As Tong tossed his box magazine aside and slotted in a fresh one, Elgin and Warner covered the rest of us as we ran to the next position. I ran as fast as I could, passing Halstead and Addie, reaching the street corner at the bottom of the hill. I looked up and hollered at Elgin. I was gasping for breath, so my voice wasn’t loud enough. When Halstead bellowed out, we opened fire on the burners while the three of them ran down the sidewalk to regroup with us.
The relentless horde was getting dangerously close. Before, when I looked through my holosight, I couldn’t make out the features of their faces. By now, they were close enough for me to see their anger and menace.
We ran down the slope of the road. As we were providing overwatch for Warner, the burners gained even more ground. We were firing up at the burners, and we couldn’t hit the ones that were too far back in the horde, the ones over the hill. The bad angle we had was killing us.
Elgin commanded us to continue retreating up the hill while in bounding overwatch. When we got to the top, we paused and did an ammo check. I popped open the console and only had enough time to level up Warner and Addie to Level 10 before I needed to start shooting again.
From up there, we had a decent vantage point. Elgin wanted to take advantage, but it wouldn’t matter much.
The horde was infinite.
The more we fired our rifles, the more noise we made and the more burners we attracted. There was no doubt—our gunfire was rousing more fresh burners out of the houses that we passed as we leapfrogged deeper into the neighborhood.
We were fucked.
Elgin yelled out.
“We’re getting overrun!”
Warner dug in and went full-auto, killing a group that was closing in on us.
“Go go go!” he cried out as he was slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle.
He yanked the bolt back and the instant the first bullet in his magazine sprung up into the receiver, he pulled the trigger and sent a burst of rounds into burner flesh.
Then, an urgent scream.
Warner’s rifle jerked up towards the sky.
His eyes were bewildered.
“What the fuck was that!” he yelled. He glanced up at sky and back on his left bicep. “I feel cold water on my arm!”
Elgin yelled to me.
“Pause the simulation, this is getting too dangerous!”
I threw the console open in front of me and tried.
> npc.horde.pause
[ERROR] Permission denied, check user privileges
Fuck.
“Can’t do it!”
Elgin turned at me with eyes full of anger and fear. “You really fucked us, Wayne!”
I did the next best thing. I poured all their stat points into Constitution. Everyone was around Level 13 where they’d only feel 49% of the pain. I hoped like hell that it was enough to prevent a bad disconnect.
Warner was getting surrounded. He paused firing and clambered up on top of a sedan before he brought his rifle to his eye again.
“I need help!” he yelled.
I could hear the fear in his voice.
Elgin directed the team’s fire to help Warner. A few burners managed to reach up and touch Warner’s boot, but he shot each of them through the head.
Even as the small swarm was slowly growing around Warner, burners were still running at us.
After a few bursts of fire, Warner screamed in pain.
I looked closely.
He’d slipped and was on the windshield of the car, and two burners had a hold of his leg. Both of them had their head buried in his calf.
Elgin responded immediately. She tossed me a thick plastic injection pen and told me to stab it into Warner—an anesthetic, I gathered.
I scanned the terrain to plot my route.
Warner was separated from us. A small horde had surrounded him. Between him and us, there was still a loose but steady stream of burners incoming. I could try and dodge my way through the crowd. It was feasible, but I hadn’t ever tried it yet, and I was scared.
The other option was to get to the roof of the house that was closest to him. If I wanted to take that route, I’d need to find a way up onto the roof of the buildings on that side of the street. Much safer.
I chose to make my way up onto the rooftop. Running to the building on Warner’s side of the street that was closest to me, I clambered up over the fences and looked for a route up to the roof. The front side wasn’t any good, and neither was the long side facing the street. Fuck, time’s ticking. So I checked the back of the building.
Bingo.
Air conditioning units.
But they weren’t the ones that stuck out through the wall. They were the kind that people hang in their windows. The kind that was propped up with books and other makeshift brackets.
I wasn’t sure whether they’d hold my weight, but it was too late.
I had to commit.
From the ground floor, I scrambled up the wall with a jump and grabbed a hold of the thin metal casing of the wiring for a security camera before I hoisted myself up. I continued climbing my way up the building. It was a miracle that none of the air conditioning units came crashing down.
Ahead of me where a few houses, and I ran and leapt my way closer to Warner. With each gap that I jumped over, I hesitated less and less.
I finally got to the house that would give me the safest route to Warner. With the injection pen tight in my hand, I looked down at the car.
Warner was dead.
Fuck.
“He’s gone!” I yelled, shaking my head. I wondered if I would’ve been able to save him if only I’d taken the short route.
Up on the top of the hill, Elgin waved at me to come back. Quickly, I regrouped with her and she told me to find high ground. Tong set up his bipod so that he could tear into the burners, and the team opened fire on the horde.
I turned and ran as fast as I could, looking for high ground as I tried to make as much distance as I could between me and the burners.
The steep incline of the road in front of me made each stride hard.
But I pushed through, pumping my legs.
Foward I looked. I couldn’t see any more buildings. Just the tops of trees and the sky.
Push, push, push.
Sprint, sprint, sprint.
I neared the top of the hill and, and everything faded into the view like when I wandered around the first time I entered STESIS. The sidewalks unrolled in front of me like carpets, and houses and apartments faded into view. Tree trunks appeared and its branches above grew at lightning speed.
What appeared before my eyes looked like the section of the neighborhood of my childhood friend. A residential area where cheap three-story houses mixed with three-story shitbox apartment buildings that were attached to each other.
I had to keep running. I had to find that high ground for the team to shoot from. Our survival depended on it.
As broad, wide stretches of apartment blurred past me, I noticed that a lot of the fences were oddly tall and ugly. They were like straight spikes that speared the air, nearly twice as tall as a man and without any horizontal bars to serve as a foothold to climb. When I ran past the houses, I saw that they had weak, rusty chainlink fences that weren’t going to hold up against a horde. And all the fences were locked to keep out intruders.
My eyes scanned the buildings for a safe platform where we could all shoot from. I was looking for balconies, the tops of garages. But no such luck. Why do I always have the worst luck.
I looked behind me to check on the team. The horde was dangerously close. At any moment, it looked the edge of that tide of destruction was going to drown them. They felt it too, and they all stopped firing and ran as fast as they could.
The burners stopped dropping. The tide surged forward and flooded the streets. Elgin and her team appeared like a tiny drop of water in an ocean about to get swallowed up.
I needed to find that high ground.
The horde was getting too c
lose.
There was no time. I had to figure it out.
I ran further ahead. The street that I was on had nothing but two-story industrial buildings, factories. But on the next street, there was a bright blue sign with dirty white letters—Sam’s Deli Grill. The building was only one story high, short enough for everyone to get on top of.
I sped ahead, sprinting until I reached the bodega. I scrambled on top of an ice machine that had been put out on the curb. With it teetering under my feet, I leapt forward and stretched out my hands to grab onto a small pipe running across the front of the building. Then I dino’d my up and over the low wall on top of the building and landed on the roof.
When I turned to look down at the street, it turned out that the team wasn’t that far behind me. And even closer was the horde.
The burners were right on their heels. One wrong step and…game over.
Quickly, and panicked, I searched for a way to bring them up. There was nothing. No ladders. No ropes.
So I tore off my shirt, twisted it into a makeshift rope to extend my reach, and tossed it over the wall. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough—I hoped.
Elgin was the first to get to the rope, so she turned around and sent more rounds into the swarm of burners to buy some time. Tong climbed up, and in that same moment Halstead got swallowed up. Elgin shimmied her way up with me, and Tong was trying to pick off the burners that were grabbing at Addie.
Elgin and I brought up our rifles and took careful aim at the closest ones. It was a harrowing moment. If our aim wasn’t true, we’d be killing our own man.
Tong’s machine gun erupted in a burst of fire. It made me jump.
“Goddammit, what the fuck is happening!” he cried out. “My arm just jerked outta nowhere!”
Urgently, Elgin told me, “We need to disconnect. Exit, now.”
I threw open the console.
Typed in the command.
Pressed return.
FIFTEEN
Kiting
I opened my eyes.
The pitch-black darkness of the visor greeted me into the real world.
I thought I heard the wet noise of a burner.
Could it really be a burner? I thought. They didn’t exist yet, right? The BPMS simulation was for six to nine months out, wasn’t it?
What the hell was going on? Why did Warner feel like there was water dripping on him? Why did Tong’s arm jerk up like that?
All these questions swam through the murky pond of my mind. Coming out of STESIS was never pleasant or easy, and all I wanted to do was stay in there. After everything I’d just been through, there was a strange sensation all over my body. It was like every nerve in me was a wire glowing with energy. The muscles in my legs and arms were emanating heat. The very core of my torso felt like a glowing nuclear power plant. And I felt as though I were floating in a warm pool of light.
A motor started humming, and the sled I was lying on got pushed out of the pod slowly. Even though there was a sense of urgency in me, I felt a new sense of calm. I don’t know what it was or where it came from. I’d never felt that way before.
As the sled cleared the pod and began to tilt up, I started to undo the restraint on my wrist and took off my visor. My vision was just slightly foggy, but I could see something dangerous.
It was a burner. Not exactly like the ones I’d been shooting at in STESIS. This one was decrepit…a decomposing ghoul that was deathly thin to the bone.
It was shuffling towards Elgin.
My sled was the first to clear the pod. As soon as my legs were free from the restraints, I strode up towards Elgin. Her handgun was lying on the wheeled tray next to her. I grabbed it out of her holster and slammed the muzzle right into the burner’s head.
I squeezed the trigger.
A bullet popped off and went through its head.
It dropped to the ground like a lumpy sack of rotten meat.
I looked at the corpse. It used to be a man. From the sagging waterlogged skin, it used to be a fat man. It was naked, and it had a tag attached to its toe. It was dripping wet, and it was giving off a rank chemical smell. The flesh looked like it was about to fall of its bone.
Another burner was shuffling to Tong. When I saw what it was wearing, my heart skipped a beat and my stomach turned.
The burner was wearing the same uniform as Elgin and everyone else.
It was Warner.
Tong groggily got out of his sled. Seeing the burner, he grabbed his handgun from the nearby footlocker and started bringing it up to shoot. But he hesitated briefly. When he recognized that it was Warner, he frowned and his eyes grew intense with disbelief. That expression was fixed on his face even as he fired a round right through Warner’s eye.
By then, Elgin had also emerged from her pod. We regrouped and looked around.
I checked the monitor readout on Addie and Halstead’s pods. I didn’t know what I was looking at at the time—all I knew was that they were unconscious and twitching and out of action—but the monitor was showing that they were basically brain dead.
Tong waved his gun at them.
“Should we kill them?” he asked Elgin.
She frowned at him.
“Why the fuck would we do that?”
“Isn’t that how these things work? They die and they come back as burners.”
“That’s what we think, but we’re not a hundred percent sure.”
“I think it’s safer if we put a bullet through their brain.”
Elgin didn’t like the idea. They debated briefly about what to do with Addie and Halstead. When I looked through the maze of floor to ceiling shelves, I noticed that a door opened up.
“Elgin, Tong,” I said.
They looked at me.
“We got trouble.”
We spread out and looked around.
Burners were shuffling into the warehouse. From all the exits around us. We’d be surrounded soon.
Instinctively, we all ducked.
“How the fuck did they get in,” Elgin whispered in a raspy voice.
“You saw back in there,” Tong said, jerking his head towards a STESIS machine. “The fresh ones know how to open doors.”
I told them that I noticed something. It seemed like there were older burners, ones that were more decomposed.
“The fresher they are,” I said, “the more human-like they are. The older they get, the dumber they get. The old ones follow the fresh ones.”
I pointed at a small group of burners.
“See, look. The fresh ones in the front…she’s leading them.”
With the burners starting to fill up the warehouse and milling around, we found a quiet corner behind a few crates to make a plan. There was no way we’d be getting out of there intact.
“If these burners are anything like the ones in there,” I started saying, “I think they respond mostly to noise. And I remember how the fresh ones would still look at things and move their eyes…I’m not sure if the rotten ones can still see.”
Elgin acknowledged what I’d said with a look of respect. Then she asked us what we thought about how to get out of here.
Tong scanned the area, then shook his head.
“If we start shooting them,” he said, “that’s just gonna get them all riled up.”
“But we don’t have any other weapons,” I said. “Honestly, I think a good old machete would work wonders right now.”
Tong raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really,” he said, “you’re Rambo now?”
A look of impatience crossed Elgin’s face. “Wayne, first, where the fuck are you gonna get a machete? And second, there’s just too many of them.”
I shrugged. “You never know what you’re gonna find.”
With my elbow, I gently thumped the crates we were hiding behind.
Annoyed, the corner of Elgin’s mouth curled up.
“Machetes aren’t part of anyone’s load-out,” she said.
We opened the crate anyway.
Tong cracked open the crate. We looked inside.
Lo and behold. Inside were a set of expandable metal batons, flares, and ammunition.
I smiled. “Not exactly machetes,” I said, “but I think these’ll do.”
Next, we continued our planning.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m gonna kite the burners—“
Elgin frowned in confusion. “What the hell is kiting?”
“It’s when I get aggro on me—I’m gonna get the burner’s attention, make a lot of noise and movement. They leader of the pack’s gonna follow me, and the rest of the horde will follow. I’ll draw them away so that there’s enough room for you to get to an exit. I’ll regroup with you by climbing up the shelves, make way to you from above.”
“Which exit do we go to?” Tong asked.
“Whichever looks safest to get to. I’ll be able to see which one from up there.”
Elgin thought things through for a few moments before she approved.
“Well, let’s get a move on it, these things are getting too close.”
I was nervous. I got those butterflies in my stomach, and that buzz in the nerves all over my body. My body was preparing, getting a reaction. Not a fight or flight reaction. It was going to be fight and flight.
Looking all around me, I took stock of my terrain.
We were near the middle of the warehouse, not far from the STESIS machines. The burners had been in there a while, clawing around and bumping into things. They’d knocked down a lot of things onto the ground—pallets of brown cardboard boxes, plastic bins of electronics parts, things like that. There were also heavy industrial crates of all sizes that were littered throughout the aisles.
Quietly, I climbed up to the top of the nearest shelf and got myself a better view of the layout. The building was longer than it was wide, and there was a section where the shelves ran straight into the walls, leaving only one way in and out of all of those aisles.
Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller Page 15