I picked up my backpack and walked out into the busy hallway. As soon as I stepped through the threshold, a pair of strong hands snatched the bag from my hand and yanked it to the side. Adam grabbed my backpack with both hands and ripped it down the middle, spilling papers and books onto the floor. The other kids in the hall stood back, some stopping to watch and laugh while others continued walking, minding their own business.
Adam threw the ragged remains of my backpack to the ground and laughed.
“Oh, I’m sorry Bran. I’d help you pick all that stuff up, but I’m really only skilled with balls.”
He laughed again and walked away.
Several other boys who walked past stepped on my papers, kicking them further down the hallway. I didn’t care. I didn’t need any of this shit anyways. I knelt and gathered up the papers and books around me, angrily stuffing them back into the remains of my backpack. I bundled the ripped bag together into my arms and walked down the hallway towards the exit.
Blood rushed to my face and my eyes burned. My head pounded and my heart beat furiously. I tried to breathe deep, tried to calm down as I walked across the parking lot to my car. I fumbled the keys out of my pocket, opened the door and tossed my bag inside, papers scattering across the passenger seat.
As soon as I was inside with the door closed, I leaned my head against the steering wheel, breathing heavily.
“It’s okay,” I said to myself. “It’s not a big deal. Three months left, that’s all.”
Then what?
“Then I’ll move back to Austin. I’ll go to college. I’ll get to be with my friends again.”
The things my dad had said repeated in my head. I couldn’t get a scholarship without good grades. I couldn’t go to college without a scholarship. It may already be too late. Three months left.
Finally, I took a deep breath and started the car.
SPLAT!
Something smacked against the windshield. An egg, splattered yellow across the glass.
I heard Adam’s laugh as he drove past in his ridiculously large white truck, two of his friends in the back, eggs in their hands. They threw more, splattering against the windshield and the side of my car, then sped away.
“Assholes!” I yelled.
I turned on the windshield wipers, smearing the egg across the glass. I’d clean it later. Right now, I just wanted to get home.
The drive to my house only took ten minutes. I left my backpack in the floorboard, left the egg on the car, and went inside. I sat in front of the computer, put my headset on, and booted up Apocalypse 2020.
I didn’t want to deal with any of this anymore.
Level 4
Solo
1
Boothe stood in the street next to The Depot and looked over at his Friends list.
Scarlett - OFFLINE
She probably had better things to do than to rush home from school, or work, or whatever she did, just to go questing with him. He couldn’t imagine that she had been thinking about him as much as he had been thinking about her throughout the day. He probably didn’t even enter her thoughts.
He wondered if she’d continue talking to him once they found other players, or if she’d find somebody cooler to hang out with.
Anyways, no point in waiting around for her. Boothe felt like killing stuff. He walked into The Depot, and strolled up to Cliff, who stood in his usual place behind the counter, cleaning what was probably the same glass for the thousandth time.
“You know of anybody that needs anything?” Boothe asked.
“I could use a favor actually,” Cliff said. “We have a bit of a termite problem, just to the east of town. ‘Fraid they might tunnel underneath the buildings. Wouldn’t be any good to have them burst up into the middle of Main street.”
“Termites?” Boothe asked. “The little bugs that eat wood?”
“Yeah, ‘cept these aren’t little, and they eat a bunch more than just wood.”
“Okay,” Boothe said. “What do I need to do?”
Cliff put the glass and the towel down on the counter, then knelt to reach under the bar. He came back up with a bandolier holding five red canisters.
“Incendiary grenades,” he said. “You’ll need to go down into the caves where they’re digging. Most of the termites are smaller and will be in mounds. Toss these grenades into the mounds and torch them. Burning up five should be enough to hold the buggers back for a while at least. The huge mutant termites, we call them mutmites, will try to protect those mounds, so be careful.”
NEW QUEST: Burning the Mutmites
Mutmites are digging towards Perry. Cliff has asked you to go into their caves and burn them out.
Burn 5 mutmite mounds.
REWARD: $150
Boothe took the bandolier and hooked it over his shoulder.
“Thanks Cliff,” he said. “I’ll be back in a while.”
“Don’t get in over your head kid,” Cliff said. “I think you can handle this on your own, but if you find yourself in trouble down there, there’s no shame in coming back and asking for help.”
“You got it,” Boothe said. He wished that Scarlett was here to go with him, but since she wasn’t, what was he supposed to do? Sit around waiting for her? Who knew when she would get online again?
Out in the street, the Falcon was still parked in the same place they had left it the previous night. It still had the bullet holes, fire damage, and scrapes along the side from chasing the bandits. Too bad Scarlett had the key, or he could have taken the car to the caves. There was probably a way to hotwire it or something, but Boothe didn’t want to steal the car, even if it was only temporary.
He walked over to Wulfa’s stall and traded in his part of what he and Scarlett had salvaged from the bandits the day before. He didn’t get much for it all – he thought maybe Wulfa was cheating him a bit, but he didn’t call her on it because she had given him such good deals on his purchases so far, and it was all junk anyways. For what he traded in, he got some ammo, a replacement frag grenade, and $10.
He made sure his pistol was loaded up, one shot in the chamber and eight in the clip, then he started walking towards the marker that had appeared on the horizon.
Mutmite Tunnels (1.6 mi)
The entrance to the cave was a hole in the ground that dropped a few feet to a tunnel which gradually descended into the hard dirt. He jumped down and flipped on his night-vision goggles, turning everything a shade of green. It didn’t take long walking down the tunnel before he saw a mutmite. He stopped in his tracks and held completely still, watching the creature, his pistol held at the ready.
It looked like a normal termite, with a segmented body, weird rounded antennae, and pincers coming out of its face, except it was roughly as big around as a Saint Bernard and twice as long. When it moved, the sides of its long abdomen pulsated, its organs visible through a translucent exoskeleton. It had no eyes on its perfectly smooth face, making it look weirdly alien. It clicked its pincers together, and tapped one of its back legs onto the cave floor.
Then, without warning, it turned directly towards Boothe and charged, its six spindly legs skittering across the ground, pincers clacking together furiously.
Boothe aimed and shot the mutmite directly in the head, the bullet bursting through its exoskeleton with a gush of yellow pus. The thing kept charging at him, the bullet not slowing it at all. Boothe ran in the opposite direction, fleeing down the tunnel to put some space between himself and the mutmite, then he turned and fired again. This time, when the bullet punched through the thing’s head, its face fell forward, slamming into the cave floor and its legs sprawled out as it slid to a stop.
Two shots. Not bad.
Boothe walked around the corpse and back to where he had first seen the mutmite. Nearby stood a mound of porous dirt nearly six feet tall, crawling with termites. Some were small, like he was used to seeing, but others were much larger, growing as big as Boothe’s hand. They swarmed the mound, crawling over each other in a strangely hyp
notic dance.
Boothe took one of the grenades from the bandolier over his shoulder and jammed it into the mound, the dirt breaking easily to reveal even more termites inside. He pulled his hand back quickly, taking the pin from the grenade with it, then fled to a safe distance. Moments later, the grenade hissed to life, illuminating the cave with a blinding white light before bursting into flames that quickly consumed the entire mound. The termite’s bodies crackled and exploded in the fire, with a sound like microwave popcorn. Smoke filled the air, but was soon absorbed into the cracks and holes in the walls.
Continuing down the tunnel, the path split, then split again. Some paths looped back on themselves while others ended in solid walls. The network of tunnels and caverns was a maze, and Boothe took his time traversing through it. He fought off more mutmites, but because of his goggles, he could see them from some distance away, easily blasting their huge bodies with his pistol before they could get to him. He had the drone keep an eye out to make sure that none of the mutmites got behind him. He didn’t want to be surrounded by these things.
He wished that Scarlett was here to watch his back. He imagined her blowing the mutmites to pieces with her shotgun. It would have made this whole quest even easier.
He set fire to more mounds as he found them. Two were even so close together that he could burn them both with a single grenade. The extra grenade he saved there would likely be useful at some point. Finally, there was only one mound left.
As he mapped out the network of tunnels, Boothe soon realized that they all seemed to eventually lead to a central cavern, and so he made his way towards it. It took him a few minutes before the tunnel he followed opened into a cave that was twenty-foot-high and about the size of a football field. Unlike the rest of the place, which had been surrounded by dry packed dirt, the walls and floor here were all solid rock. In the middle, a termite mound formed a pillar that reached from ground to ceiling, every inch swarming with the insects.
A single mutmite stood guard in front of the mound. A single mutmite as big as a house, with pincers longer than Boothe’s body.
Like the other mutmites, it didn’t seem to matter how stealthy Boothe was, they all sensed his presence – likely by smell or vibrations. The creature turned its enormous head towards him.
Fantastic.
2
Boothe thought about running away. No shame in it, Cliff had said. Maybe he could come back with Scarlett sometime later and try again. This mutmite was just too damn big to take on his own.
Still, something inside him – pride maybe, or stupidity – did not allow him to run. Instead, he shot at the giant. The bullet bounced off the mutmite’s exoskeleton, not even leaving a mark. The thing let out a hiss, like some giant ugly hairless cat. Yellow liquid bubbled around its mouth, then launched out in a stream towards Boothe.
Boothe takes 2 ACID DAMAGE!
Boothe HP - 4/6
He tried to dive out of the way, but the acid hit him in the shoulder, burning through his leather jacket, his shirt, and into his skin beneath. His flesh bubbled, but he had no time to worry about that. The mutmite charged towards him, its head low, pincers clacking together. Those things would cut him in half if they got hold.
Boothe lunged to the side, spinning around the mutmite’s front legs. He took a quick shot at the monster’s underbelly, but it was just as armored as the rest of its body. He stayed close, shifting around its legs as it turned, trying to stay behind it. He kept shooting, hoping to break through its armor. It was so big that he barely had to aim, each shot nearly guaranteed to hit, but not doing any real damage. Bullets bounced off its exoskeleton, only serving to make the thing angrier.
He needed another strategy, but before he could think of anything, the mutmite suddenly swung its huge abdomen around and launched another stream of acid from its mouth. Boothe tried to stay close, but wasn’t expecting the quick movement from something so large, and found himself out in the open again.
This time Boothe ducked under the acid, dodging it completely. He quickly dashed beneath the beast, jabbed his pistol up into the mutmites underbelly, and pulled the trigger over and over, as fast as he could.
Finally, one of the shots pierced the exoskeleton and pale, yellow blood poured out of a hole as big as Boothe’s fist. The mutmite screeched and spun, trying to get at Boothe with his pincers, but he moved with it, staying below it as best he could.
He pulled the extra incendiary grenade from his bandolier, yanked the pin out and shoved it up into the hole he had made with his pistol. His fist punched through grainy guts, then he opened his fingers, leaving the grenade inside the thing. He pulled his hand out, his skin covered in goopy yellow blood, and ran as fast as he could away from the beast.
The mutmite spun and grabbed at him with its pincers, clacking them together just behind Boothe’s head. Then his foot caught on something he couldn’t see and he sprawled forward, his palms scraping painfully across the rock floor. He heard the hiss of the incendiary grenade before the mutmite began to scream a horrific high-pitched sound of agony and fear. A light spread from the creature’s underbelly, illuminating its insides. Fire burned in its guts, spreading through its colossal body. Its organs exploded one after another in a series of sizzling pops. Fire burst out of its back, tearing through its armored plates, flames turning its skin black.
It fell to its side, its screams fading until the only sound was the crackling of the fire as it consumed its body.
Boothe looked down to see what had tripped him, and saw the corpse of a man whose football helmet had been melted onto his face by the termite’s acid. Boothe let out a little scream and jumped back, scrambling across the cave floor to get away from the thing.
It was just a dead guy, he told himself, breathing a sigh of relief. At least Scarlett wasn’t here to see him get scared like that.
The final termite mound in the middle of the cavern was still swarming, but they weren’t harming anything for now, so Boothe looked over this dead man’s body.
The face of the corpse was damaged beyond recognition by the acid. The helmet was also completely useless. On his chest, he wore a leather vest that had huge tears on the side, revealing deep cuts into red meat beneath. Boothe wondered if it was the acid or the mutmite’s pincers that had delivered the killing blow. The man’s arm was bare, revealing a square tattoo made of random numbers and letters. Another player. Another dead player. Likely he had made only one mistake and now he was gone.
He wore leather gloves that only covered half the length of his fingers, and leather pads strapped to his thighs and shins for extra armor. Beside him lay a shotgun, much like the one that Scarlett carried, but it had a magazine extender and a flashlight mounted on the side of it. These items seemed like they would be useful, so Boothe began stripping them off the man. He took the leather gloves and leg armor for himself, then took the shotgun as well, hoping he could give it to Scarlett later. Otherwise, maybe he would use it. He liked his pistol, but could use another weapon with a little more power. When he had taken the items, he also checked the man’s pockets and found $56.
“Sorry dude,” he said. “I’m just trying not to end up like you.”
ITEMS OBTAINED
Leather Greaves - Leg Slot - Light Armor
Durability 42% - Value $8
ARMOR +1
This thick leather padding offers some light protection while not impeding movement.
Leather Gloves - Hands Slot - Light Armor
Durability 70% - Value $14
ARMOR +1
These gloves offer some light protection while not impeding Dexterity.
Pump Shotgun - 12ga - Aim +0 / Damage 4
Range 10yds - Capacity 5
Double critical hit range when within 4 yds.
Durability 70% - Value $168
ATTACHMENTS - Mag extender (+5 Capacity), Flashlight (12yds Illumination)
One of the most versatile weapons on the planet, this shotgun is durable and deadly
at close range and can be modified to add a multitude of useful attachments.
+$56
He slipped his hands into the gloves and then put the greaves on as well. He’d have to carry the shotgun, as he had no place to store it. With all the man’s useful items taken, Boothe walked over to the termite mound and stuffed his last incendiary grenade into the porous dirt. He ran the other way, while the mound burst into flames and the cavern crumbled behind him.
It took some time to navigate back out of the maze of tunnels that made up the mutmites caves, but he didn’t see any more enemies and eventually found his way back to the surface. The sun was already setting in the distance, the day nearly over.
He walked back to Perry and into The Depot. The place was alive with music coming from a neon-lit jukebox in the corner. People talked and laughed from tables all around. When he walked through the door, a small cheer rose.
“Hey it’s Boothe!” Giles said, looking happier than Boothe had seen him before. “Welcome back!”
Other people in the pub smiled at him, raising their glasses or tilting their heads.
“Good job saving Marsha’s boy,” said one man who Boothe had never seen before. “We all really appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Boothe replied.
He walked up to the bar, where Cliff stood with the glass and towel in his hands.
“You take care of those mutmites?”
“Yes sir,” Boothe said. “Destroyed the mounds, along with a really big sucker who spit acid.”
“Ah yes,” Cliff said. “Those are the knights. You killed one by yourself?”
Boothe nodded.
“Wow,” Cliff said, shaking his head. “Well, I’d say you deserve this.” He began counting out money onto the bar.
QUEST COMPLETE: Burning the Mutmites
REWARD: $150
Boothe earns 200XP
Boothe put the money in his pocket.
“You want a drink?” Cliff asked. “On the house.”
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 8