Coders

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  Gabby stepped into the doorway, looking for the other demon dogs. The stench of sulfur nearly overwhelmed her, so she held her arm over her mouth and tried to breath through her sleeve.

  The three dogs stopped in the middle of the street, baring their teeth. Long canines dripped with saliva. The eyes tried to mesmerize her. Gabby felt the world closing in.

  Gabby heard a rough growl, deeper and more ragged than the others before. She spun around when she realized the growl came from inside the church. A dog had gotten in!

  Milton pushed her out of the way and launched a hunk of broken concrete into the street. Suddenly, the world tilted sideways as Gabby was thrown to the ground. Gabby gagged from the sulfur smell. A demon dog had crept along the side of the church and made its attack. A heavy paw was now crushing her leg.

  Lying on her side, Gabby could see they'd pushed the lid off the altar. The growling from inside the church had been the stone on stone grinding.

  Avony and Michael were pulling items from the space beneath the altar, but Gabby didn't have time to find out what they were as a second dog launched itself at her. Gabby found a chunk of rock and smashed it into the dog's jaw.

  Breaking a tooth off did nothing for its mood, nor the gut churning smell of its breath. With no time to retch, Gabby slammed the rock into the demon dog's muzzle before it could try again.

  To her left, Milton was swinging his piece of iron rod into the dog that had pinned Mouse to the ground. It didn't have time to bite with Milton on the offensive and Mouse jabbing its throat from below.

  Between the gap of the two dogs, Gabby spied three sets of eyes moving in to finish them off. Despite the feeling that she was certainly going to die, Gabby's mind kept going back to Milton in his street walker form to wonder how he could swing like that with such a large chest. The surrealness was only matched by the other lingering thought that none of it was real.

  Then blood and bone exploded over her. Her ears rang with gunfire. The dog on top of Mouse fell away with half its face missing.

  Michael and a limping Avony moved in tandem, firing at the dogs and driving them back. Gabby climbed to a crouch, staying low to avoid being shot. Avony threw her a long, dark curved item. As soon as it hit her fingers she knew what it was.

  Moving around the doorway, Gabby slipped the saber out of the sheath as the demon dog came in low with teeth bared. The singing steel chopped off its nose, sending it back with the others.

  Under the suppressive fire, the dogs scurried away from the church, leaving the Frags to check their wounded. Gabby moved to hug Michael for finding the Reliquary when she found Mouse in his arms. The look of concern on his face drained her will until she was a husk waiting to be blown to dust. Gabby turned away when he looked up and headed back into the church.

  "What else did we find?" she asked over her shoulder, putting her hand to her mouth to get it to close.

  "Didn't have time to pick through it," said Avony, limping back to the altar with her. "We grabbed the first weapons we could see."

  Avony was studying her, so Gabby jogged ahead.

  "We need to get armed up in case more return, or something else tougher than them."

  Gabby buried her head into the weapons cache, using the altar to keep the others from seeing her face. She barely looked at the weapons as she replayed the look of content on Michael's face as he hugged Mouse. Guilt flooded through her, replacing the shock. It's the price of leadership, Gabby told herself. And he's dying anyway. I should be happy for him.

  By the time the others approached the altar, Gabby had composed herself. She held up a semi-automatic and gave them her most confident smile, despite feeling like raw meat inside.

  "Great find, Michael. I think we're ambush proof now."

  After fixing the wounded with the first aid kit they found and sorting through the weapons, they returned to the street looking like an entirely different team. The sun drifted to the horizon and threw their shadow across the entrance to the church. Gabby glanced back to catch their prickly outline, bristling with weapons. Let the others come now, she thought, the Crimson Queen made a mistake letting us be armed.

  Gabby weighed the Desert Eagle in her hand before slipping it into a holster. The semi-automatic rested on a strap around her shoulder. She checked the safety before putting her finger on the trigger and then adjusted the saber strapped to her back. Lastly, she patted the waist pouch filled with triggerable explosives.

  "Maximum safety," Gabby told the others, "we don't want any friendly frags."

  Avony locked in her sniper rifle and squeezed off a round, blowing a hole through a wall, before slipping it over her shoulder.

  "They feel so fragging real," she said. "And unlike LifeGame we don't have to solve a problem to fire the weapon."

  The others nodded. Gabby also suspected the weapons they used were real. The ammo and actual use of them were probably fictions of the technology, but they would have to be careful either way.

  "What now?" asked Milton.

  "Map?" Gabby asked hesitantly.

  Michael unrolled it in the air between the five of them and Gabby was reminded of another reason she loved eye-screen technology. No need to hold down the rolled up corners. The map waited patiently for them, doing its slow motion rearranging dance.

  The Reliquary of Harmony had settled next to a cluster of zones. Their 'X' sat in the middle of the Reliquary and spun in a deliberate clockwise rotation.

  "Since we don't know where the exit is, we could end up with any number of new locations." Michael poked his finger through the map and shrugged.

  "Guess we need to find the exit first," said Milton. "How shall we proceed, O' leader-y-one?"

  Gabby rolled her eyes while sharing Milton's smile. Since he'd kept the girl skin, he'd stopped jockeying for leadership of the group.

  "Did any of you ever play the Roller Rocket game?" she asked.

  Mouse timidly raised her hand. "Was that the one with the ball traps and explosions and Algorithms problems?"

  "That's the one."

  Avony frowned. "We tried speed runs on that one for points, but it was always too much trouble to get through the beginning so you could work on the high point problems at the end."

  The others murmured agreement. Everyone had tried the game, but found it a hard slog for points.

  Gabby grinned.

  "Gabs," said Avony, "do not tell me you grinded that game for points?"

  "Yep. But you didn't have to do the early problems. They were worth so little for so much effort, we just ran through them, triggering the explosions and ball traps until we got to the end and then feasted on big fat scores."

  "I don't understand how that's going to help us here," said Milton, looking ready to walk down a fashion runway, minus the bandolier of grenades and two holsters on his hips.

  "We need to find the exit and fast. We're already way behind the others. I don't think we want to creep through this zone letting everything get in our way. Plus the sun's going down and I don't think we want to play in the dark."

  Milton shook his mane of platinum blonde hair. "But we can't afford to take shots from the denizens of this level."

  "We'll use a moving porcupine defense. Moving at medium speed, in circle formation, guns pointed out. If we run into resistance, we'll unload on them, but move on. Firing only to keep them at bay. No reason to engage unless we need to," she explained using hand gestures.

  Once she got them set, they moved out in formation. Her strategy didn't get far before being tested. They ran into a trio of gun wielding demons. They blew the first two to pieces before the third ran off.

  The group kept moving from street to street looking for signs of the exit. They encountered a few more groups: demon dogs, creepy spider creatures with blades for legs, and a little girl with white eyes and a mouth that could unhinge to swallow a FunCar. They ran them off with overwhelming fire.

  Gabby nervously glanced at the setting sun. They didn't have long an
d judging by the standard tropes, their time in the zone would get worse after dark. She'd hate to turn a corner and get swallowed up by the girl-creature with the python jaw.

  As the bottom of the blood red sun touched the horizon, shining through the rusted girders and blown out walls, they heard a gun battle a couple of blocks away.

  "Sounds like another team," said Avony.

  They kept formation and moved in the direction of the noise. Halfway across the first block, the gun fire trickled to a stop. Gabby made gestures that the others would recognize from LifeGame, and they ducked into a crouched running form.

  Gabby glanced back to see Michael struggling to keep up. She kicked a rock that bounced off a steel girder making a loud thunk. Avony gave her a look, so Gabby shrugged.

  As they neared the site of the gun battle, Gabby slowed them to a crawl, moving deliberately from cover to cover. Once she reached the edge, she motioned for the others to stay back and she peeked through a burned out vehicle.

  The next block had been wiped clean of debris. Even the building was gone. Only a crater remained. Halfway across the hole lay two bodies. One sprawled across the scorched ground and the other was missing its head and an arm. Gabby spied another body not far from her location clutching an unfired one-shot bazooka. The body had a badge with a black knife.

  The Black Knife team had been TPK'd. Total Party Kill. Only Gabby couldn't determine what had caused it. The crater was clearly old. Anything that would have destroyed a building wouldn't have left bodies. Gabby was about to move into the clearing to see if she could determine what had killed them when she noticed a pair of sickly green eyes peering out the shadows on the far side.

  Gabby reflexively ducked and her heartrate sped to full. Once she had her breathing under control, she checked back to see the eyes hadn't moved. Deep in the recess between two buildings loomed a massive beast with four arms, each one ending in a different weapon.

  The creature reminded Gabby of Jaxon if he'd died, been enlarged four times his size, and run through with rot. The sickly green eyed beast had intestines leaking from its stomach.

  Gabby crawled back to the group and explained what she saw.

  "I bet it's guarding the exit," whispered Mouse.

  Everyone nodded. "A boss for sure," agreed Avony.

  "Well at least the Black Knives thought so," said Gabby with some hesitation.

  "Can't take a boss down with just knives," giggled Milton.

  "They had weapons. One of them got fragged right on the other side of this vehicle with a rocket launcher in his hand," explained Gabby.

  "Right," said Milton, "so we need to move fast and duck a lot. That guy probably just stood there and tried to fire."

  Gabby picked at the sight on her semi-automatic. "I'm not sure..."

  Michael was studying her intently. His cavernous eye sockets made her feel guilty. She looked away.

  Avony began drawing a diagram in the dirt. "If it's a boss, we should just take turns firing and ducking behind barriers until we take it down. These locations would be good to fire from. Then once it's dead, we can decide when to go through the exit, picking the best named zone."

  Gabby shook her head. "It just doesn't feel right. That sounds risky."

  Avony tilted her head in an exaggerated sassy motion. "You had us bust a gut running here in your aggressive porcupine formation and now you're getting squeamish about going to town on this boss?"

  "I thought it was the right strategy because it was unexpected. Never do what your enemy expects, right?"

  Avony nodded. "Sure, but let's just use that logic with this boss? Duck and fire, duck and fire. The Black Knives just tried to go toe to toe with it and lost."

  Something about their logic bothered Gabby, but she couldn't say what. The others started moving to locations behind the buildings.

  "You'd better get moving, Gabs."

  Gabby shook her head. "Something's wrong."

  Avony sighed. "Well, while you're busy trying to accept an idea that someone else thought of, could you cover me while I grab that rocker launcher. We've got a game boss that needs killing."

  The former leader of the Evil Dolls began elbow crawling around the burned out vehicle, while Gabby stood in a stupor, mouthing Avony's words:

  "...got a game boss..."

  Then the answer smacked her right in the face.

  "Game boss. Oh no." Gabby dove forward and grabbed Avony by the ankles before she could crawl out into the open. "Don't go, Avony, it's a trap."

  Avony glanced over her shoulder, furious at the interruption. She elbow crawled backwards until she could sit up.

  "What are you doing? We have a plan."

  "It's not a game, Avs."

  "What do you mean it's not a game? Of course, it's a game."

  "The wall wasn't a game. It was just art. We'd still be stuck there if we were trying to figure out the answer to the puzzle. The Queen is preying on our expectations. We perceive everything is a game, so it looks that way."

  Avony wiped the dust from her knees and elbows. "I don't know. If it's not the boss, then where's the exit?"

  "Probably not far from here. It's where I'd put it anyway. I think the Queen is messing with us. Toying with us as LifeGamers."

  Avony blew a breath out. "Okay, I'll go for it." She paused. "For now. But if we don't find the exit soon, then we come back to the boss."

  "Deal."

  They gathered the others and explained the situation. The group just wanted to get out of the zone, though Gabby sensed they were itching for a fight.

  Using the map as guidance, they headed towards the boundary of the zone. Halfway up the next street, they saw a group of demon creatures enter the clearing behind them. Green lights flashed out from the direction of the boss, enveloping two of the demons and launching them into the crater. Lasers followed, cutting down the others.

  "We would have been so fragged," whispered Mouse.

  They each nodded their agreement.

  "Well at least we're down one group to compete with." The hushed silence that followed wasn't as reassuring as it should have been. If they lost, it wouldn't be back to reality as a soldier in the Crimson Queen's army. For the Frags, winning was the only way out.

  They found the zone exit not long after. It wasn't far from the boss as Gabby thought. The whole game - but not a game - theme was beginning to bother her. The Queen had tilted things in her favor, which wasn't such a big deal, but why go through the game in the first place if you weren't going to play fair? The Queen could have shocked her until she started making up information about Cassius. Everything was reminding her of the Pain Sticks game. What was the Queen's real purpose?

  Gabby let the others decide the next zone to enter. The names meant nothing to her anyway. After a brief debate, they went through a tunnel that led from the zone. And for at least the first thirty seconds, the Boulevard of Broken Wheels seemed like an innocuous name.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The tunnel narrowed once they crossed the zone line. They walked toward a window leading out to a brownish expanse that seemed to be vibrating. Gabby realized that it wasn't just the view that was shaking. Even the tunnel shook minutely and the closer they got the more intense it became.

  Had they entered an earthquake laden zone? Boulevard of Broken Wheels didn't sound like a metaphor for ground shakes. They crept closer, glancing furtively at each other with each step.

  The brown expanse in the window seemed to be slowly receding, revealing a deep blue. The shaking grew more intense.

  "What the Mario is going on?" asked Milton, surprisingly not staring at his own quivering chest.

  "Are we moving?" asked Avony.

  In front of the window was a pair of captain's chairs. Gabby glanced behind her to see the tunnel had closed. The blue was rapid approaching, accelerating.

  Suddenly, Mouse squeaked and lunged for the window. Mouse turned her shoulders and the whole tunnel leaned to the right. Avony elbowed h
er in the ribs as she steadied herself against the wall.

  "What the—?" exclaimed Gabby.

  The blue-brown line tilted as the tunnel rotated until only blue could be seen out the window. Mouse struggled with a wheel beneath the glass. Then the blue turned to brown.

  "What is going on with this window?" asked Avony.

  Michael was climbing into the chair next to Mouse. "It's not a window. We're in a vehicle of some kind and Mouse just saved us from going over a cliff."

  In Gabby's mind, the "brown" became desert and the "blue" became sky. She was seized with a moment of vertigo as her eyes adjusted to the new reality.

  Dust trails sped toward them from the desert side on the left. Other vehicles were racing toward them. Gabby checked behind them again to find the back of a vehicle. The illusion completed itself—they were traveling in an armored vehicle.

  Milton found a ladder in the ceiling and climbed into a turret. Gabby looked up his dress out of curiosity. He was keeping the skin consistent from top to bottom.

  "We've got five bogies incoming," yelled Milton.

  Mouse kept the vehicle running along side of the cliff edge. The whole place shook as the hard packed desert floor was run through with cracks. Spare leafless bushes poked up through the dirt, making skeletal fingers.

  "Steer away from the edge," said Gabby, "it's making me nervous."

  Mouse shook her head. "It'll keep whoever is in those other vehicles from making a straight run at us. They'll have to curve or go off the edge, slowing them down."

  The diminutive girl had a point. Gabby patted her on the shoulder and started looking for a firing port. A flap on the side revealed a murder hole. Gabby stuck her semi-automatic through and took aim. Avony took up position next to her, putting her long sniper barrel through the hole.

  As the vehicles approached, Gabby could make out half-naked bandits hanging over the hoods, wielding strange implements that appeared from a distance to be large pencils, but she assumed they were weapons of some kind. They wore outrageous styles only seen in gaudy homemade immersives. Gabby was waiting for the bandits to get into her range when an explosion deafened her left ear.