Clint lifted his head and glanced through the holes in the fence. Between the neighboring house fire and the thick grenade smoke, he could barely see anything. Which meant they wouldn’t, either.
He rolled upright and fumbled with his gun. There, still half-sitting, half-standing, he nestled the stock against his shoulder and aimed about chest-high into the smoke.
His stare darted to the lower corner of his HUD. 28 bullets in his magazine. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t waste all of them trying to get just one kill.
He just flicked the safety off, raised his rifle, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullets punched out of the fucking thing so intensely, the gun felt like it was going to buck out of his grip. Clint locked his shoulders and tightened his grip, yanking the muzzle of the gun back down.
Malina would have laughed at him, if she’d seen it. He could practically hear her cackle. The spray of bullets wobbled uncertainly, but straightened out.
Single Kill (+25 XP) marqueed across the upper part of his HUD, quickly replaced by, Level Up!
Clint waved at it to make it dissipate, like smoke, but somehow the HUD took that as a kind of activation. Its border flashed red, and a stats table flooded Clint’s vision, blocking everything behind a wall of lines and numbers.
“Shit,” he sputtered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He felt like an idiot, waving his hand in front of his face, probably looking like he was swatting some invisible fly.
Malina’s shotgun roared. 191 players alive now. Only four of Florence’s crew still alive.
A bullet zipped past his temple, biting into his ear. His HP trickled down a little more, 90/100.
His hand must have hovered over one of the stats values, because the entire table blurred as a dialogue box popped up, reading, Are you sure you want to spend 2 level perks?
Clint yelled, “Sure, I’m fucking sure,” and slapped at the HUD message until his vision returned to normal. He’d figure out what the hell he just did when there weren’t bullets rattling over his head.
Some part of him wanted to keep sitting there, bewildered, but the grenade smoke was already thinning. Their window of opportunity already mostly gone.
Clint stood upright. He took half a second to assess the scene. Whoever was still alive had already fled or managed to hide. There were four bodies on the ground, but the player count was only 191.
Three of the bodies were dead, but one was still alive, just barely. He had a huge chunk of his skull ripped out, his brains peering through a pink flap of rubberized bone, but he crawled gasping over the pavement for his gun.
Three more left alive. At least two of them were still able to fight. Maybe three, if the jeep driver had finally bled out.
It was the closest to a fair fight they were going to get.
Malina was already running across the street, her shotgun scanning the road, the AK-47 strapped to her back. Her eyes were full of death, pure kill-or-be-killed fire.
Clint vaulted himself over what was left of the fence. Adrenaline sent him up and over and solidly back on his feet again.
The pavement was slick with a congealed mix of meat and blood that squelched like jelly under Clint’s boots.
The man with the split skull stared up at Clint, his eyes bloodshot and panicked.
An instinct already coiled in Clint’s trigger finger. He had the urge to just aim and fire, end it now. It would be merciful cruelty. Helping the soon-to-be-dead die a little faster. But he was already sick at the idea of it.
Clint’s gun felt so heavy as he aimed it at the man’s head.
“I’m sorry,” Clint said. “I have to.”
“Clint! The jeep!” Malina screamed from behind him.
Just as she spoke, the jeep’s engine flared to life. Clint snapped his head toward it.
Between the fire and the grenades, the smoke only let him see the vague silhouette of the car, the red gleam of its headlights. He couldn’t tell how many people were inside. The grenade had obliterated the windows, the passenger door, and half the dashboard. It was amazing the fucking thing could still run.
Maybe Malina meant hide. Run for it. Odds were good that’s what she intended, anyway.
But he had a different thought altogether. If they took the jeep, they could get around a hell of a lot faster. Or, at the very least, they could keep Florence from using it. Every little advantage had to count.
So Clint stood his ground. He leveled his rifle at the jeep, at what he guessed was more or less window height.
Malina ran down the middle of the street and did the same: pumped the action and shot and reloaded over and over. Her shotgun thundered across the smoky sky.
The wheels squealed. The jeep darted forward.
Clint shot after it. His bullets plunked against the metal side. He could hear them, faintly, like rocks landing in a tin can. His ears had a low, constant ring from the grenades and gunfire.
He held down the trigger until his gun clicked, barely audible around the humming in his ears. Clint glanced down at his HUD.
Zero bullets left. Fuck.
The jeep swerved but kept going. They weren’t even returning fire. The jeep just veered around the corner and was gone, leaving them behind with all the bodies and smoke.
“We did it!” he called to Malina, grinning. His blood buzzed with delirious excitement.
Malina swung her shotgun back onto her back. Her shoulders sagged forward with relief. “I thought they fucking had you.”
Clint shouldered his rifle strap. “God, me too.”
A gunshot ripped through the air behind him. Clint turned. The world narrowed into a thin tunnel, closing around him.
The player with the split skull wasn’t dead yet. He lay there, staring up at Clint, his eyes full of hate and triumph. His face split in a bloody grin, his saliva red. The pistol in his hands was still smoking.
Something warm and wet was running down Clint’s back. A waterfall of pain that pulsed down his right arm when he let his rifle hang limp from his shoulder strap.
The man spat, “I’m not dying to a level 3 piece of shit like you.”
That flicked a switch in Clint’s mind. It was an instant heat, like his own blood pouring out of him. It was a darker beast than rage. It devoured everything—regret, hesitation, guilt—and left him with only raw bloodlust.
He wanted to kill this bastard.
Clint unhooked his trusty bat from his backpack and said, “Looks like you are to me.”
That single second could have lasted forever. Down the length of the barrel, the man’s fury-twisted face barely looked human. Clint was dully aware of the man’s pistol, aimed at his skull.
He heaved his bat over his head and swung down as hard as he could, just as the man’s pistol fired one final shot.
If he was going to die this early, Clint decided, better to die fighting.
CHAPTER 13
N
O ONE NOTICED THE REAPER in the corner of the ICU room. Even if they could see him, they likely wouldn’t have realized the Lord of Hell himself stood before them.
Death didn’t mind. If anything, it meant the rebranding was working.
The cloak and cowl and empty-eyed skull mask had become too medieval for his tastes. He preferred his slim-cut suits and pocket squares, not just because they were infinitely more tasteful.
More importantly, looking human allowed him to slip in and out of crowds, reveling in being seen but recognized only by the dead and dying. He craved watching the exact moment hope bloomed and died in the eyes of his prey.
It showed him the true power of the phrase a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He still carried a scythe, but he kept it hidden until the moment he could reach into the empty air and pluck it up again.
A woman lay unconscious in the ICU bed, wires and tubes spooling out of her. A respirator chugged away, and a heart monitor let out a low, constant beep. If it wasn�
�t for that thin, undeniable heartbeat, anyone would have thought she was already dead.
In a way, she was.
Death stalked to her side and stared down at her. She certainly didn’t look like she was worth dying for. Pretty enough, but he had seen far lovelier humans in his centuries culling this earth.
He reached out a thin, bony finger and smoothed her dark brown bangs out of her face. She didn’t move. Didn’t react.
“Oh, Rachel.” Death smiled. “I’m going to have a lot of fun with you. I’m afraid you won’t enjoy a minute of it.”
Time was funny in Hell. It had been only a few minutes in the real world since he sent Clint’s soul into the game, but to Clint, it had already been long enough to fight and nearly die.
To Rachel, it felt even longer. A limbo that never ended.
She was here of course, but she was somewhere else, too. Deep in the final level, the ninth circle of the game, there was a castle with hundreds of locked rooms, surrounded by a moat of fire.
No matter how hard these humans scrambled, what medicine they pumped into her, what scans they ran, her brain would remain vacant. Lights on, but nobody home.
It would stay that way until Death released her soul.
A nurse entered the room and picked up the clipboard hooked onto the end of Rachel’s bed. She passed right through Death, as if he wasn’t there, but she paused and shivered, pulling her cardigan tighter over her scrubs.
Death smirked. He knew what she was feeling now: a sudden bone-chill, the overwhelming scent of rot and grave-dirt.
He considered letting his hand become perceptible long enough to pat her shoulder, just to give her a good scare, but he had no time to sort out any paperwork that might come of a human seeing the floating hand of Death.
Instead, he simply snapped his fingers and vanished, gone as quickly as he appeared.
Death knew where he wanted to land. The moment he created the impulse to go, space-time obliged, warping around him to deposit him, instantly, in the ninth level.
He stood in the castle hallway. A red carpet spread in all directions. Portraits lined the walls, oil paintings of the terrified dead, capturing the delicious mortal fear the moment they woke up in Hell.
Death paused for a moment, just to enjoy the sound of dozens of fists banging against doors, helpless screams to be let out. It made his skin shiver with a delight that living people would call a high. He had tormented plenty of them, but only a few proved themselves to be truly rewarding.
Rachel was one of them.
He lifted a thin hand and tapped at her door. It wasn’t a request to come inside; it was a taunt, a lion sniffing at a burrow. Judging from her silence, she knew it.
“I’ve got good news for you,” he said through the door.
Again, silence. Stubborn girl.
Death’s collar went hot and tight with irritation. He pinched his face into a brief frown that he smoothed away, instantly. Being calm meant being in control. Being calm was powerful.
He hinged the door open, and there was the woman from the hospital bed.
Rachel sat in a tattered pink gown, its sleeves slipping down her shoulders. Her hair was in the same messy bun she had died in. In that candle-lit stone room, the walls covered with ornate tapestries of torture scenes, humans dying brutally, she looked like a ghost-queen.
Rachel’s eyes flashed with fury as they met his. She sat on the window seat but pressed close against the stone wall, as if subconsciously trying to shrink away from him.
Death slunk forward. His fingertips pressed together as he smirked at her. He let the room feel just a little bit smaller.
Hell was his kingdom, his plaything, and it was as simple as a thought: he willed the ceiling to lower millimeter by millimeter, and it did.
The girl must have felt the cage tightening around her, because her pulse twinged in her throat and she turned her head away, scowling out the window.
“What do you want?”
“I do factor your attitude into selecting your eternal punishment, my girl.”
“I’m not your anything.” She twisted the tassel of a pillow around her finger and held his stare, evenly.
Death just smiled. She was already his. Totally and utterly. Her soul was only bound to her body by the thinnest string, and he could reach out and snip it off any moment he liked.
No reason to cut her loose while she was still fighting so deliciously.
“My mistake,” he said. “You appear to be completely in control of your circumstances.”
Rachel folded her arms over her chest. She said through her teeth, “Do you actually have news?”
“Indeed, I do.”
Death held her stare as he spoke. He wanted to see that involuntary punch of grief. Humans’ eyes always gave them away: widening, wincing, wetting.
“Your knight in shining armor is dying as we speak.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed, just a little. She looked guarded, uncertain, but he caught that brief spark of pain.
“Then how am I still here?” she asked.
The strong ones were always the most entertaining to break.
Death lifted his hand, and a projection of light burst out of his palm. He held it up for her to see. Clint was lying on top of another body, his punctured flesh visible through his torn shirt. He was face-down, but he had his head tilted sideways, his blue eyes wide with shock and terror.
“He’ll be dead any moment. And you, my dear, will have the infinite punishments of Hell waiting for you.”
“He won’t die.” Her voice was sharp, confident, but the doubt in her eyes betrayed her. The cold flint of fear, sparking within her. She glanced away, as if she could sense his smugness.
“Everyone dies, my girl.” Death lowered his hand, and the image of Clint dissipated like smoke. He approached Rachel and pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger to tilt her face up toward him.
“And when he does, you’ll be all mine.”
Her eyes burned as she met his stare. “If he dies,” she spat, “I’ll kill you myself.”
Death cackled, a grave-deep sound, chains rattling on stone. He spread his arms for her and said, “Please, be my guest. I’m in the mood for a good laugh. Thousands have tried before you.”
Rachel didn’t move. Her fists tightened at her sides.
“Don’t worry, my girl. You won’t have to wait long to try. I’ll even let you watch him die.”
Death summoned the frozen image of Clint, lingering on the edge of death, and cast it over one of her wall-sized tapestries.
He would let it show a fake video of Clint getting shot and collapsing and dying, over and over again. His eyes rolling back and his last breath death-rattling out of him.
Rachel turned her head away from him, but not before he could see the glint of tears in her eyes.
“Try to enjoy the show,” he said with mock-gentleness. “This may be the last time I’ll ever let you see him.”
Death snapped his fingers to disappear, back to his office. He would check in on her again in a few hours, to see how broken she could become from that inescapable image of her lover, dying before her eyes.
It would be a good test of just how much he could push before her spirit splintered. He hoped it would only infuriate her.
The Lord of Hell was itching for a good fight.
CHAPTER 14
T
HE MOMENT BOOTS SAW THAT first grenade turning through the air, he made up his mind: he wasn’t going to fucking die here.
Not for Florence, not for his team. When he died for the last time, it would be while trying to save his own skin.
He still remembered looking through the fence and seeing the man hiding there, the whites of his eyes through the slats. Boots had backed up, readied his gun. Every muscle in his body had coiled with the blood-hot scream of fight or flight.
And then, milliseconds later, the grenade launched. Boots’s
eyes followed it.
For that brief moment, he felt like he was alive again, back in that bloody brutal war, in Grozny. There was no need to stop and think. His body slipped into a reflex as familiar as his own name.
No time to stand there, plumbing his mind for the English phrase for look out, you bastards. He just grabbed the shirt-back of the woman next to him and yanked, hard. She was a recent recruit. At the time, Boots wasn’t even sure of her name.
“What the hell?” she’d sputtered.
Boots shushed her and dragged her backward with him, behind the house. The house fire behind him was hot on his neck, but it was better than getting peppered in shrapnel.
Seconds later, he heard the driver, Jeffery, scream, and then the ear-muffling explosion of the grenade, only a few feet away.
Now he knew her name. Mamiko. She was in what was left of the jeep’s backseat with the only other player who survived: Jeffery, resident kiss-ass, possibly the most useless player to make it.
Boots was already regretting sticking around when Mamiko gestured for him to help get Jeffery into the car.
Mamiko pressed Boots’s coat against the blood rising from a dozen perforations in Jeffery’s chest. The backseat was a melted slab of foam, congealed to a metal spring-frame.
She yelled something at him, and Boots only caught one of the words: meds. He gathered the rest of what she meant when she produced a thin roll of gauze from her pocket and waved it in the corner of his eye.
Boots had a forty-count of painkillers in his front pocket, along with a thick wad of gauze. His HUD told him, in Russian, that the gauze would stop HP loss and the pills would give +5 HP/min. Too fucking much to waste on that sorry dick.
He shook his head and said, flatly, “Is okay. He die.”
“Boots!” she said, angry and stunned, then this string of panicked words that he wouldn’t have listened to even if he could understand them.
Boots glared at her out of the corner of his eye.
They were chugging down a street lined with burning houses. The jeep engine was already smoking and whirring, making a noise like the timing belt was only a few moments from violently disintegrating.
9 Levels of Hell: Volume 1 Page 8