by David Payne
What I needed to progress was in item level one. Everything in the levels above was unnecessary. Was that it? I tapped on the items, the only ones I could choose. And then they appeared down at my feet, a ten inch nail and two rolls of masking tape. Wow, two rolls. The GM was feeling generous.
I picked them up and slipped them into my pockets, really hoping my intuitions were correct. I could not help but feel some resentment in me as I looked around to see that a veritable armed force had appeared. The literal high rollers now had some serious fire-power in their hands.
One guy next to me had the helicopter gun. A huge and heavy piece of equipment, which as the name suggested was made to be mounted to a helicopter. The barrel could not have been far from a foot in diameter, it was so heavy that he actually staggered back when he lifted it up to admire it.
“Oh come to daddy” he said, actually leaning forward to kiss the shining metal as if it were his girlfriend. “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship my love, me and you are going to kick so much undead ass together. I’m gonna call you Betty. That’s right. Look out living dead. Liam and Betty are in the house. We’re here to put you of your misery.”
What a fucking prick. I really hoped he got eaten alive on level one.
All around me, others were aiming their AK-47s and stroking their RPGs, as the air was filled with the multiple swooshes of double handed swords cutting through the air. To my satisfaction, one wannabe be samurai-his avatar actually was that of an ancient samurai-fell onto his back as he lost control with his swing, bringing much chortles from all around him.
“Now”, the GM continued, “you may each now choose one ability, depending on what you rolled.”
The menu appeared again in my vision. Firearm and swordplay abilities were off limits to me of course, but going by what was illuminated in green I still had some choices.
Ability: Zombie-fu
There was a graphic of a man in a black karate gown-or whatever they called those outfits martial arts people wore. There was a zombie coming right at him, his arms outstretched, and mouth wide open in anticipation of his meal. The martial arts expert executed a spinning round house kick just like in the movies, connecting perfectly with the head of his undead attacker, taking the head clean of his shoulders and sending it hurtling through the air, the decapitated body slumping to the ground. The martial expert turned and pointed out from the screen, as if he were speaking directly to me.
“You don’t need a weapon. You are one. With my one kick and kill attack, you can be a match for an entire army of undead. I like to call my style ‘Zombie-fu’. Become the ultimate bad ass and kick some undead ass, or should I say, kick some undead heads off”. There were some words scrolling along the bottom in small letters. I enlarged the screen to read them.
“Please note: This skill is every bit as effective as it would be in the real world.”
The screen then went into a GIF repeating itself over and over again, of the Zombie-fu master kicking the head off the zombie. Zombie-fu. Interesting. I scrolled to the next one.
Ability: No touch attack
Here was another martial arts looking guy wearing a black outfit.
“Are you ready my friend?” said the man in black. “Are you ready to harness the ultimate power? Some will tell you, ‘You don’t need a weapon, you are one’. But what if I told you that you don’t even need your fists and feet?” This was interesting, it was like they were all competing against each other, like salesman trying to tell you that their product was the one and only you would ever need. “I will show you that power my friend. Behold, the power of the no touch master.”
The man turned to his side, and there were five lumbering zombies approaching him from out behind a brick wall that was in his virtual world. Once again, arms reaching out, mouths open, they were coming to eat him. He was outnumbered, but the no touch master simply stood his ground, not fazed in the slightest.
When the undead group were about five feet from him, he shot out his arm, palm open, as if he were throwing some invisible object toward them. The zombies were immediately sent hurtling back as if they had all been hit by a truck, thudding right into the brick wall behind then with multiple resounding splats, like flies on a windscreen. In an instant the five flesh eating ghouls were turned into nothing more than red splatter. Again, I noticed the words scrolling along the bottom of the screen:
“Please note: This technique is every bit as effective as it would be in real life.”
I scrolled along to the third, and seemingly last skill that was available to me.
Ability: None
The man on the screen was a young man with a shaved head and facial tattoos. He was wearing a white tank top and had a large shiny blade in his right hand. He practically snarled out from the screen.
“I ain’t nothin’ but garbage and I got no skills, but I’m a motherfuckin’ survivor, you hear me? You want to learn how to kill a motherfuckin’ zombie motherfucker? That shit don’t take any fuckin’ skill!”
A zombie appeared. The young tattooed man simply raised his knife, walked up to it, and plunged the knife deep into its eyeball with a sickening squelch. The man then pulled his knife out, the body slumping lifelessly to the floor. He then wiped his blade on himself, almost as if he were some ancient warrior who wore the blood of his victims as a mark of honour.
Once again the words scrolled across the bottom telling me this was just as effective as it would be in real life.
“My special skill? Hell, I don’t even need to teach you. Stick a knife in the fuckers man. Knife them before they eat you, that’s how you survive in this world. You hear me?”
He stopped talking, and I was now faced with a GIF of him repeatedly stabbing the zombie in the eye.
So there were my choices. Zombie-fu, no touch and the man who was nothing but garbage and had no special skills. Now the thing about being smart, or at least, I liked to think I was, was that I was pretty sure what was going on here.
“Every bit as effective as it would be in the real world.” That was meant to fool the dumb-asses, but was hiding in plain sight the fact that those skills were bullshit, and thus, the third one, where nothing special was shown and there was no special skill to be learnt, would contain something ‘real’ so to speak. At least, I hoped I was on the right path here, it was similar to the low dice rolls.
The GM had mentioned the rubbish pile by the house jokingly, but I thought it best to check it out anyway, as did one or two others whom I saw were now rooting through the garbage.
I screwed up my nose up as that powerful smell of rubbish hit my nose, the same as when I opened up a bucket, but multiple times stronger. They had spared no detail with the realism in this world. I lifted my shirt up over my mouth and nose as I observed what was in the pile.
Food tins, food waste, food wrappers, soggy newspapers, old magazines, bits of wood, bits of metal, old rags. At first glance I could not see anything valuable, and then one of the players who had arrived before me looked up and spoke.
“Well I wouldn’t just stand there son, you were smart enough to figure out there’s diamonds in the dung-hill weren’t you?”
The man was dressed in army camouflage and had an AK slung across his shoulder. He looked close to sixty years old, which I thought was an odd choice for an avatar, but I didn’t enquire any further. He was picking up magazines, rolling them around his wrist, then placing his arm against his chest to stop them unrolling. He then took his roll of masking tape, pulled it out, bit it off with his teeth, then rolled the tape around the magazine on his wrist.
“Armour son, better Z takes a bite of Hello magazine than takes your damned arm off. Simple but effective, may want to do it with your legs as well.”
Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t stupid. I took the masking tape out of my backpack and picked up some magazines, the others who had come to sieve through the rubbish following suit.
So he looked abut sixty and called me son. Was h
e old in real life? He caught my curious looks.
“Name’s Ted.”
“Joe”, I replied cautiously.
Just then another player arrived who caught my eye. The avatar was of a six feet tall woman, graceful and athletic, with long pointed ears, dressed in green robes. I realised she was supposed to be an elf, but her demeanour didn’t match up with her graceful appearance, averting our gaze as she picked up the magazines.
I felt my heart beat a little faster, like I wanted to talk to her, but I just pretended I was one hundred percent focused on wrapping my arms.
“And you are young lady?” Ted asked.
“Sara.” She replied.
“Another smart one huh? At least, we hope we’re goddamned smart.” The man name Ted chuckled to himself as he turned his attention to wrapping his legs.
“So did you both role a one?” I decided to ask. I knew Ted couldn’t have if he had a gun, but I wanted to just ask something of Sara, disguising it as a generic question to them both.
Sara nodded her head. I got the impression her social skills were not even the equal of mine.
Ted shook his head.
“Five”, he said, “But when Uncle Sam is always looking to save the tax payer some dollars, a soldier learns the value in what others throw onto the scrapheap.”
Celebrities, sports stars and politicians were soon looking out from all our arms and legs.
A notification appeared in my vision.
Light armour added: +4 armour
“Root through the rubbish then people”, said Ted. “Let’s see what more we can find.”
I didn’t appreciate him telling me what to do as if he had just suddenly assumed command, although I was intrigued by the fact he seemed to be ex-military and was giving out advice. He certainly didn’t seem like your average gamer.
“Why are you helping others?” I asked. “You know there can be only one winner in this game.”
“Yeah”, replied Ted with a grin, ”but I reckon we’re going to have to work together to go forward. Make us team up then maybe make us fight till the death later on. Ha!”
Ted was actually lucky enough to find an old kitchen knife which he tucked into his pocket, all the rest of us could find were some more magazines to use as armour. I was able to scavenge two more which I stuffed into my back pockets. That seemed to be our lot, so we headed back to the group.
“You now have your abilities and your weapons”, said the GM. “You all have three lives. Losing your third life will be perma-death, that’s not perma-death as in back to the beginning of level one. That’s perma-death as in out of the game for good. If you become infected and turn into a zombie, you can keep playing if you wish, but progressing will be practically impossible. I shall now take my leave and will see those of you who make it at the end of level one.” And with that, he quite literally vanished into thin air, leaving us all just standing there.
“So what the hell do we do now?” Someone piped up.
“Listen”, said Ted, cocking his head to one side.
I couldn’t hear anything for several seconds, and then…
“Quiet, all of you”, said Ted gruffly. The others around us shot him a resentful look, before snapping their heads back round as they heard it too. It was coming from beyond the raise about half a mile in front of us. It sounded like the distant drone of motorcars, getting louder and louder, till I was pretty sure of what I was listening to. It was the sound of zombie moans. Lots of zombie moans.
It was then that I saw movement at the top of the hill. The ambling forms were beginning to appear through the morning mist, stumbling down the slope.
There was an audible buzz of excitement, some players melodramatically cutting their swords through the air and slapping their guns into their hands, exuding whatever macho phrases they had seen in the movies.
“Bring em’ on! Come to papa!”
More and more, pouring over the hill, the wind blowing our way carrying with it those mournful moans and voiceless rasps of the dead. Fuck, there must have been hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all headed this way.
There were business men, business women, nurses, police officers, some were in sports gear-the uniforms of what they had once been. Now they were a mass of diseased, rotting and shambling corpses coming to eat us alive, I was sure I could hear the snap of their teeth in amongst their moans. I also noticed that much of the oncoming horde were naked, some displaying horrific wounds, such as gaping holes and cuts in their chests. A doubly disturbing vision of that which was once human; oblivious to their nakedness and oblivious to their gun blast injuries.
I knew this was only a game, that these were constructs of an AI, but I was feeling a churning in the pit of my stomach, something I had never felt before when playing. Starting a game had never been something that scared me, it was exciting to bring home a new game and see that welcome screen, knowing you were about to start blasting away and kicking ass.
There were definitely thousands now. I wasn’t great at estimating numbers, but I reckoned they must have been more than a thousand across, and five hundred deep, and they were still coming, pouring over the hill like some never ending ghoulish tidal wave. And now there was a smell, one I had never smelt before. Ted smelt it too.
“Son of a bitch”, said Ted, as I noticed he was wrapping the kitchen knife to the back of his hand with the masking tape. “They really do have everything in this game. Haven’t smelt that since Saigon. Can’t say I’ve missed it much.”
The translucent screen then appeared at the bottom right of my vision.
Level 1
Objective: Get through the horde.
Walker zombie
Level 3
Mana: N/A
Strength: 6
Agility: 4
Endurance: Infinite
Willpower: Infinite
Intelligence: 2
Runner zombie
Level 3
Mana: N/A
Strength: 6
Agility: 4
Endurance: Infinite
Willpower: Infinite
Intelligence: 2
Walkers and runners?
It was then that one sunglass wearing bad ass pumped his shotgun and actually said the words, ‘Yay though I walk through the valley of death, level two here I come.’
“Now if I were a betting man”, said Ted, nodding to Sunglasses, “I say he’s one of the first to die. Take a look around you kid, the ones who look afraid at least have a little smarts, if the pain is real like they said it would be.”
“What’s that you’re doing with the knife and tape?” I asked him.
“If I hold it in my hand, there’s a good chance it will slip out when things get bloody. I’d tape that nail to the back of your hand if I were you.”
I took his advice, placing the nail on the back of my hand and then wrapping multiple layers of tape over and around my hand and in between my fingers.
As I did so I was aware of lots of bravado and fist pumping surrounding us, with specks of fearful faces in amongst it all.
The horde was closing. This was going to be a straight forward fight. I had blown away, stabbed and crushed the head of so many a zombie on screen, but this felt so different.
“Are you going to use your AK?”
“Not yet”, replied Ted. “It looks like a whole city just came to life, or death so to speak. You shoot one and another just comes at you. There’s no way we have the ammo to shoot through all that, we’re gonna have to punch our way through.”
Before I could ask him what that would mean exactly, one player ran out to the front of the group.
“You best get the hell out of the way motherfucker!” Said one player who had an RPG aimed at the horde, “or you down along with these sacks of pus.”
“Wait”, said the player who had run out. He was wearing a long black coat and was wearing an eye patch, surely for show. Could he actually only see out one eye? Or could he see out both despite t
he fact he had an eye patch? I wasn’t sure how that worked. “Players, I know they say there can be only one winner, but we must work together to defeat the horde. Let us lead the way, let us who have the power lead the way. No touch masters, are you with me?”
At least twenty or so players ran out to rally around Eye-patch, pumping their fists in the air. This was it, their moment in the sun, their chance to be heroes and save us all from the oncoming death march.
They dead were getting closer, now all reaching out and snarling. All of a sudden many at the front were knocked over and shoved aside by zombies behind them, as if some were desperate to get to the front of the que.
Out from the ambling undead mass came hurtling forward about forty to fifty zombies, charging across the grass like Olympic sprinters. Now I could see their eyes; red, demented, rabid eyes, fixated on their prey.
The no touch masters formed a straight line, and then Eye-patch raised his hand.
“Follow me men. Into battle, let us lead the way! Let us send the undead back to the hell from which they crawled. On me!” And with that he charged, and his men followed.
The rest of us looked on fascinated. Runner zombies and no touch masters charging at each other across the open plains, like two medieval armies of old.
Eye-patch came to a sudden halt and shot his arm out right in front of him, palm open, directed at the zombies. All the others followed suit. I knew from the menu what was supposed to happen. This ability was supposed to send the runners hurtling back into the horde, or maybe even turn their bodies into mush, all by harnessing the power of invisible chi-or whatever. But that didn’t happen. It turned out that the no touch ability truly was as effective as it would have been in real life.
Nothing happened. And the runner zombies kept charging. The no touch masters flicked their hands again and again, and still nothing. I actually felt a tinge of pity for the fools as I saw the look of pure betrayal on their faces-hit with the knowledge their superpower was useless as death fell upon them.
Blood curling screams filled their air as the players were swarmed and dragged to the ground. With no abilities to save them the ghouls were soon tearing them to shreds, like packs of wild animals with a fresh kill.