by Naosu N R
Interesting...except that I have to somehow try to reject it all.
I spent a few minutes brooding about mental strategies of how to reject offers to join 'The Company Firm' as she's driving me.
...
"Uh oh," Mandy said suddenly out of the blue.
"Huh? Uh oh what?" I sat forward and straight up with better posture.
"N-nothing," she said nervously.
"Be honest. It didn't sound like nothing. You sounded nervous. What were you worrying about?" I said.
"That one car might be following us. But I could be wrong," she said glancing in the rear view mirror.
I didn't say anything. I glanced behind us quickly. I didn't know which car she meant, because there was more than one car.
But I trusted her. She is a bodyguard. And she has experience even.
Instead of doubting her, I just opened up my status screen and started equipping my gear.
Mandy increased her speed as the driver.
But then the car behind us increased its speed.
She did a few quick turns trying to avoid them and dodge them.
They stayed close.
"Damn it," Mandy said.
She then called someone on her cell. (I wasn't told this was the procedure. But according to my parents instructions that's what she's been told to do.)
"Hey, I've got a situation. If possible I'd like back up," I heard her say.
Then she ordered me to duck down as low as possible on the floor. I didn't hear what the response was.
I follow the orders to the letter.
"OK," she said after listening to some instructions for awhile. We'd still been driving and things are heating up with the chase still going.
The other car is matching us move for move.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"My job. Also, I work for your parents, not you," she said.
"That won't impress me. It was my choice to pick you, not theirs," I said.
"Hang on. I'm going to try to lose them," she said. "Please trust me," she adds.
But then I felt the energy of a magitek field burst.
This one was crazy powerful, and encompassed the whole area. It also felt like the energy was so bright and powerful that I was blinded for a bit.
Mandy had trouble steadying the car and the steering wheel for a few seconds and she swerved like crazy with a huge car brakes smoke cloud. And it even felt like we might have the car flip over at one point. But after that it was OK, after she recovered.
"What just happened? I felt a huge mana burst?" I asked.
"Hang on," she said. Then she swerved around a bend in the city. She's also started moving again, but only slowly.
"I don't see him now," she said.
"Were we attacked?" I asked.
"I don't think so," she said. She's looking around while I've got my head down.
"Stay down for a bit. But I don't see him. I think he's gone," she said.
"Oh shit. I know what they did know, Jay. We need to be super careful. Stay in the car! Keep your guard up. Oh wow, this is bad," she said.
Huh?
I felt the sun dim after we'd gone through the change of the energy burst. It feels weird also, in that something doesn't feel right with the colors. But I'm not sure what.
The road looks normal. We're still in the city, but I'm not sure where exactly in it our position is.
"Something doesn't feel right," Mandy said.
Then a few seconds later, she said confirmed for sure that we'd lost them. She kept going for a bit to make sure and then confirmed we'd lost them.
I still don't know who them is.
She proceeded to slow the car and pull over.
!
I realized the surroundings around the road are all wrong and different than before! Mandy also seems to have noticed this, but was trying to process it.
"Something doesn't feel right. I...don't know where we are anymore," she said.
"Wait! Don't slow down! Speed up! Get us out of here!" I said.
I felt her push more speed into the car's gas pedal, as the car lurched forward.
"What?! Did you see something?" she asked.
"Its a trap! Get us out of here! But don't go home!" I told her.
"Wait, we can ask that man for directions. Let me pull over," she said.
"I'm giving you a direct order! Do not stop. Don't slow down. Go fast! There's something wrong with him!" I shouted.
My mana detecting had helped me see there was something wrong with him.
If any other murim players are reading this also, when you see a strange guy shambling on the street with hostile red mana with your mana sensing, don't approach them.
Mandy looked like she didn't want to listen to me at first, but then followed through. In fact, I think she almost rebelled.
But then something about my tone and my face made her give in at the last second. She changed from a slowing stop to flooring the gas pedal and peeling out.
What the freak?!
Just as we'd been about to stop we're speeding by, but we're going much faster than I would have liked.
The man that was by the side of the road jumped onto the side of the car!
Luckily the window wasn't open, and the doors were locked.
But what horrified me was his face! There was no mistaking a face like that!
It was the face of a zombie! UNDEAD?! HERE?!
Wait, if that's an undead, where is 'here'?
"FUCK! Get us out of here! Drive! Faster! Zombies!" I shouted.
"How the fuck can there be zombies?!" she asked.
But I did notice that she did what I told her to.
...
Within five minutes of that, we found ourselves being sieged by other zombies chasing the car.
The horde seemed to increase rapidly, so fast it was like going from only two or three to suddenly a couple dozen of them all sort of shamble running in a way that hurt to look at with their deforming bodies.
The car is a fairly rich but not too expensive wealthy Audi model with beautiful car body, nice purring engine, and other great features. There's no way a zombie can keep up with it. Its a fine tuned powerful escape card that gives us the survival card we need.
The zombies don't stand a chance in jumping on it. Although, there still is a weird red black goo smear on the right side from the first one that tried to jump onto the car. And now I worry also and hope we don't get any dents in the beautiful figure of the car.
We sped past them easily.
But there's just so many of them!
We realized that the entire town is zombies!
When we thought they were on one street, and went to another, we then found every street had some on them.
But it seemed that most of them were inside the buildings, to our horror. You might think this is better, but its not. Its worse.
Then we noticed that the pavement on the streets is very rough and has potholes in a lot of places. It means this is a very old ruined city that has been this way for some time; enough time to get into disrepair, but not so much time that the town doesn't look fairly modern and intact.
But because its a dungeon there's not a lot of dust over windows and doors.
"Wait, how can there be so many of them? And why wasn't there any sign of things going bad?" I asked.
"I-I don't know," she said.
She turned around a corner, while trying to go as fast as she can without slowing much.
"For now just keep us moving while we figure this out. Avoid any streets that dead end, or that can get us trapped," I said.
We kept driving.
But then I noticed the flaws in this place.
For starters, why is the sun got a black planet sized disk over a small part of it?
The black disk isn't blocking the sunlight, but maybe that's because this planet isn't in range of it. But it is weird.
And then I noticed that there's no cars on the streets a
nywhere except ours. Even the parked cars are gone. There are no taxis or buses either. Ours is quite literally the only car in the entire city!
A lot of the buildings have damage also on them, but not all.
Then we realized that the green street signs have another language on them that is most definitely not anything I'd seen before.
But we have to worry more about not getting trapped by chasing zombies putting us in a corner than we have time to think about where we're at yet.
There sure are a lot of zombies...
"This is some weird stuff," my bodyguard Mandy said.
"Yeah. How are you with weapons?" I asked.
"Um...pretty good. I have two hand guns. One has a silencer. I have four extra clips besides the main one. But that's it. And this city has tons of zombies," she said.
"So we have to be careful and not run out of supplies," I noted.
"What about water? And food?" I asked.
"I thought I was picking you up from school. That's all. I didn't bring anything. But there is a 3 gallon jug of emergency water in the trunk. But I don't want to use it. And I only had that because the old school car repair training is to have water in the car in case your car overheats. There's also some things to change the spare tire, and a blanket. That's it," she said.
We began to brainstorm.
First, right away we found our cell phones aren't working.
First, I'd noticed that my phone wasn't showing me texts from Simone and Melanie. Then she noticed, she couldn't talk to the other guards around the mansion.
I got a bit more worried while I thought about it.
"What could cause that?" she asked.
"Let me think on it a bit first. I'll figure it out," I said.
She started to slow down, when we had lost the zombies and got onto a more isolated section of city.
But then I had her drive around town instead.
"See if you can drive to a residential area. Leave the commercial store areas," I said.
"Oh OK. I think I get it. You think the residential areas of the city will have less swarms of them?" Mandy asked.
"Possibly. That's my thoughts. But let's not let our guard down still. And watch out for getting us trapped in dead ends. That could kill us even if this is a new car with a bad ass engine," I said.
"OK boss," she said, speeding up the car.
We lost a few minutes driving about 4 miles towards the housing areas.
The terrain should be Los Angeles still.
But then we were shocked when the freeway stopped. It literally stops hanging over nothing.
Mandy slammed on the brakes to avoid having us fall to death.
We had to swerve and slam on the breaks to avoid dropping off the edge of the freeway, which would have killed us. The freeway ends with a 50 foot drop off above the ground, complete with a jagged teeth like torn up edge leading to an abyss below that looks like it was made by an asteroid hit.
Wow.
And then when we got out, it felt like there was an energy wall there. You can touch and feel it even but not go past it. Like an invisible wall!
And even more crazy, we're the only ones on the freeway.
"What the hell?! Where the fuck are we?! This isn't Los Angeles!" Mandy asked while feeling the edge of what feels like a video game zone wall.
I guess I should have realized that already, but the mental confusion and stress had slowed us both a bit. The signs being in some weird language was a give away also.
"What?! I didn't recognize it before. But, if its not Los Angeles then where the hell are we?" I wondered, looking up close to the window glass to peek out.
"Stay away from the windows please. As your bodyguard that's what I have to say," she said while driving.
"Well...we had better defend ourselves then. Let's get our weapons out," I said.
I noticed she had an unusual look and was partly watching me take out my weapons, before getting hers out. She seemed satisfied that I also had arms but, I wonder what she thought.
But then something weird happened.
When Mandy went to shoot one of them that got too close to the car when driving her gun wouldn't fire.
"What the hell?!" she said in shock.
She barely got us out of there by flooring the gas pedal, but the zombie did bounce off the side of the car. Fortunately it was a glancing hit, and the car wasn't damaged. (As a new car it would be a shame to have this messed up the first day I have it.)
"Let me see your gun," I said with a thought.
She frowned. "No. I shouldn't. This is my personal weapon."
"But it won't fire right?" I asked.
"Fine. But I want it back. What are you going to do?" she asked.
I then tried to use a weapon enchant attempt on her gun.
Thankfully I succeeded on the first try. (I don't always succeed on the first one.)
But it wiped out so much mana that I was actually worried.
"Hang on I have a mana potion you can use, whatever you did," she said.
She then sort of back handed it to me while looking at the road driving.
The mana potion gave me back about half my mana.
"Try it now," I said.
BLAM!
Her gun finished off a zombie.
"So one problem down. Several more to go," she said.
We traveled around a bit still lazily, but trying to be careful and save gas.
'Where the hell are we?' I thought.
An hour passed.
We ended up parking the car at one point. We didn't want to but we technically had to. Its a bad situation to be using all your gas non-stop in a place like this with no plan.
I paused to think. Plus we stretched our arms at one point.
"I think we're in some kind of dungeon pocket that mirrors what Los Angeles looks like," I finally concluded.
"Wow!" she said in shock.
"That's amazing," she added. "But how did it get like this?"
"I think that guy that followed us, sucked us in here somehow using a magic skill. It took me awhile to work it out," I said.
"What kind of magic skill?"
"Something that would be like a time space travel skill," I said.
"Wow."
She paused. And I'm thinking.
"Wait, if that's the case, we're in serious trouble," she added again, while I'm moody and got my arms folded trying to not pout.
"If that's the case then..." she stopped in mid-sentence and turned her head.
"Oh crap," she swore.
Behind us, a whole pack of zombies have caught up with us.
There must be about forty or fifty of them there.
"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap! How can this be?! This is my first day on the job, damn it!" she said. "Get back in the car!" she shouted.
She began blasting her gun.
"Head shots," I warned her.
"Its harder than it looks Jay. In movies and games they don't teach you how hard it actually is to do head shots," she added, still shooting.
We managed to use the car as a shield, and avoid getting bit or stampeded.
I sent her a dungeon party invite, which she accepted.
Then I ran to the trunk.
"Where are you going?!" she shouted while still shooting zombies.
"To get the crowbar in the trunk for when you run out of bullets!" I told her.
While I do have my own weapons, she only had the guns. She hadn't intended to go in a dungeon. Plus, I want to keep my own gear.
"Oh shit..." she cried.
It didn't take long for us to start downing the zombies that had chased us down the freeway. But its weird that they'd even managed to follow us this long.
I used my stun skill, both to keep them from biting her and me, plus to set up nice head shots for both of us.
We used the front hood of the car to fight with her being my shield and gunner while I used my enchanted crowbar.