by Tracy Deebs
I decide to IM one of the men sharpening weapons. He’s an older guy, dressed in a suit, and he’s definitely the leader of their little pack. His user name is Roger919.
Hey, Roger. What’s going on? Who are you fighting?
There’s silence for a couple of minutes, but then he pings me back.
There you are, PStar. We’ve been looking for you.
That makes my stomach hurt.
Why?
The AR gate opened a couple of hours ago, and we’ve all moved up. But the giants are here. We’ve lost sixteen people fighting them already.
And you think I can do better?
I glance around, looking for the huge creatures that are Gaia’s children. So far, I don’t see anything.
You can’t do worse, that’s for sure.
We IM back and forth a little more, him giving me whatever pointers he has—and one of his sharpened sticks. It seems like a pretty pathetic weapon against a couple of giants, but I’ll take what I can get. Besides, I’m just trying to get the lay of the land. I won’t actually do any fighting until Eli or Theo is with me. The last thing I want to do is die because I decided to take the game on without their help. Now is definitely not the time to be overconfident in my gaming skills.
We start walking again. Past the last gas station and out onto the long, lonely stretch of highway that looks remarkably like the one I’m currently parked along. At least until we get to the desert castle. It comes out of nowhere, a huge, towering citadel lit up in all directions by purplish-red lights. Instead of turrets it has pipes that interconnect in fascinating patterns. It’s beautiful and eerie and every instinct I have is screaming that the place is bad news and I need to get the hell away from here.
Of course, that’s why I have to go in. If my dad has the giants hidden anywhere out here, this would be the place. It’s the only structure I’ve seen so far that would be big enough.
Besides, now that I’m seeing the whole thing, I understand one of the pictures my father put on the blog. It was the three of us—my mom, my dad, and me—in front of one of the strange purplish-red lights. I’m in a stroller between them, and my mom is smiling in a way I haven’t seen from her in far too long. My dad, however, looks miserable.
Which could account for the ominous feeling that blankets the entire place and presses down on me as I walk through it. Whatever it is, my dad doesn’t like it.
As I get closer, I see a sign that reads ANDERSON NATURAL GAS CORPORATION. Of course. No wonder my mom had been smiling. Working for Anderson was her first big job as a corporate attorney. I can’t help wondering what it says about her—and them—that my dad has programmed the place into the game as a source of danger.
Ignoring the dread that wells up in me, I clutch my stick and look around for possible escape routes. If I end up running into the giants in their den—or their factory, as luck might have it—I need to make sure I can get away quickly until my backup arrives.
The factory is four stories high, with outdoor walkways and railings. If bad comes to worse, I guess I can jump—and hope I don’t break every bone in my body.
Finally, I say to hell with it and start running. If I’m going to get flattened by a huge woman-eating monster, I might as well get it over with.
I make it through the gates and up the main walk before someone falls in beside me. I don’t pay much attention to him at first, but when he bumps against me, I burst out laughing. I’m even less alone than I thought. Theo is with me.
Leaning down to peer in the window of the van, I see him sitting cross-legged, his tablet on his lap as he moves his avatar along with mine. When he catches me looking, he slides open the door.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“Sleep is overrated,” he says. “Ready to do this thing?”
“Why not? I’m all about kicking some giant ass.”
He laughs, and suddenly I feel a million times better, like I’ve actually got a shot at this.
“I see you’ve picked up some friends.”
I glance back at Roger, who also appears pretty happy to see Theo. “Looks that way.”
A deafening roar rips through the eerie mood music, and we look up to see two giants, complete with bows and arrows, standing on the fourth-story walkway. They’re bellowing for all they’re worth, and I know that this is it, even if the bottom of my stomach has just dropped down to somewhere in South America.
“Want a boost?” Theo asks.
“I got it,” I say, and then I hit Shift+J and jump about ten feet in the air. I catch the edge of the railing, pull myself up, only to find Theo already standing there, waiting for me.
“Show-off,” I tell him as we take off running, looking for the staircase that will lead us to the third and then the fourth floor.
My avatar is still injured from my run-in with Campe, so Theo slams up the stairs ahead of me and the others, which means he’s the one who gets to the giant first. He’s also the one to take the first hit, from an arrow that sinks itself into his arm even as it sends him flying about fifteen feet through the air. He stumbles to his feet, a little disoriented, and the giant that shot him heads for him while the second one takes on a group of attackers from the other side. I jump in front of Theo, determined to protect him until he can protect himself.
Not sure what else to do, I poke the giant with my stick, and he yells even louder. Fantastic. Nothing like enraging the monster to make the game more interesting …
The bow comes down again, this time aimed straight at me. I manage to stumble out of the way, but that just makes the monster more eager to get me. He shoots again and again, and I’m lucky enough to avoid him—at least until he shifts and the arrow comes from a new angle, catching me unaware.
I practically feel my lung puncture under the speed of the shot, and no matter how hard I try to stay on my feet, I can’t do it. I sink to my knees, try to crawl away, but I’m afraid this is it. I won’t even make it past the second level.
Theo, who finally seems to have come back to himself, shoves me out of the way at the last minute and grabs hold of the bow, refusing to let it go no matter how much the giant swings it. Even when he starts beating it against the ground, Theo hangs on—at least until the very ground beneath my feet begins to tremble.
Theo falls off, goes flying, grabbing me on the way. And then we’re doing what I had contemplated all along—jumping, or in Theo’s case, soaring—over the railing and down three stories.
I manage to catch one of the pipes as we go down, and Theo follows my lead. We drop to the ground, and I start to ask him what we’re supposed to do now, but before I can get the words out, the giant jumps the four stories and lands right in front of us.
A large earthquake rips through the desert, huge cracks and fissures showing up in all directions. Behind us, Roger and two of his group scream as they slip into one of the cracks.
I race over to check if I can see them, but they’re gone. The fissure is too deep.
To make matters worse, the giants keep stomping around, trying to crush us with their gigantic feet. We dodge them, but the earthquakes get stronger in magnitude and longer in duration so that it becomes not just about dodging the NPCs, but about missing all the cracks—and the noxious fumes pouring out of them—around us as well. More and more players slip through the new crevices and disappear.
“We’ve got to do something,” Theo mutters. “Or we’re going to be the only ones left.”
“If we’re lucky enough to survive, don’t you mean?”
“I was trying to think positive.” He jumps over one of the giants’ feet but narrowly misses sliding into the largest fracture.
I reach for him, pull him to safety. “Well, don’t. At least not until we’re out of here.”
“Well, then, if we’re being pessimistic … If this doesn’t work, run like hell, okay?”
“If what doesn’t work?”
“This!” he says as he launches himself at the giant’s legs,
using every ounce of speed and power he has—which is considerable.
The giant roars with rage, tries to shake him off even as he struggles to keep his balance. But, as before, Theo hangs on like a leech. He even manages to drive his stick—my stick—straight into the giant’s foot. The monster screams and shouts and hops, squishing people by the dozens even while making more cracks with each landing. I’m about to try to drag Theo back and call this whole thing a major failure, when the giant trips over one of the big pipes leading out of the factory and barely catches himself.
This is it. I can feel it. I run straight at him, picking up a discarded stick as I do, and plow it straight into his upper thigh as hard as I can. He screeches like a scalded cat and then falls straight into the biggest fissure in the ground and, hopefully, straight to hell. Or Hades’s underworld.
Unfortunately, he takes Theo with him. I scream—in the game and in real life. Eli jumps beside me but doesn’t wake, and it turns out Theo isn’t quite so easy to kill. Thank God. When I get to the opening, he’s holding on for dear life as he dangles over a deep, dark abyss.
I tangle my hands in his shirt and refuse to let go, even as he starts to slide down. With the help of a few other players, I manage to pull him to safety.
By the time he’s up, I’m shaking and soaked through with sweat. Theo, however, seems as cool and unaffected as ever. “So, how about that GPS code?” he says.
I want to throttle him. Want to lean into the van and beat the hell out of him for scaring me and for looking so unruffled, but I don’t. I can’t, because he’s right and I know it.
Far behind us, the other giant goes down, and we spread out, start to hunt for the coordinates. Other people try to join in, though they don’t know what we’re looking for. I don’t tell them. Getting help in the game is one thing, but dragging them into the real-world mess is a whole different story.
Theo’s the one who finally finds the coordinates, on the sign I saw at the very beginning of the battle. The street number for Anderson Natural Gas is 350639N and its zip code is 10636-36W.
“I don’t suppose you have these coordinates memorized, too, do you?” I ask.
He laughs. “Nope. I only remember coordinates for places I’ve landed.”
“You mean in that plane you and your dad built?” I close my laptop, then climb off the hood so that I’m face-to-face with Theo.
“Yeah.” He shuts down, his whole face closing up right in front of me. He doesn’t say anything else, not that I expect him to, but still. An explanation for his change in attitude would be nice. It’s only been a couple of days since I met him, and already I’m sick of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing.
I open my mouth to tell him so, but something about the way he’s holding himself—the way he looks so alone—has me shutting up. Even as I wonder how a guy like him, with his legion of groupies, could possibly know what it’s like to be lonely.
The silence stretches between us, taut as a circus high wire, until I think of something to say that has nothing to do with what I actually want to know. “So, I guess we’re going to head out in the morning, find somewhere we can pick up an atlas?”
He glances at his watch. “It’s close to four a.m. Why don’t you get Eli in the car and we’ll head out now? You can sleep while I drive.”
21
Day Three
“We’re here, Pandora.” A warm, rough hand strokes down my arm, and I come awake with a jolt. Sitting up, I nearly bang heads with Eli, who is leaning over me, green eyes gleaming mischievously as he watches me wake up.
“Where’s here?” I lie back down. My head is spinning, and, despite my nap, I’m still so exhausted that I’m nauseated with it.
“Hobbs, New Mexico.”
We’re in New Mexico already. That means I slept about five hours, because the last thing I remember is being about two hours from the Texas–New Mexico border. Wow.
As I lie there, everything that has happened comes crashing in on me, and tears fill my eyes. I close them quickly—I don’t want Eli to see—and then spend a minute willing away the pain and the terror.
It’s somehow worse, now, after I’ve slept, because of that one moment—you know the one—when you’re just waking up and you forget the new reality. Forget how your life has spontaneously combusted and instead think it was all just a bad dream. That everything’s going to be okay.
Until you remember. You jolt up, look around, and realize nothing is ever going to be okay again. That’s exactly where I’m at right now.
“You ready, Pandora?” Theo asks me from where he’s standing outside the car. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels, and I can tell he’s impatient to get inside. To move on to the next step of this quest we’ve found ourselves on. His face doesn’t look so bad this morning. The swelling is just about gone, and somehow the cut temple and bruised cheekbone only make him look better. Maybe because they’ve humanized him a little, made that too-perfect face of his look real.
“Pandora?” he says again.
“Yeah. Sure.” I grab my backpack and slide out of the van. My mouth tastes like something crawled into it and died while I was sleeping, and my eyes are gritty, swollen. The librarian is probably going to take one look at me and run screaming in the other direction.
Not that I’d blame her. If I could run away from myself right now, I would do it in a heartbeat. Maybe even faster.
I glance around as we walk, notice that most of the businesses around us have CLOSED signs on the windows. No electricity equals no cash registers, no computer systems, no lights, no stoves, no refrigeration. Nothing that usually makes the world of small business go round.
People are hanging out in the streets in small, desperate knots. Talking fast and casting furtive looks over their shoulders, like kids trying to avoid detention. Whatever they’re planning, it doesn’t look good.
Theo and Eli must feel the same way, because they move closer to me, flanking me. I don’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved by their obvious attempt at protection.
With everything going on, I worry that the library won’t be open, but I guess librarians take their jobs seriously, because as we get closer, we realize this might be the only place in town that is getting a brisk business. The usually automatic doors are propped open, and as we walk in, I notice that there are more people in here than I’ve ever seen in a library before. I guess when there’s nothing else to do, people remember that books kept whole generations entertained for centuries before TV was even invented.
It’s actually kind of cool to see this many people reading, though a lot of them are just sitting around and talking, their wary eyes constantly moving around the room.
The building was designed to maximize the amount of light coming in, so it’s not dark at all as we wander up to the information center in the middle of the main room. I can’t help being grateful, at least until we get to the banks of computers that hold the catalog to the library’s contents. Without them, will trying to find a specific book be like searching for a needle in a haystack? Thank God atlases are all grouped together, at least.
Theo must figure the same thing, because he heads straight to the nearest help desk—and the very frazzled librarian standing there, trying to single-handedly deal with a line of people that has grown exponentially longer in the time we’ve been here.
“Come on,” I tell Eli. “Theo’s going to be there forever. Let’s see if we can find the maps section on our own.”
We wander from one area to the next, and I’m surprised at just how big this building is. I haven’t been to a library besides my school’s in years, but the ones I remember were small and cramped.
This place is a work of art.
We troll through the different fiction sections, past children’s and teen lit, into nonfiction. But there are a million categories of nonfiction to work our way through, and it takes forever. I’m beginning to think Theo had the right idea when I stumble on the reference section. There are a
ton of almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases, along with a bunch of other books that I have no use for.
Eli grabs a US atlas off the shelf—it’s a big, heavy book that weighs about twice what my calculus book does, and that’s saying something. But after he lays it on a table and opens it, he looks baffled. “How do you work this thing?”
I laugh. “You don’t work it—it’s not a machine.” But to be honest, I’m not sure, either. I remember learning how to do this in third or fourth grade as part of a study-skills unit, but it’s been a lot of years since I’ve had to do more than type a question into Google. Still, it can’t be that hard.
I sit down and start pawing through the book until I get a feel for it. Then I ask, “Do you have the coordinates?”
Eli doesn’t answer, and when I turn to him, he has a weird look on his face, like I’ve just caught him doing something he shouldn’t. “Are you sniffing me, dude?”
“I’m sorry. Your hair smells weird.”
I stiffen at the insult. “That’s because I dyed it yesterday, which—if you remember correctly—I did because you and Theo made me. So get over it.”
I keep my spine ramrod straight when I turn back to the book, fuming and embarrassed. I take a deep breath and try to concentrate, but now all I can smell are the chemicals from my hair. Eli’s right—I do smell weird.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, and he’s watching me, waiting for me to do just that. He crosses his eyes, makes a face that looks absolutely ridiculous. I laugh—I can’t help it—and somebody at the next table shushes me.
It’s such a normal thing to do when the last two days have been anything but, that it makes me feel better in a way nothing else could. The world might be going to hell, but there are still some rules. Still some semblances of normalcy.