I was at the top of the valley, and behind me the ravine threatened to suck me back down in another rock fall. I wasn't safe.
Nowhere was safe. At least I was feeling more and more healthy. My minions must be eating something, since it seemed like I was getting the occasional trickle of hit points.
At least the mansion I’d ignored a little while ago, the one with the crazy angles had a good view of the lower parts of Beverly Hills. If I really was going to have allies streaming into the area, it’d be good to have a vantage point like that. At least I’d be able to help if things went bad, and affect the attack once they were ready to reinforce me.
As I looped back in that direction I saw that the backyard had a lush orchard full of fruit tress encircling a big, overgrown weeping willow. I lay on my belly and crawled in that direction. If someone was scanning the hillside for me, there was still a chance I’d be spotted but I could worry about that. I just kept my face down and pushed forward, inch by inch.
When I finally made it to the orchard without being spotted, I let out a sigh. Can you sigh, without breathing? Whatever it was, it was a noise and I made it. There were things that looked like apple trees, and things that look like orange trees, and even some grapes hanging from rows of vines. Nothing hugely elaborate, but it would suit my purpose.
Besides, it was the weeping willow that interested me. It was huge, with one of those swinging chairs beneath it that I always pictured lovers sitting in in the bayous of Louisiana. At least weeping willows are easy to climb, which let me scurry up this trunk as quickly as I could. I concealed myself in the densest part of the foliage I could find, checked my surroundings, and waited.
It was a good hiding place. Most importantly, the area at its base was inviting. From down there you could see the whole road that led up to Beverly Hills from LA. It shouldn’t take too long for a few Survivors to decide to set up shop below me. After all, if I was looking for a place from which to pick off an army of would-be attackers, it would take a lot of willpower for me to resist this one.
I took a moment to let the world seep into my skin. For the first time in a long time, I had a few moments where the only thing I really needed to do was get out of my own way and experience every input that the game had to throw at me.
That was when I realized that I was hungry. Only it wasn’t the perpetual Zombie hunger of the game. I was used to that.
I was actually hungry…
Headshot must really be bugged if I was able to feel that. The rig was supposed to keep me from experiencing any emotions that might try and drag me away from the virtual experience. By all reports it was almost too good at blocking those feelings, but here I was, with a gnawing in my gut that no amount of Zombie feeding frenzy could possibly alleviate.
That got me thinking again about how long I'd been in the game. I couldn’t pretend that it was still Wednesday. Not anymore. That mansion had looked like it had been burnt to the ground at least a day before I’d inspected the damage, and that was being conservative.
Now that it was the middle of the night and I had minions in several places to wreak havoc, I should probably log out. Maybe I should even reset the rig and try to get my UI back. Besides, if I was starting to experience a bleed through from the real world ow, it was only going to get worse. The last thing I wanted was something else breaking in the game and me dying because of it. I'd come so far, and I didn't want to risk any distractions in the coming battle.
So, I willed myself out of the game.
Nothing happened…
I frowned, trying a little harder. When that didn't work either I pushed against the invisible wall that they told you to imagine in front of your face if you really needed to break out of the game.
There still wasn’t an effect. Something was holding me back, and when I strained as hard as I could I wasn’t surprised to hear Sasha’s voice thunder through my head. "Are you sure you need to log out? I need you to get to Silicon Valley. Please don't forget!"
That pissed me off. I was still my own person, and instead of wasting my time answering her I redoubled my efforts and forced myself out of the game as hard as I could, mentally throwing myself against whatever barriers she had somehow managed to wrap around my consciousness.
The next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground in my game room. The stink of old, crusted vomit drifted to my nostrils and I instinctively put my hand to the top of the head. The helmet was ajar. That was the only reason I’d gotten out of the game. My muscles must've spasmed, which wasn’t supposed to happen either, and I’d flopped on to the ground.
In the end, the fact that I was too poor to afford the proper type of chinstrap for the helmet had saved me from being stuck in the game for who knows how long.
There was another possibility, of course. Maybe the equipment wasn’t bugged. What if Sasha had been the one screwing with my UI and letting the real-world hunger affect me in the game, either accidentally or on purpose? I don't think it was really her intention to keep me locked into Headshot in the first place, but there was no point in denying that the power Sasha had in the game went far beyond any explanation she'd given me so far.
It took a couple of minutes, but I managed to push myself into a sitting position. I knew I was going to be wobbly on my feet, but the mattress I’d been reclining on was on the wrong side of me to let me reach out and use it to steady myself. Maybe a while ago it would have been okay, but now that I didn’t have a hand, I needed to be aware of how that changed the way I interacted with the environment.
Except… I looked down at my hands. They were both lying limply in my lap. My real hand, the one of actual living flesh and bone was right there where it should be.
I felt the world shift sideways and my center of gravity followed it. I slid down the wall and barely caught myself before I fell over again. The game was leaking into my brain, and my brain was leaking into the game. That much was painfully obvious.
I was starving. There was nothing in the house to eat, and I was too weak and in too much of hurry to go to the store and get something. I got my phone and ordered the usual, pizza from the local joint. They knew me, and it wouldn’t take long for the pizza to get arrive. There was still time to stagger down the hallway and spend a few minutes underneath the water in the shower, so I did.
Once I washed the vomit and its stink from me, I threw on a new pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt. Finally, I was starting to feel better. I was still a bit woozy when the knock on the door came, but I hurried to the door, one hand on the wall to steady myself. Normally, I made this transaction a couple of times a week. I knew it would be Jimmy with the pizza out there, since it always was. Over the years I’d made it a point to tip him a little bit extra, primarily because I felt bad that I never really want to talk to him.
It wasn’t his fault. I just had no room for small talk in my life, and when I wanted a transaction to be simply I-pay-you-and-you-feed-me, I didn't have the patience for a drawn out, useless conversation.
That was why I liked Jimmy. The pizza was okay, but the reason I kept going back was because he got it. He never made small talk. He handed me my pizza and went on with his life. I'd take mediocre pizza all day long if it meant that I could keep my sanity and not have to pretend to smile and listen to someone's bullshit jokes until I could finally find a spot in the conversation to politely close the door in their face.
Jimmy had always seemed to understand our literal unspoken arrangement, which was why I was so surprised when I opened the door and he said, “Hey man, are you okay?”
Stunned, I could only nod. The mirror in the bathroom had been too foggy for me to see my reflection, but I probably looked like shit. I glanced over his shoulder at his car, too anxious to meet his eyes. He’d left the door ajar just like he always did, and the inside was lit by the interior light. I frowned as I saw at least twenty pizza boxes stacked up in the passenger seat, each of them enshrouded in stay hot plastic.
/> “That’s a lot of pizza,” I croaked, my throat dry, my voice thick with disuse.
Jimmy turned and followed my gaze. "Fridays are always our busiest night. I brought yours first, though."
His words slid through me like a knife, sharp and sure, just jagged enough to catch on my ribs as on their way through to piercing my heart. "What did you say?"
Jim shrugged, thrusting the pizza at me. “Fridays are busy, that’s all.” Something in my voice had scared him, and when I took the pizza box from him he didn’t waste any time turning on his heel and hurrying back to his car.
I thought about calling out after him, but what would have been the point? Why harass the dude if I didn't have to? Instead, I held onto the pizza even tighter as I closed and locked the front door. Once the house was secured I stepped back into my game room, barely dodging the crusted slop of my evacuated stomach contents before sitting down at the computer.
Friday! Jimmy had said that it was Friday night.
I checked the time on the computer, and found that it was even worse than that. It was 12:13 at night, and since it was past midnight that meant it was technically Saturday. I had twenty-four hours of game time, give or take a few minutes, before Headshot ended the game for the week and dumped everyone from their servers.
Twenty-four hours to get to Silicon Valley, if I decided to try and get the brick to Sasha.
I wolfed down the pizza as I logged into the Headshot forums. Once I was in there, it was pretty disconcerting. So much had happened, but most of the top voted posts were a long litany of complaints.
I clicked on some of the headings at random.
Fire kills too fast!! How the **** are we supposed to put ourselves out??
Hit in the head with a bat ONCE and died? OMG - FML…
Help! Fell off a building and broke my legs. Hit points won’t stop going down. What now?
PLS fix the balance! Other team OP and derp dive doesn’t care. PTW crap.
There were pages and pages of that stuff. I’d hoped that I would go on there and find some mention of Beverly Hills and its new Battleground status, maybe even an attack plan I could chime in on, but it became clear to me pretty quickly that the forums were, as always, a cesspool.
What a fucking mess this launch was turning into… The game was buggy as hell and it never should have been released like this. The hacks and downtime were sure to torpedo Headshot in the press. Deep Dive studios had already probably done as much as they could by offering those rewards and letting all the Survivors respawn, but it was still an unadulterated shitshow.
Sadly, I had no doubt that the game was probably going to struggle to make it past the first couple of months. They’d botched the most important of any game by not stopping the constant interruptions, and it was going to be a hard thing to come back from. The hackers may have killed Headshot already, which made me wonder if I’d be in trouble if I helped Sasha by doing her bidding.
I didn’t know the answer to that, but I figured that Deep Dive still had a huge war chest. If anyone could right the ship, it would be them.
Not that any of that mattered right now. I could see at the top of the screen that my account had already been credited with $10,000, and I knew that I could transfer that out whenever I wanted. When I clicked on it, the only information I got was that it had been a gift from an anonymous player, though I knew that Sasha had been my benefactor. The rest of the money would be there too, if I get to the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley and bring her back the brick.
As I devoured the last piece of pizza, I decided that I’d do it. After all, I had nothing to lose. I doubted that I'd been good enough to win any of the rewards Deep Dive had added as an incentive to play this week. Besides, if the game really was going to go belly up sooner as opposed to later, then I’d be a fool not to make some money along the way while I could.
I deserved it. I'd been the idiot that had crowdfund and preordered early access to a bunch of games that had never made it out of their honeymoon period. It sucked, but that was the price you paid to stay on the bleeding edge of these things. The VR market had reinvented everything, though it might take a little while for investors and gamers alike to trust something as bold and ambitious as Headshot had been.
In any event, I needed to get back in there. I was starting to get an odd sort of fractured vision. Every time I blinked it felt like I was looking down though the branches of the weeping willow at the Sniper and his machete apprentice, and the only way I could force myself to clearly see the pizza crusts and the computer screen was by rubbing my eyes so hard that I saw stars in front of them too.
I was about to get up from the chair before I realized that I had one more thing I had to do. I didn't want to think about it being a necessity, but the game itself had proven that it was so prone to bugs and exploits that I needed to write myself an insurance policy before I dove back in.
So, I opened an email and addressed it to Lori. I stared at the screen for longer than I needed to, not really knowing what I wanted to say. Finally, I just gave up trying to be witty or suave and just typed a single sentence. It said everything it had to.
It's Saturday Morning and I’m going back into the game.
It was probably so vague that it was useless, but I really couldn't bring myself to ask for help or to hope that she’d check on me if she didn't hear from me by Sunday. I didn't know where she and I stood, but by leaving it that ambiguous I gave myself an out. When everything was okay, at the end of all of this, I could just email her or text her that the email had been a mistake…
Once the email was sent, I got back on the mattress, but the helmet back on and jumped back into Headshot for what might be the last time.
Chapter 42
From my perch, I could plainly see pair after pair of headlights driving in from the road to Los Angeles; ten trucks in total. The Survivors that jumped out were wearing headgear that illuminated the area in front of them, and their equipment told me that they were a lot more hardcore than the enemy I was used to dealing with. The ones I’d been coming across seemed like local patrols compared to their reinforcements.
I frowned. This complicated things. These newcomers looked like they’d hit a military barracks on their way in. Even from here I could hear the ones in charge barking orders, and they started unloading crates full of weapons.
A couple minutes later I heard automatic fire from their direction and saw staccato muzzle flashes. From the way they were aiming I thought they were just becoming familiar with the weapons, and when I saw a few flamethrowers open up and spray fire in wide, wild skyward arcs that notion was confirmed.
Once they finally ceased their show of power, I heard the crackle of static and the faint monotone of radio chatter drift up to me. Obviously, these guys knew what they were doing. They’d clearly responded to the new Battleground conditions and were eager for their chance at amplified experience.
Were they all from the same guild? I wondered for a moment if there were any Eternals down there, and then decided against it. If there had been I was pretty sure that Sasha could have worked out a way for them to either take the brick she wanted so badly from me or at least get me to Silicon Valley. I’d never heard of Survivors and Zombies working together for anything, and the fact that we all looked so similar and couldn’t communicate with the other faction very effectively was meant to limit those types of interactions.
I heard the metal on metal grind of a gate being forced open and looked in that direction. Sure enough, the spot beneath the willow had already attracted a couple of campers. A sniper and some sort of melee fighter with paired machetes and a patch over one of his eyes were making a beeline for the chair swing beneath me.
I watched in frozen silence as they set up shop beneath me. The sniper snapped off some branches from a nearby apple tree, fashioning a forked brace and digging it into the ground in front of him. Once his construction was complete, he set his rifle in the mak
eshift tripod and sighted down the scopes. “Easy,” he said to the machete dude. “Just watch my back.”
“Whatever,” his partner growled. “You and I both know the real fight’s going to happen down there. You and that rifle may be racking up the kills from here, but I need to get down there in the middle of things if I want to level.”
“Just guard me for a bit, huh? We’ll go down when it’s time to mop up…”
I didn’t think the one with the machetes believed him, and I didn’t either. From where they were, the sniper would have a clean shot at any Zombies that had the misfortune to try and climb the hill right now. With the firepower he was sporting, combined with an entrenched position, my new allies wouldn’t have much of a chance.
But I waited. Even though I didn't want any potential allies to be taken out, in the end I reminded myself that they were expendable. I wasn't, at least not to me. Maybe it was pure arrogance, but the truth was that I deeply believed that if this assault had a chance at being successful it would be because I turned the tide up here. The Zombies that I hoped would be on their way would be a distraction at first, and I had to use them to my advantage.
Thankfully, I was surprised to find that it was easy to be patient. My muscles didn't hurt. My body didn't have the desire to move. There was no urge to readjust my position, and my dry mouth didn't need my dry tongue to lick my dry lips. I could sit here forever, with only the low-level annoyance of the Zombie hunger slowly growing in my belly like a smoldering fire that could never fully be extinguished.
Headshot: One in the Gut (Book 1 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 23