Headshot: One in the Gut (Book 1 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy)

by Matthew Siege

  I dragged the padded helmet off my head and stood up on wobbly legs, heading into the kitchen with the phone pressed to my ear. It had been a dumb question. Lori was a gamer too. It was one of the few things she and I had in common. "So, you’ve been playing Headshot too, huh? How far have you gotten?"

  "Just a couple of levels. I had to work today. But I’ve got tomorrow off, so I thought that maybe you and I could meet up in game and raise a little hell. And before you get scared," she said with a little laugh, “I’m not saying it will be just like the old days. Don’t worry about that. I just thought it might be fun, that’s all.” I listened to her chew and swallow again and this time I had to bring my thumb to my lips to absently wiped away a strand of drool. This was getting ridiculous. I was starving.

  I took a deep breath and held it for a second. If she was only level 2 or 3 that she hadn’t gotten far enough to make the decision about whether or not to be a Tank. It might be fun to be with her when she discovered the choice that lay ahead of her. Even so, my gut was telling me no. “It’s brutal in there,” I confided. “Between you and me, I’m not sure it’s working.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s amazing! Everything is so real. Maybe there is something wrong with your helmet…”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Lori laughed. “You’re not washing out at me, are you Ryan? Our actions have consequences in there. The choices we make matter. It’s so different to what I’m supposed to think of is the real world. I am too used to the bullshit out here, I guess.”

  I shrugged, embarrassed. I tried to be honest with her, but she just decided that I was a coward. “All I’m saying is that it’s stressful. That’s it. I’m not telling you I won’t go back in, and I’m not thinking of quitting. But the survivors have just about every edge, and it’s getting so that I can’t move around in that world without imagining my brains getting splattered an instant later.”

  Before she even answered I knew that she wasn’t going to get it. It was always like that with her and I. I don’t know if it was my fault for never being able to explain what I was thinking, or hers for always assuming that she knew what I was about to say. Whoever was to blame, the walls that had been built up between us were clearly still standing strong. “That's why I was calling you,” she said. “I don’t begrudge what the survivors bought for themselves, but it sure is rough out there as a Zombie. Maybe some teamwork won’t go astray. Two’s better than one, and all that, right? "

  I realized that I was standing in the center of the dark kitchen. I hadn’t even bothered to turn the light on. Confused, I looked back over my shoulder and into the darkened hallway. I hadn’t hit that switch either. You have got to get a grip, I told myself as I went over to turn on the light. You’re not in the game anymore. The fucking power works, idiot. Use it.

  Once it was bright enough for me to see I made my way to the refrigerator. There wasn’t anything edible in there. I opened one of the cupboards and found a can of spaghetti. Good enough. I got out the can opener and started to decapitate the metal cylinder that contained my meal. "Okay," I said, hating myself for agreeing but not really seeing the way out. “But just remember, we don’t have a way to communicate in there. I’d rather not cobble together some chat program to lay over the UI, so just follow me, okay? If the shit hits the fan, will go our separate ways."

  But we’re both used to that, aren’t we? I didn’t say it, but it didn’t have to. The words still found a way to float down the phone line, and even if Lori didn’t hear them I sure as hell did.

  “Awesome! Where are you in the game?"

  I shrugged. "Somewhere in South LA. I didn't really recognize the corner. It's not like I know the whole damn city like the back of my hand."

  Lori laughed at me. "Can't you just read the street signs? How hard can it be?"

  I shook my head at her. Usually she knew everything about every game we ever played together, obviously in her eagerness to get into Headshot She’d been missing a few of the details that I’d already picked up on. "Listen to you. Go ahead and try to read something the next time you login, idiot. See how far that gets you."

  "That sucks. I haven’t really tried yet, so I didn’t know. I suppose I could try and work my way toward you, though with our luck we just end up missing each other."

  I swallowed hard. I suppose I did miss her, but I wasn’t willing to admit it, not to Lori and not to myself. I had finally convinced myself that I was better off without her. "I’ve got a better idea," I told her, trying to cover up the silence. The last thing I needed was for her to think that she had some power over me still. “Let me grab something to eat and I’ll get back into the game. I was already headed home, since Los Angeles was looking more and more dangerous. Give me a couple hours and I’ll meet you at your house. Does that work? Are you near there?”

  “Perfect.”

  I thought was a pretty good idea myself. “Besides, if you want to lie low and hunt as a pair, it’s probably best if we do it in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe I could meet you at your place in game at… Well, shall say midnight?"

  "It's a date,” she said, though I thought I could hear the smile in her voice. "I can't wait."

  I frowned. Lori was a lot of things, I didn’t want her to be any of them to me anymore. Still, it would be good to have an ally in the game. The fact that I couldn’t rely on anyone in there was starting to take a toll on me, and I didn't see any reason why we wouldn’t level faster together, even if we did have to split the experience.

  Come to think of it, I was wondering if there was some type of grouping mechanic available in game. There hadn’t been one in the Beta, but that was beginning to mean less and less. I wonder if we would get actually get an experience bonus for being together…

  I realize that I hadn’t answered her. She was just hanging on her end of the phone and I was just listening to the silence that was growing between us. It was like a void. It was almost a tangible thing, and I felt the urge to throw myself down it and hope that it would close up over my head. "I'll see you then," I told her, whacking my bowl of spaghetti into the microwave and stabbing at the buttons. "I suppose it will be good to be back on home turf, you know?"

  "I do. Don’t be late, okay?"

  “I’ll do my best.” We both ended the conversation at the same time, and I put the phone back in my pocket.

  I knew something was wrong when I wasn’t dreading catching up with Lori in Headshot There were a lot of reasons that I should be, but the way the game stripped you of everything that you were, it made me start to wonder…

  Well, I suppose it was forcing me to question who I really was in the first place.

  There may not have been any food in the fridge, but I went back to it anyway and grabbed a couple of bottles of beer. And then I took out another one. Two would slake my thirst, and the third would hopefully stop me from embarrassing myself by being too nervous around Lori.

  I pushed those other thoughts away as well. It was only a damn game. I knew who I was.

  Ever since these games started there had been people telling you that you could spend too much time in them. I never believed it. And besides, this wasn’t my first rodeo. Maybe Headshot Was way more intense than anything that had come before it, but I was no babe in the woods.

  The spaghetti wasn’t very good but it didn't have to be. It had been cheap in the first place but I’d bought it because it had been on sale. It just had to be enough to get me through the night. That was all that mattered.

  Even though I was trying to clear my head will I chewed the food, my first instinct was to unfold the computer and check the Deep Dive studios forums. I didn’t let myself. I knew all too well that I would lose track of time. I’d often spent countless nights trying to min max different characters in different worlds, but it was too simple to get lost in something like that.

  I finished the spaghetti and drained the beers, went to the bathroom a
nd then headed back to my game room.

  If I was going to meet Lori at midnight, I better move my ass. If I got whacked along the way, then she’d just have to understand. Once I got to her house, if I made it at all, I’d have a couple of hours to group with Lori before I needed to crash. If I didn’t grab some sleep tonight, I’d be useless in the morning. That should be enough time to see if there really was a beneficial grouping mechanic. Maybe she and I could even hunt around our neighborhood for a while, but I couldn’t imagine anyone around here had been either rich or dumb enough to buy a Survivor subscription.

  I didn't have high hopes, but you never know. Even if all I did was show her the ropes, that would have to be enough.

  Not that anything had ever been enough for her in the past, of course…

  Chapter 17

  I got back into the game and surfaced from the river once more. I didn’t see anyone, and I don’t think anyone saw me.

  And then I headed for home. I wasn’t that far from the spot right where I had entered Los Angeles in the first place, just a few blocks from the ambush with the car bombs that had slaughtered so many of us. It was a risk to go back the way I’d come, but was also fastest.

  And so, I retraced my footsteps.

  I could tell by the way that I was playing the game that I didn’t really care if I got taken out. I was being cautious, but I wasn’t being careful. At every opportunity, I traded speed for cover. I knew that it would be a relief to stumble across a survivor and have them end my game for me.

  At least then I’d have an excuse not to catch up with Lori. But it didn’t work out that way.

  As I walked south I could feel something nagging at the base of my brain. I couldn’t put my finger on what the issue was, but I knew there was one. Something was wrong. Something was happening, and I felt like I should know what it was.

  Not that I did, unfortunately…

  It was an unsettling feeling and, as I traveled, I scanned the Heads Up Display to see if there was anything there would point me in the right direction to whatever I was missing. My experience was trickling, along. I’d just gotten to 4 for before I logged out, and I had a long way to go to level 5.

  My health looked like it should, and now that I had a few hit points to hold in reserve I wasn’t that afraid of the hunger mechanic kicking in. It would be a threat if I was injured, but I wasn’t. I scanned my list of abilities and didn’t see any clues there, either.

  So, what was wrong? Why did I feel so off balance?

  That was when I saw the clock at the bottom of my vision. It all kind of fell on me then, and I staggered under the weight of it. I had the distinct memory of checking the time just after I finished eating those two survivors at the other zombie had thrown from the roof. It had almost been 8 o’clock. I’d been ready for dinner. Hungry, but not famished.

  And when I logged out of the game minutes later, I’d gone from being underneath the waters of the Los Angeles River to hearing Lori on the other end of my phone. That’s when I’d been ravenous. I even checked the time on my phone when I started talking to her and it had said 9:30.

  So where had those ninety minutes gone?

  Chapter 18

  I made good time. Most of that was because I wasn’t the least bit concerned about my own safety. I got to her house unscathed and early, and I don’t know which of those two things surprised me more.

  Lori only lived a block away from me. It had been convenient when our relationship had first begun, though once that had soured it made every trip to the grocery store or the train station into a precarious jaunt through a minefield.

  Headshot wasn’t even twenty-four hours old, since it had launched at midnight the night before. Even though it felt like I’d gone through a lot since then, I was really right back where I started. Dark clouds were rolling in, and they made the moon into nothing more than a dim orb. My Low Light Vision was doing a good job of compensating against the darkness, brightening the black shadows to various tones of steel gray.

  Now that I was a bit more used to the launch version of Headshot and had a little time on my hands, I could let myself appreciate the little details the game’s fictional apocalypse backstory had draped over the familiar scenery.

  None of the houses on this street had gone unscathed. Her next-door neighbor’s place had somehow managed to get its roof caved in, and a few doors down there was actually a smoking ruin where the Fisher’s house should have been.

  I guess that was payback for them not playing the game. They were a brother and sister of about ninety who lived for nothing more than yelling at people when they walked too close to their fence line.

  Every window of Lori’s house was smashed. Her mailbox was missing, though I thought I could see it in the gutter, laying on its side.

  For a long, dizzying moment I wanted to use the extra time I had before I caught up with Lori to turn around and go to my own house. There was something I wanted to find out. There was something I wanted to try.

  I needed to know… If I looked in the window of my game room, would I see myself in there?

  Of course not, you idiot. I chastised myself. It felt like I was having to haul back on my own reins more and more often, and I didn’t like the sensation. You aren’t in there. You’re out here…

  I tried to distract myself by glancing down at my hit point indicator. The long walk here hadn’t burnt that many of my hit points, even though I hadn’t found anything or anyone to eat along the way. If I had to guess, that meant that there was some sort of carryover effect from the gluttony I’d indulged in before.

  That was good. I was happy that it would be a while before Hunger drove me into the madness that robbed me of my ability to choose what I attacked, and I had no intention of letting myself get down that low ever again. Not if I could help it, at least.

  Standing there with ten minutes to go before I was supposed to meet Lori, I had an idea.

  Lori was a joker. She had always thought of herself as a jester, and I knew for a fact that she prided herself on her wicked sense of humor. Unfortunately for me, sense we’d spent so much time together it often meant that her not-so-gentle barbs had often been aimed in my direction. I discovered to my horror that if she was ‘just joking’ she wrongly assumed that all would be forgiven once the prank was finished.

  Well, here was my chance to turn the tables. Lori had never been early to anything in her life, which should give me a chance to hide beside her front door and scare the shit out of her when she opened it. As jokes go I knew that it was hardly genius, but it was all that I had time for.

  Besides, it would serve them her right. It may be my only chance, however small, to get her back for all the crap she’d pulled on me over the years. Sometimes she’d teased me mercilessly, and I never liked being the butt of the joke. The things that she found funny had often put me on edge, and I’d lost count of the number of times that I’d stayed over at her house, only to discover that sometime in the night she’d tied my shoelaces together or hidden my toothbrush in the fridge.

  I stood across the street from her house and couldn’t help but feel envy. The game may have added a few dark touches to the landscape, but it didn’t bother to hide the fact that her lawn was well manicured. I knew there’d be a brand-new Mercedes in the garage, for instance, the same way that I knew that the house was bought and paid for by her parents. A few months ago they hit it big on some investment, and I’d heard on the grapevine that she was only keeping her job because she ‘needed something to do with herself’.

  Apparently, Lori was rich.

  I crossed the street as carefully as I could, looking both ways as I scanned for predators. I was trying to identify places that stood out as tactically important, ambush points were someone could bide their time before bursting out, guns blazing, or simply take a shot at me from hiding.

  With my new stats I may be able to tear someone apart if I got close enough to them, but the Survi
vors had one advantage that was probably going to prove impossible to ever find a way to nullify.

  Range.

  Thankfully, the mapping software that they'd purchased so publicly a couple of years ago was working wonders for Deep Dive studios. Every tree, bush, and shrub of her lawn had been exactly re-created. There were plenty of places to hide, and that got me thinking…

  What if Lori was planning the same thing I was? What if she was already there, crouched in the shadows? Waiting…

  It would be just like her to let me think that I finally had the upper hand, only to jump out from behind a bush and scare me half to death in a moment that I thought would be a victory for myself. I wondered about that. There was every chance that I was just being paranoid, but life with Lori had proven that just because I was paranoid didn’t mean that she didn’t have one of her pranks planned for me anyway.

  It was only 11:54 now. I didn’t have time to wait, and so I just across the street as stealthily as I could. If her plan was to surprise me, then so be it. Let’s get it over with.

  As I got to the sidewalk in front of her house I was surprised to discover that I was actually sort of looking forward to playing with her. I mean, it sounded like for once she didn’t already have the game figured out. She hadn’t even known that you couldn’t read street signs. Even though she tried to laugh it off, it was the sure sign of a noob. It would be a nice reversal of our previous roles for me to be able to teach her something, and maybe that would make Lori respect me a little bit more.

  Our relationship had tired me out because it had always felt so lopsided, though I knew that was my fault as much as hers. I rarely felt strong or competent enough to stand up for myself in the real world, but maybe our interaction in Headshot could be different. Hell, I could even show her the one real trick I felt that I had, logging out in the river. It wasn’t much, but it was a show of faith.