Safe Zone

by R. T. Martin

  “I’m not sure how long that’s going to hold,” she said. “We need to find another entrance. Quickly.”

  They walked along the front of the stadium, searching for an alternate way inside. They didn’t dare try to open any of the other main entrance doors—they knew what was on the other side.

  The stadium was huge. It took a long time before they’d left the main pavilion. N3V3RDIE was right—there was no way around the stadium. The remains of toppled buildings blocked their path on both sides. All they found was a service door, but it was locked.

  “Look for a key,” N3V3RDIE instructed. “A lot of times in games, you find a key to open a locked door. Check that dumpster.”

  “I don’t want to check a dumpster,” No_Idea protested.

  “Why? It’s a game. It’s not real garbage.”

  “Maybe there’s something in there we could use to distract them, like we did in the lobby of the skyscraper . . .”

  “Oh, you’re lucky.” She was hunched over the trunk of one of the burned-out cars. She pulled a glowing key out and held it up for him to see. “You were so close to going into that dumpster.”

  “Can we just open the door, please,” he said.

  The key fit perfectly in the service door’s lock. As she opened it, N3V3RDIE said, “It’s a shame. I could have used that rebar to bash them.”

  No_Idea rolled his eyes and followed her inside. As he stepped through the doorway, he was again suspended in the white light. The now-familiar level marker also appeared:

  Chapter 12

  Beyond the door was a loading area. One truck was inside, the back open, mid-delivery. They entered quietly, listening for any groans. On the far wall of the loading dock, they spotted a ladder. Slinking their way through the area, they made sure to check that there weren’t any zombies hiding in the truck or in corners. The last thing they needed was to have one sneak up on them at a crucial moment.

  They climbed the ladder and waited at the top, again listening for groans. Nothing. On the second level of the loading dock, a door opened to dimly-lit cement service tunnels. Debris and wreckage blocked their way down some hallways and from entering the center of the stadium where the field would be, so they had to follow a fairly clear-cut path.

  They followed the tunnels past concessions stands, behind ticketing booths, around broken kiosks. They passed a gift shop before entering another service area stairwell, clearly somewhere football fans weren’t supposed to go when they were attending a game. They went up to the third level, but the door to get to the floor was locked. They went up a flight and tried every floor, but each door was either locked or blocked by debris. When they reached the top, they finally found one that opened.

  It wasn’t encouraging. They cautiously exited the stairwell and found they had arrived on the catwalks, usually reserved for maintenance workers fixing lights or speakers. They were on the uppermost level of the stadium. Some movement below caught No_Idea’s eye. The field looked like it was moving. He looked closer—swarms of zombies crowded the area below them, wandering all over the field. It was so packed with undead monsters he couldn’t even see the grass.

  “How do we get across?” N3V3RDIE asked.

  I think that’s the first time she’s actually asked for my opinion, No_Idea thought. “We just use the catwalks, I guess,” he replied.

  “Can’t,” N3V3RDIE said, pointing toward the middle of the arena. Once again, she was right. There was one catwalk that was clearly supposed to stretch across the length of the field, but it was missing a huge chunk from end zone to end zone.

  Chapter 13

  “We have to go back,” N3V3RDIE said.

  “We can’t!” No_Idea shouted at her. “Look at our stamina!” They were both approaching only 20% left. “We still have a whole level left. If we go back, we’re just going to end up wasting more stamina to end up back here.”

  “How do you know?” N3V3RDIE was getting irritated again.

  “Because we tested each of the doors in the stairwell, and we couldn’t go through any of them. Besides,” he continued, “even if there is a way across on the first floor, how do we avoid getting killed by all of them?” He gestured toward the shuffling mass on the field. “Think you can bash them all?”

  He felt a little bad saying that. It was a little mean, but bashing did seem to be her solution to a lot of their problems. “We already went under them. Maybe now it’s time to go over.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?” she asked.

  No_Idea looked around. “This isn’t any different from any other time we’ve thought we were stuck. There’s got to be some way across.”

  They walked to the edge of the catwalk. They were hundreds of feet above the field. The zombies were now looking up and reaching their dead hands toward them. It was like an ugly, rotting rock concert. If a fall wouldn’t kill them, the zombies would.

  On the other side of the catwalk, directly across the entire length of the football field, No_Idea spotted an open door with an exit sign above it.

  “There, right there,” he said, pointing. “That’s where we need to get to.”

  N3V3RDIE looked down at the zombies. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but that’s about ninety-five yards farther than I can jump.”

  No_Idea looked to the left and the right of where the catwalk ended. Maybe there was something they could jump to. There had to be something they could do.

  He saw a support cable just behind her that stretched across the stadium. It wasn’t too high up from where they were standing. The cable must have been designed to hold up the walkway. The steps may have been gone, but the cable wasn’t.

  “We have to use that,” No_Idea said, pointing to the cable.

  N3V3RDIE turned and looked at the wire. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  No_Idea shrugged. “You got a better idea?”

  “We don’t know if it’s stable,” she said. “It might not even hold our weight.”

  “There’s one way to find out,” he said.

  No_Idea took a deep breath, jumped, and grabbed the wire. It made a creaking noise as if it were about to snap. He heard N3V3RDIE take in a sharp breath. He hung there, waiting to see if the wire would hold. After a few seconds, it seemed that it could hold his weight.

  Heart pounding, No_Idea carefully put one hand over the other, moving forward on the wire. Before long, he was suspended over the field, nothing below him and nothing above him. First he kept his gaze on the scorched sky above. Then he made the mistake of looking down. The zombies had surged directly beneath him, their arms reaching for him. He could hear their groans and moans get louder every time he put one hand over the other. They were watching, waiting for him to fall.

  As he moved forward on the wire, he could feel the strain in his arms, and his stamina dropped 1%. He still had a long way to go—he was only over the twenty-five yard line so far.

  Suddenly, something moved the wire, causing it to bounce and creak even more. He looked back and saw N3V3RDIE hanging from the wire.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Get off the wire—it’s going to snap!” He could feel it tensing in his grip. It couldn’t take this much weight. They would have to cross the stadium one at a time.

  She dropped, which made the wire bounce quickly up and down. No_Idea tightened his grip as much as he could. The wire violently shook up and down, as if it were trying to throw him off. N3V3RDIE dropping from it had flicked it like a guitar string.

  He had to close his eyes as the bouncing made his stomach clench. It felt like forever before the line stabilized enough to move forward. Once it was still, he looked back at N3V3RDIE.

  “Sorry!” she shouted. At least that’s what No_Idea thought he heard. He was far away from her now, and the zombies were even louder.

  He started off again. Hand over hand, he crossed the forty-yard line, the fifty. He was starting to get the hang of it, but the farther he went, the more his arms and legs began to tremble. Hi
s stamina was decreasing rapidly. By the time he reached the other side, only 12% of his stamina was left.

  He dropped from the wire and waited for it to stop vibrating before he motioned to N3V3RDIE to jump up and start coming across.

  She came toward him, hand over hand, the exact same way he had done it. No_Idea watched her stamina tick away—and she had started crossing the wire with less stamina than he had. On her way across the field, No_Idea flinched each time she lost a percentage point. He wasn’t sure she would make it across.

  Slowly but surely, she did make it. She dropped from the wire with only 9% of her stamina left.

  “Good job,” No_Idea said.

  N3V3RDIE just nodded, panting, and headed through the exit door. They descended another staircase in darkness and silence. At the bottom, they found a glowing green door. N3V3RDIE was just about to touch it when she paused.

  “What are you waiting for?” No_Idea asked.

  “I-I-” N3V3RDIE stammered, “I need to tell you something.”

  “Well, tell me in the next level,” No_Idea said, reaching for the door himself.

  “No.” N3V3RDIE grabbed his arm. “I don’t know how the next level is going to begin, and I may not have a chance, so I’d rather tell you here.”

  No_Idea stopped. “Okay, what is it?”

  “Do you know why you’re here—why you’re playing this game?”

  No_Idea thought back to the beginning, to when the Game Runner had explained everything on the roof of the skyscraper. “I was chosen by that company—L33T . . . Corporation? You too, right?”

  “Yes,” N3V3RDIE said. “I was randomly selected to play.”

  No_Idea shrugged. “So, what are you getting at? We were both randomly selected. So what?”

  N3V3RDIE took a deep breath. “I was randomly selected. You weren’t.”

  Chapter 14

  “What do you mean I wasn’t randomly selected?” No_Idea asked.

  “L33T C0RP selected me,” she explained. “And they told me that I needed to have a partner in the game, but that’s not really something I’m used to. Most of the games I play are single-player and I don’t have a partner. I don’t really, uh—” she hesitated. “I don’t really do teamwork, but I still had to choose one.”

  “Wait,” No_Idea said. “Are you saying—”

  “I chose you.”

  “What?” No_Idea was angry—furious. “What do you mean you chose me?”

  N3V3RDIE took a step back. “They gave me a bunch of profiles to choose from. I—I . . . I picked yours.”

  “All this time,” he started. “All this time, you’ve been telling me that you’re the one that’s going to win, that I’m no good at these games, that I don’t know what I’m doing—and you’re the reason I’m here? You’re the reason I might be stuck in a stupid video game forever?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why would you even choose me? Didn’t it say in my profile that I never play video games? What possible advantage could I have offered to you?”

  “I wanted to win,” N3V3RDIE explained. “I chose someone that I thought I would be able to beat.”

  “You chose me so I would lose? That was the advantage? I die, and you win.” He began to wonder when she planned to double-cross him. They had been working together this whole time, but she had clearly thought that, when the time was right, she’d throw him under the bus and take the victory for herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’ve never really worked as part of team before. I guess I didn’t really think it through.”

  Her apology meant nothing to No_Idea. It was entirely possible that he’d be stuck in this zombie nightmare forever all because this girl—whom he had never met before in his life—had picked his profile out of a list, and he had been specifically selected so that she could beat him.

  “You realize that your decision may make us both lose and get us stuck here forever, right?”

  She lowered her head. “Yeah, I know. I—I’m really sorry.”

  She could apologize until she ran out of stamina. It wouldn’t make any difference to him. “Why tell me now?”

  “We’ve been through three out of four levels, and we haven’t had to compete with each other once. I thought this game was going to be two players fighting for superiority, but now I know that it’s not. It’s two players fighting together for survival. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.” She paused for a moment. “I owed you the truth. I’m the reason you’re here, and I—” she hesitated again. “I should have been treating you as a partner this whole time. I get that now. You have my apologies.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. “You’re so generous.”

  “Sorry,” she said again.

  “Yeah,” No_Idea snapped. “You are.” He leaned past her and touched the door, ending the level.

  Chapter 15

  The final level began back on the street. The safe zone’s green beam was straight in front of them.

  N3V3RDIE quickly grabbed No_Idea and pulled him behind a dumpster. They had started the level standing in the middle of the street in full view of the swarm of zombies.

  The walk would have been easy, but between them and the structure, the street was packed with thousands upon thousands of zombies. The level was appropriately named. No_Idea thought it looked like the entire world’s population standing between them and their goal. The zombies were surging, shuffling aimlessly, and the collective moaning was louder than he would have thought possible.

  He could see the safe zone itself, a large structure about seven stories high, with shiny metal walls and rotating spotlights shining down onto the street. It was more than just a fictional safe zone in a virtual world to him. It meant the end of this horrible experience.

  “What do you want to do?” N3V3RDIE asked.

  “Why don’t you try to bash your way through them?” No_Idea replied with a glare.

  N3V3RDIE lowered her head. “I said I’m sorry. I realize what I did was wrong. What more do you want?”

  He felt the anger leave him. He knew it wasn’t worth it at this point—nothing could change the fact that they were both here in this game now.

  “Nothing, I guess,” he muttered. “It just sucks that you did that.”

  “I know,” she said. “I get that, especially now that we’ve gotten to know each other. But it’s not like I really had a choice.”

  No_Idea sighed. “Okay, well, whatever. It is what it is. Let’s just figure out how to get us both out of here.”

  “Right.”

  They looked around. Obviously they weren’t supposed to just plow through the swarm. They’d left the riot shield in the sewers, so that wasn’t an option anyway. They would have to go around. He peered over the top of the dumpster and saw that there was a shop directly in front of them with broken windows

  “Look at that shop over there,” he whispered to N3V3RDIE, gesturing to beyond the dumpster. “We can get inside through the windows. Follow me.”

  Crouching, they crept around the dumpster, over to the shop and, very carefully, through the broken window. Broken glass crunched under their feet, but they managed not to alert the swarm.

  The shop was actually a restaurant. There were overturned tables, fallen chairs, and crumpled, half-burned tablecloths scattered on the floor. They went through a door to the back, where they found a kitchen. The cabinets were all opened and cleared of anything edible, pots and pans scattered around the floor. Above the oven was a huge scorch mark from a long-extinguished fire.

  “There’s a door behind this shelf,” N3V3RDIE said from the back. The door was blocked by a metal cabinet wedged between the wall and deep fryer.

  She was positioning herself underneath it, just about to push it out of the way when No_Idea said, “Wait—I’ll do it. I have more stamina.”

  N3V3RDIE moved out of the way, and No_Idea took her place. The shelf was heavier than he had expected, or maybe he wa
s just so low on stamina that even lightweight objects seemed heavy now. Either way, he was able to get it standing upright and out of the way. The door was unlocked and opened into an alley.

  About five building lengths toward the safe zone, No_Idea saw four zombies huddled together. They wouldn’t be able to use the alley to get all the way to the end. They ducked behind a car.

  “How far can we get?” No_Idea asked.

  N3V3RDIE peeked over the top of the car and came back down to where he was crouching. “Maybe two buildings down before they notice us.” She took a second look over the car. “It looks like there’s a hole in the wall of one building, pretty far down.”

  No_Idea took a look for himself. An explosion had left a burned-out hole in the bricks of one of the buildings, but it was dangerously close to the zombies. He looked for any other way around them, but couldn’t spot anything that would work.

  “All right, let’s go for it,” he said.

  Still crouching, they wound their way around trash cans, piles of debris, and a staircase that had fallen off of one of the buildings’ fire escapes. When they got close to the zombies, they moved more slowly and carefully. As silently as they could, they slinked through the hole and into the next building.

  This must have been a clothing store, No_Idea thought. Much of the merchandise was scattered around in various states of deterioration. Metal racks and wire hangers were all over the floor. They walked through the store, careful not to jostle the hangers or kick any racks.

  This shop’s windows were—miraculously—intact. They could see the swarm in the street: hundreds of them packed up against the shop, shuffling around and bumping into each other. No_Idea and N3V3RDIE crouched to avoid being seen through the windows. There was no way flimsy glass could hold back that many zombies.

  They made their way to the back of the store, but there was no way to get to the safe zone from the street. N3V3RDIE sighed, rolling her shoulders and then her neck. As she tilted her head back, she froze.