“Where did you get that?” I snapped at Tabitha.
“The gun was on the floor.”
“No—the ammo mag. Where did you find that?”
“Oh…in the storage room I was hiding in.”
“How much was there?”
“A lot. Many boxes full of them.”
Was the storage room in the kitchen an item cache, just like in a real game?
I clenched my teeth as an oversized male student zombie proved hard to take down. The fifth round into his skull finally halted his advance. Before he crashed face down into the corridor, I was already shooting at the zombie behind him.
“Hey—aren’t you going to use that?” I asked Tabitha.
“No. I can’t be trusted with weapons.”
“Just point the thing at them and pull the trigger.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“No it’s not, and I could use a little help, please!”
“No. I’m the damsel in distress. You’re the Princess. Save me.”
“What?” With concentric shots to the side of his head, I blew away a tall, heavyset male student. “I’m not a Princess. I’m a Prince!”
“Oh. I thought you were cross-playing as a male student….”
I retreated another step and Tabitha followed suit. “Damsel in distress my ass. You’re the Princess here.”
The lightgun sounded an alarm warning me of a low ammo count, and after firing the remaining handful of mini-bullets, the weapon clicked empty.
Slinging the lightgun across my back, I yelled at Tabitha, “Give me that!”
She tossed it over with a gloomy expression. “Here, my Princess.”
“When I’m done with them, I’m starting with you.”
“Kyaah, don’t hurt me.”
I bit down a retort as I employed the lightgun liberally on the remaining zombies.
If felt like an hour before I finally shot dead the last of the undead on this floor. Realistically it was probably no longer than five or six minutes, but by then I was gasping for air, and my arms felt weighed down by lead, while my stomach churned like a cauldron of acid. I held onto the lightgun and swept my gaze over the library interior, noting that the zombies on this floor were accounted for, but those on the other levels were now climbing toward us. I wasn’t certain, but I felt they were moving faster than before, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the darkening sky.
“There’s just too many of them,” I muttered, briefly startled when Tabitha handed me a reloaded lightgun. I took it, and handed the other one back to her. “We have to get out of here. The sun is setting and I have a suspicion these things do better in the dark.”
She arched an eyebrow at me gloomily. “You’re not going to search for survivors?”
“No.” I shook my head sharply just once, and met her gaze. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
For a heartbeat, Tabitha’s gloominess lifted, and I saw a smile flicker on her lips. At that moment, my heart jumped and I turned away hoping she hadn’t noticed my reaction. Seeking to distract myself from the memory of her faint smile, I waved the lightgun at her dress skirt and asked, “How much ammunition did you take with you?”
“Two magazines.” She turned her skirt pockets inside out. “That was all I could carry.”
Turning back to the library, I watched the zombies climb up the broad transparent stairs to the third level. The zombies from the level above had already descended, leaving those library floors clear of undead. Hefting the lightgun in my hands, I checked it was loaded and with a round chambered, then raised it up to my shoulder.
“We go through the library, then down to the ground floor. If the west gates are closed, we go through the cafeteria, then over the balcony to the grounds outside the school.”
“Why not go down a corridor stairwell?”
“Too narrow. I don’t want to get boxed in from above and below.” I started advancing toward the library entrance. “If we travel down the library, we only have to worry about the zombies below us. Plus, I can see all the way down to the ground floor, so there are no surprises on the way down.” I tapped a shoe against my carry-bag resting on the floor. “There’s another ten magazines inside. I shoot you. You reload. How does that sound?”
Tabitha looked depressed as she watched the zombies amble unsteadily yet quickly toward us. “Sounds good.”
As soon as the words left her lips, I fired the first shot of the next round.
Two shots later, I’d claimed another kill.
Unfortunately, dozens of undead traversed the library floor toward us with ashen skin, hungry mouths, and glazed eyes.
Chapter 4.
- I -
Is it folly to wonder if you could have done something better and thereby achieved a more favorable outcome?
If so, then I’m guilty of it.
Had my physical condition been superior, had my stamina not degraded, had my awareness not lost its focus, had I been stronger, larger, faster, then perhaps – just maybe – she wouldn’t have had to suffer. Undeniably, I say this with the benefit of hindsight, now knowing that things were never as they seemed. However, back then as I ran atop the ledge circumnavigating the school rooftop, I hated and cursed my shortcomings, especially that of being small and weak because a real man would never have left a woman behind. In conclusion, I was never a real man to begin with.
So what was I?
I have heard that an individual is not one entity but two. By this, I don’t refer to the concept of duality where we question or talk to ourselves at various times. I refer to another interpretation. Another concept of duality involving individual perception.
There are two of us. There is the person we see ourselves as being, and then there is the person that other people see when they look at us. The question is, are the two mutually exclusive, two sides of the same coin? Can one coexist with the other, or can neither coexist without the other?
So how did other people see me?
From experience, I knew they failed to perceive me as manly either. Thus, our opinion on both sides of the coin was one and the same, but The Game reinforced that perception by proving I wasn’t physically man enough to save another life when it mattered. It showed me the extent of my weakness and impressed upon me my physical shortcomings, and it made me hate myself even more. It’s true that a person can be mentally strong while being physically weak, but men are seen as both. The hero charging in on his white steed is often romanticized as a man amongst men with a never surrender, never retreat attitude and the physique to back it up. That’s the kind of man that gets the girl in the end. Even if he wasn’t responsible for saving the day, he gets to ride off into the sunset with the damsel, not his sidekick who did all the real work such as coming up with the plan to save the girl. While he may be viewed with sympathy and pity, he was always the sidekick, and so no one questions the girl’s choice to ride off with the manly hero.
This is what The Game made abundantly clear to me when I wasn’t able to save the girl.
In doing so, The Game achieved its purpose of tearing down the walls protecting my fragile male ego, and thereby lowered the drawbridge just a little for what was to come.
Others saw The Game as a test, an experiment to gauge my abilities.
I saw it has a hard lesson intended to reshape me, to pound reality into me, and to make me accept the truth that I was probably better of being a girl.
- II -
I was careless to think two shots would be enough to bring a zombie down.
Thus far, I had used three shots to kill the undead. The first opened a hole in their heads. The second widened it. The third detonated inside their skull, thereby killing them. The mini-bullets were two small to do any better. They lacked weight, mass, and kinetic energy. Despite being fired at well over the speed of sound, they failed to penetrate through bone. Instead, they compensated by exploding with enough force to crater or shatter bone, opening the way into a zombie�
��s head.
However, when we advanced into the library, the number of undead swelled beyond expectations, and so I switched from a three shot to a two shot strategy. This was also motivated by the need to advance down the library, clearing the way at each level with haste. But my efforts were in vain, and soon we found ourselves retreating back up the stairs.
As we backed away, with Tabitha leading the way while I covered our retreat, I heard a scream from her, and turned around to see an undead girl on the floor clamp her jaws around Tabitha’s right calf. The zombie girl had two holes in her skull, but it had failed to kill her. Since we were retracing our footsteps, we encountered her again, and this time she succeeded in wounding Tabitha.
I fired on instinct, this time killing the creature properly with another two shots into its skull.
Tabitha crawled, then staggered back up to her feet by making use of the translucent – not transparent – guardrail running alongside the stairs leading up to the fifth level.
I couldn’t help her because I had my hands full keeping the undead at bay. Having realized my mistake, I was being careful to expend three shots to their heads, four when uncertain, and ensure their termination. In other words, I wanted no more surprises as we withdrew up the library.
Using the height of the stairs to my advantage, I picked off the zombies encroaching us, not realizing until much later how splendid my performance was. The fact that I was center punching their foreheads with three consecutive rounds time and again was a remarkable feat. However at that time, I wasn’t basking in the glory of my skill and talent, instead rather desperately trying to stay alive, and I had no reason to celebrate. Tabitha was wounded because I’d slipped up, and now I feared that whatever created the zombies would affect the girl as well.
The fifth and top most level of the library was usually furnished with sofas, chairs, and coffee tables. It was intended purely as a reading area for demure young maidens, and thus there were no shelves of any kind. However, when we retreated up to this level, we found it devoid of any furnishings. I didn’t have time to wonder why, but it felt as though the scene had been prepared for us in advance.
Tabitha had retreated to the back of the top floor. She was slumped on the floor, resting against the rear wall, and tying around her wounded leg a strip of her dress that she’d torn away. Though it was a risk, I ran back to her, removed my tie and tossed it to her, then hurriedly returned to the stairway landing. There were no zombies on this floor and I intended to keep it that way by preventing the undead masses from climbing up the stairs to this level. In order to do so I had to suppress them at the bottom of the aforementioned stairs.
“Hey,” Tabitha called out to me. “You’re running low on bullets.”
I swallowed to clear my throat. “How’s your leg?”
“I’m bitten. I’m out of the game.”
I felt my stomach tighten unpleasantly into a little ball, while my chest hurt from the sudden pressure of intense regret swelling within.
The alarm sounded on the lightgun, and I expended the handful of remaining rounds into an undead male student clambering over the bodies of its fallen kin. He added to the growing pile of dead zombies surrounding the foot of the steps on the level below. My pockets were empty of magazines, so I turned and ran back to Tabitha sitting on the ground. She had tied my school tie around her lower right leg, but the wound was still open and it soaked the strip of her dress.
I glanced at the drops of her blood on the transparent floor.
“You’re not out of The Game,” I told her.
Perhaps I was trying a little too hard to be manly because she gave me a weary, sad smile. “Ronin, I don’t have much time.”
After swapping out the empty magazine in the lightgun well for a fresh one from the bag, I slung the weapon’s straps over my shoulder, and then reached down to help Tabitha to her feet.
She pushed me away. “Don’t be a fool.” With a nod, she indicated the stairs behind me. “They’re coming. You need to leave.”
“Not without you.” Again I tried picking her up, and again she pushed me away.
“You can’t carry me and shoot at the same time.” With a shake of her head, she nailed the truth down into me. “You’re not strong enough.”
An undeniable truth, and it knifed my male ego. Yet I persisted. “I’m not leaving you. That’s final.”
“Then you’ll stay here and die? Is that what you’re saying?”
I turned around and faced the stairs were the undead were beginning to emerge from. The distance was twenty meters as I took aim, and then fired two rounds in quick succession into the forehead of the closest zombie. The impact and detonations that followed a millisecond later knocked it backwards into its companions behind it on the steps.
“Are you saying you want to die?” I asked Tabitha. “Are you giving up?”
I fired again, and knocked another zombie down the stairs.
“Well, what’s your answer?” I asked her loudly.
Not hearing a reply, I glanced behind me and saw something unexpected.
Tabitha was aiming the second of the two lightguns at me. “This is my answer.”
She pulled the trigger and I had but a heartbeat to rollaway as the mini-bullet streaked past my body.
“What the Hell are you doing?” I yelled at her as I came up on my knees.
With a loud grunt, Tabitha flung my carry-bag toward me. Then she turned the lightgun on the zombies coming up the stairs.
“I’m not done yet,” she muttered loudly.
The lightgun wasn’t the only thing she carried. Tabitha had previously turned out the pockets of her skirt, but she never did the same for the pockets of her short summer blazer. I saw her reach into the blazer’s left pocket, and retrieve a cylindrical canister that she now held in her left hand. For a second, my heart stopped beating when I realized what it was.
“Wait—what are you planning—?”
Tabitha pulled the pin, and tossed the canister toward the zombies. “Run, Ronin. Run.”
I turned away, and dropped to the floor, fully expecting a loud explosion to rock the air and the library. Instead, there was a muted bang followed by a loud hissing. When I looked up and over a shoulder, I saw a thick cloud of ash grey smoke spread rapidly across this floor of the library.
A smoke grenade?
More than likely she had picked it up from the storeroom that she claimed was stocked with munitions.
Partially obscured by the smoke, I glimpsed Tabitha toss another canister out across the library floor, and it soon added to the spreading smoke, making it grow thicker and darker. Moments later I lost sight of her and the undead, but I heard her cry out, “Hurry, Ronin—get out now!”
She should have been only a few feet away, yet her voice sounded distant. Then I heard a lightgun firing away not from the back of the library floor but from somewhere in the direction of the stairs, though I couldn’t be certain because the dense smoke was disorienting. Regardless, and with my eyes stinging a little, I searched for Tabitha until my feet struck the carry-bag she’d tossed over to me less than a minute ago. Picking it up, I slung the bag’s straps over my shoulder, then peered around me with my lightgun at the ready, still searching for the girl though I couldn’t see more than couple of feet in front of me. However, dark shadows moving about in the ash grey smoke forced me to retreat.
“Tabitha! Tabitha—where are you?”
The sounds of a lightgun firing somewhere in the thick smoke faded away.
“Tabitha!”
My back collided with something hard, presumably the back wall of the library as it was quite flat and solid. With it behind me, I moved to my right away and from the dark shadows of the undead moving through the smoke until I arrived at a permaglass wall. Glancing through it, I saw a rooftop courtyard and realized I was on the north side of the library floor. The high school building was a circular structure four storey high, however the library possessed five levels. As such,
the topmost level offered access to the rooftop courtyards flanking it to the north and south.
Wary of the shadows ambling through the smoke cloud, I walked beside the permaglass wall until I arrived at the transparent doors that opened to the rooftop courtyard. How did I know the doors were there? Because there was an identity scanning plate embedded into the permaglass wall that worked by either waving my school id card over it or by palm print. Swapping the lightgun to my left hand, and with no guarantee it would function, I nonetheless pressed my right palm on the plate. To my surprise, the door slid open on recessed railings, and the outside air began to swirl the edges of the dark cloud filling the library’s top floor.
“Tabitha!” Standing at the entrance and with the lightgun once more in a two-handed grip, I peered into the smoke. “Tabitha!”
There was no response, and my actions had drawn the attention of the zombies on this level, their dark shadows heading toward me, attracted by my shouting and the swirling smoke beginning to spread out into the courtyard.
“Tabitha!”
With the lightgun up, I clenched my teeth as I watched the oncoming shadows resolve into zombie students. Firing at them selectively, delivering three shots to their heads, I brought down two, then three undead before I retreated out of the library and onto the courtyard.
“Tabitha!”
My yelling attracted more undead.
“Damn it, Tabitha. I’m on the north side courtyard. Come on! Get over here!”
I killed a fifth then a sixth zombie student, but there was no sign of Tabitha heeding my cries.
“Damn it!”
I slapped my left hand on the scanning plate fitted to the exterior of the permaglass wall, triggering the doors to close and seal the undead within the library.
From the safety of the courtyard, I peered at the smoky interior, feeling frustrated and distraught, but also hating myself for being so weak and incapable of protecting one girl from a school of undead. My shooting skills had fallen short of my arrogance and overconfidence, and Tabitha had paid the price of my shortcoming. Adding salt to my wounded pride and ego, Tabitha had saved us by utilizing smoke grenades to cover my escape. However, there was a chance she had fled to the courtyard on the south side of the library.
Gun Princess Royale: Awakening the Princess, Book One Page 10