Safe Zone

by R. T. Martin

  N3V3RDIE kept charging forward, but No_Idea tripped . . .

  Chapter 9

  Only a few seconds later, N3V3RDIE appeared right next to him back on the rooftop. No_Idea looked at his stamina bar—58% left.

  “That didn’t even kind of work,” he said.

  N3V3RDIE scowled at him, looking even angrier than she had been when he’d gotten them killed. “They’re a lot stronger than I thought. Why give us the shield if we’re not supposed to plow through them?”

  No_Idea wasn’t sure if she truly wanted him to answer the question. He decided against it. Instead he said, “So I take it we’re not going to try that again.”

  N3V3RDIE got right in his face. “Are you making fun of me, n00b?”

  “What? No,” he said, taking a step back. “I was just saying—” He cut himself off, not knowing how to finish the sentence without making her even angrier. “I was just saying that we need to come up with another plan when we make it back there.”

  He desperately wanted to change the subject, so as she went to grab the crowbar for the third time, he asked, “Why do you keep calling me a ‘n00b’? What is that?”

  “It’s short for newbie,” she said. “As in someone who doesn’t know the first thing about gaming. As in someone like you. A n00b is someone who should stay out of the way of someone like me because the only thing you’re good for is getting us killed.”

  “Didn’t you just get us killed?”

  “I didn’t—you don’t—” She groaned. “Just stay out of my way.”

  No_Idea felt the slightest twinge of satisfaction. He may not have done anything productive, but at least, this time, he wasn’t the one who got them killed. And she knew it too.

  They did it all again, popped the door and went down the stairs. They grabbed the flashlight, sneaked through the floor full of cubicles, which didn’t frighten No_Idea nearly as much as it did the first time, and started down the stairs again.

  “I should have known we couldn’t just plow through them,” N3V3RDIE said after a while.

  “Huh?”

  “I should have known we couldn’t plow through them,” she repeated. “I should have known that when we first hit them, we’d slow down and they’d swarm around us.”

  No_Idea shrugged. “I’d actually believed we could make it.” He paused. “But we probably both should have known that wouldn’t work.”

  “It was a stupid mistake.”

  “So was turning on the flashlight,” he said.

  “You never play games. I should have known better. A lot of the time, the physics in games allow you to do things you wouldn’t be able to in real life. This game’s more realistic than I thought it would be.”

  Rather than doubting her ability to get them both through the game, No_Idea found himself feeling a bit relieved that she’d done something wrong. Maybe she wasn’t as good at gaming as she’d claimed, maybe it was just an easy mistake—but he felt a little less like the screw-up now.

  She is taking the mistake pretty hard, No_Idea thought. “Let’s just forget about it, get back there, and find a way around them,” he said.

  “And,” he added with a smile, “maybe we don’t try something so ridiculous this time.”

  She actually snorted out a laugh this time. “Right.”

  They arrived at the lobby and, much more casually this time, threw the crowbar and the flashlight away from the exit door. They finished the level in less than half the time it had taken on their first attempt. N3V3RDIE grabbed the riot shield again. This time on their way to the car barrier, they made sure to check for alleyways or any entrances to a building in hopes of going around the zombies behind the wall.

  Nothing, no alternate routes. It seemed as if the game was designed for them to go through the car corridor.

  By the time they arrived, their stamina bars were approaching 40% remaining—way too low this early in the game. Even as a ‘n00b,’ No_Idea knew that much. They began searching for a way around the pack of zombies that were still rumbling in the distance. They checked store fronts, even dumpsters and broken cars, for a tool or way around the group of undead on the other side of the walls. After nearly an hour of searching, they were still stuck in the same place with the riot shield as their only tool.

  “Maybe we missed something on the way here,” N3V3RDIE said. “There was a lot of road between this and the skyscraper.”

  No_Idea was kicking a chunk of concrete debris around. “Too much road,” he pointed out. “We’d run out of stamina before we’d be able to search the whole street for tools.”

  “You’re right.” She stared at the wall of dead cars. “There’s got to be a way.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “There’s always something. That’s the way games work. We may not have found it yet, but no game is impossible. There’s always a way to win.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We seem pretty stuck.” He kicked the piece of concrete again. It rolled for a while and made a clunk noise where it landed. At first, No_Idea thought it might have hit something hollow, but it had actually landed on a manhole cover. He walked over to the manhole cover and was about to kick it again when a thought occurred to him.

  “Hey, come over here,” he shouted to N3V3RDIE.

  “What?”

  “Let’s see if we can lift this,” he said, gesturing down to the manhole cover. “Maybe we can go under them.”

  N3V3RDIE crouched down. “Not a bad idea.”

  The manhole cover was heavier than No_Idea had anticipated, but together, they were able to move it, although they had to sacrifice 5% of their stamina each. Below the cover was a ladder leading down into the sewers. It was pitch-black below ground. They had to feel their way along the cold, wet walls of the tunnel. It was slow going. After a while, N3V3RDIE said, “We must be past them by now.”

  “Yeah,” No_Idea replied. “Let’s get out of here the second we find an exit.”

  They continued down the dark tunnel, feeling along the walls for another ladder or anything that could take them back up to the surface. No_Idea felt like they had made it pretty far, but he really had no point of reference for the distance they’d traveled.

  Suddenly, N3V3RDIE put up her hand to stop him. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

  He listened, but didn’t hear anything. “No,” he whispered back to her.

  “Well, listen harder,” she said.

  He held his breath, waiting a moment, and finally heard it. It was faint, but it was definitely there, echoing down the tunnel—groaning. There was a zombie in their way, and in the dark, it was impossible to know how far away or even how many there were.

  “What do we do?” No_Idea asked.

  “We keep going,” N3V3RDIE whispered. “No other choice.”

  “We don’t know how many there are.”

  “I only hear one,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.” How could she tell how many there were? Surely not just by sound.

  “Wait,” No_Idea insisted. “Even if there is only one, we don’t know where it is.” N3V3RDIE had already started through the tunnel again, and he was left to follow her in silence.

  Chapter 10

  The groaning echoed off the walls, making No_Idea question if the zombie was in front of or behind them. Or maybe there was more than one zombie in this tunnel. He couldn’t tell. He had to blindly trust in N3V3RDIE, trust that she was right about there only being one zombie, trust in her knowing how to take it down without being able to see the thing in the dark.

  Soon, the groaning sounded only feet away from them. With each step, No_Idea became convinced that they would run right into the monster, get killed, and have to start all over at level one, but N3V3RDIE continued on at the same pace: slow, but steady and careful. No_Idea followed and hoped for the best.

  Once again, N3V3RDIE held out a hand to stop him in his tracks. The groaning was loud, but without any light, the zombie could have been two or twenty feet away.

>   Is that the zombie? he questioned. Or are those just echoes?

  No_Idea listened carefully, wondering if N3V3RDIE had a plan. He could sense her movement, but couldn’t see exactly what she was doing. He could tell that she had taken another step forward.

  Suddenly there was a thud. The groaning got louder and angrier, more like snarling now. He heard N3V3RDIE grunt, then a few more thuds.

  “Run!” she shouted. No_Idea jumped at the sound—her voice echoing all over the tunnel. He took off into a sprint. At first, he bumped into N3V3RDIE, unable to see her in front of him in the dark, but he maneuvered his way around her and they both took off down the tunnel.

  The groaning was behind him now, and the sound of footsteps trailed off. That better be N3V3RDIE, he thought. Otherwise, I’m in serious trouble. It suddenly occurred to him then that earlier he may have actually bumped into the zombie and not her. She might have told him to run because the zombie was about to bite down on her, and now the zombie was pursuing him down the tunnel.

  He ran until he heard her voice again.

  “Stop,” she said, panting. “I think we can stop running now.” She caught up to him. He listened for a zombie, but there was no groaning—nothing except the trickling of some sewer water running in a thin stream by their feet. Neither of them said anything for a while, trying to catch their breaths. No_Idea knew better than to talk right now. He needed to know there was nothing else in the tunnel.

  “I think we’re good,” N3V3RDIE broke the silence.

  “What happened?” No_Idea asked.

  “I pushed it up against the wall with the riot shield,” she explained. “Once you were past, I knocked it off its feet and pinned it between the shield and the ground. Then I found some bricks on the ground to wedge the shield in place. It sounds like it held.”

  “Was that smart?”

  “I didn’t see any other option,” she said stubbornly.

  “Yeah, but what if there had been more of them?”

  “We probably would have died,” she replied. “But we would have known to hang on to the crowbar when we went through again. If we’d had that, we could have bashed one or two others.”

  No_Idea looked at their stamina bars. He only had 32% left. She was at an even 30. She was being too casual about this. “I don’t think we have enough stamina to start over again.”

  “Well,” she said, “good thing there was only one then, right?”

  “You can’t take risks like that!” No_Idea shouted suddenly. “We can’t die again! That could have easily gotten us killed!”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t,” she snapped back. “I’m in the same boat you are! Do you really want to sit here and argue about something that was a little risky but worked out in the end?”

  “How did you even know where the zombie was?”

  “I listened!” He couldn’t see her, but he pictured her throwing her arms up in the air. “I wanted to know exactly where it was before I lunged at it. That’s why I got as close as I could. I needed to know exactly where it was so I wouldn’t try to smash it and hit the wall instead.”

  “We shouldn’t have risked it,” No_Idea said, a little quieter this time.

  “Listen, n00b!” She was really mad now. “You think you’ve got all the answers because you opened a door and thought of the sewer? You didn’t think to use the shield to get that thing out of our way! You would have turned around and gone back the way we came!” He stayed quiet. “Don’t tell me it was a mistake because you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t have even left the roof. If you want, you can go off and lose without me. I’ll be able to finish without you. Can you say the same?”

  “Oh, you’d be fine without me?” he shouted back at her. “If I hadn’t found the sewer, you’d still be twiddling your thumbs outside of that car wall, wondering what to do.”

  “I would have thought of the sewer eventually,” she replied.

  “You wanted to bash through a hundred zombies in the lobby, and you actually tried to by the cars and got us killed!” No_Idea couldn’t help himself from erupting. “Without me, you wouldn’t have made it past the lobby. You’d just try to bash everything, wasting stamina just to get bitten over and over. Maybe you’d be looking for some tool or something that might not even be there!”

  He crossed his arms, hoping she could feel his glare even if she couldn’t see it in the darkness of the tunnel. “I thought you were supposed to be good at video games. Why am I solving all the problems?”

  “I’m not losing this game!” she screamed at him.

  “Why can’t we both win? Aren’t we on the same side anyway?” he asked. N3V3RDIE had seemed sure that only one of them could win, but he didn’t remember the Game Runner saying that there would be only one victor. Maybe both of them could win.

  N3V3RDIE was quiet for a moment before finally saying, “Let’s go.” They continued to feel their way down the tunnel in silence.

  Aside from some rats squeaking and squiggling in the tunnel and a little debris, the path was mostly clear. They reached a crossroads where the sewer had collapsed. They made a left and saw daylight. There was a crater in the street, a hole big enough to expose the sewers to fresh air. They each jumped, grabbed the edge of the road, and climbed out of the sewers and back onto the street.

  The moment they were both out, the ground started rumbling.

  Chapter 11

  “What’s happening?” No_Idea shouted.

  N3V3RDIE grabbed his shoulder and pointed up. “That building is coming down!” A skyscraper, only few blocks away, was starting to tilt toward them. No_Idea could see a cloud of dust rising from the base of the building. It was going to fall right on top of them.

  No_Idea started backing up. “We can hide in the sewer!”

  “No!” N3V3RDIE shouted back. “There!”

  “Where?”

  She grabbed his arm and started running. Above, the building was coming down fast, the brown cloud growing and rolling toward them.

  The ground shook and the noise became a deafening roar. No_Idea couldn’t tell where N3V3RDIE was leading him. The shaking made it hard to run in a straight line. If she yelled anything to him, there was no chance he’d hear it over the crashing.

  We’re not going to make it, he thought.

  N3V3RDIE made a sharp right. There it was—a green, glowing chain-link fence between two buildings. The fence had a gate. She ran right through it, and No_Idea followed.

  The building came down just behind the gate. The impact alone knocked them both off their feet.

  “Whoa,” No_Idea panted. “How did you spot that gate?”

  “I didn’t exactly know it would be there, I just took a chance. When we got closer I saw the glowing green.” N3V3RDIE got back on her feet. “You’re too busy looking for a safe route. This is a game—you have to take risks!”

  He checked their stats. They each had 27% of their stamina left and they were only halfway through the game.

  The building’s collapse left them only one way out of the alley. They climbed over a mangled car to get back onto the street.

  There, they could see the beam of green light indicating the safe zone—the end of the game. It looked much closer now. No_Idea felt like they were making progress for the first time since this ordeal started. They still had a ways to go, but seeing the beam was encouraging.

  As they walked, they saw a large, rounded building. No_Idea noticed more and more kiosks scattering the sidewalks. There were hot dog vending carts and little huts that looked like they may have been information booths. Over what looked like the main entrance, there was a battered sign:

  FO T LL S ADIUM

  “‘Football Stadium,’” N3V3RDIE said. “We have to go through it.”

  “Maybe we can go around,” No_Idea said.

  “Doubt it.” N3V3RDIE was already walking toward the building’s front entrance—a series of double doors. “The Game Runner said there were four levels: Skyscraper, Streets, Stadium, and S
warm. Why name a level ‘Stadium’ if we don’t have to go inside it?”

  There were only two levels to go, and N3V3RDIE was right—the skyscraper level had taken place in a skyscraper, and the street levels had taken place on the streets (with a brief detour into the sewers). It made sense that they would have to go through the stadium.

  But if all the levels were so appropriately named, No_Idea thought, doesn’t that mean that in the swarm level—

  “I hope these aren’t locked,” N3V3RDIE said suddenly, cutting off his train of thought.

  She reached one of the sets of double doors, grabbed a handle, and pulled hard. The door opened with a loud screech. She barely had time to look inside when she slammed the door shut again and positioned herself with her back against it. “There’s tons of zombies in there!”

  There was a loud bang. Something pounded on the other side. N3V3RDIE braced herself harder against the two doors.

  “What do we do?” No_Idea shouted over the noise. “Run?”

  N3V3RDIE was straining to keep the door closed. “No way! They’d catch us for sure.” No_Idea could see her stamina level lowering. She hadn’t been holding the door long, but she’d already used up 3%. “There’s nowhere to run to anyway. Find something to block the door—I can’t keep this up for long!”

  No_Idea scanned the area, but all he could see were chunks of broken concrete and burned-out cars on flat tires—too heavy to push in front of the door. A few feet away, he found a glowing piece of rebar lying next to a destroyed phone booth. He picked it up and brought it over to N3V3RDIE.

  “Will this work?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” she said, grabbing it from him. “I can’t do this anymore.” She turned around, keeping one arm and her shoe wedged in place against the shaking door. She slid the rebar through the handle and slowly backed up. The rebar prevented the doors from opening any more than a crack. Some zombies were able to fit their arms through the opening and flail them wildly, while No_Idea and N3V3RDIE backed away slowly.