by Ian Woodhead
“There you go, traitorous mind, there's fuck all there.” Jordan jogged back towards his house while reassuring himself that going home would be the last place his dead family would be, well, except for Susan. They were just creatures with only their primal instincts working. They only craved fresh meat and that was one thing that wasn't in the house. “Well, except his other self.” No, that was an illusion, there's only one of him and he was right here, just about to reach the garden gate.
Jordan stopped, before he did enter the house, perhaps now was a good time to examine exactly what happened in the game? If Barry had been right, and there was no reason not to think he was, what happened in Necrovoid kinda mirrored or at least was related to what was occurring in the real world, meaning discovering the plant pod and what it did to the man before attacking his game-mum had to be important. It's clear Jenny had prior experience with those things and they just had to be crucial to the narrative because of the way she reacted upon the first sight.
Could they be the cause of the infection in the game? If that was the case, then exactly how did they fit into the plot as well as the conspiracy? Jordan frowned. That reminded him, what the hell was the conspiracy now? Hell, in the first insertion the game had literally laid out for him. Jordan had known exactly what had happened as well as who or what was responsible. Now. Well, now he knew absolutely bugger all. It's as if with each insertion, some piece of the first game is either masked over or changed completely, like the game showed the newbie all the juicy bits to hook them in before throwing the user in the shit on the second game.
“You've seen the box belonging to the jigsaw puzzle, now I take it away.” Yeah, that sounded about right. The simple fact was, until he entered the game again, Jordan would have to confine himself to guessing.
There was also the game shop in the shopping mall to think about, namely why did it hold such attraction to his other self. That was yet another mystery he wouldn't be able to solve until he re-entered Necrovoid. Until that moment, all Jordan could do was to...
There was someone in his house! While he'd been sodding wool-gathering, stood in the open, vulnerable and exposed, a face had appeared at his window. Jordan ducked behind the dense bushes. Had she seen him? Well, he'd soon discover the answer to that dilemma if Susan jumped through the glass, raced down the lawn and dived through his mum's cherry laurel.
What was he going to do now? The panic he previously felt when he realised that leaving the house was his only option, reared its ugly head. "Wait in the car? Wait for what? Yeah, that's right, maybe she'll die again and this time, stay dead. Oh wait, no. She'll be sneaking out of her house when it gets dark to meet up with her secret boyfriend. Was he dead too?"
Jordan could hear himself muttering but he no longer cared. He could let his voice continue chatting shite while the sane part of his head figured out what to do next. Hell, at least it was a bit of company until he met up with Jenny. She'd know what to do to.
For one thing, Jenny sure as fuck wouldn't go into town, not in this world anyway. At least you could get away from the dead things in Necrovoid. The woman wouldn't stay here either, being out in the open, in one spot was just asking for trouble. Come to think of it, so was going back to the car.
“Come on then, Jenny. Little miss high and mighty, the one woman, digital or otherwise, who'd dropped all my emotions into a paper shredder and pressed the button. What are we going to do?”
Several seconds passed with no forthcoming reply from his imaginary, CGI love of his life, until he remembered that she had already told him what to do in Necrovoid, back when she'd just rescued Jordan from the clutches of his dead wife. Locate more survivors, find weapons and find food.
Jordan had no idea where to even start to look for anything that had the power to stop the new super-zombies short of an anti-tank weapon and that is one piece of ordinance that Jordan wasn't going to stumble over. He guessed there could be some shotguns inside the farms on the edge of town. Hell, there could even be one or two illegal guns stashed away in one of the houses in the middle of the estate. Neither option really appealed, not when it meant walking past literally hundreds of windows where behind each one, a super-zombies could be waiting, just for him to walk past, all unsuspecting like. The last thing that Jordan would ever hear was the sound of breaking glass.
He shivered. No, bollocks to that. There had to be an alternative. There was. Search each house, starting with Mrs Spicer's place. That sounded like a safer plan. He doubted that the old bag would have much in the way of weaponry, but she was bound to have food of some description squirrelled away.
The woman's house beckoned! Jordan ran past his gate, after checking the coast was clear, before he leaped over the old woman's gate. As Jordan approached the back door it did occur to him that if his dead sister hadn't been standing by his bedroom window, at the exact moment he reached the garden, he would have gone straight into his house without any knowledge that Susan was no longer trapped in her bedroom. Even with an empty stomach cavity, he just knew his life would be over, the moment she saw him. Unencumbered with the ballast. He viewed the dead thing would be even faster than his deceased parents.
“A super, super zombie.” he murmured. Jordan tried to block out the ridiculous image of his sister in blue spandex, with a red cape, flying over the rooftops while her flesh rotted off and focussed on how he was going to get inside if the woman's door was locked.
He tried the handle, not too surprised to find it locked. Mrs Spicer's brain might have gone walkabout into the past but some of her facilities were still buzzing around in that big empty head. Jordan took a step back to see if any windows were open. Again, not shocked to find the place shut up tight. He only had one choice left.
Jordan selected a nice rounded rock from the edge of the woman's flower bed, stepped over Mrs Spicer's daffodils and approached the living room window. It felt so strange to see the house from this angle.
Their family moved in here just before he was born and in all that time, they had the mad woman as a neighbour. Back when he was younger, Jordan did actually go outside but tended to stay away from the house on account his older sister had this annoying habit of trying to land him into trouble for anything that entered her sadistic mind. This included trashing their neighbours' gardens and blaming him or shoplifting from the corner shop and planting the goodies in his bedroom.
The only way he was able to avoid punishment was by ensuring he had an alibi. That generally ended up to be either Barry or his parents. Playing anywhere near his own house was far too dangerous.
Jordan ducked under the window and listened for any sound which may give away her presence. If Mrs Spicer was inside, then she'd be probably watching TV. It took him the time for a single bee to hop across four flowers before he remembered the fucking power had gone. “You idiot,” he muttered to himself.
He jumped up and pressed his nose against the glass, to find the Mrs Spicer staring right back at him. Jordan stifled a panicked yelp, turned and tripped over his own feet, and fell into the flowers. Panting and moaning, he scrambled to his feet and ran back to the closed gate. It wasn't until he'd fumbled open the gate when he realised that there had been no breaking glass. He dared himself to look back.
The scene had not changed, with the exception of the flattened flowers, the place looked just as it was when he first entered this garden. Jordan looked at his own house then back to this one, while trying to work out what to do. He'd been fucking inches from the old woman and yet, he was still breathing. He knew that if that had happened earlier while fleeing from his parents, he definitely wouldn't be here to have this mental dilemma. It might be a better idea to skip over this one and try the next house.
The Soaper family lived at number twenty-two. All five of them. The parents and three teen boys. No, fuck that. Going up against five super-zombies inside a confined space was suicide. He wouldn't even make it out of the kitchen! Jordan retraced his steps. Perhaps she was still alive but sle
eping? Okay, so her eyes were open, but he had heard of some people possessing this ability. Maybe she was in a trace, or the woman might actually be really dead, as in dead like it used to be before all this happened?
He grabbed his stone. His answer would soon become apparent. Jordan brought his arm back and lobbed the missile at the window, aiming for the bottom left corner. If she was still alive, Jordan had no wish for his stone to smack her on the bonce. He was dealing with enough traumatic issues right now without adding murder to the list.
The tremendous crashing his stone made when it smashed through that window was probably heard in the next county. Jordan brushed away thoughts of every super-zombie in town stopping what they were currently doing in order to investigate the sudden noise and walked through the already destroyed flower bed.
Mrs Spicer hadn't moved in inch. Did this mean that the old dear really had passed to the other side? That there would be no sudden arm grabbing when Jordan climbed through the hole he'd made? He picked a piece of old, rotting fence post up from against the wall and proceeded to knock out the loose glass. He winced at the noise it made when the damn stuff fell inside and smashed when it landed on the edge of the old woman's coffee table but what choice did he have? Something told him that the super-zombies were more likely to react to the scent of flowing blood from his cut arm rather than the sound of glass breaking.
It took him another few seconds to clear out enough for him to climb inside without the fear of slicing open an artery. He still expected the woman's eyes to start following him as Jordan climbed through the window. That fear soon vanished when he jumped off the beige sofa and approached her and prodded the woman’s arm.
“Oh, Jesus!” he gasped, jumping back. When Jordan had been of the tender age of seven, his granddad passed away. The family had an open casket. When the others had left the coffin and gone into the living room for the default cucumber sandwiches and wine, his sister dared him to put his hand inside and touch him. To prove to the cow that he was no yellow custard coward, Jordan had dome just that.
Mrs Spicer had felt exactly the same, cold, very dry and just a little unpleasant. It kinda made him grateful as well as a little sad. Grateful for not having to tackle yet another deadly super-zombie but sad because, unlike his granddad, there would be nobody left to mourn the old lady or to put her in the ground. If Jordan really was experiencing first hand, the end of days, then poor Mrs Spicer would stay in this position of kneeling on the end of her sofa while resting her chin on the back. The only time she was ever going to move was when her flesh rotted into the fabric causing her skeleton to collapse.
He walked over to the living room door, wondering what could have happened to her. Heart failure maybe? That sounded about right especially considering her position. He imagined her looking out of the window, probably confused as to why the birdies were not eating that rather tasty looking bicycle wheel when, all of a sudden, two super-zombies come out of nowhere and tear into to some little girl who'd just happened to pass Mrs Spicer's gate on her little pink bicycle. Something like that was liable to give anyone heart failure.
Jordan gave the old woman's backside a little wave then opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Several framed prints, each one showing a picturesque scene of the same country cottage hung upon the wall opposite. The kitchen door was already open and from his vantage point, Jordan saw even more prints of a similar design on the far wall. He guessed that somebody must like that house. Perhaps she once lived there as a kid? He mentally shrugged. Who cared? Did he not already have enough on his plate without filling his battered head with even more trivia? As for plates, that reminded him as to one of the reasons why he had risked his neck to get inside this place.
There was a narrow route along the once-maroon carpet, leading to the kitchen as well as another door which he guessed would take him to the bottom of the stairs. Mrs Spicer obviously never threw anything away. Dozens of supermarket carrier bags, packed full of crap were piled high against each wall.
This place looked like someone had tipped the contents of a landfill site onto her carpet. Christ, what a dump, literally. No bloody wonder their local feline population were given such weird stuff to eat. It did make him wonder why nobody had brought this up before. She had a family. When they first moved in, His mum used to tell him about the woman's son who was always tinkering with cars fit only for the scrapyard. Apparently, Mrs Spicer's garden wasn't always such a tidy place. The renovation only happened when the son moved out, leaving all his car parts behind.
He stopped by the kitchen doorway. His mum never told him what happened to the garden, Jordan guessed that either somebody got onto the council or the woman paid somebody to get shut of the stuff. He decided to go for the latter. After all, if the council saw the state of this house, they'd have brought in the social straight away. Perhaps he ought to thank the woman for going down that route. Who knows what family might have moved in here when the social service put the mad old bat into a home.
The kitchen offered nothing much in the way of food, aside from a half empty box of cornflakes that he found under the sink. He left that where it was, Christ know how long it had been there. Due to the colony of beetles nesting inside, Jordan guessed it had been there for quite a while. The cupboards were all stuffed with even more carrier bags. Jordan began to think that this had been a huge waste of time, until he turned around and saw that the wall opposite held something a little more useful than a picture of a stupid cottage.
“You have got to be kidding!” he murmured, walking closer to his all time greatest find in the whole of today. Jordan spun around, knocked a blue plastic basket full of screwed up newspaper off a wooden dining chair and dragged the chair over to the wall. He then climbed on to the seat and lightly ran his fingers along the handle.
Just what this strange old woman was doing with a samurai sword displayed on the wall was beyond his power to answer but there's no way that he intended to leave it there. Thankfully, it wasn't bolted to the wall, she or whoever put it up here, had rested it precariously on three thick hooks. It came off the wall with the minimum of ease. In fact, it came off as little too easy for his liking.
Jordan stepped down and held the sword in front of him. He looked at where he'd removed it and then at the door leading to the garden directly below. All it would have taken for this sword to fall off was a single door slam. He sat on the chair and looked outside while considering what to do next. This had been the prize of the century, that's for sure. He now might actually stand a chance of surviving the outside.
Jordan swung the sword, getting a feel for the weapon. Over three years had passed since he'd played Samurai Alien Killers in the town's gaming arcade, but he obviously hadn't forgotten the moves. He jumped back and spun around while bringing the blade down on the back of the chair. Jordan found himself grinning from ear to ear upon seeing the sword cut through the wooden slats with hardly any effort. This thing was sharp!
This was the first time he'd ever handled a proper sword but that didn't seem to matter. Obviously, the creators of Samurai Alien Killers had done their research and it so pleased him to discover that the skills he'd picked up in the immersive game had not gone to waste! Jordan tried out his signature move on the woman's kitchen counter. The weapon almost made it through the full thickness before getting stuck.
“Not a bad effort,” he said, prising the sword out of the compressed chipwood. “I think I’ll give you an impressive eight out of ten.”
Feeling so much better for acquiring something of actual use, Jordan left the kitchen and walked over to the door leading to the stairs, hoping he might find something on the next level. As he climbed the stairs, while listening out for anything that might betray the presence of somebody else, Jordan pondered the possibility that something might be seriously wrong with his mental facilities. It had been the total lack of empathy that he showed to that dead woman that tipped him off. It shouldn't matter that Jordan hardly knew her, she
had still been a person. Then again, considering what he'd been through, already, should he not be all that surprised to find himself becoming desensitised to the horror of death? After all, in the past few hours, Jordan had lost everyone remotely close to him. Hell, saying that, none of his family had been all that close to him for a good few years. Even so, Jordan couldn't have shed all his deep feelings for his family? What was he, some kind of psychopath? He really had no answer to his question. It's not like he had any from of reference over what to do in the event of a zombie outbreak. Well, apart from his DVD collection of films and TV shows, in the genre, as well as the books he had collected over the years on the subject, as well as the games. Apart from the games that his mum took off him. That stuff was no good, it was all fiction. Everybody knew that zombies were about as real as Santa Claus.
He reached the top step and looked out of the window. It felt weird to see his house from this view. Wait, was that movements that he spotted in the top left window? That was his parent's bedroom! He leaned a little closer and watched, hardly daring to breath at the sight of his sister's head appearing and disappearing. “Just what the fuck is going on?” It looked like she was jumping on the bed! “Okay, so that has to go right to the top of odd things I've seen today,” he muttered.
He moved away from the window and walked over to the first door, resisting the temptation to go back to that window, knowing his luck, he'd see his sister still jumping on the bed but this time accompanied by Santa, his reindeer, while one of the elves filmed it.
“Focus on the task, Jordan,” he muttered.
As the house was the same design as this, that door ought to lead to the bathroom. He gave that one a miss, doubting he'd find anything of value in there. Jordan crossed to the next door. In his house, this would be where his sister had spent her time, plotting and planning schemes in which to make his life a misery.