METAVERSE
GAMES
OMNIBUS
Includes
Devolution: Level Up
Devolution: IRL
By
William Kurth
Copyright 2017 © William Kurth
ISBN: 978-1-64136-895-7
Cover Art by: SelfPubBookCoovers.com/Dmick27
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either used fictitiously or are just products of the author’s imagination.
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Dedication
To my wife, Angela for all your encouragement and love and to my daughters Nia and Toula, who are my greatest treasures.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Dead Zone
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
About the Author
The Dead Zone
Rats exploded out of a side street, milliseconds before an armored, desert-tan truck slammed into both police cruisers blocking the intersection. The 4th Gen Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) scrapped both cars off its canted grill without the slightest pause. The driver kept redlining the engine and spit in the face of gravity as he took the turn on two wheels.
“Don’t friggin’ slow down, Andy! Only 30 minutes to sunset!”
The 4x4 truck glided over the city’s endless potholes and bomb craters with ease, even at 60 mph. Of course, the smooth-ish ride did little to calm the nerves of the two civilians inside. Despite the elaborate defenses and firepower onboard, the armored car clearly didn’t do its missing former crew of soldiers much good. The scavengers needed hours to scrub out the old bloodstains from their abandoned prize before putting it to work.
The gun truck’s remote-controlled 20mm Vulcan cannons swiveled in every direction, but nothing else stirred on the vast, deserted boulevard. Ever since The Outbreak three years ago, this 2,000-square mile mega-metropolis area, larger than Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore combined, hadn’t seen many street maintenance crews.
Or any living human for that matter.
The only exceptions being licensed infiltration teams like this in search of fame and “trophies,” in the lingo of those who hunted the deserted great city and its suburbs for a living.
Technically, the rogue “Outfits” living below ground breathed like humans, so they should count too. But no one who tried to count those psychopaths ever came back.
Still, as desperate and lethal as those outlaws were, the Outfitters were a joke compared to the real danger haunting the shadows above ground.
“Shit, Andy! Do you see that?” In the passenger seat, Logan McMillan peered into a tablet computer synced up to the cannons outside. His automated targeting reticle jittered around, ID’ing shifting shadows and moving to the next before he could hit the fire button. “This ain’t the suburbs. Downtown’s crawling with more DEVO’s than I’ve ever seen!”
DEVO was short for De-Evolved Human, but the euphemistic moniker didn’t do the cunning mutants justice. Nor did it explain their laser-focused, barbaric rage.
Andy Crawley just shrugged. “Hold your fire until we really need it. You’ll run out of ammo long before they run out of cannon fodder. Besides, this seems like a perfect neighborhood to shop in if…when, we get out of here. Would be a shame to torch the place now.”
Since the wildfire plague struck so fast, the fancy yet permanently dark buildings rising on either side of the rig held all manner of treasures despite their decay; most of the first-floor windows lay smashed, the interiors close to the street looted. Towering like canyon walls over the heavily armored and armed combat vehicle, they cast mocking shadows in the waning daylight up and down the forsaken streets. Debris from looting, riots and pitched battles spilled out of the upscale shopping and business districts they now negotiated.
Burned-out cars lay strewn everywhere, even on the sidewalks, with nothing but skeletal remains in most seats. All around, Mother Nature reclaimed what was rightfully hers, cracking the pavement with weeds and smothering humankind’s artificial confines with vines and shrubs.
The JLTV bounced and shuddered as it flew across an extra wide crater. Behind the wheel, Andy grimaced and studied the countdown timer on the Heads Up Display (HUD), overlaid across the two-inch thick armored windshield.
Next to him, Logan glanced up from the gun’s camera. The goosebumps on his sweaty skin, despite the air conditioner running at full blast, said everything. He just tapped the countdown timer again for the second time in thirty seconds.
Dusk minus 27:28. The numbers, now under the one-hour mark, had turned blood red, as if they needed any more stress. Andy just kept his eyes on the road, busy enough swerving in and out of the abandoned cars.
“Still twenty-seven minutes to sundown. We’ll make it to them. Trust me, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
Only once had Andy ever been so deep in the Dead Zone this late. It didn’t turn out well. That lone survivor fame made Andy Crawly somewhat of a celebrity in the infiltration community. Logan snorted.
“Yeah, yeah. I know the story about you. But what ever happened to the other twenty guys in your convoy? Look, maybe we can get to Keith and David, but even you can’t drive out that fast. Christ, this is going to be a cluster. We’re way outside the safety margins. Maybe we should call the authorities; they can send a VTAL whirlybird.”
“Logan…” Andy trailed off as he scrapped against a gutted bus blocking most of the road. Something stirred in the shadows inside, but he kept his head down and gritted his tee
th.
“You know we can’t call anyone. Our permit is good just to patrol the picked-over suburbs. The lucrative business districts are reserved for the government’s official salvage teams. Even if they did come, the military would just seize all our gear and any trophies. If we’re lucky, they’ll only throw us in jail, but you never know. We’re still technically under martial law, which tends to be a bit unforgiving to looters.”
Logan just worked his jaw and stuttered. Andy flashed a naughty grin. “On the plus side, at this hour, the soldier boys wouldn’t attempt a VTAL landing in an LZ this hot. We’re finally on our own.”
Logan pounded the gun station display screen, his voice rising faster than all the man-sized bright points flaring up on the thermal imager.
“That’s exactly my point! When the hell did this become a suicide mission? We’re jeopardizing everything! How we gonna get out?”
“Easy. We’re not getting out tonight.” Andy drummed his fingers on the wheel and whistled some jaunty tune.
“No shit, we sure as hell won’t if you don’t turn around. I’ve got the egress route mapped out based on the path that we already used to get this far. That way should be clear, at least till they come out and start blocking it. Even so, it’ll be tight, man. We also have to keep the speed down with all the torn-up pavement.”
“I’m not turning around. Keith and David are still my responsibility, even if they did run off on their own little field trip.”
“Dude, are you crazy? They’re dead already. Why do you think they’re not answering the radio?”
Andy ground his teeth. “Their last call was barely legible from that sinkhole they hit. We just need to get closer to hear them.”
“Why do you want to add us to the body count? You just admitted that if we go any deeper we aren’t getting out.”
“Right now, yeah. So we’ll just do the one thing the DEVO’s would never expect: we’ll spend the night. If we make a run for it, they’ll block us with burning vehicles or other obstructions and trap us. Once we’re out of ammo, the bastards will burn us alive in the rig or force us out on foot, but either way, we’re doomed. We have to barricade in place; we’re too far in regardless if we rescue those two rookies or not.”
Logan took a raggedy breath and cursed to himself.
“Barricade in place? No one who tried that was ever seen again. That’s suicide; the underground societies are just as likely to rob us of our rig, our ammo, and even our clothes and then kick us out. Or kill us so we don’t join the DEVO’s—rather than give us shelter.”
“No one joins the DEVO’s; they take you. Assuming they’re not hungry.”
The occupants of this once bustling vast metropolis with its thirty-five million residents had become ground zero in a viral outbreak that eventually made walking corpses out of its victims. Only sealing the city off and implementing other “aggressive containment measures,” courtesy of generous donations by the Air Force’s bombers and the Army’s artillery brigades, kept the apocalypse at bay.
The military razed whole communities by the grid square around the city to create clear lines of fire. Occasionally, some of the suicidal, all-volunteer rescue missions even managed to evacuate uninfected civilians first.
Despite the medieval chaos of the first few days, once the virus was isolated and the brush-fire outbreaks across the globe stomped out, mankind bought enough time to stave off Armageddon. Thanks to Apollo mission funding levels, the eggheads in labs around the world managed to develop a vaccine. For the airborne variety, at least. The security precautions soon grew relaxed, allowing authorized teams to enter the metropolitan area situated on a peninsula. Mine fields and guard towers, along with UV lights by the hundreds, augmented the rows of electrical fencing strung across a line to the south. The bay to the east and the ocean to the west offered an effective barrier as DEVO’s wouldn’t cross saltwater, at least not yet.
Soon, the national resources demanded to secure the “Dead Zone” were reduced and responsibility handed over to local authorities. The official intelligence estimates listed somewhere around five million DEVO’s remaining, although some suppressed reports pegged their numbers several times higher.
It didn’t take long until the struggling local governments turned to the private sector for help. What started as volunteer militias contracted to secure the border, soon morphed into sophisticated “infiltration teams.” These quasi-legal private clubs organized raiding parties to go in and hunt the DEVO’s down in the name of public safety.
And for a reasonable kickback to local officials, these volunteers were allowed to retrieve all the “trophies” they could carry. Cash, gold, jewelry, antiques, art, hi-tech machinery—securing valuables was the last thing on the minds of the city’s few survivors.
The vaccine eliminated the risk of an airborne viral transmission, but a blood-by-product to blood-by-product transmission remained a danger. If that occurred, you were a goner. You would become a DEVO unless you received rapid and intense medical care. Some test serums to treat such bites out in the field looked promising. The difficulty was that the DEVO’s didn’t just bite their victims, they ravished them in a feeding frenzy.
And DEVO’s were pack animals.
“Christ, Andy! You said this was a quick INFIL. That we’d be back by sunset, maybe hang out near the open areas and do some target practice; whack as many of them as we can before hitting the bar. Perhaps find a small trophy for our efforts and earn some cash.”
Andy slammed on the brakes. “I didn’t think there would be so many roadblocks we’d have to negotiate.” A large overturned semi blocked his route. Wasting no time, he threw the JLTV into reverse and raced a half block backward to the last street.
Glancing at the moving GPS map, Andy flung the truck into drive before it stopped, locking all four tires and spinning as he floored the gas pedal. He made a quick right onto the cross street, veering wide to the right around the wreckage of a downed VTAL. The truck’s right front bounced up onto the curb, followed by the right rear tires before Andy yanked the wheel to the left and sheared off a “No Parking” sign.
“No! For God’s sakes! It’s already dark in there!” Logan stared into the dim alleyway.
Andy brought the rig to a stop, just short of the tall buildings on either side that formed the deep concrete crevice before them.
He pulled the optics screen down from its overhead position, then pushed his face against the soft rubber edge. The periscope-like digital screen wrapped around his eyes as he zoomed down the alley. It looked clear for at least the next three city blocks. Logan had a similar optical device above his seat but instead brought up what Andy saw on a Multi-Function Display screen on the dashboard in front of him.
“I’m telling you, it only looks clear to lure us in. By now they know this rig. We’ve been roaming this area long enough for word to get passed around. Then they spring the trap by dropping crap in front and behind us. Then we’re screwed. Classic maneuver, dude. The Navy calls it ‘Crossing the T,’ where a battle force is caught in a bottleneck and is worn down by a withering attack, unable to defend itself or fight out of it.”
“Well, Logan, the DEVO’s ain’t the Navy. While they might be able to pull that off when it’s dark, they’ll have a harder time now. Besides, they’d never expect us to head this way; it’s a total rookie move to drive down an alley blind.”
“Goddamn exactly! And it’s dark in there already!”
Andy ignored his nervous partner and activated the external mic to pick up the outside sounds. Sure enough, a series of loud shrieks echoed off the building. Andy muted the mic.
“By the time they figure out we’re in the alley, we’ll be halfway or more through, bro.” Andy pushed his eyes back against the optics and angled the external camera upwards.
“There, man. See it?”
Logan shook his head at his leader’s nonchalance before checking the MFD. It took him a moment, but then Logan focused on what Andy
centered on at a moderate magnification. At the end of the block, just before the next cross street, some slight shelves protruded out of the third-story windows on each side of the alley. Switching to thermals, he scanned up the crude ramp and spotted dozens of warm, fifty-five-gallon drums. Someone, or something, inside each building hammered a flint together and lit up a small torch.
“The bastards can’t even remember how to read, but they sure know everything that goes boom.” Logan wagged his head as hard as the rest of his body. Andy just clucked his tongue and massaged the steering wheel.
“Don’t worry. Only makes things easier. As soon as we’re halfway down this first alley, light up both ramps with the Vulcans. Whoever survives the blast probably won’t poke their heads out for a bit.”
Logan flipped his tablet’s fire safety off and on.
“Yeah, but what if there’s more of those barrels and they cook us alive? Why don’t we just use a flare to keep their heads down, or better yet, simply find another way?”
“That’s why timing is everything, bro. No need to waste a flare. Besides, we need to beat the DEVO’s to the punch; they’re going to spring this trap one day no matter what. Let’s save some other poor suckers the headache. I don’t care for all that God business, but I’ve heard that Karma is a sentimental bitch.” Andy tucked the optics back up against the headliner and took a breath. “Ready?”
“I dunno, bro. I think we’re pushing it,” Logan mumbled, but unbuckling from his seat and slid between the captain chairs anyway.
“We should have hired a gunner; we’re kinda light, going this deep in.”
Logan popped the turret latch and hauled himself up into the open, still cursing the whole time. He could have fired the guns safely via the computer, like so many rookies tried. But he learned after his first taste of close quarter’s combat that no computer could match the speed of a live trigger finger under fire.
“Need the space for extra ammo; only so much room, wingman.”
Logan jerked a thumb at the large ammo drums fastened down to the floor in front of the back seats. A middle jump seat folded forward against the back of the center console. Most of the ammo fed the quad Vulcan 20mm cannons built into the armored turret that connected to auto-feeders sitting on top of the JLTV.
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