Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure

by Peter Meredith

“I don’t know…I don’t know. I’m not supposed to tell, but…but they’re monsters, I think,” was the strange reply the unknown officer received.

  Alex flicked off the radio and sat still, with his head cocked to one side. Even through the heavy glass, he could hear the pop, pop, pop of gunfire, only it wasn’t just: pop, pop, pop. It was a thousand pops going off all at once. Feeling a sudden churn in his guts, he climbed out of the cruiser and the sound of the battle assaulted him. He was a mile away, with a wide river between him and the fire-fight and still the sound was frightfully urgent.

  He didn’t rush off, however. The churning in his guts intensified, and he slowly climbed back into the cruiser. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, and then stuck the car in gear. Gradually, he built up speed and far too soon for his liking, he was at the Queensboro Bridge and being directed to heel his cruiser in next to a row of forty others.

  Even as he pulled in, another cruiser squeezed right up next to him and another pulled up next to that one. He slid out of the car, feeling his stomach twist, going beyond churning; it was a curdling sensation that made him feel sick.

  The officer in the next cruiser beat him out, rushing to pop his trunk. “What is it?” he asked, as Alex reluctantly opened the trunk on his cruiser.

  Alex couldn’t answer at first; the sound of the guns firing was now mingled with screams. So many screams. “I-I don’t know,” he said, after taking a gulp of air.

  “They said monsters,” another officer said, a fake little laugh in his voice. It was a high, oddly girlish sound as if someone had a good hold of his balls and was giving them a healthy tweak.

  Another officer further down the row of cruisers, was screaming: “Masks! Get your damn masks on! Come on, damn it!”

  Masks meant there were germs in the air…zombie germs. The idea that just breathing could turn him into one of them was horrible and Alex dug in his trunk for his protective mask. It came in a pouch that he buckled around his waist. It took three tries to snap in place, and as he struggled with the simple buckle, the sound of the firing came closer and the screams grew ever more urgent and loud. People were dying right on the bridge and yet Alex felt as though he was moving in slow motion. He couldn’t seem to get his feet moving despite the urgency in the air.

  Some of the officers were pulling on their masks and others were hauling out shotguns or Colt M4s. Alex only had his 9mm Sig Sauer P226 and it felt altogether puny, certainly too puny to use against an army of undead.

  He needed something bigger: a machine gun or a grenade launcher. Anything would be better than the pistol. “Hey,” he hissed to the officer who had pulled in next to him. “You don’t happen to have a…”

  Just then, someone turned him around and screamed in his face: “Get to the line! Hurry!”

  Alex was pushed and shoved onto the bridge where his fellow officers were lined up. There were forty or fifty of them, all looking green, all sweating and scared. Alex was sure he looked just as terrified. His hands shook as he tried to check on his second magazine. It dropped, clinking on the cement. Frantically, he scrambled for it. He was deathly afraid, but of what exactly, he didn’t know. He had no idea what they were facing and yet he was practically pissing himself.

  Questions ran up and down the line: “What’s going on? What’s happening? What are they? Are they really zombies? Really?”

  No one knew, but it wasn’t long before they found out.

  The bridge stretched east toward Queens. Normally, a person could see across the half-mile span without a problem but just then, the far end couldn’t be seen. A swirling black cloud engulfed it. And it didn’t just hover over it, it advanced against a gentle westerly wind.

  Within that unnatural black cloud were creatures masquerading as people. They shambled forward, bringing with them a horrid stench of decay. It was so bad that even the veterans of a hundred murder scenes ripped their masks out of their holders and pulled them on.

  Gagging from the stench, Alex held his mask to his face, but didn’t put it on. The mask would cloud his vision and he needed to see what he was dealing with. Monsters was what the dispatcher had said. Seconds later, he saw that she had been wrong. These weren’t exactly monsters—they were zombies. They could be nothing else.

  The creatures stumbling though the swirling darkness had been people at one time, only now they were the living dead. They were corpses somehow imbued with life. They limped along, dragging ropes of intestine and leaving long trails of blood and pus behind them. Their decayed and rotting flesh hung in ribbons off their bleached bones.

  They were horrors that had no right to be alive and there were thousands of them.

  Someone yelled: “They-they’re zombies! Aim for the head!”

  Alex was way ahead of him. He had the mask in one hand and the Sig Sauer in the other. He peered down the iron sights, waiting until the leading wave of monsters was within thirty yards. He couldn’t miss from that distance.

  A captain screamed: “Fire!” The line of officers let loose with a ragged volley, some using handguns, some shotguns and some M4s. Those zombies in the first line were staggered, many falling, causing the wave of undead to slow as it stumbled over them. More shots created more mayhem and the bridge became an obstacle course of black blood and rotting limbs which slowed the attacking monsters even more.

  Alex shot his Sig Sauer dry and in the three seconds it took to reload, the zombies were ten yards closer. Strangely, the thunder of the guns going off all around him and the acrid stench of the spent gunpowder calmed his nerves to a degree.

  It didn’t last.

  A foul creature, grey and stinking of death, pushed itself over the mound of wriggling bodies and came for Alex. He aimed and fired, certain that he had hit the zombie in the head; however, it didn’t fall or even slow.

  “What the hell?” he whispered, and took aim again. Now, at twenty yards he knew he was a good enough marksman to plug the bitch dead center. He caressed the trigger, a shock that ran up his arm to his shoulder, and he saw the thing’s head rock back, bone and brain and unknown crap flying onto the bridge.

  Again, it didn’t fall. It just kept coming closer and closer, close enough that Alex could see a gaping hole just off center in its forehead.

  Alex wasn’t the only one just realizing that things were far worse than they realized.

  “Oh, my God!” someone screamed. “They’re not dying!”

  That wasn’t possible. In the course of the last two hours, the world had been turned on its head. These were zombies, flesh-eating, brain-chomping, undead zombies and everyone knew that you could kill a zombie with a head-shot. That was supposedly, a fact, and yet the zombies kept coming, seemingly impervious to any bullet. Even the creatures that had collapsed earlier, were fighting their way to their feet.

  Movement out of the corner of his eye had Alex turning. Some of the men were running away! Everything was suddenly chaos. A few men ran, a few fired their weapons, a few stood there not knowing what to do.

  Alex glanced down at his Sig Sauer for a brief moment, tempted to toss it away and run, but he managed to swallow his fear long enough to empty the gun into the corpse that was now only ten yards away. The 9mm blazed with orange flame as Alex hit the zombie with every round. It jerked with each strike, coming to a standstill almost within reach. Then the two just stared at each other; Alex trying to come to grips with this new reality, and the zombie trying to stand with a body that had been torn to shreds.

  An officer standing next to Alex waggled his head side to side, saying: “That ain’t possible,” while holding his pistol loosely in slack hands.

  Another officer, this one a round-bellied sergeant who had been too long at the desk, yelled: “Keep Firing! Keep firing!” He had a shotgun and when he pulled the trigger, the zombie in front of Alex flew back, its head coming off its shoulders. Every time the sergeant squeezed the trigger on the gun, his belly would jiggle and a zombie was blasted back.

  Alex watched h
im with one thought in his head: I’m going to die. There were too many zombies and not enough men with shotguns. He started backing away. With only a pistol, he didn’t think he stood a chance. A second later, it rattled on the pavement as he turned to run. The sergeant caught him.

  “Stand your ground!” he roared, into Alex’s face.

  “Give me your gun and I will!” Alex yelled right back. It was suicide to stand there with only a pistol. Already, a dozen officers were screaming with zombies latched onto them, tearing them to pieces with their teeth alone. Those officers with shotguns and M4s were able to hold back the flood of walking corpses, but anyone with only a pistol was already running or dead.

  The sergeant hesitated, seeing the truth of the situation around him, but somehow, he found the courage to hold out the shotgun. Alex eagerly snatched it and began blasting the walking dead. The shotgun was like a cannon, it thundered and flashed with every pull of the trigger, throwing body parts into the air.

  He fired over and over, his hands growing numb, the corpses piling up in front of him in a mound. When his gun ran dry, he fed shells from the bandolier on the strap, he had twelve shots left—they went in less than a minute. He turned to yell for more ammo, only to realize that he was all alone.

  The line of officers had fallen. Some men had run off and some were being fed on by the creatures. The lucky ones had their throats torn out, the unlucky ones were being eaten alive, screaming at the top of their lungs.

  Alex spun, desperate to escape; however, before he could take his second step, a grey hand with bloody fingers reached out from the pile of corpses and grabbed his ankle. He went down, the empty shotgun flying from his grasp. He tried to pull away, only the zombie had a grip of iron and a strength that was irresistible.

  Slowly, Alex was dragged to the mound of corpses and pulled under, his screams growing more and more muffled until he was buried entirely and the teeth of a dozen zombies tore into him.

  Fictional works by Peter Meredith:

  A Perfect America

  Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1

  Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2

  The Sacrificial Daughter

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four

  The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1

  An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2

  Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3

  The Punished

  Sprite

  The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1

  The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2

  To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3

  The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1

  The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2

  The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3

  The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4

  The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5

  The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6

  The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

  The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8

  The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9

  The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World 10

  The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One

  The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two

  Pen(Novella)

  A Sliver of Perfection (Novella)

  The Haunting At Red Feathers(Short Story)

  The Haunting On Colonel's Row(Short Story)

  The Drawer(Short Story)

  The Eyes in the Storm(Short Story)

  The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World

  Infinite Assassin Daggerland Online Novel 2