Time was not just of the essence. It was ticking down so loudly I could almost hear it, sending my pulse pounding and the adrenaline coursing through me.
“Well, the door’s here now. Not only that, it gets better,” I said, stepping through the door first and letting her follow me in. Toward the end, I hadn’t been bothering to slide any of the avatars back in their place, and there were probably thirty or forty drawers hanging open with the beds full of lifeless Survivors. “Sasha, I know some of these guys. I don’t mean ‘know’ in the biblical sense, I mean ‘know’ like I’ve pawed through their guts and ate their insides and then ordered them back on their feet to do it to somebody else. That type of know, you get me?”
I was glad to hear that there wasn’t exactly a hysterical edge creeping into my voice, but I was certainly talking faster than I needed to. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.
Everything changed. I froze, absolutely motionless. Something was wrong. “Wait a minute,” I muttered to myself. “Hang on…”
Sasha didn’t hear me. She was looking at the bodies that I’d uncovered, and she’d recognized Smashfoot at a distance and gone over. “I know this one,” she called back to me. “This is one of the Eternals that you told me you killed in our headquarters.”
She wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know, but I couldn’t have brought myself to concentrate on her even if she’d told me what the key to the whole damn thing was.
Something was happening. That deep breath that I’d tried to take, it hadn’t been there. I’d reached for it, and my lungs couldn’t function like that. Because they didn’t function like that.
Not anymore.
I couldn’t breathe. The pulse I’d heard roaring in my ears was gone. The push of adrenaline had fallen completely away. Something clattered to the ground at my feet, and I stared at it like my life depended on it.
Sasha’s flashlight pinned it to the cement. It was a watch. My watch. It had fallen off of me, and when I finally got enough control of my body to turn my head and look at my left hand, all I saw was a stump.
Power washed over me. It hit me like a tsunami, and I braced myself and felt it strip me bare and remake me into what I truly was.
You have been granted the following abilities: Hide in Shadows, Low Light Vision, Grasp, Lunge, Infectious Bite, Howl, Consume Undead Flesh, Forgotten Language - Level 1, Forgotten Language - Level 2, and Infectious Influence.
You have declined the Tank Archetype. You have declined the Runner. You have embraced the Schemer archetype.
Achievement Unlocked – Time to Bring the Pain
All of my lost levels and abilities were restored all at once. I started the day with nothing, literally nothing, only to become a passenger in someone else’s head. And now, with something like six minutes to go before every Survivor Deep Dive could muster got thrown at us, I was everything that I’d been when the servers had gone down yesterday.
Everything and more, because through my new eyes I didn’t see cold, lifeless bodies on the slabs anymore.
I saw allies.
Sasha was watching me, eyes wide. “Holy fuck,” she said. “That’s why the door wasn’t here for me. If I’d poked my head in here, I wouldn’t have given it much thought. Yeah, it’s huge, but I would’ve just chalked it up as a safe space for my dad or one of the developers to visualize the casualties that had occurred. But this… This is a gift from my father to you, Ryan.”
Rise, I thought, and sixty bodies sat bolt upright on their beds.
Another hundred odd simultaneous thuds bumped out of the cabinets the length of the room as no doubt the rest of my puppets tried to obey my command in their cramped confines.
“Seriously?” I asked myself with a chuckle. “This is supposed to be my moment, and instead it’s the fucking Three Stooges…”
Sasha didn’t bother to hide her laugh, but at least she was good-natured about it. It felt good to relieve the tension a little, and after we shared a smile, she took the left side of the morgue, and I took the right, but even going as fast as we could it took more than half of our remaining time just to roll out all the slabs.
Once they were free, I got them all to put their feet on the ground and their minds into predator mode. They weren’t automatons or robots. They might have all sat up at the same time, but now that I had commanded them to stand they did it in a variety of different manners, which was fine with me.
They were a flurry of idle animations and swirling Zombie subroutines, and just looking at them made murder cross my mind. The Survivors were in for a shock…
Even if most of them were just going to be fodder, I had something close to one hundred and fifty Zombies on my side now. Although I didn’t know how much the Survivors’ numbers had swelled in the past hour or so, the fight that was on the way was certainly going to be much fairer than it would have been a few minutes ago.
“Go,” I said to them. “Find a room and make it yours. Find a corner. Find a hole. Lash out at the Survivors. Flank them. Drag them down. Let them pass and grab the last in their line. Drop on them from above, strike at them through windows. Show them who owns the night.”
Most of my pets were at least of a high enough level that they could exit the room with enough speed that it only took ninety seconds or so to clear it. A few shambling forms brought up the rear, and Sasha looked past me as they staggered by. “Okay,” she confided, “I am willing to admit that you’ve suddenly become pretty badass.”
“To be fair, I was due,” I told her.
But no sooner had the compliment left her lips then her face darkened. “You know they shouldn’t be in the game, right?”
I grinned wickedly, showing her my broken teeth and making her shudder. “Of course. But neither should I.”
THIRTY-SIX
The original plan, back when our little party consisted of nothing more than Sasha and I and a complete death wish, had been for me to be at the controls of the cameras while she set off some explosions upstairs and created a bit of chaos. After that, she’d retreat downstairs, and we’d hope like hell that we could find a way to luck out and last an hour.
It hadn’t been a great plan. In fact, it had been a completely useless one, but it was all we had.
Now though, I was far more valuable on the front lines than I was down here. Or, to be more accurate, I was far more valuable skulking through the shadows behind the enemy’s front lines.
One thing was for sure; the game knew exactly how to treat me now. The restoration of my Zombie powers had given the programs running the majority of Headshot an inkling of proper protocol, and I was sure that Blake Redhook had given them a push in the right direction as well.
That meant that I got the systemwide countdown just like everybody else.
Three minutes before the raid begins.
“Okay,” Sasha said. “I’m going to barricade myself down here as best I can. The cameras are set up, and I think they’ll do their job. Some of them are pretty well hidden, so it might buy you a couple of minutes. Just get out there and keep your head down at first, at least until you can capitalize on the mayhem.”
“Very mysterious,” I said, giving her a wink that I could only imagine was hideous. “Good luck. I’ll fall before you do, I promise you that.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have to keep that promise,” she told me. “Good luck. And thank you, for everything.”
I should’ve gone. I needed to set up our defenses, but instead, I just stood there.
So did she. There were a thousand things to check on, prepare or make ready. There were a hundred things I should have been thinking about.
But there was just one thing that needed to be said.
“Sasha?”
“Ryan.”
I swallowed hard, but when I opened my mouth to say the words, I hesitated instead. The voice in the back of my head was reminding me what I must look like to her now, and my resolve faded away to nothing. Sasha was fiery a
nd beautiful and as stubborn as a mule. She bordered on brilliant, not to mention touching the boundary of irritating. She was just about everything I’d thought that I wanted, and for once in my life the way I imagined a thing seemed to be exactly the way it was.
There might’ve been one thing still to say, but there was zero chance I could say it without fucking it up, so I turned and hurried up the stairs after my army. I was angry with myself, but that was fine. I could use it. I’d make the Survivors suffer. Perhaps when I reunited with Sasha on the other side of all of this, I’d have the balls to say what needed to be said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
My minions were everywhere. I was happy to see that my Low Light Vision was kicking in just like it should and between it and the rest of my assortment of Zombie abilities I was already feeling more like myself. As I strode through the emergency room and crossed the street, everywhere I looked that was suitable for ambush was already ensconced with at least one and sometimes two of my brethren.
They were ready. It was time for me to find a spot to lead this from…
It wouldn’t be a massacre, at least. I didn’t think we’d make it through, but we’d turn it into a very different night than the Survivors were expecting. They thought they’d be storming a minimally guarded hospital, and that wasn’t the case anymore. Once the initial rush was slowed by unexpected attacks from every direction, things would quickly grind to a halt. Panic would ensue. Fallen Survivors would become mine and fight their former friends.
We weren’t without our advantages. If enough things went right, we might well prevail. Without knowing exactly what we were up against, it was hard to know if we had the numbers. I thought it would turn on a knife edge. There’d be plenty of Survivors now, and more would be hopping in with every passing moment in waves of reinforcements from other parts of the world, assuming the server announcement had been accurate.
But they wouldn’t be ready, and the best thing about being in my spot was that my numbers grew whenever theirs fell. I had to do what I could to make sure that the maximum amount of chaos occurred in a minimum amount of time.
I knew that Sasha would play her role. I never doubted that. Not only did she have more experience in the game than everybody else, if there was anyone that I wanted to be rigging a place up defensively it was an Engineer. I didn’t know exactly what she’d cooked up on the outside, and I’d been paying too much attention to my Zombie brethren to investigate any changes when I’d left the hospital. Hell, I was just happy that it looked like she’d installed some fail-safes in the booby-traps she’d made with the C4 because there was no way in hell that my Zombies were agile or cunning enough to have not set them off.
Two minutes before the raid begins.
I wanted to use all of the three blocks the barrier had brought us. There was a reason that her dad had given us that buffer, and if I didn’t make them hurt over the length and breadth of that space that was just wasting whatever it had cost him to protect us for as long as he had. I needed the Survivors to turn and run, or to get desperate enough to give up, log out or even get scared to death enough to make more mistakes.
It was a shame that it was just AI running the zombies. What I needed was players, real minds behind these dead eyes. On top of that, all of them were the base archetype. I had no Tanks or Runners at my disposal, and certainly nothing higher like myself or Riode had been. I knew that I should be happy with what I had, since not ten minutes ago it had just been Sasha and me alone against the world. I was going to have to make up for the fact that the Zombies wouldn’t be performing at peak efficiency by making a nuisance of myself amongst the enemy.
I was determined to choose the battlefield. Three square blocks of grisly, in-your-face urban warfare was a very different proposition from the stomping they were planning on delivering. They needed to bleed from start to finish, and it was my job to make it happen.
Sixty seconds before the raid begins.
I could practically feel the weight of the clock bearing down on my shoulders. As I rushed from shadow to shadow, moving toward the same spot where I’d driven the truck through the barrier, I took the opportunity to direct a few of my minions ahead of me. They were ready for blood, and I didn’t envy the Survivors’ mad dash if they didn’t have their wits about them.
The enemy didn’t even imagine there was going to be a front line, but I was determined to drag the fight out as far away from the hospital for as long as possible.
Fortunately, all of the buildings were abandoned. I don’t know if there had been anyone in here when Redhook had created the buffer, but they sure weren’t here anymore. A couple of blocks away from ground zero, I scanned the architecture around me. Cafes, office buildings, a dozen different types of thoroughly looted shops, a restaurant, and then, the one thing that caught my eye.
Just ahead, with frontage on the main street and tucked discreetly between a place that sold prefab kitchens and one that was hawking camping crap was a little real estate office that I decided would be mine. I liked it because it wasn’t obvious. It was two stories tall when the ones behind it were only one, which meant that there was a chance I could find a window in the back of the upper office to use as an alternative escape route.
Even better, the front of the estate office had already had its glass blasted out at some stage, and because businesses like this made their money by filling massive windows full of property photos, the lack of upright glass meant that there was nothing stopping me from getting in and out easily.
Ten seconds before the raid begins.
I climbed in, went up the stairs, and discovered that the room above was an open plan office. I was glad I didn’t have to weave amongst a maze of cubicles, but if I let myself get cornered up here, there’d be no place to hide.
I’d been right about the upstairs window, though. It was just as I’d imagined, looking out onto the first-story roof of the place behind it. Since it was perfect for my needs, I opened it. If I did find myself needing a quick way out, there was no reason to slow myself down or throw myself through it and alert my attackers to the sound of breaking glass.
Listen up, I told myself, get the hell out of here at the first sign of trouble. If they take you out, the Zombies you’re leading might give up the ghost.
Speaking of trouble, here it came. The barrier was still muffling the sound from beyond it, but as it vanished right on the button at 11 o’clock, the roar of engines and the snap crackle pop of every caliber of weapon known to man crescendoed with enough force to shake the building’s foundations.
The Survivors poured in like a nightmare let loose. If anyone were viewing the game through my eyes in that instant, they’d never have imagined that the things below me were anything other than a ravening, slavering horde of mindless monsters bent on making mayhem.
I watched them from upstairs, keeping to the shadows in case any of them were wise enough to suspect an ambush. I sent out a mental command for the other Zombies to do the same, though I was sure that my range of influence was a lot smaller than the area my forces had assembled in. If we moved too soon, the ambush would fail, and the Survivors would be able to turn it into an exercise in marksmanship.
I didn’t think I had to worry about being spotted, though. I suppose my gamer brain was of a different sort than most of the ones down there, because where I’d have undertaken the raid in a methodical, almost surgical strike after making sure we couldn’t be outflanked, these guys were looking at it as nothing more than a race to the finish line.
There were so many of them packed in so tightly that it looked like a parade on fast forward. They zoomed by in custom cars and armored motorcycles, spike-laden big rigs with cowcatchers that had been ripped from trains, exotic sports cars I’d never even laid eyes on in the real world, let alone gotten behind the wheel of. They drove and swerved so close to each other that they jostled and threw sparks all up and down the line. A lot of the passengers were leaning out of the window like drunks on
New Year’s Eve, slicing up the night sky with thousands of rounds that they should have been holding on to.
How much ammo would they have brought, to take us out? Not nearly the same amount they’d require to fight their way out of the teeth of what they were rushing towards, hopefully…
The Survivors were buoyed by waves of bloodlust. They screamed curses or shouted the names of their Guild or themselves or just anything that came into their tiny, useless brains. Invincible. That’s what they thought they were.
I hoped that they were wrong. They were absolutely dangerous, but it didn’t take a tactical mastermind to spot the myriad of flaws in their assault. Unfortunately, the mistake I’d made was even more glaring.
How the fuck was I going to slow them down? I’d known that they’d be impetuous, throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of the raid bonuses, but what I hadn’t counted on was them jumping in a collective snake of metal and screaming engines and essentially ramming their way right into the hospital’s ground floor.
Basic tactics weren’t going to be the issue here, and their sloppiness wasn’t going to matter if they left my Zombies in their dust. My mind raced. Did we have any defense against ramming? I’d been too busy trying to find spots for my minions to hide to worry about the obvious issue of physical defense, and now that I searched my memory I seemed to remember some thick, metal pylons placed in a loose semi-circle near the emergency entrance.
It made sense. The world we lived in now meant that you couldn’t build a place like the Good Samaritan without anticipating some asshole driving through it, but because ambulances needed to get close I feared that the placement of the pylons wouldn’t be enough. A few well-placed attacks with heavy enough vehicles and high enough speed would let them come crashing straight into the building.
Two in the Gut Page 26