by Isaac Stone
“What was that about?” Lavon asked when he caught up with the rest of the group. “Command finally gets around to talking to us?” All curiosity about what he and Jesse were up to behind the wall was gone.
“They want us to retrieve some kind of code book from a building,” he explained to them. “Another side quest.” He pulled out his map and looked up the location. “Not too far from where we are and in the direction of the town.”
“Which means we lose time reaching the last objective,” Camper grumbled. “Isn’t that the final goal? Whoever hits that button wins the game?” He crossed his arms and stood still.
“Not until all the NZ’s are dead,” Jesse added. “Didn’t you read the entire guide to this tournament? Only when the last one of those little geeks is gone can the button be depressed. All side quests have to be complete.”
“Yeah,” Camper said. “This means someone only has to camp out in front it and wait while everyone else wipes out the zombies and completes the side quests. You can push the button until the last ghoul fiend dies and then it activates.”
“Don’t think it works that way,” Detra brought up. “If that was the case, it would be too easy for someone to beat the game.”
“You know something we don’t?” Lavon asked him. She gave him a stern look.
“No,” he returned, “but it makes sense. Rashid wants us here to play the game. Someone will figure out a way to beat the system eventually. I think there are flaws in the way this game was designed. Too many smart people involved who didn’t think it all the way through. Besides, why do the rules for the tournament insist we kill all those hellspawn?”
“He wants to delay something,” Kurt spoke up. “Rashid doesn’t want there to be a mad rush into that final building. This way the game is drawn out further. We can’t take the tower until the last one is eliminated. Game balance.”
“Which means all someone has to do is sit there and run out the clock,” Camper brought back up. “After a while the gamers get tired of waiting around and go after them. But they can’t, because it means the moment the last NZ is killed, the button is active. The person nearest to it gets to punch it and win the game. So no one goes out to kill the last NZ and everyone sits around and waits. I bet the area around the button is just a big circle of dudes pointing guns at each other.”
“This tournament does have a time limit,” Jesse pointed out. “What happens if we reach it and there is no winner?”
“Game goes into default?” Detra proposed.
“All of this talk is pointless,” Kurt brought up to them. “Don’t you think he’s thought this all through? He'll have some backup in place that will force people to fight, bombs or enemy spawns, something. He's not going to let anyone just camp their way to ten million dollars. No offense Chet.”
The rest of the Skull Legion was quiet. What he’d said struck home in a way none of them could dispute. Kurt turned and began to walk in the direction of the location the map gave him. The sun was the only way he could tell north from south. It was enough for him to find the general location of the place where this codebook was located.
They were on the outskirts of the town by now. In the distance, Kurt could see the small dwellings that characterized many households near the cities. After the fuel shortage, many people moved back into the urban areas since it was one way to be close the available supplies. Plenty still lived in the suburbs and rural areas, but it was dangerous out there with the lack of police response times and the difficulty in obtaining food and power. If a power line went out, it might take months for the power company to restore it. They usually went in to do the remote jobs accompanied by armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders if anyone interfered.
Closer to the cities, it was easier to survive in small groups. There were still plenty of houses a person could move into and claim if no one was around to notice. However, houses built recently didn’t hold up as well in the weather as they were built with constant maintenance in mind. Kurt recalled all the houses built only ten years ago near his parents’ house that were falling apart.
There were few of these dwellings near them and most were made from adobe brick. Given the arid nature of the place where the tournament took place, this was not surprising. Mud bricks were cheap to make and didn’t melt away when there wasn’t a lot of rain. Kurt assumed they were left over from whoever lived here before Rashid bought the landscape. No one came out of the small houses as they ventured past them, but he was certain there were people who watched from inside. Whether or not they were part of the game didn’t concern him.
The location for the codebook turned out to be a one-story office complex. Whatever happened to it took place recently. Most of the structure was blown apart by a bomb blast that happened outside the entrance. From what Kurt could tell, a car drove up loaded with explosives and blew itself up. The entire front of the building was leveled, with only a few bits of it left on each side to show where a roof once stood. There were no other vehicles, burned or not, around the parking lot.
“So this is it?” Camper asked Kurt, as they looked the location over. The five of them stood in front of the ruins of the building and tried to figure out the best way inside.
“At least we’re a bit closer to our final goal,” Detra stated. “But I don’t like the way this place looks one bit. How the hell are we supposed to find a code book in that mess?”
“More to the point,” Lavon spoke, “how are we to find a way inside it? There’s crap piled up everywhere around that front. You’d need a shovel to dig your way into it.”
“The code book is supposed to be in the front drawer of the production manager’s desk,” Kurt explained as they looked at the remains of the building. “All we need to do is find the desk. It’s in a part of the building where the roof didn’t collapse.” He pointed toward one of the corners.
“Are you sure of this?” Camper asked him. “You think Rashid and his friends are setting us up for something? To tell you the truth, I don’t trust the bastard anymore.” He walked forward and kicked at the ground.
“Can't trust the game master,” Kurt responded. “But we still need to get that code book.”
He walked around the front and up to what remained of the outer wall. From where he stood, Kurt could see the blast zone and the shock wave that destroyed most of the office building. There were no dead bodies around. He didn’t expect any, but Ares could simulate almost anything it needed to create for the game. He starred out in the bright sunlight and saw the scattered papers, office equipment and everything else that was present when the explosion took place. It appeared simple enough to climb over the blasted masonry and walk to the desk in question.
Once again, Kurt wasn’t so sure about the location. It was easy to hide inside the remains of the building. The paperwork scattered on the floor was open to the ceiling and covered with mold. It didn’t rain too often here, but when it did, enough moisture was generated to turn the paper into a growth medium. He couldn’t smell the spores in the air, but they were present.
It was too easy for the hellspawn to hide behind those tumbled bricks and surprise them. Kurt checked to make sure he had a full clip on his rifle and turned back to the rest.
“Anyone want to scale what’s left of this wall and get the code book out of the desk?” he asked them. “Looks like a quick jump and crawl over to it. The rest of us will stand out here and run cover. Too many places to hide in that mess.”
“I’ll do it,” Camper announced and walked over to Kurt. The rest soon followed.
As they stood there, Camper climbed the broken masonry and jumped down to the other side. He had his assault rifle out and looked around.
Camper moved with stealth out into the open field between what remained of different sections of the old building. Kurt looked in the distance where the collapsed office was located and noted there was enough room for a whole squad to move through there if it was necessary. The sun created mysterious shadows out
of the building remains.
“You think this is something else that Ares in masking?” Jesse asked Kurt. She took another step closer and placed one hand on his shoulder.
Kurt looked at the hand and sighed to himself. He didn’t want there to be anything that might jeopardize their hunt for the final objective. Still, bonus points on side quests would matter for a hell of a lot when the game ended.
As far as Kurt knew, the books were some kind of McGuffin designed to toss a gear in the works and keep them out of the town for as long as necessary. If Ares picked up the background chatter on the topic of the real agenda of this place, the AI could do a lot to change up the appearances.
However, Kurt was assured the building was here before Rashid bought them here. It had the appearance of a small production plant where local machinist ground the burs from dies used to make battery parts. This wasn’t some kind of high tech operation; it was a machine shop that made parts for other machines.
Kurt’s dad used to work in one of these places and he remembered the times he’d visit his father at work. The floor was always covered in a layer of oil and metal shivers were scattered all over the place. The windows were covered with grime and the air smelled of burnt lubricants. He vowed never to be stuck in this kind of job.
Something moved and Kurt swung his head to look at a pile of collapsed masonry outside the building. Could one of those beasts be back? It wouldn’t surprise him, but they moved in packs and he’d yet to see one since his crew stepped onto the grounds of the building.
“Detra,” he told the other man who stood there with him. “Keep one eye on that pile of rock.” He pointed in the direction of the fallen masonry. “If anything moves, shoot it.” Detra nodded and looked in the direction Kurt indicated.
By now, Camper was crawling over the rubble between the outer entrance of the office and the small space over the door that led into it. Kurt watched Camper make his way over the pile of rocks and drag his gun behind him. Soon, he’d disappeared behind it.
“Building had to be here before the tournament started,” he spoke to Jesse. “From the burn marks, I’m guessing they hit it pretty good from the air too. Probably a combined drone strike. I don’t see any papers or anything that would show it was in use, so I think that’s what happened.”
A few minutes later, Camper’s head popped up over the other side of the rubble. “Hey, boss!” he yelled. “You might want to come and see what I found!” He grinned from the other side to let Kurt know it was important but not very dangerous.
Kurt leaped over the wall and soon was at the pile of rubble that blocked the entrance to the former office.
“You find the code book?” Kurt asked him as he crawled over the pile. “I hope so, because that is the only thing that matters.”
“I found it,” Camper announced and held up a large bound volume. It had the words “Code Book” written on one side in huge gothic letters, so there was no mistaking it, "Kinda generic right?"
Camper handed it to Kurt once the team leader reached the top of the pile. Kurt opened the book up and saw endless rows of unrecognizable letters matched up to other columns of strange cyphers. He couldn’t understand why they’d needed this, but it was what Command wanted him to retrieve. Kurt shrugged and placed it in his backpack.
“So what did you find?” Kurt asked him as he crawled over to the other side.
“Why don’t you come down here and have a look?” Camper responded as she slid down the rock pile too.
There wasn’t a lot of light in what remained of the small office. Sunbeams broke through the dust in the air to show a smashed desk and some chairs scattered over the inside. The worst of the fire the bomb blast generated spared this room and most of what was inside.
This was good as there was enough ammunition inside it to blow the remains of the plant and building to cinders.
Kurt walked slow and looked over the shells lined up against the wall. He’d never seen these types before. There was all manner of sizes here, some large, some small and every kind of projectile for every kind of weapon represented. Boxes of ammunition for assault rifles were stacked in front of him. Next to those, large high-explosive shells were neatly arranged. Some of them were covered in rock dust, but the damage never reached this part of the facility. Here was an ammo dump that begged to be removed by some lucky arms dealer who needed a shipment. Best of all, each shell or round he could see was intact and ready to be used.
“What do you think?” Camper asked him. “We might harvest a bit of this. Damn fine reward for a side quest.”
“Except that none of these will work in our guns,” Kurt pointed out as he looked at a green metal box full of bullets. “Nope, not one single bit of ammo that fits our weapons.” He opened the box and looked at the copper bullets inside it.
“What?” Camper exclaimed. “Are you sure, I thought I saw some rounds for my assault rifle.” He walked over to Kurt.
“Wrong size,” Kurt pointed the ammo specifications on the box. “All of these rounds are off-spec. Won’t fit any standard rifle or gun, come to think of it.”
“So what do we do with all of this if no one can use it?” Camper asked. “Seems crazy to make ammunition that no one can use.” He walked around and looked over the boxes.
“I don’t’ think we’re the first bunch to find out this ammo is useless,” Kurt pointed out to Camper as he put his backpack down on the ground. Kurt reached inside and pulled out something he felt would be right for what he had in mind.
“Why do you say that?” Camper asked him. He was curious as to what Kurt had in mind with his backpack.
“This dirt was disturbed recently. Look at the floor. Someone came in here, made the same observation I did and left. Appears our friend Rashid bought up all the ammunition he could find that no one could use. Must be a lot of it out there. Ordinance companies make all kinds of small runs and need to get rid of them. In addition, there is material made by accident. It all adds up to this mess.”
Kurt took out the object he wanted and began to fool with it. With one hand, he made some adjustment. It would do the job.
“What you got there?” Camper asked him.
“Land mine,” Kurt explained. “I bought a few at the last save point, to be on the safe side. You never know when they’ll come in handy.” He walked over to the middle of the ammo boxes and placed the round object in the middle of the arrangement.
“This should do just fine,” Kurt announced to Camper. “I’m eager so see how one of these things works in real life. As much as this place can be considered real life, that is.” He walked back to the other side of the room.
“What do you mean?” Camper asked again.
“I set the time for five minutes,” Kurt explained. “It will give us plenty of time to get out of here and watch the boom.” He went up to the pile of rubble and began to climb up it.
Camper was over the top and down to the bottom of the heap before Kurt finished his climb. Kurt had the "what’s the worst thing that can happen attitude?" look and took his time climbing down it. When he reached the grounds of the destroyed building, Camper was already on the other side of the collapsed wall.
“Camper says you rigged a bomb to go off in there,” Jesse spoke to Kurt as he emerged on to the exterior of the former machine shop.
“Correct,” Kurt, informed her. “And it’s about to explode, so we need to get behind something unless you want to leave the game in a hurry.” He headed to the large rock that was part of the landscaping around the building.
A few minutes later they were still behind the rock as the bomb hadn’t gone off. The other four hugged the ground with Kurt.
“So why the hell did you set that land mine to detonate?” Camper asked him. “How is this supposed to help us win the game?”
“Rashid’s people planted all that off spec ammunition in there,” Kurt explained. “And none of it was for us. Therefore, I have to assume it was for the other side to use. Pe
rhaps he’s found the guns that need the ammo we saw. All good and fine, but I don’t see why I need to give the other side any help. Let those hellspawn run short on rounds.” The sand was below his face.
“But they had to know we’d find it when they sent us inside for the code book,” Camper objected. “Why show us a pile of ammunition we can’t use?” He seemed frustrated.
“A sick joke on the part of Rashid, maybe,” Kurt proposed. “I’m not sure. No reason to let them have use of it. Just keep down and stay put.”
Ten more minutes passed. Then fifteen. Camper stuck his head up and looked around the wall.
“Are you sure you set the timer right?” he asked. “Shouldn’t it have gone off by now?”
“Yes, but there’s no telling with these things,” Kurt pointed out. “The land mine was put there in my pack by the people who run this game. Could be they messed with the mechanism.”
“I don’t think you set it right,” Camper swore and stood up. “I’m going in there to reset it.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Detra pointed out. “You never fool around with a live bomb.”
“It’s not live,” Camper announced. “Give me a few minutes to reset it and I’ll be back. I'll bet you anything destroying the cache will result in a huge points bonus, like you said, it takes it out of enemy hands.”
“Camper, really,” Lavon said to him. “You know this will end badly.”
It was too late; Camper was already on his way to the ruined machine shop and office. He marched with determination and reached the compromised wall in a few minutes.
“Just give me a few,” he yelled back at them. “I’ll do it right and we can be out of here.” Camper climbed over the wall and was on the other side, out of visual range. Only Kurt peered around to see where he’d went.
This almost took Kurt out of the game.
Five seconds later, the land mine detonated and took the ammunition dump with it.
Kurt saw a blinding flash and leaped behind the protection of the wall. He felt the ground shake from the combined explosions of what was inside the former building. He couldn’t feel the wind rush as the shockwave arced out, but he felt the heat from the blast inside his bones. The others stayed down as shrapnel, bits of rock and burning fragments soared over them. It was followed by a series of small explosions as the remainder of the shells went off. The small explosions continued for a good five minutes.