by Wyatt Savage
“I’m thinking more like ‘Slayergrl,’ with a ‘grl’ instead of ‘girl.’”
A moment passed between us. Dwayne pointed to his score on the bracket.
“First time in my life I’ve been recognized for my abilities.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“No, it is,” he said. “You’re used to it. You were always so good in sports, on those all-star baseball travel teams and whatnot. What was I? The manager one year.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“’Cause we weren’t friends back then, Logan. We didn’t run in the same circles and you and your friends, well…”
“I was a bit of a dick back in the day, wasn’t I?”
Dwayne nodded. “You thought your shit didn’t smell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just…don’t change again. I hate to say it, but the guy who got into that car was not the same one that came out. I like the Logan you are now.”
I smiled as Dwayne swiped the screens to shots of the outside world, neighborhoods, streets, fields, forests. I could see that many of the participants were going solo, but there were definitely larger groups and, in some cases, small armies of men and women, all heavily armed. Everyone was making their way toward the same thing, the wall which now stretched from the water all the way across the entirety of the state.
Along with the participants were the monsters of course, gruesome things moving on the land and in the air, godawful beasts and alien prisoners that had been inserted into the game to make it more challenging. My heart sank at the realization that we would have to fight our way through it all if we hoped to get to the next level in the Melee.
“If you were hoping to get me totally depressed, mission accomplished,” I said.
“You need to not listen to that voice,” Dwayne said.
“What?”
He turned to me. “The voice, Logan. Y’know, the…voice.”
“Sue?”
“Not your SecondSight assistant, the other one.” Off my confused look he continued, “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“I don’t know lots of shit, D.”
“The aliens try to corrupt you, man. They plant ideas in your head. They’ve got this little voice that whispers in your ear when you’re at your lowest, trying to convince you to kill yourself or turn on everyone else.”
I thought back on the voice I’d heard at the moment I was considering killing myself. That still, small, sweet voice that commanded me to pull the trigger on the .45.
“Whatever happens, do not give in to that voice,” Dwayne added.
“I won’t.”
“Promise.”
I nodded.
“I wanted to show you this for a reason,” Dwayne said, twirling a finger as several sections of the map expanded, highlighting specific firefights.
In one I saw a group of participants facing off against something…what was it? A man? The man was wrapped in a cloud of blue light, levitating, arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross.
“That dude is in a different class,” Dwayne said.
“What?”
“The base class is usually, but not always, ‘fighter,’” Dwayne replied. “It’s like Lish said before, once you get enough points you can acquire an upper-tier class with significantly better attributes which gives you power over the elements in a certain sense.”
The screen flashed to reveal images of classes that were marked, “Nihilist,” “Monster,” Wind Warrior,” “Ice Warrior,” “Animus,” “Sonic Warrior,” and many others.
“Whoa,” I said. “You can actually become a monster?”
“Please don’t tell me this is the first time you’re seeing this. I mean…haven’t you been researching all of the other classes?”
“No, I’ve been focusing mostly on not getting killed, Dwayne.”
“Well, there are more participants in higher classes now and they’re getting closer to us.”
A shiver worked itself up over the knobs of my spine. Dwayne pointed and a section of map popped up to reveal a tall figure whose face was shrouded by a mask of some kind. He was moving slowly down a street, hands outthrust even though he didn’t appear to be carving a path of destruction.
“Who is that guy?”
“An Animus.”
“What’s he do?”
“From what I can tell, he gives life to inanimate objects.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
The map vanished and Dwayne eyed me. “We’re going to find out pretty soon how bad it is if we don’t leave now ‘cause the Animus is only a few miles away.”
“Then let’s get Lish and head to the wall.”
We ran back down the hallway to see that they were gone.
The holo-lift and Lish.
They were just…gone.
31
“LISH!” Dwayne shouted. “HEY, LISH!”
“She’s not here,” I said.
“Did they get her? Did someone come in while we were looking at that stuff and find a way to kidnap her and then—”
I pointed and Dwayne saw what I saw: a wall of orange light, what Sue confirmed was an energy barrier blocking the front door.
“She did it, Dwayne.”
“Did what?” he asked.
“She stole the fucking weapons and left us here!”
He shook his head and began pacing like a jungle cat in a cage. “No, no way she’d double-cross us like that.”
We stared at the ground and the words “I’m sorry” were written in the dust next to several crates of ammo and additional supplies. She’d left some of the stuff behind for us, but still. I turned away in disgust.
“Sue, what’s the SITREP? Where’s Lish?”
“She is gone.”
“I know that,” I snapped.
“She is playing the game in the manner in which it is meant to be played.”
“Because she double-crossed us?”
Silence from Sue. I was shocked and pissed, but it all was beginning to make sense. The stealing of the money from the dead, her repeated observations about going off on our own, the desire to become like a god. She’d given into the alien voice, the one that had apparently convinced her to turn her back on us.
“You turned her against us, Sue,” I said.
“I do not have access to her mind.”
“You’re all the same!” I said, wanting to kick the shit out of Sue and her alien handlers. “You get inside our brains and get us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do.”
“That only works with certain participants.”
“What?”
“They have tried to corrupt you,” Sue said.
“I fucking figured…”
“And were unable to.”
“Why?”
“Because you are not weak. Because of your accident. Because your mind is…different, Logan.”
I didn’t know whether that was good or bad and frankly I didn’t give a damn. I had more pressing concerns, like the boxes blinking on my HUD.
“You seeing that, Dwayne?”
“Yeah, but I’m wishing I wasn’t.”
“He’s coming isn’t he? The one with the upper-tier class. The Animus.”
Dwayne nodded. “We need to beat our feet.”
“Gonna be a tad difficult seeing that Lish locked us inside.”
We grabbed what Lish had left and tore back into the vault room where we gathered the few remaining weapons. I snagged two grenade launchers and shoved them into a duffel bag with a crate of ammo, then I hoisted the other flamethrower, and Dwayne slung two assault rifles over his shoulders.
I checked our points. I had 837 and Dwayne had 695. More than enough for each of us to acquire a Ragetag if need be.
Reading my look, Dwayne said, “We could get upgrades for sure. Both of us.”
“But if we did that—”
“We might not have enough points to get over the wall,” I said.
>
“I’m using some for a Rejuv and you should too. They’re cheap and we can build up some health points as we find a way out of here.”
“Speaking of that. I think I’ve got a way for us to bust loose.”
I held up one of the grenade launchers.
I blasted a hole through one of the side walls with my grenade launcher and we crawled outside and under the energy barrier that I surmised Lish had left. In my mind I pictured her using a portion of her points to move up a class, becoming some kind of sonic warrior or perhaps a figure who was able to sling spells like an old-time mage. Whatever her reasons, Lish had stolen from us and tried to keep us locked up inside the installation, which meant that if we saw her again, friend or no friend, she’d have to answer for it.
After quickly using some points to get back to full strength, we set off back across the field. We stopped halfway across it when a bluish-white light flashed. I turned back and there he was. Striding out from the treeline on the other side of the installation. Easily eight or nine feet tall, a nimbus of the same bluish-white light around his bald head. He didn’t walk as much as glide, drifting across the field, arms out to his sides as if he were about to offer a blessing. I didn’t need to check my HUD to know that we were in the presence of the Animus.
Species: Homo Sapiens
Level:1
Class:Animus
Health:10/10
Attributes: Possesses the psychic power to give life to inanimate objects and resurrect the dead; enhanced with powerful energy and munitions suppression shields.
Dwayne sighed. I patted him on the shoulder “If it’s any consolation, he, it, is worth 200 XP.”
“I’ll remember that when he’s killing me.”
I dropped to my knees and strapped on the flamethrower as the Animus rose up ten feet in the air and began chanting. Friction sparks filled the air all around him and the ground shook. Dwayne fired at the being, but the nimbus, some kind of forcefield, blocked the bullets.
“Okay, I’m done,” Dwayne said. “I tried the bullets and they’re not working.”
“Let’s see how he does with fire,” I said, scanning the user instructions on my HUD.
Before I could fire the weapon up, things began to move out across the field. Some of the things were very small, and others were not.
“What’s the SITREP, Sue?”
“The Animus has harnessed his abilities. He’s given life to that which was previously lifeless.”
Remember the religious icons, statues, figurines, charred animal corpses, and dead people we’d seen earlier back on the one-lane road? Well, they were alive and running right towards us. I thought I’d seen it all, but then I caught sight of a little statue of Jesus, now animated and pissed, running alongside the still-smoking remains of a dog, and the gruesome corpse of the guy who’d been burned behind the wheel.
“That’s fucked up,” Dwayne said. “I mean, that’s like someone took some otherwise really fucked-up shit and poured gasoline on it and set it on fire to make it even more fucked up.”
“Well said.”
“What do we do?”
“Send it all to hell!”
Turns out using a flamethrower is a bit like using a pressure-washer to clean the old deck. Okay, so it’s a bit more difficult and involves squeezing the trigger lever at the base of the gun housing. This opens a plug and pulls a rod back, opening another valve that allowed the pressurized fuel in the canisters on my back to spurt up to and through the nozzle.
“Come on, baby, light my fire,” Dwayne whispered as I aimed the nozzle at the approaching horde of animated figurines and corpses.
With one tug on the trigger, I unleashed a forty-yard stream of fire. The fire splashed the monsters, sending them up in flames. I maneuvered the nozzle left to right, creating a firestorm that engulfed the entirety of the field as Dwayne picked off any survivors with his rifle.
I didn’t get any XP or kills recorded on my HUD for killing the things the Animus resurrected, which was curious and annoying as hell. Still, I got a kick out of seeing the pissed look on the Animus’s face as I fried his minions. I tried to burn him too, but his forcefield blocked my flames.
“Fuck you!” I shouted, letting up on my flamethrower long enough to flip him a middle finger.
The Animus’s mouth unhinged like a snake’s mouth and a shriek sounded from somewhere deep down in the big bastard’s belly. In a voice, rich with menace, he pointed at us. “You are barely worth the time! I piss fifty points!”
I had the strongest desire to take the sonofabitch down, so I charged.
Dwayne did too.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Logan!” Dwayne shouted while on the run.
“And I’ve got a good one so it cancels out your bad one!”
“He’s in a different class and is more powerful!”
“The bigger they are, the harder they—”
WHAM!
The Animus fired a ball of plasma that struck me in the sternum, nearly knocking me out of my shoes.
Flying back, I landed on my ass and trenched the mud.
-2 Health Points!
Damn, that hurt like hell, but the manner in which I landed at least provided a nice view of Dwayne getting swatted sideways like a fly. I saw my old buddy face-plant in the mud and roll over three times.
“Looks like you were right, Dwayne!”
Dwayne held up a middle finger, wiping a mask of mud from his face.
The Animus fired plasma balls into the mud that barely missed me as Dwayne ran for cover. In the throaty roar of the detonating plasma, I made out a high-pitched sound that sounded like someone bouncing a spoon across the top of a bottle of beer.
All of the things we’d burned suddenly sprang back to life. That wasn’t the worst of it, however, because the things separated, pulling apart like taffy to form new things like those brooms in that Sorcerer’s Apprentice cartoon.
“Please tell me I’m not seeing this,” Dwayne said, crawling over next to me.
“You’re gonna need more bullets, Kemosabe.”
The monsters ran at us. Dwayne and I rose, planting our feet, ready to fight to the bitter end.
One of the little figurines, an image of the Virgin Mary maybe two feet tall, somersaulted into me. She rained blows down with her tiny fists as I flung her sideways. Two more figurines jumped on my back, the little bastards working to scratch my eyes out. I broke one over my knee and punted the other one when gunfire and explosions rang out across the field.
Forms suddenly appeared from behind us, men and women holding heavy weaponry and hidden behind body armor and helmets with smoked visors. They sprang from the woods, firing on the run.
Their bullets hissed over our heads, flying toward the Animus and his minions. I scanned my HUD, but didn’t see any stats listed for the warriors, which I assumed meant they were blocking me, using spoofers, jammers, whatever they were called.
I noted that one of them, a male figure at the rear was moving haltingly, using braces that were strapped to his hands. Another man was next to him, assisting the handicapped man. They whispered and then this man moved forward, took a giant rocket launcher from another of the warriors, and fired it. A rocket streaked up into the sky like a bottle-rocket, trailing a corkscrew of purple light.
The rocket curled up into the air and then came down at the Animus.
The Animus’s forcefield appeared again and the rocket slammed into it.
This time the explosion was not deflected by the forcefield in full. Rather, the blast vaporized the barrier and shunted the Animus sideways into the muck, causing him damage.
-6 Health Points!
A cheer rose up from the armed fighters, who sprang forward.
I didn’t know if they’d come to help us or kill us, so I kept my finger on the flamethrower’s trigger.
The warriors galloped past us and I could hear some of them muttering, “Who wants the two hundred points?! I want the two hundred p
oints!” while cutting down the remaining things the Animus had resurrected. Several of the warriors sprayed the creatures with an eerie-blue liquid that made the things topple over and stop moving.
And then they quickly encircled the stricken Animus, who was crawling across the field.
One of the warriors popped the top on what looked like a grenade. The fist-sized canister spewed orange smoke and then the warrior tossed it at the Animus. A cone of orange flame smothered the Animus, quickly melting him.
More cheers from the warriors along with several hellacious chest-bumps, as if they’d just scored the winning touchdown in a football game.
“Who the hell are these guys?” Dwayne whispered.
Before I could answer, one of the warriors stalked across the field toward me and removed his helmet.
I knew instantly who it was.
It was the Asian man who’d interviewed me after DC and the vanishing of the Severn River Bridge.
It was FBI Special Agent Pei.
Several seconds of silence stretched between us.
“Nice to see you again, DC Slayer,” he said.
I was shocked to see him, so I didn’t respond.
Then another figure approached and another helmet was removed to reveal Noora!
I couldn’t believe she was still alive.
I held up a hand in a gesture of goodwill and she approached. She embraced me with tears in her eyes.
The other fighters began screaming and I saw something in the sky, a profound rearrangement of the air, a movement across the heavens that made it appear as if the sky itself was being ripped apart.
“THEY’RE WARPING IT!” Agent Pei said.
Everyone rushed toward me and Agent Pei grabbed the scruff of my neck and dragged me to the ground as the sky turned a sickly orange color.
“What’s going on?!” I shouted.
Deep down I already knew the answer.
The aliens were changing things; they were calling an audible.
At the very moment that the sky began to melt, the older man with the braces stood above us.
“Why isn’t he getting down?!” I shouted. “He’s going to be killed!”
“He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Agent Pei said.
The man discarded his braces and stood unsteadily, hands out like he was one of those statues in court clutching the scales of justice.