.
A translucent screen projected out of my arm and a few feet in front of my chest. It was a monochrome display with various shades of orange. It glowed brightly, so I hoped that it was a private display. I twisted my forearm around and was glad that the screen was anchored and didn’t twist around too.
I looked at the console, and it was just frozen there, waiting for me to type in commands. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have a keyboard. But when I put my hands near the screen with my palms down, a keyboard projected under my hands. Whoa, good UX.
I peeked back outside. The soldiers had started clearing their buildings. Elgin was outside. I guessed that she was keeping an eye on things.
Seeing that they were occupied, I settled in and started experimenting with different commands and digging around the file system. I was trying to find any information about where Nyla could’ve been taken. I knew it was a long shot. There wasn’t much of a reason that the system would be hooked into any personal machines that contained sensitive information, but I had to try.
After a while, I found a directory called transmissions.
Bingo.
The file list was long. There were plenty of audio files for me to listen to. If they were anything like the transmissions that Elgin played back for her squad, I was sure I could piece together something.
I executed a command in the console.
> play transmission_FoxOne-SquadBlue-6749
Suddenly, the voice of the stout man boomed loudly from my screen.
My heart sank into my stomach.
The voice was doubled. It sounded as if it were coming from the sky.
I peeked over at Elgin. She reacted to the voice.
Pin pricks of sweat beaded all over my body.
Why the fuck did the file play globally? I thought.
Elgin barked into the shoulder mic clipped onto the strap of her vest, and moments later the soldiers ran out of the buildings and formed up around her. Her eyes were laser-focused, her gaze frozen in my direction.
“Sarge, what the hell was that!” a soldier yelled as he jogged up to her. He was trying to make his voice heard over the booming one in the sky.
“I don’t know,” Elgin yelled back, “but it appears that we have an intruder in the system. I heard something over there, form up on me.”
The soldiers spread out, forming up in a wide formation, scanning their surroundings with their rifles snapped up, ready to fire.
I scrambled to stop the audio file. Nervous and frazzled, I ran downstairs and ran out the back door. The door slammed shut, and they must’ve heard it.
“Back there!” someone yelled.
It was game over for me. The soldiers would reach me in just a few moments.
Are they gonna shoot me?
I heard movement coming towards me.
Screw it.
I burst out into a sprint towards a fence in the back alley, but when I tried to climb it, I failed.
Fuck!
Sheer panic.
I ran out the only way I could. Through an alley and onto the street.
I glanced to my left and the soldiers were there.
“Contact left!” a soldier yelled.
I bolted off in the other direction.
I swear I could feel the rifles all pointed at my back. I was terrified that at any moment, I’d hear a burst of bullets being fired, tearing into my back. As fast as I could, I kept running and running until I couldn’t stand the fear anymore.
I felt like, any moment, the rifles would erupt and I’d be torn to pieces. I glanced to my side. There was a recessed doorway, so I ran into it.
Pressed up against the edge, I peeked out at the streets. The soldiers were steady, the muzzle of their rifles pointing right in my direction. I could feel them trying to surround me.
I couldn’t let them capture me. So I gathered myself, took a few deep breaths. Then, I jetted out onto the sidewalk and kept running up the street until I got a chance to turn the corner.
Thank God I broke line of sight.
My relief was short though. In my fearful flight, I felt like I needed to hide in a building. It wasn’t going to be long until they caught up to me, so I ran up the block, trying to open as many doors as I could. My panicked rattling of doors was making a hell of a lot of noise, but all I could think about was getting the hell off the streets. The last thing I wanted was the barrels of all those rifles bearing right down onto my back again.
Finally, a door swung open. I’d pulled so hard that it slammed into the wall. The glass shattered loudly. They’d find me for sure, but I just ran inside and up the stairs. It was fight or flight, and there was no way I was fighting those soldiers with nothing but a console on my wrist.
I ended up on the top floor, completely out of breath. My legs were like jelly. I tried the doorknobs of the apartments. Thankfully one of the doors opened up. I darted inside and slammed the door shut behind me.
Fear. Panic. Fatigue. It was making my head spin. I didn’t have the slightest idea how the hell I was going to get rid of those soldiers.
I ran into a bedroom, threw open the closet door, and planted myself as deep into the corner as I could. There were plenty of clothes on hangers. I threw them in the way of the closet door, then tucked my knees to my chest. I wished that I was a tiny little kid.
Now that I was hidden—well, not very well—I had bought myself some breathing room. And that’s exactly what I did. I caught my breath before I opened the console.
A holographic screen lit up in front of me. This time, it wasn’t super bright like it was before. I thought it was pretty cool that it had automatic brightness adjustment. Whoever had designed the system was really big on usability, I guess.
Then, it hit me.
Maybe it was a custom shell.
Made by the dead guy whose login I used to get in.
All the answers are in here, he said.
I didn’t have time to dig through his user directory or try to snoop my way into more sensitive information.
But I did have time to find some tools that might save my ass.
I flipped out the keyboard under my palms and scrambled to find the command to give me some weapons.
> give
> ngpsh: command not found: give
> giveItem
> ngpsh: command not found: giveItem
Dammit, what the hell is the command?
I kept trying different combinations of words.
But nothing was working.
I heard the heavy boots of the soldiers thudding their way up the stairs.
I was fucked.
There were two choices. I could either hide there, or I could run and hope to buy myself some more time.
I wasn’t sure what I should do. But it didn’t matter.
The choice was made for me. The steady thud of the foot steps neared the apartment door.
Please don’t let them find me in here.
“Clear!” someone yelled.
“Clear,” someone else said.
I could hear and feel the heavy boots thudding on the wooden floor near the door of the bedroom that I was in. The boots continued in, and another pair of boots followed behind. And then another.
Boom.
The closet door was thrown open.
It scared the crap out of me. And the next thing I knew, I was thrown onto the floor face first, loud gruff voices screaming aggressively at me.
“Got him secured, Sarge!” someone said as he planted his foot onto my back and dug into my spine. It hurt like hell.
The soldiers dragged me into the living room. I was still face down, and someone pointed the cold hard metal barrel of a gun right into the back of my head.
I couldn’t help it. Instinctively, I squeezed my eyes shut. My entire body was tense and all my muscles were clenched.
“Please no!” I shouted. “I’m not armed, don’t kill me!” I’m sure they could tell I was about
to piss my pants.
There was a brief moment of silence. But it felt like an eternity. I wasn’t ready for a bullet to blast through my skull and my brain. I wasn’t ready for my life to end. I had just gotten the guts to do something. Maybe that’s why there aren’t that many brave people, I thought. They get killed. They get mauled by bears. They splat at the bottom of a canyon. And they don’t get to have kids. They don’t get to spread that retarded-brave gene.
In my chest, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer. I could hear the blood pumping through my head like a waterfall.
I thought I felt the gun move, so I screamed. “Please don’t kill me!”
I still needed to find Nyla.
I still needed to prove to her I could be the man she wanted me to be.
Elgin’s sharp voice grated through the air.
“You,” she said, directing her commanding voice straight at me. “Are you an avatar?”
I was confused. “Wha-what?”
“An avatar,” she repeated. Then she pointed her voice at someone else. “He a bot or what?”
“Don’t know, Sarge,” a soldier said.
“The Fly didn’t tag him, strange,” said Elgin.
The gun lifted off my head, and they turned me over.
Surrounding me were four soldiers, with Elgin planted right over me. It was intimidating, but at least they didn’t have their guns pointed at me.
Elgin started to say something, but a voice outside the building called out to her.
She snapped her head towards the window overlooking the street. Looking outside, she called down to the soldier.
“What is it?” she yelled.
“Mob incoming!” he replied. He sounded urgent.
The soldier to my right got angry. “This fucking guy! It’s all his fault!”
Elgin snapped at him. “Get down there, now.”
Then she looked me up and down with sharp, observing eyes.
“Do not move from here, techie,” she said before rushing out to join her team.
I was left there in the empty apartment. Outside, I heard the sounds of urgent yelling. When I poked my head out the same window that Elgin had looked out of, a terrifying sight snatched the breath out of my lungs.
A massive horde of what could only have been zombies were running full speed.
The running corpses were clothed in ragged pants and shirts. Filthy, gray and brown, with deep red stains. They bled from the eyes and the ears, and red dripped from their open mouths. And there were enough of them to fill the entire street from one side to the other.
The first burst of rifle fire cracked through the air.
The soldiers had spread out in a line formation, and Elgin was the first to fire.
I took the chance to open the console and tried the tail command for a live log view.
It worked.
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_081 for 5 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_081 for 6 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_117 for 4 DP
Then, Elgin took one well-aimed shot.
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_081 for 100 DP
BERN_081 dead
ElginV36176 +5 XP
“Burner down, aim for the head!” she shouted.
“Sarge, there’s too many of them!” a soldier yelled over to her. “We never fought this many before!”
The horde of zombies kept advancing at a scary fast pace. The zombie that Elgin had killed fell to the ground and the body was trampled. A zombies tripped and fell, and they were trampled too. The horde simply mowed right over everything like a massive cloud of ants that consumed anything in its path.
The soldiers continued firing, thinning out the crowd as best as they could. But there were hundreds of zombies headed straight for them.
They tried retreating, but it was too much for them. They got overwhelmed.
BERN_291 attacked PVT-Shapiro for 5 DP
BERN_177 attacked PVT-Shapiro for 20 DP
PVT-Shapiro is infected (67/92 HP)
BERN_124 attacked PVT-Shapiro for 8 DP
BERN_237 attacked PVT-Shapiro for 12 DP
BERN_233 attacked PVT-Shapiro for 53 DP
PVT-Shapiro dead
I felt guilty. I felt like I needed to do something. But I was also scared.
I added it up and it looked like the soldier had at least 45 HP.
The soldiers were getting overrun. They were firing and leapfrogging, but one by one they were getting swarmed. Meanwhile, I was trying all the different commands that I knew from the different games that I’d played before.
No such luck.
I looked out the window and the soldiers had been pushed very far back. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Behind the mob of zombies was a trail of morbid carnage. Like splotches of blood trailing behind a limping injured animal, the soldiers who were dead on the ground were being torn into bloody shreds by gangs of zombies. Hearing them scream in pain as they were being eaten alive, their cheeks and ears being chewed off...it was the stuff of red, bloody nightmares.
There was no way I was going to be caught without a gun with those zombies swarming the streets. I needed a rifle, so I tried to spawn one from the console. Over and over again, I kept trying commands. Then, I remembered a syntax from another MMO that I’d played a few years back.
> addItem rifle tgarro
> unknown item
BOOM. Let’s gooo!
The command worked.
Now all I needed was to find the right item.
That’s when I realized that the name of the weapons might be logged. So I restarted the live log viewer with the verbose switch enabled.
I heard an explosion, so I took a better look. It looked like someone had lobbed a grenade.
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_119 with M350-GLM for 210 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_221 with M350-GLM for 202 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_212 with M350-GLM for 200 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_219 with M350-GLM for 195 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_144 with M350-GLM for 194 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_037 with M350-GLM for 80 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_073 with M350-GLM for 25 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_162 with M350-GLM for 32 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_182 with M350-GLM for 11 DP
ElginV36176 attacked BERN_006 with M350-GLM for 8 DP
BERN_119 dead
BERN_221 dead
BERN_212 dead
BERN_219 dead
BERN_144 dead
She’d taken out five zombies with that grenade. From the looks of it, the ones that died shielded the ones behind them. Honestly, I was expecting that a grenade would take out a lot more of them. Still, killing five zombies instead of one was still a good deal. I wanted one of those, whatever it was.
I typed into the console.
> addItem M350-GLM tgarro
But then…I got an error.
> [ERROR] Unknown exception error code 6675636b6564
Shit.
EIGHT
npc.enemy.stopcombat
Out on the streets, all those soldiers were dead. I didn’t know them, but I couldn’t bear to see the sight of them getting their flesh torn into by a bunch of undead monsters. If I couldn’t get weapons to defend myself, I thought, maybe I could stop the zombies just like I’d stopped them in 28 Dayz.
I started digging around in the terminal, trying commands, opening help files and any other documentation I could. But I didn’t get much of a chance to.
I heard the wet bloody groan of a zombie in the building.
I had to get out of there. If that horde gets into the building, I’m gonna end up just like those soldiers—screaming in pain, dull teeth gnashing into my skin and tearing my flesh off of my bones.
Adrenaline was still surging through my body, and I had to fight every instinct to just recklessly run out of there. Cautiously, I moved through the apartment and out into the hallway.
; No zombie in sight.
I was sure that the zombie was somewhere down there. I just wasn’t sure exactly where. With my eyes glued to the floor and my ears tuned to pick up the slightest noise, I listened carefully. There was the sound of shuffling, and a low, guttural moan.
I couldn’t take it.
I ran.
Down the stairs, I scrambled and skipped steps. My foot hit the corner of a step the wrong way and I slipped. I tumbled down the stairs on my ass. If I weren’t running for my life, I would’ve been embarrassed.
As I sped down the stairwell, I could hear the zombie behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. It had turned towards me from all the sound I was making. Seeing the ragged deathly shape of its body sent another jolt of adrenaline through me. My legs pumped even faster.
I burst out of the doorway and into the street. Turning to my right, I saw the horde. Up the street, it’d left behind a trail of bloody carnage. Dead zombies laid in the street, making slick pools of dark red blood. Their limbs were mangled. It was a ghastly sight to see the lower half of a human leg bent the wrong way at the knee, and arms that were crooked and halfway torn out of their sockets.
The horde had thinned out a little, but there were still more than Elgin—and whoever was left—could handle.
I bit my lip out of nervousness and frustration. I couldn’t get any weapons, and any weapons I could get wouldn’t be able to wipe out the mob anyway. So I got an idea.
Why not freeze them the way I’d frozen the mob in the demo?
I touched my forearm and brought up the console again. I may not be a tough kick-ass soldier, but I do know my way around tech. Tapping away on the virtual keyboard, I navigated through directories to narrow my search. Then, I found what looked like a documentation directory. I ran a grep search for words like freeze, pause, and other possible commands.
And then, I found it.
> npc.enemy.stopcombat
I looked up from the console and at the horde of zombies.
They weren’t frozen in place like I expected. They kept up their running.
My eyes bugged out and my mouth was ajar. My breath had stopped.
Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller Page 7