The places he was rattling off were far, far too familiar to me for me not to feel like I’d just been kicked a couple of times in the gut. Every place he’d mentioned, I’d been…
Jared threw up his hands. “But we can’t change it now. We've already given our suspicions to Deep Dive, and they assure us that they’re on it. It does mean that we have a better chance in the upcoming raid, since so many of our competitors are noticeably absent.”
He tried to win us over with a big smile that bordered on manic. “But that's about it for now. Gear up and come back here in half an hour or so, and we’ll talk strategy. Until then, start handing out those weapons. Go through the crowd and see if there's anybody else you can invite. Let's swell our numbers and make this a raid to remember."
Everybody started to break away. A few people got closer to Jared and started asking more in depth questions to him on a one on one basis, but when I leaned in and didn't hear anything worth eavesdropping on, I drifted off instead of making a nuisance of myself.
It was time for me to go. With all these people looking around eagerly for more Survivors to invite to the Guild, it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to invite me again. I didn't think that I'd be able to bluff them as well, this time.
Better for me to make myself scarce. Every second I was here was yet another chance for things to go badly. I knew I was supposed to bring some hint of their plans back with me, but everything I’d seen pointed to their plan involving nothing more than an overwhelming display of force. Besides, Sasha would need help preparing some surprises at the hospital, and I felt like I might be more useful there than here.
I turned back toward the barrier as casually as I could, but a little voice whispered in my ear, and I slowed my pace. I wandered over to where the weapons were being handed out of the back of the trucks. If I grabbed a gun, I could put a lot of holes in a lot of people.
But so what? Even if I was right and the friendly fire rules didn’t work against me, anyone I killed would just respawn a few minutes later. And when they did, Deep Dive would warp them back here, so they didn’t miss out on the raid,
It would be pointless. I looked at my watch. It was pushing 9:15. Just slightly less than two hours to go before they beat down the doors and strung Sasha and I up by our necks.
But as I walked past the lines of trucks and saw that the lead one not only had its door open, but the keys were already in the ignition… Well, that was simply a situation I was powerless to resist. I saw my chance, and I took it, hopping behind the wheel and starting it up before I could give myself a chance to talk myself out of it.
I'd been expecting someone to shout at me. Maybe even take a shot at the truck, though the fact that it was still in one piece right now with those idiots still running around occasionally shooting things for no reason meant that it was also safe from friendly fire. But nobody stopped me. Could they all be so damn happy to be involved in this raid that they didn't realize I was stealing this thing?
That appeared to be the case. I stomped on the gas and saw, to my sheer and absolute joy, that a dozen or so Survivors were in my way. Yes, they’d respawn. Yes, it was pointless.
But holy shit it felt good to shift up the gears and mow them down.
All I had to do was hold my foot down on the gas. A couple of shots rang out as a long string of tracer fire shot past the windscreen. I heard the pings but didn't see any damage.
As I raced down the street, I knew that the next thing was going to be the barrier. It was only two blocks away. If it didn't like the fact that I was driving a Survivor’s truck or it wasn’t planning on letting me back in, this was going to be one extremely short, extremely messy, and most of all extremely unsuccessful escape.
Thankfully, a dark line ran up the blue as the wall unzipped, swallowed me, and then shimmered back into life in my rearview mirror. I was back in my safe zone, with a truck full of weapons that we could hopefully use against the guys gunning for us and a head full of theories about Headshot’s issues and my place in the game.
Had I caused all the problems people were having logging in? I had no idea at all, but hopefully, Sasha would.
Chapter 33
She would certainly have heard me coming. The blue barrier that protected us also appeared to muffle noises, which meant that in this quiet cube of protection that her dad had created for us the only real sound was the roar of the truck engine as I red-lined the stolen vehicle in the direction of the Good Samaritan Hospital.
I shot down the road. Right before I had to decide where to park the truck, I saw Sasha step through the doors to the emergency exit with that big revolver in her hand. She wasn’t smiling, though. I’d been hoping to get a hero’s welcome, but instead, I was staring down the barrel of the damn thing.
I flashed my lights at her to try and show her that I was friendly, and then stuck both of my hands out the window for good measure. "It’s me," I called, though there was really no way that she could have possibly heard me over the engine.
At least she didn't shoot me, though. That was a bonus. I rewarded the courtesy by pulling the truck up alongside where she was. That way she could see that I was the one behind the wheel. Once she lowered the gun and finally gave me a grin, I gave myself a second to be glad that she’d met me here, since the emergency entrance’s double doors were the easiest place to drag all the truck’s mystery boxes in.
As I hopped out, Sasha gave me a high five. "Looks like you’ve been a busy boy. Good job."
"I figured they wouldn’t miss it.”
“Did they?”
“I hope so…”
She took a step back and glanced toward the back. “What’d you grab?”
I shrugged. “Good question. Let's take a look. If it’s just crates of inflatable bouncy castles and confetti for the Survivor’s after-Raid party, we’ll never mention this again, though. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We walked to the back of the truck together. I’d already seen that the truck was stacked to the brim, but when I reached out and lifted one of their lids, I discovered that I’d accidentally returned with the motherload. This one was full of assault rifles, and the next stuffed full of plastic explosive. Everywhere I looked I saw crates of ammunition, weapons, and random dealers of death. Far more crap than we could hope to use, especially since we were sure to be cut down in the first thirty seconds of the upcoming firefight.
But, at least we’d have guns in our hands, and hopefully, she had time to rig the place to blow in the inevitable event of our death.
That was a point, actually. "I hope you know how to use some of this stuff because I certainly don't," I admitted, shaking my head in awe.
She didn’t seem stressed about it. "Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Ryan. I'm already on it. I had a feeling you’d be back with some sort of surprise, so I leveled up a bit while you were gone.”
“Good idea.”
“So, let’s hurry up and get this stuff in. After that, I need you to do some stuff down in the security room for me, okay? I've got a huge list of modifications I want to make to the building, but none of that will matter if you can't cook up some biofuel for us."
Security room? Biofuel? I didn't even ask. She'd explain it to me when I needed the info, and right now we both had our hands literally full as we lugged the first of the crates into the hospital.
Sasha had found some wood and propped open the sliding doors. Just before we went through them though, she rotated herself around so that she was the one in front and then stopped. "Try and make sure to step in the same places I do.”
“Okay…”
She angled her chin at the ground inside. “See how there’s some paint splashed on the ground?”
“Yep.”
“Those are the safe spots. I think the mad rush to murder us will make the assholes overlook them, but if you need to run around up here and you don’t watch what you’re doing, things are going to get messy fast."
It should have been as black as pitch in here, but she’d ransacked the hospital in my absence. The result was an odd collection of personal and official hospital flashlights scattered everywhere. Some of the bigger, emergency ones even threw enough light to illuminate huge splashes of the ground.
The floor was shining oddly, and the sharp bite of gasoline fumes assaulted my nostrils. I took a closer look, realizing that what I’d assumed was well-polished floors was an inferno waiting to happen.
She’d stacked up furniture and filing cabinets, creating a narrow path rife with kill zones and choke points just begging for her to wire up the C4 I’d stolen a few minutes ago. Sasha led me through the darkness and along the way I could make out a series of tripwires.
"It seems to me that you've been pretty busy, too," I told her. She’d gotten an incredible amount of work done, and this was just the main entrance to emergency. What else had she been up to while I’d been gone?
Sasha just laughed. "I had more than a little fun plotting their demise. I’ve got all sorts of surprises ready for them, and those guns you grabbed are going to be put to good use in a couple of minutes… But before I spill the beans, let me show you what I’ve found."
We worked our way through the room and over to what I’d assumed was a blank wall on the other side. Behind the reception desk was a wall, and behind that Sasha led me to a nondescript metal door. “This leads to the lower levels. It’s primarily an employee area down there, but since the entrance to it is in a public area they’ve camouflaged it a bit. With any luck, the chaos up here might mean that the Survivors could have trouble finding the stairs, at least for a while.”
“Nice,” I said. It wasn’t exactly genius, but it was close enough for me.
She nodded. “I thought so. They could be chasing their tails clearing the empty upper floors of the hospital and not even realize that we’re hidden below.”
Sasha and I left the crate we were carrying in the corner, and then went back for more. After more than a dozen trips, I was chomping at the bit to see what lay behind that metal door she’d just shown me.
“Okay,” she said at last, swiping strands of red hair out of her eyes. “Let’s get down there, huh?”
Through the door, down three flights of cement stairs lined with narrow cinderblock walls and more random flashlights.
I cleared my throat. Better to drag this out into the open now. “So, I heard some crazy stuff when I was over there, playing Secret Survivor.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m pretty sure that I’ve got something to do with the login issues. The Survivor’s don’t have all of the pieces yet, but I’ve put enough of it together. Everybody I killed can’t log in. On top of that, anyone killed by any of my minions can’t, either.”
Sasha paused on the stairs. “But… You killed me, and I got to log in, eventually.”
I snapped my fingers. “Right, sorry. It only works on people after I picked up the brick. I mean, technically I didn’t kill you anyway. A Tank smashed you into next week with a light pole. But you could log in, and I bet if I were back closer to home I’d find Lori had logged in, too.”
“Who’s Lori?”
“Nobody. Let’s focus on the revelation and not the ex-girlfriend, okay? Headshot’s short on Survivors and the people that can’t get back in are my victims. Your Guild buddies? I killed three of them on the way to the Vault. Those three can’t log in, right? But the three that tried to blast me all over Silicon Valley are just fine and dandy…”
Sasha chewed on her lip, clearly pondering the implications. “Why?” she asked, eventually.
“Fuck if I know,” I breathed. “I was hoping that you could tell me.”
“Sorry. I’m short on answers and long on focusing on the ticking clock hanging above our heads.”
“Lead on, then,” I told her. One more flight of stairs later she stepped through a metal door and led me through a hallway with a few rooms branching off of it. The first one on the left was a cramped office with a single desk squatting in front of thirty small, lifeless screens assembled in a tight rectangle.
“It’s a security room,” she explained. “A backup one. The real deal is all the way on the other side of the hospital. It’s a lot nicer, but this one must be here in case there’s a terrorist attack or shit goes down over there and they need to monitor things remotely.”
I did my best to get excited about Sasha’s discovery, but I guess I didn’t do a good enough job.
“Come on,” she told me. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not a complete idiot. I know this room is useless without power, and we don’t have any of that. Not yet…”
“The biofuel?”
“The biofuel.” She turned and left the room, and I followed. The hallway we were in led to another space and the doors were much, much larger than any of the ones I’d seen in the hospital up until now. Sasha yanked one open and stepped through, and I was right behind her.
Two hulking generators squatted against the far wall. The room itself was massive. If you could get cars down here, you could have parked four or five of them right next to each other. The walls were thick, the ceiling and floor reinforced, and I had an inkling that the room was probably pretty close to fireproof. If these backups needed to be in operation, there was no way the patients and staff above would hear it.
There were a whole bunch of buckets spread out in the far corner. They surrounded a canister of natural gas that had been crudely piped into what appeared to be the ripped off the top of a stove. A metal barrel balanced precariously on the heating element.
Hmm…
“You’re going to be cooking grease for a while. I ransacked the cafeteria and drained the fryers, just in case you were wondering the sort of glamorous tasks I got up to while you were away.”
I gave the makeshift setup a sidelong glance. "Is it as simple as heating it up?”
“Pretty much. Once it separates, you siphon off the top layer and keep right on going. Do a good job, and the generators will love you for it.”
Will you love me for it, too? It would have been an easy quip, a harmless little comment, but the words died in my mouth. "You got it," I said, instead. “Just remember, if this damn thing blows me sky high, it won’t be my fault.”
She just rolled her eyes at me. “Whatever. And before you ask, Headshot doesn’t require any talent points to cook up biofuel. That’s why I figured it’d be perfect for you.”
“Thanks…”
“Don’t mention it. While you’re doing that, I'm going to go outside and see if I can make these cameras into something a little more fun. Get started, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
"Your wish is my command," I answered, trying to show her that I was going to be good-natured about the whole thing. If she could use her engineering abilities to help us hold the hospital, then that's exactly how she should be spending her time.
And that was still what I was telling myself more than an hour later as I stirred the biofuel and hoped against hope that this would actually work. Nothing she was doing outside of the cameras or anywhere else would really matter if I couldn't get enough fuel to power the generators.
Thankfully, we probably wouldn't need me to make that much. The generators only need to run for an hour, and that was being hugely, unrealistically optimistic. They could probably last until we were full of lead and shrapnel on a couple of spoonfuls.
But I got the burner going with the lighter she’d scrounged up in the library and poured a few buckets of grease into the barrel. After that, I was on autopilot, mixing and cooling and filtering out the junk that floated to the top before draining off of the fuel. By the time I had four buckets of it at a consistency that I thought was acceptable, Sasha was back to check on me.
"That looks pretty good," she said as she looked over my shoulder. I froze, the nearness of her making me all too aware of the fact that I was, basically, obsessing over a girl while in her dad’s head. Best case
scenario, that was going to make things awkward, one day.
Even though I didn’t want the moment to end, I realized I had no idea what time it was. Before I could stop myself, I’d already checked my watch. The moment was over. Sasha stood up.
It was 10:35. Some things fly when you’re having fun and all of that…
Sasha knelt down and placed her hand on the side of one of the buckets of biofuel. "We'll let this stuff cool for another few minutes before pouring it into the generators. If they fire up, we’re doing better than I dared to hope."
"And if they don’t?"
Sasha shrugged. "Then we’re pretty much shit out of luck, I guess. No pressure…"
Chapter 34
She sloshed some fuel into one of the generators, and I splashed the rest into the other. After that, it was as simple and anticlimactic as mashing a big red button.
They kicked on immediately, and the overhead lights flared into life. After sulking through the gloom for so long, I had to shield my eyes until they got used to how bright everything was.
“Before you worry about it,” Sasha told me, blinking fast as her eyes adjusted, “I’ve already been to the fuse box. The lights down her work, but the ones in the stairwell are shut off. They won’t find us that way. I left a few lights on in the top floors to give them even more reason to head in the wrong direction."
I nodded. It was hard for me to be getting too enthusiastic about this. I knew that they'd get us, it was just a matter of how and when.
Sasha knew me too well already. She read my expression and said, “You can go, if you want."
I made a not-this-again face. "I said I'll stay, and I'm staying. I won’t pretend that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but I’m not going anywhere. And it’s not just because you’ve got way more of a chance with the two of us working together than you do on your own.” I sighed and then pointed at the gun in the holster on her hip. “You know, if you want to fuck with them, just take that thing and shoot yourself now. Don't respawn. Log out. Just vanish, for a while. Stay off the radar and hit them in a few weeks, maybe a couple of months."
Headshot: Two in the Head (Book 2 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 24