The Diver on my right screamed like a banshee, and I took a bite out of his ankle to make sure that he’d be mine soon. The one on my left was panicked now, and I lashed out with my feet to tangle him up as he tried to get away. He didn't do a good job of it, and I’d watched how Desmond had gotten his helmet off. It wasn't hard, just a simple thumb lever to attach it to the neckpiece. I tore off this guy's helmet now and scalped him with my teeth, choking down the hair before grabbing the nape of his neck and slamming his face into the hard ground. I felt his skull split, but he’d be a Zombie soon anyway.
Desmond was lazy and sloppy and all of those things, but he wasn't stupid. He had his gun in his hand, and he was already firing it. I caught a round in the chest, another in the neck, one in the sternum, the clavicle, the balls. He tore me up with those high caliber rounds, and it felt like I was getting a fence post rammed through me with every shot. I took ten of them, and he didn't miss once. I slunk to the ground and felt like more of me was splattered on the walls than inside, but it didn't matter. Sasha couldn't kill herself, and I couldn't do it with my teeth, or she wouldn’t be able to log into the game again.
I needed to get to her gun.
It took everything I had in me, but I'd ingested enough flesh a couple of seconds ago to still be mobile and hostile. I triggered my lunge ability not at Desmond, but at Sasha. I landed on her in one swift, sure motion and grabbed the revolver, yanked it free, and slammed a round through her heart.
Friendly fire and Deep Dive’s developer bullshit couldn’t stop me from killing her. She’d respawn now with the Eternals. Far from here, and if they meant her well they'd hide her until midnight. If they didn't then, she'd be no worse off than she would've been.
Desmond was looking down at his gun as if it had malfunctioned, and as I rolled onto my back and stared up at him, it was clear that he didn't understand why I was still alive.
"How can you still be…"
I smiled up at him. "It's the name of the game you fucking moron. You need a Headshot to kill me."
He chuckled and made a quick gesture in the air. "Very clever. We’ll track her down, but your part in this is just about over." He put his hand to his side and seemed pleased with himself. "You can't die now, Ryan. You can't bleed out. I am about to turn your pain to fifty. I hope that's okay. We can turn it up higher if you don't give us the things we want."
He might not have been able to kill me, but as he raised his boot up and smashed it down on my face, pain like the explosion of a sun went off behind my right eye. It was inconceivably torturous, an agony that felt like it had filled every pore of my body at once and I was drinking it in besides. I screamed, so loud that I thought my eardrums would burst, forcing the pain out with so much power that my lungs could've crawled up my throat and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
But there was no blacking out to save me. There was no mercy from Desmond, and even though he told me that things were going to plan and he wasn't worried that Sasha had escaped the fury, what I saw in his eyes as he beat me to a pulp told me differently.
She got free. And I, well I guess I wouldn't…
"Just a second," Desmond said, and I felt his attention split. "They tell me they’re at your house. I'm going to have to turn you off for a couple of minutes, while we transfer you from your rig to the portable one. That's okay, isn't it? "
He smiled down at me again, and I tried to die and failed.
You have been awarded a quest. Would you like to save Blake and Sasha Redhook?
"Yes," I whispered, just before he turned me off like a light.
The end
A Note from the Author – Here we are again, dear readers. The end of a book. There are a few things I want to let you know, though. Firstly, Book 3 won’t take as long to get to you as Book2 did. So, that’s a good thing.
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~Matthew Siege
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Headshot: Two in the Head (Book 2 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 30