by Wyatt Savage
Releasing the wind-up key, the toy began vibrating. We ran in the other direction, heading into the throat of the dungeon, careful to dance between the remaining ropes. If our luck held, the spider would think we were the toy and would move in one direction while we headed in the other.
Stopping, I scanned the HUD to see that the spider was indeed moving toward the toy. Hot damn, it was working!
We all hopped aboard the holo-lift and hovered down the corridor into the fathomless passage, using our night vision to guide the path ahead. Following the contours of the hallway, we moved left, then right for seven or eight minutes. I could see that we were getting closer; the vault was only a few thousand feet ahead and then we slid to a stop.
We were going to do it.
We were going to make it.
I took the lead and rounded a bend in the hallway as my HUD flashed, revealing that the floor was gone.
If I’d been walking this way I never would have seen it, and plunged down into a bottomless pit.
“Holy shit, the floor is gone!” Lish shouted.
“They boobytrapped it,” Dwayne said.
We glided over the vanished floor, grateful for the holo-pad.
Continuing through the murkiness, we finally reached a door that had not been breached and had not been struck during the looting. It was made of featureless metal. The exterior was dented, scratched, and showed signs of being set on fire. There were also pry marks near the edges of the door and it was obvious someone, maybe a lot of someones, had wanted to get inside.
“This is it,” I said. “The vault is on the other side.”
Lish smiled and a note suddenly echoed off the walls.
A loud, annoying, vibrating sound.
The alarm on Lish’s cellphone.
Our fifteen minutes was up.
My terror-stricken eyes ratcheted to the HUD because we weren’t the only ones who’d heard the alarm. The Whore Spider had as well, and it was moving rapidly through the building to greet us.
30
“The monster’s coming!” Lish shouted.
I manipulated my HUD, but couldn’t get a read on what was on the other side of the door.
“Lead probably,” Dwayne said. “I’ll bet the walls are lined with lead which is why we can’t see anything, or maybe they have some kind of high-tech Faraday cage.”
I pushed on the door and it wouldn’t budge. “Anyone bring a key?”
“I did,” Lish replied. She held up a finger, ran back to the foyer, then returned holding a small cube of what looked like clay.
I could see on my HUD that it was a wad of plastic explosive.
I could also see that the monster was getting very close.
“Hurry, Lish,” I said.
“I’m on it.”
She quickly set to work on the explosive, guided by the directions on her SecondSight, she said. She removed a spool of wire and then connected this to two orange caps that she inserted into the explosive. Lastly, she pressed the explosive not to the door, but to a section of wall directly to the left of the door, where the hinges were anchored.
My HUD said the monster was six thousand feet away.
“What’s the good word, Sue?”
“The monster is gaining ground,” Sue said.
“Thanks for the news flash.”
“You still have the chance to run.”
“I want what’s in that vault!”
“How long?” Dwayne asked, nervously tapping his Air Jordans on the ground. “I can’t get a clear signal on my HUD.”
“Four minutes, maybe less,” I said.
“Cool your jets. Now all we need to do is detonate it,” Lish said, motioning for us to get back.
“How?”
She grabbed up her rifle. “Get behind me.”
We did, taking cover well behind Lish, who fired several shots. The last one was true, striking the explosive, creating a controlled blast that tore a section of the wall away.
My ears were ringing from the explosion as we stood and looked into the hole in the wall. On the other side was a hallway that led into a bullpen-like room with a very high ceiling that was filled with crates and boxes and metal lockers.
“We need to get moving now!” I shouted.
We swung into action and I dropped in front of one of the metal lockers, throwing it open to reveal a row of neatly stacked cylindrical grenade launchers.
“Congratulations, you have acquired a Milcor MGL portable grenade launcher manufactured by Milcor of South Africa in 2007. The weapon holds six forty-millimeter grenades.”
On the ground next to it was a metal case that, when pried open, held what Sue said were an assortment of incendiary, high-explosive, fragmentation, and anti-personnel grenades.
I began slotting grenades into the launchers, casting a look in Dwayne’s direction. “Me likey,” he said with a smile.
“What did you find?”
He unfolded the longest (and largest) rifle I’d ever seen before. “Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifle,” Dwayne said. “At least that’s what the SecondSight says.”
Lish whistled and we looked over to see that she was shouldering an olive-colored contraption with a long tube fitted to what looked like a battery pack.
“Manpad,” she said.
Dwayne quirked an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“A surface-to-air missile,” she said.
“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but what if there’s nothing in the sky to shoot down.”
“Then I modify it,” she replied. She lowered the weapon and then went to work on it, unfastening clips, unscrewing sections of the tube.
I made a move to assist and Dwayne waved me off. “Let the girl work her magic.”
With the aid of directions she claimed were on her HUD, Lish spent exactly two minutes field-stripping two of the Manpads, only to combine two of the launchers into one weapon, the tubes mounted on top of each other.
I was amazed at how quickly and efficiently she worked. She had the kind of hands that might’ve performed surgeries in another life, so deftly her fingers worked, expertly separating wires, twisting some together, isolating others. Absolutely no energy was wasted as sparks flew and a green light blinked on top of the weapon.
“What in the holy hell is that?” I asked.
“The baddest fucking weapon around,” she replied with a huge smile.
“Woe to the alien who steps to her,” Dwayne whispered in awe.
My HUD beeped and blinked.
The monster was here.
“LET’S GO!”
We hopped on the holo-lift and the side wall imploded.
A hailstorm of debris filled the air, knocking me from the holo-lift as I looked up to see a terrifying silhouette on the other side of the room.
The whore spider muscled itself into the room. It stood nearly twelve feet tall with eight segmented legs that held aloft a bulbous body capped by a triangular head with a face that looked eerily like a woman. Below the feminine face were a pair of long, greasy appendages that ended at blades that winked at us. The appendages whipped back and forth like snakes, slicing the air, searching for something to strike.
Species: Jorogumo – Whore Spider
Level:2
Class:Monster
Health:10/10
Attributes: Adept at calculating trajectories and enemy movements; exoskeleton of double-layered chitin; possesses the ability to create and propel necro darts; charged hemolymph provides advanced locomotion.
“That is one ugly bitch,” Lish said.
The spider’s face screwed up in a scowl. Dwayne whacked Lish. “I think she heard you!”
The spider’s legs moved, making a sound like giant trees creaking in a forest, propelling the beast sideways. The thing’s mouth opened and a nasty snarl erupted. I grabbed one of the grenade launchers and let the monster have it.
“GET DOWN!” I screamed.
I fired a shot, watching the grenade corkscrew
forward only to bounce off the thing’s exterior.
“It’s got Level 2 protections!” Dwayne shouted.
“So not fair,” Lish said, hefting her rocket launcher, which she fired. The rocket ricocheted off the spider’s exoskeleton and blasted a hole though the side wall. If nothing else, we had another way out of the room.
Lish lowered her smoking weapon, eyes wide in awe. “Not cool. Not cool at all.”
Dwayne hadn’t fired. He was holding the sniper rifle up, adjusting his glasses. “Focus on its feet.”
“What?”
“Most spiders have a hardened exoskeleton that covers their back, bottom, sides, and legs.”
“And you’d know this how?” I asked.
“Because I’ve studied them,” Dwayne replied.
“You’re scared of them.”
“You often study that which scares you the most.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Whatever, just fire on its feet. It’s probably the only weak spot.”
I nodded, fear-gripping my grenade launcher.
“Spread out and attack,” I said. “And whatever you do, do not panic.”
“Panic’s looking pretty fucking good right about now,” Dwayne shot back.
Lish ran to the right, Dwayne took the left, and I maintained my position between them, staring the thing down.
I fired a grenade at its legs, causing an explosion that made the thing shriek in pain.
“TAKE IT DOWN!”
Lish fired, then Dwayne did as well. The beast shrunk, dropping down onto its legs, hovering near the floor. For a moment it looked like we’d be able to put the monster down easily. I charged, gun blazing, then saw that the thing had adopted the defensive crouch for a reason. Its legs were no longer exposed. But there was a reason the thing was at Level 2 and we were still stuck at Level 1.
Before I could stop my forward momentum, the spider had reared up and one of the appendages, a necro dart, shot forward and slammed into my shoulder. The blade hit flesh and kept on going. The pain was immediate and intense as I fell to the ground, struggling to dislodge the bony protuberance.
“What the hell is that thing?!” I shouted.
“A necro dart,” Sue replied.
“What does it do?”
“Cause immense pain and suffering.”
“Anything else?”
“Dissolves you from the inside out.”
Shit!
The appendage didn’t go all the way through but it went far enough and then was yanked back, its razor-sharp barbed end taking a hunk of my flesh with it. Blood spurted and stars filled my eyes.
-5 Health Points!
Groping for my gun, I slipped on my own warm blood as my HUD flashed my stats:
Species: Homo Sapiens (James, Logan)
Chattel:
Health:4/10
Level 1:1
Class:Fighter
Kills:32
Vitals:BP – 132/80; T – 98.08f; RR – 19bpm
XP:823
Dammit, I’d lost five health points and was really feeling it.
I was having trouble catching my breath and when I moved it felt like there was concrete in my joints. My breath came in wheezes as I pushed myself upright. Hobbling around, I gaped at my shoulder and saw that the puckered flesh around the wound was beginning to turn black.
I grabbed my grenade launcher which felt like it weighed two hundred pounds.
“If you do not move in four seconds you will reach your journey’s end,” Sue said.
“Doing the best I can,” I snarled.
“Do better.”
Sue was getting a little snippy.
Lish fired another rocket at the spider, which deflected the shot. The fiend counterattacked, striking her in the legs with one of its legs. She smacked against the ground and skidded sideways like a hockey puck.
The spider pivoted and fired a flurry of necro darts in my direction.
Realizing the grenades would be ineffective, I held my weapon like a baseball bat and dropped into a hitter’s stance.
The darts flew at me and I whacked them like I was striking a baseball over a centerfield fence. The pain in my shoulder was intense and the black flesh was expanding, spreading over my chest and up my neck, but I managed to avoid losing any other points.
Dwayne drew the spider off, bobbing and weaving, taking careful aim at the thing’s legs, firing a shot that stole a health point from the spider. But it wasn’t enough.
I stared at my own blood, shiny on the floor, and then an idea popped into my head.
“The booze!” I shouted to Dwayne.
“What?!”
I pointed in the general vicinity of the spider’s legs. “Toss your bottle of booze on the ground!”
Dwayne dropped his rifle and flung the bottle, which broke on the ground, releasing the amber-colored alcohol.
My HUD highlighted the alcohol in red, my targeting reticle positioned in the middle of it.
Harnessing the pain and anger, I whipped out the road flare, popped the top and flung it at the spider.
The flare hit the alcohol and created a pool of flames that began licking hungrily at the spider’s feet.
-3 Health Points!
Tooth-shattering shrieks echoed from the wounded monster. The spider slipped on the burning alcohol and fell back and I knew our moment was at hand.
Using my targeting reticle, I launched a grenade that struck the spider’s soft underbelly, blowing a hole in it that leaked an orange-red blood.
Dwayne followed this up with several shots and then Lish grabbed her rocket launcher. “TAKE COVER!”
I did, covering my head as she fired a rocket that pulped the spider, which twitched and moaned in its death throes.
Lish got the points for killing the spider. She pumped her fist and did a little dance as Dwayne rushed over to help me and I saw he had a pouch of some kind in his hand.
“What is that?”
“Basically, it’s like an enchanted apple in Minecraft. A health booster.”
“How much did you pay?”
“I paid what it cost. Now stop asking questions and drink the damned thing.”
I ripped open the top and downed the gel, which tasted like spinach blended with sardines. After nearly vomiting, I checked my stats to see that I’d been returned to full health.
“Thank you,” I said.
He smiled. “Pretty sure it won’t be the last time that I save your ass.”
We bumped fists and then hugged as Lish sauntered over, blowing smoke from the end of her rocket launcher.
“What do you boys propose we do for an encore?”
“Load up and get the hell out of here,” I said.
Lish piloted the holo-lift through the hole she’d created with her rocket launcher, stationing it down at the other end of the hallway near one of the building’s side exits.
Dwayne and I took turns hauling more gear down to stack on the lift, including what we deemed the most valuable items: grenades, canisters of ammunition, one of a pair of flamethrower backpacks, pistols, you name it.
“See, the beauty of the whole thing,” Dwayne said, smiling, admiring one of the grenade launchers as we took a breather in the vault, “is that we didn’t have to use any XP to get this stuff.”
I nodded. “Which lets us conserve our points for when we really need ‘em.”
“What are you going to buy with yours, Logan?”
I shrugged. “Not sure what we’re going to encounter.”
Dwayne’s smile wilted. “You been checking the big board?”
“What big board?”
He gestured for me to follow him over to the rear wall in the vault. He pointed at the wall and I didn’t see a damned thing.
“Yeah, that’s a great-looking wall, Dwayne.”
An emerald spiral of light issued from Dwayne’s eye. It struck the wall and expanded to a holographic screen that was easily five feet wide by as many
feet long. It was the same map I’d seen on my own HUD only bigger, and Dwayne was able to do things with it that I couldn’t.
He mentally drilled down into the map’s topography, circling around our present location. I could see holographic images of us looking at the damn map, which was spooky, then he zoomed back to show the surrounding area.
Entire sections of neighborhoods were on fire, buildings torched, churches and businesses blasted apart. I witnessed the other participants, some driving in vehicles, others on foot, doing the damage, killing each other, a kill list counter in the right corner continuously spinning to represent the number of dead participants, which now numbered over five hundred thousand in Maryland alone.
Dwayne swiped his fingers as if he were switching screens on a tablet. The images changed to dozens of crazy names like Ram-Jam, Hotshot, Jetstream, Turbo Jones, Windchill, and The Death Defier. Next to the names were numbers like 1876, 2099, 1255, and 1408.
Below this were other names like Dark Daze, The Duchess, SeekNdestroy, Xenomorphing, Streetsweeper, MGMT, Oathkeeper, Enigma, Santa Muerte, and The Crimson Parson who had higher numbers. The Crimson Parson was up to 5205 points, and MGMT was close behind at 4760.
“Those are some of the top scorers,” Dwayne said. “Hard to tell if they’re from this country or another one.”
“Someone’s keeping track?’
He nodded. “It’s like a March Madness basketball bracket on crack. I’ll bet somewhere the Noctem are placing bets on all of us.”
Dwayne scrolled through hundreds of names and pointed to ours. The three of us were on the bracket, although near the very bottom.
“That’s you,” Dwayne said, pointing to DC Slayer.
I was shocked to see that. “Who put that up?”
He shrugged. “You’ve got fans.”
“Enemies.”
“Enemy ain’t nothing but a fan who’s turned on you,” he said.
“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your handle?”
His nose scrunched up. “I’ve been giving that some consideration and I was kinda digging ‘Black Plague.’”
“Because you’re black and kill lots of stuff?”
“Exactly.”
“What about Lish?”
“‘Mother Trucker,’” Dwayne replied. “’Cause she just runs shit over.”