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

by Matthew Siege

  But that didn’t change the one fact I couldn’t let myself lose sight of: If I let them organize, I'd was done.

  I looked around at the dark hills and the mansions dipped in shadows. Not for the first time, I couldn't help but notice how much the real world relies on electricity. I suppose it was obvious, but as I saw how many of these mansions had front gates that required electromagnets to roll open, not to mention a working current to operate the web of security systems and closed-circuit cameras that was meant to keep the owners safe in day to day life.

  The winding road up the hill casually connected wide estates and sprawling properties, and they prided themselves on their privacy. After all, who wants to spend millions of dollars on a house up here, only to look across the street and have your view ruined by someone else’s mansion?

  Nobody, that’s who. They wanted to feel like the whole world was their oyster, and that meant that they’d do whatever they could to avoid having to admit that they shared the area with neighbors who were at least as rich as they were. It was a farce, of course. But most of the things we experience every day are really just one part or another of a well-oiled, well-timed and conveniently believed illusion.

  Now that the end was near and the power was out, the layout of Beverly Hills was going to be its undoing. The way they insisted on spreading everything out meant that I could slip from one place to the next with relative ease. If I was back home, where they were anywhere between seventy-five and a hundred houses on the same street, I’d have been a lot more limited. Back there, your bedroom window usually stared straight into someone else’s brick wall. If you wanted to own a chunk of land, you had to do it by taking the fight door to door.

  Behind me, I could hear yells of pain and echoing screams. Gunshots punctuated the night once more, and this time they didn’t trail off. Instead, it was like someone had lit a line of firecrackers, and more and more sporadic blasts sounded from up and down the hillside. A bright flash flared up at the base of the road, near the guard house I’d already neutralized, and a low whumph rolled up through the ground and sent a concussive wave of heat up the valley.

  Whatever was going on, they weren’t jumping at shadows anymore. The fight was kicking off.

  Suddenly there were panicked shouts and screams off to my left, over on the slope where I'd piled the rocks on top of the Zombie I’d turned when he’d been trying to bandage himself up. Automatic weapon fire ripped up from fold in the land where I’d left him, tracers arcing up wildly into the sky. I hoped he was getting revenge on the bastards that had abandoned him down there, and I concentrated on the mental tally Headshot was feeding me of my allies.

  Fourteen.

  Fifteen.

  I guess he got them both… I pictured the big guy in body armor checking the body of the player he’d no doubt spent the early part of the week victimizing, only to meet a brutal end as vengeance claimed him.

  So much for side quests, you shit head.

  Even better, it looked like whoever was still crazily pulling the trigger down there was actually taking some fire from across the valley in return.

  This was exactly the bedlam I needed. I wanted Beverly Hills to be rife with jumpy Survivors terrified of every shadow, frightened of every imagined movement in the dark. I wanted them taking accidental pot shots at each other, and if they scored a hit in the night I wanted whoever they’d shot to get pissed off and fire back. I was pretty sure at this late stage of the game that Deep Dive studios would allow some level of friendly fire Player Killer mechanic.

  The [Battleground] can now be upgraded to a [War Zone]. [War Zones] will allow Players from either faction to instantly reinforce you from other areas of [Southern California]. These reinforcements will arrive in preset holding areas at the outskirts of the battle. All allies who accept the offer to fight in the [War Zone] will gain benefit from triple experience gains.

  The enemy commander must also agree to upgrade the area to the status of [War Zone]. Be aware that this escalation in aggression will likely quickly turn your engagement into a much larger battle, resulting in a fight to the death which you may not survive.

  As the ranking Zombie in this area, do you want to upgrade the [Battleground] to a [War Zone]?

  The game’s message was so welcome that I heard myself make a noise that sounded eerily similar to a human laugh. That was exactly what I wanted. Allies warping in? Powerful Zombies from other parts of California coming to my aid me?

  It was a gamer's wet dream, and I quickly thought YES! at the Headshot interface.

  A long moment passed. Another. I was expecting it to acknowledge the choice I’d made, but the message just hung there, almost completely transparent unless I stared directly at it.

  A series of small explosions rocked the distance, somewhere over by the NPC guard that I'd murdered. I might've taken out the sniper and his machete buddy, but obviously another group had set up shop to reinforce such a vulnerable position.

  And, by the sounds of it, they'd already found someone to fight…

  The enemy commander has declined the opportunity to upgrade this [Battleground] to a [War Zone].

  I growled quietly to myself. Just my luck. Whoever was running things on the Survivor’s side was too chicken shit to open the floodgates, but I guess I couldn't blame them. What was happening now might seem amazing to me, but in the grand scheme of things it was probably just one fight amongst many. If they thought they could take us without more Zombies being allowed to aid me, then they’d be fools to give me more allies to work with.

  I suppose I couldn't blame them. It made sense to keep things contained, if they thought they could.

  As I looked on, a pair of pickups and a long, sleek limo rolled down the street toward the gate. Heavily armed soldiers leapt from them even before they rolled to a stop, taking fighting positions all along the base of the hill.

  Not for the first time, I wished that there was some way that I could coordinate with the Zombies that would be on their way to help. If they were just going to march straight up the road into Beverly Hills, they’d end up walking straight into the teeth of the defense. It would be far better for them to use some stealth on the way in so that they could clamber up the hills, using their Hide in Shadows abilities to creep up on the mansions from a dozen different directions at once.

  But I didn't think that I could get down there in time to be of any use. I was better suited to staying back where I was, keeping a steady flow of ex-Survivors turned against their former teammates. The more butchery I enacted, the more chance I had of catching my opponents in a pincer movement. By the time they realized how bad it was, with any luck it would already be too late.

  I started crept over to where I’d left the Zombie beneath the rocks, glancing up to gauge the smoke and clouds crossing the moon. When it was darkest, I moved. It didn’t take me long to get there, and once I did my Lowlight Vision let me see that the little valley was full of bodies, most of them climbing up the hill in my direction. They were probably draw by the promise of more food, and I swept my gaze across them once more to make sure that there weren’t any Survivors to finish off.

  There weren’t. I counted six Zombies, their AI already more responsive to my desires thanks to my Infectious Will ability.

  Follow me, I thought at them. We've got work to do.

  It seemed like every little pocket of gunfire and panic set off a couple more, and over the course of the next sixty seconds I watched as more than half of the entrenched positions I’d been keeping track of started either milling around like a kicked hornet’s nest or firing in the vague direction of the main road into Beverly Hills.

  I didn’t know if they knew exactly what they were shooting at, but as another explosion went off down there and the white-hot blast reflected from hundreds of pairs of Zombie eyes, it became clear that blood was about to spill and meat was about to be torn from bone.

  Chapter 45

  I’d
been ready to oversee a surgical attack, playing the tactician from the shadows as my minions and, ideally, the Zombie players that managed to get up here with me did the dirty work. But now, I knew that I had to be bold. I couldn't wait forever, because time was no longer on my side. The night wouldn't last, and when the darkness evaporated so would a lot of my advantage.

  The streets swam with survivors, so I knew my little cohort and I couldn’t use those. Instead I went straight up the hillside, digging in to the chaparral for purchase. That was one of the things I was really beginning to appreciate about Beverly Hills; everything was built on tiers. The people wealthy enough to live up here all wanted the view, which meant that they crowded the edge of the cliff sides with their houses like lemmings.

  It also meant that if we were willing to traverse the land by clambering up and down the hills we could completely escape the patrols that would love to put us in their sights.

  On the next level up, I sent three of my minions in. No hiding in the shadows and waiting for loners this time. Now, I needed them to do some immediate damage. Spread fear, panic, and infection amongst the ranks!

  I took the three Zombies that remained and climbed even higher, though when I got to the next level of houses I skipped it and continued my ascent. This Biggs guy sounded like the one they were all reporting to. He was the one that had refused to upgrade Beverly Hills to a War Zone, and I was going to take the fight to him.

  The best place for him to lead the defense from was the top of everything, so I decided I was going to find him. Maybe when I brought the fight to him, he’d have a couple of minutes to regret ignoring all of the signs that he’d been infiltrated before we ended his reign. He and his lieutenants would probably be gathered around a table in the uppermost mansion, and I thought the best sort of justice I could provide my Zombie brethren that would surely perish in the streets below was to take the fight to Biggs.

  Once I cut off the ones at the top of the chain of command, the lesser guilds that were manning the defenses would start to crumble as their command structure buckled.

  I suppose that was one way that the Survivors were a lot like us; if you take out the head, the rest can't function worth a damn.

  But, as excited as I was, I still needed to be careful. If anything, I needed to be more cautious than I’d ever been. Everything that was going to go down in the next few minutes needed to go right the first time, because there was no going back.

  I clung to the side of the hill with my one good hand and climbed. I told the three minions that were still with me to fan out, thinking it was a good idea to hit Biggs and his guys from more than one direction at once. I had visions of some type of assault raid, with a SWAT team kicking in the windows, tossing in flash bangs amidst a peppering of carefully placed double taps.

  But that wasn't going to be the case. For a start, we were Zombies and those sort of tactics simply weren’t an option. Also, as I reached the top of the highest hill and peered cautiously over the edge, I saw that the people I was looking for were standing right no more than twenty feet from me...

  Chapter 46

  There were floodlights everywhere, splashing light around in wide arcs. The roof of the mansion had some spotlights attached to it, and these cut through the night in random patterns as the guys operating them desperately tried to catch us in the open, before we had a chance to bring them to their knees.

  The top of the hill had only one property, far and away the grandest one I’d seen up here. It reminded me of some type of ancient government building meshed with polycarbonate materials, a tech-studded Acropolis perched at the top of Beverly Hill in such a way that it could take in the layout of every other property from its sweeping vista. Literally and figuratively, it looked down on everything below it. No doubt whoever owned this place in real life did exactly that, sipping their coffee content in the knowledge that they were the only one that could ever say they lived at an altitude that would not be superseded.

  When the rest of us in the Los Angeles basin looked up and saw this place glistening in the sun, or shining in the darkness thanks to what looked to be thousands of blindingly bright LEDs, the only thing they wanted us to remember was that they were never going to be one of us.

  I’d climbed up behind the mansion without realizing it, and I saw all of that light glistening off the surface of a massive circular pool to the rear of the five figures standing close at hand. Now that I concentrated I could hear the hum of what had to be an army of generators, which explained the floodlights.

  The Survivors were looking past me, at the battle beginning below, but I pressed myself flat against the side of the hill anyway and froze. I was surprised by how well prepared their headquarters were, but there was no turning back now.

  As carefully as I could, I took a moment and scanned the area, trying to work out a way to get through this without having to make a direct, frontal assault. I was a Schemer, after all. I figured if I didn't at least give myself a chance to come up with some dirty tricks I might not have bothered to make the journey up here in the first place.

  But it looked I wasn’t going to come up with anything overly clever, no matter how much time I gave myself. There was a wide, open field between the pool and I, not to mention me and the pool. A couple of Survivors had dragged an expensive looking dining room table out of the mansion and were using it to plan their defense, and as I watched the five Survivors moved away from me and turned back to rejoin the discussion.

  The darkness held surprises as well, as a patrol’s equipment got too close to the arc of a spotlight and revealed glinting equipment. They were painted in some sort of material that had gone a long way to fooling my Low Light vision, but their mistake told me that there would be others hunting us out here too.

  I ran through everything in my head that I knew the game would let me do. Headshot was a lot of things, but at least on the Zombie side of the game it kept us… Well, I guess it kept us on our toes. Maybe it was because I'd taken such a roundabout path of advance, or maybe it was because of the bugs and whatever else Sasha had somehow implemented in the code, but I knew by the continued lack of my Heads Up Display and the fact that I had at least two full days of missing time that something was incredibly broken.

  I shook my head to clear it. I couldn't think like that. If the game is bugged, that was only worth thinking about later. For now, it was completely out of my control. I needed to concentrate on the things that I could affect, the rules I either could follow or manipulate, the abilities I could trigger in order to get a known outcome. I could heal, if I could find something to eat. That was always an essential need, but not right this second. I didn't feel like I was low on health, at least not enough to warrant going back and trying to find something weak enough for me to scarf down before I rejoined the fray. I could Lunge. That would let me cross distances fast and engage in combat with element of surprise. Useful as it was, it wouldn’t let me take on numbers like this.

  I had an Infectious Bite that would let me turn both NPC's and Survivors into my minions. That was integral to what I was, and if I was going to make it out of here alive it was going to be the one thing that bailed me out.

  I had that radio or brick or whatever the hell I was supposed to be calling it in the backpack still, but I didn't think it would be much use. Not right now, at least.

  I suppose that I could try to Howl. It had worked before, but for some reason my instincts were telling me to hold off. Without a UI it was hard to tell what type of cooldown the ability had, and if I tried it and it failed, I’d be completely exposed. Besides, I didn’t know for a fact if it would work on my AI allies the same way it did with the Player controlled ones. Even if it did, there weren’t enough of us up here yet for even that buff to make a difference in the outcome.

  Not yet, at least…

  Now that the leaders of the Survivors were all looking down at the documents they’d spread across the table by the pool, I risked
a glance over my shoulder at the valley below and let my Low Light Vision do its work. Down at the base of the hill I could make out an ever-increasing trickle of Zombies that were pouring in, no doubt responding to the Battleground conditions. They were here for the increased experience, and it looked like they were more than willing to risk their virtual lives for the chance at it.

  Even now, they were taking fire from a dozen places at least, but they were nothing if not tenacious. Any Zombie still in the game would be a pretty high level and therefore a dangerous opponent, and those guys down there were certainly spoiling for a fight.

  I was determined not to waste them, but that meant I had to disrupt the Survivor’s defensive structure enough to give them a chance to rout the enemy. After all, I didn’t want to let them down.

  With a sinking feeling, that thought echoed around inside of me. I realized how central the fear of disappointing everyone was to me, and it set off a chain of memories that was hard to get away from. If I screwed this up, I really would be disappointing everyone. Janice at work. The random people on the forums who might one day work out that some loser from the suburbs of Los Angeles had crashed this Beverly Hills party and squandered the chance to make these rich people worry. Even Lori.

  And Sasha…

  I didn't know if she was watching me, but I felt like she was somehow present. I couldn’t imagine that Headshot had any sort of observer mode, since the potential to abuse it and leak secrets to the other side would be immense, but what did I know? Even if they didn’t, Sasha had already shown an innate ability to make the game do things that it shouldn’t be able to do. Was it really so insane that she could find a way to ride through the ether and watch me?