Land of the Undying

by Dave Willmarth

  Moving as fast as she could with the heavy burden, she returned to Bertha and unloaded the loot onto the back seat. Then she jumped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

  Shari had wanted to loot a few of the surrounding businesses for food. But her instincts told her she’d spent too much time out in the open already. With the power bars she just took from the police van, and the food and water she had in the back, she could survive for several more days if necessary. So she turned Bertha toward the highway.

  “Goodbye, little town. I don’t even know your name. Thanks for the rest.” She gave a little wave as she hit the on-ramp to the interstate.

  She’d given up on the car radio weeks earlier when the stations all stopped broadcasting. Except for one AM station that seemed to have an endless power supply, and fire and brimstone sermons on a repeating loop.

  Since the actual end of the world pretty much proved that preacher wrong, she didn’t turn on the car radio. Instead she reached into the back seat and retrieved the police radio from the bag. The cradle had a dc power adapter, so she plugged it into Bertha’s cigarette lighter to charge. Out of curiosity, she turned on the handset and set it to ‘scan’.

  As expected, she heard nothing. Not sure whether that was because the radio was dead, or because nobody out there was broadcasting, she set the handset back in its cradle and focused on the road ahead.

  Less than an hour later, Shari was stopped along the side of the highway, eyeing one of those mega-truckstops. The kind with a restaurant, showers, and a store full of tourist knick-knacks. She’d learned that some of them had generators that allowed them to keep operating in the event of a power loss. If she could get one of them working, she could get a shower. Maybe even with warm water. And there was probably food in there. But the place was huge. It would take her half the day to clear it and secure some part of it. She was weighing the risks and benefits when the radio beeped and locked in on a channel. There was a clicking sound, as if somebody were keying the mic. Then a static hiss for a moment before it went silent.

  Shari instantly grabbed the radio and pressed the talk button. “Hello?” her voice was a bit scratchy from lack of use, and nervousness.

  There was a series of clicks and static. With short pauses in between. Shari listened hard, trying to detect some pattern, like maybe an S.O.S. or other code. She was about to press talk again when a screech came thru the radio. It was one she knew well. A humanoid zombie. She tossed the radio into the seat as if it were contaminated.

  “What the hell?” she shouted at the thing. “When did friggin zombies learn to use radios?”

  As if in answer, the radio shouted back at her! “I’m gonna kill you! You hear me? You killed Katie and her brother! I’m gonna put a bullet through your skull!”

  Shari stared at the radio, flabbergasted. Eyes wide and mouth open, she continued to stare for a full minute. Finally, when no more sounds had come forth, she blinked a few times and remembered to breathe.

  “There’s somebody else alive out there!” she thumped Bertha’s steering wheel. “But who the hell is Katie, and why does this guy think I killed her?”

  Hearing herself say that out loud, she giggled. “Doofus. He was talking to the zombie on the radio. Not you.” Then she rolled her eyes, looking at herself in the rear-view. “Yeah, ‘cause that makes SO much more sense.”

  After another minute or so of thinking it over, she picked up the radio again. “H-hello?” she ventured. “Are you there?”

  Silence. Whoever he was, he either wasn’t listening anymore, or just wasn’t answering. If they had been in game chat, she’d have said that his outburst was a lead-up to a rage quit. So maybe that’s what happened.

  Either way, her decision had just been made for her. These radios had a limited range. She didn’t know where this dude was, but she knew he was within a few mile radius. If she kept going, she might be getting closer to him. Or she might be getting farther. Out of radio range. So she headed Bertha up the off-ramp toward the truckstop.

  The place had a massive parking lot, meant to accommodate a large number of semi rigs and cars full of travelers. At the moment, there were maybe a dozen trucks parked in the designated lot, half a dozen RV’s, and about twenty cars. Some of the cars sat with doors open, blood stains on the seats and pavement. The entire windshield of one of the RV’s was covered with blood. On the inside.

  Shari circled the building slowly, inspecting every vehicle. and keeping watch for any charging zombies. Then she circled it again in the opposite direction. When she saw no movement, and the sound of her engine hadn’t drawn any attackers, she parked Bertha near the back door of the building. As she suspected, there was a generator. A big one. Capable of running lights, refrigeration, fuel pumps, all of it. She opened the gate of the fence enclosing the generator and checked the fuel level. Dead empty. So, it must have kicked in when the power went out. And probably run until it was out of fuel. Grabbing one of her gas cans, she poured some fuel into the generator’s tank. Crossing her fingers that it hadn’t seized up when the gas ran out, she pushed the primer button a couple of times, then pushed the starter.

  The thing spluttered for about half a minute, then coughed into life! Lights began to turn on around the building and the parking area. She was going to need to remember to turn this thing off before it got dark. Those lights would draw every creature for miles around. After living in silence for so long, the generator itself seemed loud enough to be heard from space.

  Jumping back into Bertha, Shari made another circuit of the building. Still seeing no movement of any kind, she parked next to the glass doors at the front of the store area. Not in one of the spaces near the doors, but up on the curb, right next to the door. She wasn’t taking any more risks than were necessary.

  The fact that the glass doors and windows along the front were unbroken was a good sign. Any zombies trying to get at people inside would have smashed right through. Now, the question became, were there any already inside waiting for a snack?

  Slinging her rifle over her shoulder, she grabbed the shotgun from the police van. Checking quickly to make sure it was loaded, she pulled open one of the doors and walked through.

  The stench of rotting food nearly overwhelmed her. With the power off, everything perishable that had been refrigerated was now rotting. She took a minute, breathing through her mouth to acclimate to the smell. She scanned the store area while she did so, shotgun raised and following her line of sight.

  To the right was a set of shelves with automotive items. Motor oil, air fresheners, and such. She found several bungee cords, and grabbed one of them. She tore open the package and wrapped the cord several times around the door handles of the two glass doors. This effectively locked them together.

  Then she proceeded to clear the place. Aisle by aisle, room by room. She forced herself to open the walk-in coolers in the store, and the freezer in the kitchen, even though the stench factor increased tenfold. She checked behind the counters, cleared the bathrooms, the showers, even the offices. One office, the one that held a giant safe that looked like it was from 1945, looked promising. There was a sofa along one wall, and the metal door was mounted directly into a concrete block wall. There was even a barred window that looked out over the parking lot. She could hide in here if necessary.

  She closed each door behind her as she cleared the rooms. After more than an hour, she was satisfied that she was alone. She went back to the office and set down her pack. Rummaging through the desk, she found a set of keys on a large ring. Taking the keys, she made another round of the building, locking every door. She found a bank of switches behind the counter, and turned off all the pumps and lights. No point in draining the generator faster than necessary.

  With the building as secure as she could make it, she began to shop. First, she grabbed a couple heavy duty flashlights and batteries. She’d use those to make her way around after dark. Then she grabbed a couple of beach towels, some soap, and
a pair of flip-flops. Even without the possibility of life-ending contaminants being on any given surface, no way was she going to use a public shower barefoot. When the thought of contaminated bugs crossed her mind, she dropped the flip-flops and grabbed a pair of rubber boots.

  A few minutes later she stepped into one of the showers wearing nothing but the boots. Soap in hand, she said a little prayer as she reached for the water controls. The water heater had been running for about ninety minutes, and should have had time to at least take the chill off the water.

  To her surprise, the water was more than warm. When she adjusted the control all the way to ‘hot’, steaming water fell from the shower head. Adjusting it back to a more modest temperature, she dove in. She took maybe the longest, most luxurious shower of her life! She scrubbed areas that hadn’t been properly clean in weeks. She stood with her face in the flow of hot water, just soaking it in. She sang a little song, did a little dance, and thought about the voice on the radio.

  After forty minutes, the hot water finally gave out, and she turned off the shower. Toweling herself dry, she slipped on fresh clothes. Including a t-shirt from the store that read “Slippery When Wet”, which she supposed was popular among the truckers.

  She took a couple of large canvas bags from the store and filled them with food. She grabbed everything pre-packed that looked good. Chips, candy bars, granola, trail mix with dried fruits, and a whole bag’s worth of beef jerky. She preferred the teriyaki flavor, but she took everything they had. Then she filled another bag with water bottles and a couple mountain dews. She nearly teared up when she saw a whole row of her favorite monster Irish coffee cans in one of the coolers. She opened one right there and, despite it no longer being cold, gulped it down. She took all the bags and loaded them into Bertha. This was food for a solid month, at least. She also loaded up a 12-pack of ultra-soft toilet paper, toothpaste, mouthwash, some feminine products, several bottles of aspirin, a first aid kit, a couple trashy romance novels, a couple cool looking fantasy/sci-fi novels, and every can of soup, stew, or pasta she could find.

  With Bertha packed nearly to the roof, she once again locked the doors. She quickly moved Bertha over to a pump and filled her tank, as well as the extra cans. Parking Bertha back by the doors, she stepped out back and turned off the generator. Closing and locking that door, she made her way to the office. She took a can of beefaroni, some chips, and a package of ho-ho’s into the office with her, along with her guns, flashlight, and a plastic tarp.

  She spread the tarp out over top of the sofa, making sure to cover every surface. She didn’t think the sofa would be contaminated, but she wasn’t going to risk it.

  Sitting on the sofa, Shari let the silence settle around her. She opened the beefaroni and ate it cold, scooping it out of the can with chips. She rolled her eyes at the chocolate deliciousness of the ho-ho’s as she finished her meal.

  Rummaging through her bag, she pulled out the radio. She turned it on and pressed the talk button. “Hello? Are you there?” she asked. When there was no answer, she tried again. Every few minutes until she began to get sleepy. Though it was only early afternoon, it had been a long day, and she was tired. Switching off the radio, she laid down on the sofa and took a nap.

  *****

  Mace sat staring into the darkness for nearly an hour. He plotted the death of the creature on the radio in a thousand different ways. He pondered whether it was just random chance that the thing had picked up the radio, or that they were getting smarter. Smarter would be very, very bad for him.

  He decided to distract himself by getting back into the Elysia. The game was becoming more and more important to him. And for good reason. He could only live for so long in this hole in the ground. There was a limited supply of safe food nearby, and even if he were the last survivor, there wasn’t enough for his lifetime. At least, not within an area it was feasible to travel.

  Mace had reached this decision shortly after the last of his companions was killed. Facing eternity alone, he immersed himself in the game just to have ‘people’ to speak to. While in the real world, he confronted the likelihood of his long-term survival. And the quality of life he might expect. As he pondered this, an idea struck him. It wasn’t his idea, really. Something he’d read in an old LitRPG novel as a kid.

  He was going to find a way to transfer his consciousness into the game.

  Living as he was, he might last a year. Or ten. If he was extremely lucky. And if the food held out. But if he were a pure consciousness, existing as an AI within the game, he might live for decades, even a century, before the infrastructure of this facility gave out and the servers shut down.

  It was this goal that he worked on in the lab. Modifying the code for the pod interface. Modifying the pod itself. Preparing to upload his entire consciousness into the pod’s system. Essentially becoming an AI in his own right.

  It wasn’t as hard as one might think. Early in the development of VR immersion, a few test subjects had been, for lack of a better term, mind wiped. Mace had studied these cases in college. Most doctors believed that some kind of feedback from the system had delivered a sort of low level charge into the victim’s brains, and wiped their memories. Their conscious minds. Mace had disagreed.

  What if, instead of the consciousness having been wiped clean, it had simply left?

  And so, he’d gone to work. Day after day he tweaked the code. He thought he’d figured out that a certain level of synchronization with the system was needed before the copy could be made. Somewhere approaching 98%. A sync level that high couldn’t be programmed into the software. A player needed to play. To embrace the game. Embrace the characters. Pursue goals. Struggle. Receive rewards. He would need to accept the game as real. As his new life.

  Which is why Mace found himself in Immernacht again. To play the game. To forget about a world he wished to leave behind. To find a way to live.

  Mace stepped out of his room and down the stairs. He ordered breakfast from the usual emotionless drone of a waitress. He decided then and there he was going to find a way to make her smile. As she set his plate down in front of him, he gently touched her arm. “Thank you, beautiful. You are the light of my mornings. It would fill my heart to see you smile, just once.”

  She snorted. “Touch me again and I’ll feed you your ears.” she growled, the expression on her face barely changing.

  Undaunted, he countered. “Was that the hint of a smile I saw just now? I do believe you like me!” he favored her with his best smile.

  “Fool” she simply said as she turned and walked away.

  After breakfast he headed to the markets. He needed to have his armor repaired. But first he would sell the items he’d looted in the tunnel. Stopping at an alchemy shop, he sold the rock spider meat and most of the spider and squod components, save for the claws and mandibles. He also unloaded all the random drops from the other creatures he’d killed in the tunnels before encountering the spider. Nearly one hundred gold richer, he made his way to the leatherworker who’d created his armor.

  Entering the shop, he found Jervis, the old drow master, throttling a kobold. He was shaking the creature as he squeezed its neck, making the head wobble side to side as the small lizardman suffocated. Mace knew better than to interrupt.

  “Worthless bag of bones! I told you to clean the workshop this morning! What do I find you doing? Dusting shelves! I’ll-” Jervis spotted Mace standing there. “Well hello there, young Mace.” Jervis released his prisoner, who fell gasping to the floor. It immediately rose to its feet and disappeared in a puff of dust.

  “Damn! Now I’ll have to catch him again. Speedy little runt.” Jervis’ gaze followed the settling dust trail. Then he turned back to Mace. “I see you’ve found a bit of trouble. Need some repairs, do you?”

  Mace grinned at the old drow. He liked Jervis. In a city full of cutthroats and murderers, Jervis had actually been kind to him. The old drow was legendary. He’d been an assassin and a spy for a long dead quee
n. The only one of her household to survive. It was said Jervis had personally killed more drow than any invading army had ever managed. Leatherworking had been his cover back then, and he’d enjoyed it. So when he retired from service, he continued to run his shop.

  Once in a while, some upstart would get it in their head to take out the legendary drow assassin. Their bodies were inevitably found in a very public place, in humiliating condition. Houses generally forbid their protégés to go after Jervis, in order to avoid the embarrassment when they failed.

  Jervis handed Mace a folded set of clothes. “Put these on, and leave your armor with me. I’ll have it ready for you tomorrow.”

  Mace bobbed his head, removing the torn armor and donning the replacement clothes. “Master Jervis, I’ve been thinking about an upgrade. I plan to travel to the surface soon.”

  “Ah, the surface. You young ones, always eager to see the surface. Nothing good for a drow there, you know. Nothing but pain and hatred. Still, I suppose you must see for yourself.” Jervis looked thoughtfully at the ragged kobold skin armor. “Yes, I can upgrade this. Give you what you need. It’ll cost you… 65 gold.”

  Mace grinned at the old drow. Reaching into his bag, he produced the spider claws, mandible, and the squod mandible. “I acquired these yesterday. It’s how my armor was damaged. I don’t suppose an old seamstress like you would be interested in them?”