by Ian Woodhead
The sunlight filtering through two skylights gave him plenty of light to see there was nothing in here, save for a wardrobe at the end of the corridor, opposite the only other door.
He ran up to it, looked at the oak panelled, blue painted door for a second before getting around the other side of the wardrobe. While he so needed to get as far away from those dead things, Jordan still needed to at least try to slow them down. What if there wasn't another way out of here? He shook his head, not wanting to even think about that.
From the room he just left, the sound of that front door finally giving up the ghost reached his ears. Jordan spun around and leaned against the furniture, not knowing what to do now. He dare not open the other door, in case those bastards heard him. One thing he had learned in the brief time the dead thing's began to move is that not only were they persistent, those dead bastards had exceptional hearing. It also meant he couldn't move this wardrobe either, they were bound to hear hear the bottom of the wardrobe scraping across the floorboards.
Maybe he could stay here? Now that those vile monsters couldn't see or hear him, they might finally leave. It sounded like the only option he had left. If they did open that door, at least he still had the one escape route still to use.
Jordan sighed quietly. It also sounded like the worst idea he'd ever had. Like those bastards were going to just give up, turn around and vanish into the sunset. He had already discovered their tenacious obsession with following their prey. That flimsy door wasn't going to keep them at bay, that's for sure.
He had to block the door. It really was that simple. Jordan flattened his hands against the side of the wardrobe and pushed.
Nothing happened. The wardrobe just wouldn't budge! “Come on,” he muttered. “Give me a break.” Jordan had no other choice but to get the hell out of here. He grabbed the door handle then paused.
He turned to gaze at that piece of furniture. It didn't look solid. If anything, the wardrobe gave off the impression that it had been put together using plywood and staples.
Jordan grabbed the brass wardrobe door handle and pulled. Both doors swung open to reveal another corpse. This one couldn't get to him. Both its wrists and ankles were attached to thick metal hoops on the inside of the wood with wire.
It might not be able to reach him but that didn’t stop the dead thing from trying. It pulled repeatedly at the tight binding, not noticing the wire cutting deeper and deeper into its purifying flesh. It lunged at him when he got a bit too close. Jordan jumped back. He was about to flee when the corpse lifted its head. It slowly turned, stared straight at him and opened its mouth. He thought it was going to follow the example of all the other dead things by growling or hissing at him. Jordan believed that all the way until it actually spoke.
“For crying out loud, Jordan. Mum has been shouting your name for the past ten minutes. Get off this bloody game and go eat your food.”
Chapter Two
The colours of his bedroom wallpaper seemed so jaded and washed out compared to the sensory bombardment that he'd just experienced.
“Holy shit!” he whispered.
“ Jordan, did you hear what I just said?”
He nodded, unable to tear his eyes off the sensenet now lying on his bed covers. According to the bedside clock, he'd been in deep for almost two hours. How could that be possible? His mind told Jordan that three days had passed since he first unrolled the sensenet over his face.
“Are you nodding at me or your new toy, you sad twat?”
Jordan had no intention of trying to defend himself. There really was no point. He simply gave her the single finger salute, waited for his sister to slam his bedroom door and storm back downstairs before turning around.
The urge to forget this reality and plug himself back into Necrovoid almost overcame him but Jordan resisted. It'd be a better idea to mull over what he'd just gone through first. Besides, his stomach felt like his throat was cut. Jordan really ought to give this body of his a little energy.
He packed the sensenet back into the box, set that under his wall TV then made his way over to the door. Jordan glanced back at the TV, while wondering if Jenny was another player or simply just part of the narrative. There'd be no way of knowing.
God, how intense was that? Jordan couldn't remember any other game that had gotten him so excited or, for that matter, so emotionally drained.
The guys who made the game were onto a winner, that's for sure. Jordan smiled. Liked they needed him to tell them that. Necrovoid had already outsold its nearest rival, some crappy platform game which looked positively 8-bit compared to Necrovoid. Not a bad accomplishment considering you actually had to physically travel, on feet, to the shops. This baby wasn't available online or via delivery. Jordan actually had a game box, complete with instructions and a poster which now adorned his bedroom wall.
Even his dad had commented on the company's 'retro' method of running their business. True, unlike everyone else, his old man complemented them on forcing the kids to use other muscles instead of the mouse finger button. Jordan grinned to himself, while wondering if his did had grasped the concept of just how little exercise the kids would be doing once that sensenet had enveloped their heads.
“I think I'm going to need to grab myself some protein bars for the next time I plug in.”
His heart jumped into his mouth when he opened the door. Just for a second, Jordan actually believed that a dead thing would be on the other side, waiting for him to become its next meal.
“Get a grip, you bloody idiot,” he muttered.
Jordan passed the bathroom door, grabbed the banister and walked downstairs, while listening to that idiotic sister bad-mouth him in front of mum and dad. Words like geek, loser, weirdo, waster, and freak made up about a third of the conversation. His darling Susan was sure in fine fighting form today.
He just tuned her out. There were far more pressing concerns in his life at the moment, namely, Necrovoid, and what to do next. Jordan still had the option of a full game reset. Basically, to start at the beginning. Thing is, would that really be the wisest choice? Sure, it did sound like his only option, considering he had lost Jenny, was trapped in some farmhouse and, from what he remembered, close to having a breakdown. He still lived though, and that, despite his current bleak circumstance, was still a bonus.
Who's to say that if he did reset, his outcome would be any better? Who's to say that he wouldn't make the same choices and end up back in that farmhouse again? Maybe next time, with an infected wound? Hell, even if he did figure out what he'd done wrong, there's be no way of taking that info back with him when he did immerse himself in the Necrovoid world. He had already found that out.
“Oh, hello there, Jordan. So nice of you to join us.”
“Hi, mum,” he replied, smiling. Sorry I’m late. I didn't hear you.” Jordan sat in his usual place by the dinner table, gently ran his index finger across the bamboo place-mat and treated both his mum and Susan to a big sunny smile. He waited until they silently turned and left the room before the smile turned into a big grin.
They no doubt expected him to either play the sullen mood game or allow himself to defend himself against Susan's argument. Granted, it had occurred to him to do just that, especially considering his sister still had no idea that her older brother knew all about Susan and a certain boy she had been seeing for the past couple of weeks. Jordan picked up his knife and fork in readiness for his meal.
The blackmail material could wait for another day. The simple fact of the matter was he wanted to eat his food and quickly as possible before retreating into Necrovoid for another few hours.
He checked the time. The wall clock beside the dining room bookcase informed him that it had gone six. Maybe the game could wait for a bit longer. If he still needed those protein bars then he'd need to get to the town's only shopping mall before seven.
If only he could go back to this time last week and inform his past self that he would be leaving the house not once but twic
e in the same day. The younger Jordan would call bullshit, that's for sure. He had two weeks off from work and he hand intended to spent almost all of it logged into the Bard's Realm server, his previous game obsession.
Had it only been just a week since the company released Necrovoid into the unsuspecting public? It was so weird to think that seven days ago, nobody within the gaming community even knew about the game. That was just too odd for words. You would have thought that somebody, somewhere, a mole inside the company or someone along the supply chain would have let the cat out of the bag, but no. Not a peep.
“Okay, who stole my son and replaced him with a clone?” Jordan's dad lowered his newspaper. He folded it up and placed it on the table then leaned forward. “Seriously, what's with the abrupt change of personality?”
Jordan shrugged at the same time the microwave in the kitchen pinged. At last, food was on the way. He hadn't felt this hungry for a long time. He should have opened that tin of pineapple chunks that Jenny had found in that building. Jordan chuckled, yeah, like that would have helped.
“Jordan, you're starting to freak me out. Are you smoking something illegal? No, don't answer that one. I don't think I want to know”
“No, dad. Of course not. I just don't see the point of getting into an argument, that's all.”
“Fair enough. I can't argue with that one. So, tell me. How are you doing with the online gaming course you enrolled into a couple of weeks ago?”
“I've read through the basics,” he replied. Jordan had started glancing through the coursework, a day after the membership details had come through, then closed the tab when he'd received a game challenge on Bard's Realm. He hadn't looked at it since. Now that he had another game to rule his life, the chances of him ever looking at it again were slim to none. “Yeah, looks pretty interesting, dad.”
His mum placed the plate in front of him then turned to his dad. “Stephen, I thought we were supposed to be meeting Alan and Gail in the Horse and Crown?”
“We are.”
“Then shouldn't you be getting ready?”
His dad scraped his chair back, stood up, grabbed the newspaper and left the room without saying a word. Jordan watched him go. It dawned on him that his dad hadn't said so many words to him for months. Granted, Jordan hadn't spent much time downstairs recently, so that probably accounted for that.
“Me and your dad's going out for a bit. Your sister has already left, so I need you to keep an eye on the house.”
Jordan quickly swallowed the mashed potato. “What if I want to go out too?”
The look on her face told him that she obviously hadn't expected him to go anywhere apart from back to his bedroom once he'd cleaned the plate.
“Fine. I'll leave the spare key on the coffee table in the living room. Just make sure you lock the door if you do go out.”
Having said her piece, his mum stepped back. He watched her from the corner of his eye while he spooned more mash, fish fingers, peas and parsley sauce into his mouth. It looked like she wanted to say something else. Before he was able to empty his mouth to ask her, she too left the dining room.
“Okay, so that was a little weird,” he muttered. It wasn't often that his mum was lost for words. “Maybe my happy face caught her off-guard?” Jordan decided to go with that assessment, it seemed a good explanation as any other. Chances were, she was probably about to repeat her warning about locking the door when something else, probably a thought about dad got in the way and disoriented her. He smiled to himself. Like any of that mattered. Within an hour tops, he'd be back inside Necrovoid, battling to survive against the zombie horde!
A few minutes later, his parents re-entered the dining room. His mum repeated the request to lock the door if he did leave the house before they left him. Jordan waited until the outside door closed before looking up.
The terrible feeling that he was never going to see his family again engulfed him and totally soured his previous chilled and contented outlook. “Just stop it, you idiot.” He jumped up, ran to the dining room window and caught a glimpse of their backs as they turned out of the garden, heading to meet their friends. Jordan returned to the table and sat down. He looked at the remains of his food then pushed it away. His appetite had left him.
“Everybody is leaving me.” Jordan picked up the bamboo placemat and rolled it over his wrist while wondering how effective it would be against a zombie bite.
He suddenly dropped the placemat. That's where he'd experienced these damn emotions! After he rolled that sensenet over his head for the first time and made his way through the annoying health and safety notices and finally navigated the menu system, those feelings of extreme anxiety, terror, and loneliness, slammed into him before he could even work out where or who he was.
Jordan had opened his eyes, a few seconds later when some part of his battered psyche healed enough for him to remember his name. He'd shuffled backwards and hid under a table while desperately trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. At that precise moment, one of the dead slowly shuffled past his hiding place. Jordan fearfully peered out from under the maroon tablecloth and watched it leave through the open door.
He scraped the chair back and stood up, still shaking at the memory of what that damn game had put him through at the beginning. He still remembered watching the dead thing, some man, wearing biker gear, Stumbling through the overgrown, weed infested garden while trying to work out where he'd seen him before. Just as the memory clicked into place, the game then chose that moment to fill his aching head with his character's history as well as the back story.
According to the game, he played a character who had witnessed his own dead wife tearing into their only child, a seven-year-old girl called Charlotte. He had only just managed to escape becoming her next victim. That happened yesterday morning and since then, his character had spent the next two days been chased through the town, running, hiding and generally being scared shitless.
He knew that none of it had really happened. It still didn’t stop him from feeling like he'd just inherited another life, another personality. Somebody else's hang ups. That made him pause. If he did reset the game would he find himself inside a different Jordan? One who didn't lose his Charlotte and wife to this zombie plague, only to fall in love with some stranger called Jenny?
“Talk about messed up,” he muttered. Jordan did find it a little disturbing to find that one of the reasons he did want to reset the game was so he could try to save Jenny's life. He hadn't given a thought about saving his daughter or wife.
His character sounded like a complete cockwomble. Then again, maybe he shouldn't be so judgemental? After all, the other Jordan had just lived through the trauma of being smack in the middle of a worldwide zombie outbreak. The poor bastard was bound to have a few issues.
“Even so, to not care about his own kid? That's just wrong.” Jordan chuckled quietly. He was getting all worked up over some computer generated fictional character. Jordan used to have a go at his mum for doing the same thing, only for her it was getting all annoyed at the characters in the soaps she watched.
How incredible was this game? Jordan couldn't wait to get past all the mushy rubbish and into the real action. He needed to dispense with all that pointless emotional baggage and get out there with his trusty shotgun and turning all those dead things into lumps of unrecognisable scorched flesh.
Jordan reached the stairs and began to climb, while going over what mistakes he could have possibly made on his first go. He had found the shotgun easily enough. Jordan figured that must be the default weapon. Jordan shouldn't have left though, not without locating some ammo first. That must have been his worst mistake. That alone probably fucked up any chances of getting any further in the narrative.
He reached his bedroom, sat on the bed and slipped on his trainers. He decided to do the reset and try to coast through all the mush. Jordan decided that he would probably be fine once he found the shotgun shells. One of the reasons why he pla
yed games in the first place was to get away from the family drama. Especially all the crap associated with her sister. That woman couldn't get through a single day without either getting upset, upsetting someone or creating an emotional cyclone which dragged in anybody unlucky enough to be close by. She'd always been like that. Jordan couldn't understand how anybody could live as some kind of frigging trauma magnet. His mum could be just as bad. Not quite so needy as Susan. Jordan guessed that age had mellowed her. That and dad's calming influence. His old man was a lot like him, preferring to keep himself to himself and not to make waves.
Jordan picked up his phone then gave the Necrovoid game box a fond little wave, silently promising his hidden sensenet that he wouldn't too long, Jordan then ran down the stairs, fully aware that time was a wasting. He scooped up the keys and hurried over to the kitchen door.
His parents should be in the Horse and Crown by now. Dad at the bar, ordering in the first round while mum and her friend, Gail, already settling in, on the far table, in the corner of the pub, right where the cigarette machine used to stand. Gail's husband would be in the games room, setting up the pool table, as well as shouting jibes and jokes across the empty pub with dad. Jordan knew their routine off by heart, it’s what they got up to at least twice a week. Getting in there early enough to avoid the local teens, who generally piled inside at about eleven. One of those local teens would be his sister.
Before the next generation appeared to ruin the night, the old folk would be gone from the Horse and Crown, abandoning that pub in favour for the Fruitbowl, situated on the other side of the town. Dad told him that not so long ago, his mum and dad used to be the ones who invaded the Horse and Crown after the grey-haired gang buggered off for pastures new.
It's weird how his old man never saw just how sad it was to follow same predicable pattern from one generation to the next. Once uni was over, he intended to make something of his life, something that didn't involve getting drunk. Jordan was able to find other methods of fulfilling his young life that didn't involve getting out of his face through the consumption of fermented vegetable drinks or getting embroiled in the private affairs of other people. No doubt his mum and Gail would be doing just that right about now.