I ignored them and let my consciousness slip back into that bird’s eye view. Instead of hovering over us though, I forced my awareness North until I was drifting slowly over that big, swirling circle of zombies that were fighting up there. Now that I was over them, I could see just how far away they were from Silicon Valley. They were a lot closer that I was, but if I didn't get through to them soon even my new plan might not work.
I zoomed in on their leader. She was a brighter red dot than the rest, and I was surprised to find that she wasn't a Schemer. Instead she was something else, some sort of short, skinny thing that was neither completely a tall child nor a short adult. Misshapen bones marred her form, and it looked like her skeleton had decided to fold over and grow back into itself. Everything about her was knobby, and her blackened skin was so riddled with cracks and crevices that it looked more like pavement than flesh.
When I pressed my awareness closer to her, she looked up and cocked her head as if she was aware of my presence.
"Can you hear me?" I tried to ask.
She responded by staring into the air where my consciousness was hovering, possibly chalking whatever she was feeling up to the bugginess of Headshot the same way I would if our situations were reversed.
It took me a couple of tries but I managed to line my eyesight up with her eyes. When I had, I reached out with my phantom limbs and tried to grab her, eager to get through to her somehow.
No luck. It didn't work.
Uncertain of what to do next, I tried to find a moment of calmness. Panic wouldn’t help. I’d already done things I didn’t know possible, and if I could just see the forest for the trees here I might have a chance…
Either the game was letting me do some of this stuff because I was a Schemer or it was making up a few new rules along the way. That wasn’t that crazy, actually. At this early stage in the launch, why wouldn't the developers be in our heads, cherry picking ideas that might work and possibly even implementing them? Deep Dive needed every advantage they could get, especially with the critics baying for blood because of the downtime.
I backed off of the Northern army and zoomed back in on myself, only this time instead of letting go of the reins and drifting back into my own head, I stayed in the map view. I inspected my troops for a few long moments and was rewarded with a few of their stats, strengths and hit points. There was even a little paragraph about their effectiveness against other types of troops.
That was interesting, but it was far from the breakthrough I was looking for. That came next…
I let myself float along until I found the Puppet Master that had built a carriage of AI minions. He knew what he was doing. He had about forty helpers now, and if that wasn’t a sign of his ability I didn’t know what was.
I stared at him, trying to get into his mind. That was where the power I needed lay…
Would you like to recruit the [Mentalist]?
I frowned. Recruit him? Hadn’t I already done that? He was part of the Horde, after all. I shrugged and selected Yes.
The [Mentalist] has agreed to lend you their powers. Direct them.
Elated, I quickly zoomed out of my army and back in on the odd leader in the North. Here goes nothing… I smashed my will at the game, gritting my teeth and bearing down with every bit of rage and desire. If sheer determination was going to crack the code, this just might work. Headshot resisted, but I didn’t give up. Finally, I could push through the air and cross into her mind, doing the best attempt at possession I knew how to do.
Once I felt like she could hear me, I mentally screamed as loud as I could, "HEAD EAST. SILICON VALLEY. NOW! I NEED A WAR ZO-"
There was a bright flare of incredible pain in my frontal lobe and the world winked out.
When I finally opened my eyes again, I was staring into a dark sky. Without an internal clock on my vanished User Interface I didn't know what time it was still, but it was clearly Saturday night. I sat up slowly and looked around. Almost all of my retinue had abandoned me.
Fair enough. I couldn’t be surprised. They’d been good to me, but they were still humans playing a game. Nobody wanted to spend the last few hours of launch week staring at a lifeless corpse on the ground, not when they could be earning experience or smashing skulls.
I got to my feet as best I could, and the first thing I did without really looking around was go back into the map view.
It had worked! I couldn't believe it, but the proof was right there. That whole northern army had doubled back on itself, just like their leader’s bones. Better yet, there were still moving. They were almost to Silicon Valley.
Of course, now that they were pretty much exactly where I needed them to be I realized that my brain had shorted out before I’d been able to pass along some vital information to her. It wasn't enough that they’d gone to the right place…
Pissed off at myself, I heard a noise behind me and turned around to find that my loyal Trampler Riode was still with me. He was grinning at me like a big, ugly, Golden retriever and when I locked eyes with him he gave me a double thumbs up.
I didn’t feel his enthusiasm, but I returned the gesture. There was no point being an asshole to him. He was the closest thing I had to a friend in this game, and maybe the closest thing I had to one outside of it as well. Besides, he’d already rewarded me with loyalty that I didn't deserve, and the fact that he'd stayed when everyone else had left meant a lot to me.
It had all been for nothing.
The Silicon Valley area has been declared a [War Zone]. Zombie players in the region of Northern California have the option of warping into the designated staging areas. All experience gained at the behest of the leader of the Horde in that area will be tripled. Would you like to join them now?
My heart sang. I smiled, and I could tell by the eager nods of the Trampler that he was getting the same message. At least all that walking had gotten us to Northern California, and if we hadn’t kicked ass on the freeway the way we had all day it looked like I’d have been out of range of this warp mechanic.
Yes!, I practically shouted, and the world faded out around me as I went somewhere new in an instant.
The staging area. That must be where we were. The Tramper and I had arrived smack in the middle of where we needed to be, on a little elevation in the southern part of San Francisco. The Zombie army that had made the area a War Zone was about half a mile away, and I could already see that traveling this distance had cost them. They'd been pressing the Survivors when I’d contacted her, no doubt grinding them into the dirt.
But she’d changed direction, because of me. I didn’t like to use them like this, but there was no other way.
Riode and I needed to get do down to business, so he and I turned and hurried into the city. For the first time in what seemed like forever, even though I played most of this game completely alone, I felt that I was without an army to protect me. I'd grown so used to that ability to flex the sheer numbers of the Zombie Horde that, now that I was mostly alone again in possibly treacherous city I was feeling incredibly vulnerable.
When I glanced up at the office buildings and skyscrapers that surrounded me I was surprised to see lights in many of the windows. The power was spotty though, which told me that I was witnessing the work of generators and not a restoration of power from the grid. Still, if these guys were enjoying benefits like that, that it was clear to me that they hadn't really had to fight for their lives the way they had in Los Angeles.
Maybe this was a bastion. I could imagine that guilds like the Eternals headquartered in Silicon Valley because it was far enough out of the way to not be worth an attack but had enough infrastructure to be worth holding.
The Computer Science Museum wasn’t far away. It was even marked on my mental map, and I knew that had been Sasha’s doing. Now that I was almost to my destination, I was hoping that they’d be watching for me. Surely, they’d be smart enough to have spotter on the lookout for me, especially if they wa
nted this brick badly enough to pay a small fortune for it.
Riode was nervous, and I didn't blame him. Out here are death could come swift and silent from any of a dozen directions. At least he had the hit points and the armor to sustain a few shots. One well-placed bullet would be the end of me, and I wouldn't even get to see what had taken me out before I was back home, dealing with the repercussions of whatever VR illness I'd probably succumb to again.
Not to mention the regret of having come so far, only to fail.
But what was I supposed to do? I looked up at the moon. I wasn't good at judging these things. I never had been, but by the way my ally was acting I knew that we didn't have much time. I redoubled my efforts to get to the Museum before the game ended. I didn't want to think about the morality of working with the enemy. Sasha had said that this brick was one-of-a-kind, and I understood her desire to get back. Especially if it was a limited-edition item. It'd only been through a bug in the game that I'd been able to pick up at all, and if she and her crew weren't working furiously against the Deep Dive developers for whatever reason, she probably would've simply been able to lodge a ticket and get the item back herself.
Of course, I had to admit that I had a soft spot for her. She was pretty, for start. I know you're not supposed to trust stuff like that in these virtual worlds, but her voice had touched me as well. She had seemed like someone I could trust, and so I did.
I didn’t want to be wrong about that, but maybe my unwillingness to admit that I could have been tricked was getting in the way of the logic I’d need to complete my journey.
Riode and I kept to the shadows as best we could, though with a Trampler in tow I didn't know if there was really any point. He'd obviously given away some of the abilities that I still retained when he'd made his choice, which meant I didn’t think he could still be Hiding in Shadows as we moved. The way he was peering into the night made me doubt his Low Light Vision, too. Riode had specialized, and had both gained and lost a lot. In battle, he was a force to be reckoned with but out here, trying to be sneaky, he was just a lumbering, obvious target. Without me to guide him, he’d probably just be trouncing around, one big hand trailing along the buildings as he tried to make his way through the darkness.
My vision was working fine. The illumination spilling from the office buildings and the moon was more than enough to see by. It was almost peaceful here. It was harder and harder to remind myself that we were deep in enemy territory. There was none of the destruction here, no smoke and very little wreckage.
Not anymore.
We crossed one final street and I saw the precinct that held the Computer Science Museum. Elated, I turned to motion to Riode that we were almost to our goal, a smile on my face and both of my arms raised in a gesture of victory. I wanted him to see how proud I was that we’d made it, but instead he saved my life again.
As slow as I'd thought him and as blind as I'd decided he was, Riode proved me wrong right then and there. I heard the close thump thump thump of triple ignitions, but he saw where they were coming from and batted me out of the way of the projectiles. As I was flying through the air, about to crash through the glass of a hotel’s foyer, I looked on in horror as three shoulder launched missiles detonated against his armor plating.
He didn't have a chance. What little opportunity he’d had to save himself by getting out of the way had been squandered on rescuing me.
The blast was enormous, and the fireball that ensued washed over me like an ocean of pain. Lying against the wall in the hotel foyer, I beat at my flesh as it burst into flame. I’d bounced off the reception desk and rolled behind it, my ears full of the roar of the missiles and their payload.
There was no time to mourn Riode’s passing. I scrambled up to my feet. I didn't know who had fired at us, but that sort of military precision told me that they were ready for me. It was an ambush, and the only people that knew I was on the way were the damned Eternals.
Back in the pool on the top of Beverly Hills the Survivors had assumed a blast had killed me, but these guys weren’t that naïve. Besides, they needed to find my body and get the brick before the server dragged the game down around us.
Right on cue, I heard the crackle of their radios as a couple of Survivors burst into the hotel. I managed to slink around the desk and down the hallway, deeper into the hotel before they saw me, but I heard the glass crunch beneath their boots. They didn't slow down, instead taking an even, measured pace in their relentless search. Without even having to glance back I could picture them clearing the room with a callous efficiency that filled me with dread.
They'd been ready for me then, and they were ready for me now.
I was done, a dead man walking, which was of course ironic since that was the whole point of being a Zombie in the first place. I didn't know how to get out of here, but the fight or flight reflex that lives in all of us was screaming at me to run run run.
And so, I ran. Reckless and willing to take risks, I darted right and found an immaculate, luxurious dining hall. There wasn't time to dodge all the tables, so I simply sprinted past of them and Lunged across the rest, hitting the swinging doors that led to the kitchen hard enough to put me straight through them. One of them even came off its hinges, which meant that even if they hadn't somehow heard the impact once they got here they’d know where I'd gone.
I was screwed. I could run, but as they say it would only ensure that I would die tired. Except of course, that I didn't get tired…
Think, damn it, think! You’re a Schemer. Fucking scheme!
I skidded to a halt around another corner and gave myself a moment in the kitchen to assess my options. There was no way I could fight the type of firepower they were bringing with them. Even if they weren't crazy enough to shoot those missile launchers in this enclosed space I was sure that they had more than enough artillery to end me a thousand times over. Hiding was out too, since I had a feeling they’d find me.
What were they expecting me to do? I tried to guess what they were planning, envisioning what they were anticipating. Where would they think that I might flee to?
The Zombie army right outside the city, of course. If my pursuers lost my trail they’d push most of their resources in that direction. It was the logical thing for me to do, since the only real advantage Zombies had was numbers. There were so damn many of us, so fucking many free Players against such a small, privileged group.
This was worse than just being hunted. I was being stalked. I'd been brought here in good faith to complete a deal and now they were trying to betray me.
No way. If this was the way they wanted it to go down, that was fine. But I wasn't going to run back to the Army, which meant as I burst out the back door of the hotel I took a right instead of a left, staying in the shadows the whole way. They weren’t quite out of the hotel yet, and by the time they were I was around this corner and the one after it, headed as fast as I could in the direction of the computer science museum.
There was no way that they’d think I was still trying to complete the trade, not after they’d just tried to murder me. I had to hope I was right, just like I had to pray that there weren't that many Eternals in the guild.
If they had a lot of members at their disposal, I was toast.
I crested a hill and there it was right ahead of me. Instead of bursting in the door I took a page out of that Runner's book from the diner and ran up the hood of the car, using its roof to leap to a ledge and pulling myself on to the second story. From there, I could see a number of different access doors that would let maintenance workers get to the roof. The third one I tried was open, which meant that no matter how professional they were, no matter how well prepared or practiced, the Eternals were arrogant, too.
All the survivors were…
I pushed my way through the door and found a brightly lit area below me. I was up on some type of gantry or catwalk, and my bare, dead feet padded silently across it as I inspected the three Etern
als below me, deep in conversation.
"They'll be back soon. They have to be."
"Yeah, well they better hurry up. We’ve got less than five minutes before the damn game shuts down. If the brick isn't back in the Guild Bank by then, all of this has been for nothing. I really don't want to be the one that has to tell Sasha that your stupid plan chased her courier off."
"They'll get it. Just have a little faith, huh?"
The third one hadn't spoken yet, but now he did. "This was a bad idea, but it was yours. I just want you to remember that, when all is said and done. The Zombie would've brought it to her. She had the money, and she was happy to spend it."
The first guy didn't like that. "She shouldn't have to!"
So that was the deal. These three and the ones out there trying to track me down had decided to save Sasha a bit of money and had blown it. If I didn't get this brick in the Guild Bank, it would disintegrate just like everything else when the servers went down. I’d lose my money and Sasha would lose her item, and all because these fools couldn't find it in their heart to trust someone that came from the wrong side of their gilded tracks.
It was pathetic. And worse, I had no way to get past them, no way to communicate with them. It would be so easy if I could say this had been a misunderstanding, but I couldn't.
So, I did the next best thing. If they wanted the damn thing so badly they could have it.
I shrugged the backpack from my shoulders, held it in my good hand for a moment as I aimed and then let it fall. It landed perfectly in the middle of the three of them and, for one brief and shining moment, all they could do was stare down at it as if the answer to every question in the world was contained within.
Headshot: One in the Gut (Book 1 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Page 29