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

by Matthew Siege

  The moment was over pretty quickly once I landed on top of the first guy. I felt something in him give way, but I was already reaching for the second Eternal to claw his eyes out before triggering my Lunge ability at the third. The first guy’s spine acted as a springboard and I heard the dry-branch snap of vertebrates as I pushed off with all my strength. My momentum carried the third one into the wall with me, but he got the worst of the impact.

  He looked like a bookish sort, without so much as a scrap of armor, and I made him regret it, biting pieces out of him before we’d even slid from the wall to the floor together. Too bad for them, I popped up with more hit points than when I’d begun the attack, ready for more Eternals to enter the room at the inevitable noise I’d made.

  They didn’t. The one I’d Lunged at was bleeding from a dozen places, and over where I’d started there was a newly minted paraplegic and a blind guy clutching at the sockets where some of his eyes still leaked from.

  I sauntered over and scooped up the backpack, putting it on once more.

  I decided to let them live, at least until the server came down. I even let them shriek as I took a bite out of the two I hadn’t tasted yet. Perhaps it was cruel, but I wanted to give them something to remember me by. They panicked and made even more noise, which was fine. Maybe it would bring Sasha.

  I wasn’t waiting for her though, not anymore. I didn’t have very much time left at all, and I needed to find their Guild Bank. I hurried past the Museum’s exhibitions, doing my best to ignore the fact that most of them powered up. This place held some little tidbit from every era of computing, and it looked like either Sasha herself or the Eternals as a group loved it enough to waste power making sure that the interactives were still operational.

  It was strange, but the fact that it was all lit up and painstakingly cared for dragged my eyes to a display about family computing. The wall I was facing had a bunch of stuff about kid’s game and how important they were as a bond between generations. There were a few pictures of the early pioneers in the computer field and even a few from the VR one. Next to that shimmered a whole bunch of names, all the way back to the first PCs, but one jumped out at me.

  Blake Redhook… Where had I heard that name before? I didn't recognize the guy, but his name was screaming out at me. Finally, I had it. He was one of the Headshot developers, the guy that had quit when the game had gone in a direction he didn’t believe in. They’d even used his quote in the marketing material on the website.

  The picture they had of him looked to be at least fifteen years old. The way they wore their hair and the furniture and the design of the computers all told me that was true, but what drew my attention was the flashing green eyes and the spitfire, devil-may-care expression of the eight or nine-year-old girl sitting next to Blake, a controller in her hand as she played some game located offscreen.

  The red hair was a giveaway, too.

  Sasha. I looked at the caption to be sure, and there it was. Sasha Redhook plays Maestro of Mayhem with her dad on a nightly basis, when he gets home from a long day at Deep Dive Studios.

  No wonder she'd picked this place as the Guild’s headquarters. It meant a lot to her. Her dad was some sort of big deal, and they remembered him fondly here. I knew there was more to this than what I was seeing, but the game was almost over. The server was coming down. I looked around the exhibition hall for the Vault that would store their valuables during the reset and found only one way to progress.

  When I followed the path, I found a big, cement area that said The Future of Computing is Now! in big, cheesy tech-inspired font along the top. Whatever had been here before they’d pushed aside to make room for their Guild Bank, which looked like the ancient safes you see in those old movies were some burglar decides that the best way to get into it is with a couple of sticks of dynamite.

  It was standing open. Inside I could see a whole bunch of glittering equipment and hardcore weaponry, not to mention blueprints and technical drawings for whatever they’d been cooking up. And six bricks, just like the one in the backpack. That made sense. There were three broken Eternals in the other room, and there’d been three missiles launched at me from the group that had set up the ambush. Sasha’s made seven.

  At least they’d left the door open. If I got all this way and it had been locked, especially without Sasha here to greet me, there was no way I’d have gotten into the safe on my own. They were special, highly sought-after items. Survivors could gather any number of useful objects and save them from the reboot, thus increasing their wealth or technical stockpile week after week.

  It was yet another huge advantage they had against the Zombies, and even though I thought I’d given up getting pissed off about the imbalance, this got to me. They already started with so much, did they really need this too?

  It was overpowered.

  It wasn't fair.

  I took a deep breath and let the cunning thought that crawled up the back of my brain grow to full form. The Guild Bank might be all of those things, but it was also exactly the loophole that I'd been looking for.

  As quickly as I could I leaned in and scooped everything out. All of it. Their equipment. Their weapons. Their blueprints. Their bricks.

  It was payback for what they’d tried to do to me. Let them see how they liked starting with nothing. After all, that was what the Zombies had to do at the beginning of every week.

  But not me. Not this time. Now that I'd tossed all of their items on to the floor at my feet, there was just enough room for me to climb into the Guild Bank, turn around, and reach out with my remaining hand to slam the door shut behind me.

  I wasn't getting reset. Not this time.

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  And

  the

  server

  came

  down…

  End of Book One

  That’s all there is of Book 1. I really hope you enjoyed spending some time in that world with me. The absolute best thing you could do for ME (if you were so inclined) is to leave a review on Amazon. That helps readers find what they’re looking for and let’s them know if this is the sort of story they might enjoy.

  The best thing you could do for YOU (reading related) is to go to my website at http://matthewsiege.com and sign up for my newsletter. That way you might be able to have a chance to read Book 2 before it hits Amazon. In addition, I’ll be doing some updates and fun giveaways there.

  Thanks for reading!

  ~Matthew Siege

  P.S. I’m in the midst of writing some short stories that flesh out (Zombie pun!) a few of the side stories from Headshot: One in the Gut. Subscribers to my newsletter will be getting them for free… So, what are you waiting for? Get over there and sign up!