Then, there it was: the distinctive creak overhead. Someone crouched down, hiding. Waiting.
Malina had done the math, once, on one of those long lonely hours hiding alone, trying to psych herself up to go out hunting for supplies and XP. There were nearly 500 players at that time and 236 houses that she counted on the map of the neighborhood. If only a quarter of the player base stayed in the suburb—which would at least match how much of the map the neighborhood occupied—there was only a 50% chance of running into someone in any house she entered.
The odds were even slimmer now, realistically.
She could just back out. Leave as quietly as she could. Hit the next house.
Then get shot in the back as a thanks for her mercy.
Malina tried to leave a player alive once and only once. It had been a teenage boy who looked so much like her son, his brown eyes huge and terrified. He’d begged her not to kill him. When she turned away, he shot her, and it hit her like a punch.
Even now, standing in the threshold, licking her dry lips, she could see the desperate glint in the boy’s eyes, like he was sitting right in front of her. She could still hear him scream as she turned her shotgun on him and roared, Why the fuck would you make me do this?
Malina did the only sensible thing. She pushed away the part of her mind that pulsed, Don’t do it, you don’t have to kill anyone, that stupid naive once-living part of her that still wanted to somehow make it through Hell without hurting another person.
There was another much deeper part of her, something that felt ancient, rotten, and more powerful than any kindness: she wanted to murder anyone who could stand between her son and his chance at life.
Malina crept backwards, out of the doorway. She left the door open and hid just behind it, hunkering down so her head wouldn’t be visible through the glass.
And then she waited. Thighs burning, shotgun heavy in her hands, ears straining to hear every whisper within the house, she waited. Malina knew now how it felt to be the hunter outside the foxhole, ready to pounce on the first head that dared peer out.
It felt like ten or fifteen minutes before she heard someone walking across the kitchen tile. It was the distinctive clunk of someone wearing heavy boots and trying to hide it. Construction boots, maybe. Steel-toed. Would hurt like hell if they managed to kick her.
Her shotgun would take care of them before she had to worry about that.
Malina’s heart hammered against her throat as the footsteps approached and stopped. She could sense them now, just inches from her, on the other side of the door. Maybe they could sense her, too.
Time seemed to unravel. It could have been minutes. It could have been seconds. Malina twitched like a knife about to be unsheathed.
The boots emerged first, and they seemed to move in slow motion. She was right. They were construction boots. Malina could only see the guy’s leg, but it was enough. The other player was a man, long-legged, jeans stained with blood.
Malina didn’t care about honor or glory. She cared about winning. About living to the next moment.
She lifted her shotgun and blasted the man’s knee open. The force of her gun firing jolted her ribcage, but dopamine surged hot through her when she saw the outward spatter of blood, the tip of his shinbone, jutting up through mangled strings of muscle.
He hit the ground screaming.
Malina leapt into sight now. She aimed her shotgun at the man’s skull and told him, as his pistol swung up, “Sorry. You get it.”
She squeezed the trigger again.
Single Kill (+25 XP)
Malina stepped over his body, trailing bloody footprints into the house as she started hunting for anything she could use to get Clint back on his feet and back on the road.
If they didn’t beat Florence to Level 2, they were both as good as dead—and Malina already knew she’d let Clint fucking die out here before she allowed that to happen.
After all, she played to win.
CHAPTER 19
T
HE WORLD CAME BACK IN jagged shards of light. Clint winced against it, his eyes stinging, and for a moment his mind let him imagine the pale sky over him was real. That he would turn his head and see Rachel, the EMTs, the smoking cars, and frown and wonder to himself, What the hell was that dream?
But his HUD blinked back on, and his stomach sank.
Still in the game. Still alive, which he had to take as better than nothing. Clint wouldn’t put it past Death to program his personal Hell to have a HUD, just to give him the vain illusion that he still had any hope of getting out of here.
Clint sat up groggily. Branches snarled at his face, and he realized he was in some kind of thicket. He’d been dragged here, judging by the filth on his jeans.
A headache immediately punched at his temples, throbbing so deep he thought he might throw up. He frowned around, his eyes still bleary against the light, which slanted greenish through the trees overhead.
His stats now read 42/120 HP and 1/100 NRG.
The grievous injury message had vanished, which was a tiny blessing. His chest felt like an empty well, echoing deep within him. Now there was a single drop of energy, plunking through it.
Clint’s mind clunked like an engine trying to start, but he could put a few details together, at least. He must have stopped losing health when he passed out, which would explain why his health bar hadn’t budged.
He scanned the ground around him. His rifle, his backpack, and Malina’s backpack all rested beside him, but Malina and her shotgun were gone.
That lurched him back to reality.
Malina. Where the hell was Malina?
He hurriedly opened the recent kills list, his heart ratcheting upwards. Of course, he cared if she died, but some part of him was most urgently concerned with how the fuck he was supposed to make it out of this level by himself.
He scrolled through half a dozen unfamiliar names and player pictures until Malina’s face flashed across his vision. His heart dropped, instinctively, before his mind placed her. There were six players in a row who had KILLED BY MALINA ORTIZ beside their name. Only 157 players alive now.
“Wow,” Clint murmured, his voice hoarse, rasping. “You’ve been busy.”
At the very least, she was still alive. She had to be coming back. There was no way she’d just ditch her inventory. Right?
Or maybe she figured she could make it faster without all that weight dragging her down. Just a couple boxes of shotgun shells, a medkit, and her shotgun.
Clint shook his head. He didn’t want to believe it, even as his mind spun up reasons for her to have left him here to rot.
Branches broke and snapped a few dozen feet away. Someone moving fast. He couldn’t see through the brush, exactly. He fumbled around, but he couldn’t find his Beretta.
His fist closed around the grip of his trusty bat, jutting up from the side pocket of his backpack. It still had a bit of blood smeared on it, gluing on a shard of skull. He yanked it out with his left hand and readied it over his shoulder as that stranger came closer and closer.
Brown, blood-freckled hands pulled the brush apart. There was a familiar broken watch on her wrist.
Malina peered over the leaves at him and smirked at his bat. “You can 1v1 me with that, if you want. But I’m gonna use my shotgun.”
“Oh, thank Christ, it’s you.” Clint let his arm drop. He clutched his forehead and winced up at her. “Where did you go?”
“To get you some food, asshole. We can’t waste any more time waiting for your energy to recharge itself.”
The look on her face told Clint not to tease or bitch about that. He said instead, “I saw you on the kills list. You did a good job.”
Malina’s brow hardened, and she said, clipped, not quite committed, “I guess. Got a level up out of it, at least. Lucky level 13.” She offered him a hand. “Can you stand up?”
Clint shook his head and laughed, breathlessly. “I feel
like I got hit by a fucking bus, honestly.”
“You’d feel a lot worse from that, I bet.” Malina climbed into the brush with him, scowling as a particularly stubborn branch tried to knot itself in her hair.
She settled down beside Clint and shrugged off a backpack he hadn’t seen before, a simple drawstring workout bag. Her jeans were spattered in still-red blood.
He was touched she’d killed—and risked being killed—when she could have just dumped him and taken off. Was there a good way to say, Hey, thanks for not being a total dick and betraying me?
Clint settled on, “Thanks for sticking around. I know you didn’t have to.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.” Malina pulled open the bag, her cheeks darkening. “I wanted to.”
“Careful, Mals. That was almost sentimental.”
“God, I know. I gagged a little.”
Clint cracked a tired smile and peered over her shoulder. “What’d you get me?”
“Pretty good score. Found a couple bottles of Gatorade. Some canned food. It’s not much, not as good as an energy bar or something. But it’s better than nothing. I’ve got three granola bars in my pack, but we should save those for the road. You never know.”
Clint nodded. He picked up the drink, and the label said, Zappy Sports Drink (Yes, That One) (+10 NRG).
They sat shoulder-t0-shoulder in silence while Clint cracked open a Gatorade and chugged it as quickly as he could. It didn’t taste like the real thing. There was something strange about it, a chalky aftertaste, like he could blink and realize he had been sipping watery sand. It made him grimace, but he choked it down, then the other one.
Malina just sat there, her knees to her chest, looking like she was somewhere far away.
Clint watched his stamina rise to 21/100 NRG. He had never been much of a stats guy, even at the height of his gaming in college. He skimmed guides from smarter, nerdier people who’d sunk the time into calculating which weapon had the slight advantage that meant the difference between victory and defeat.
But now, paying attention to the stats was likely the difference between life and death.
He asked, “Do you know the base health or stamina loss just for, like…”
Malina quirked a brow at him. “For what? Existing?”
“I mean, I noticed my stamina obviously went down when we were fighting, but it only seemed to really drop when we were running instead of jogging.”
“Did you spend all that time unconscious trying to become the best nerd you can be? Jesus.”
“C’mon.” He pried open a can that said Fruit Cocktail (+5 NRG). “I know you know the answer.”
That got a smirk out of her. “Yeah. But I still like to make you work for it.”
“Lucky me.”
Clint glanced into the bag and caught himself smiling. She’d even taken the time to grab a couple dented spoons. If she didn’t have that war-weary look on her face, he’d tease her for being such a mom.
“I’ve noticed a few things,” she said. “It seems like your stamina drops five points every minute anytime you’re in combat, no matter what. I lose about three every minute when I’m running and ten every minute when I’m sprinting, like fast-as-I-fucking-can sprinting. Let me think.”
Malina untied her bun and tied it back up again, as if playing with her hair helped her think better. “How much health you lose depends on where you got hit and what hit you. But once you’re bandaged, you stop losing health from blood loss. But, well, you know firsthand that doesn’t stop you from the grievous injury effect.”
“Right,” Clint said. He tipped back the last of the fruit cocktail and chewed thoughtfully. “I noticed something. Right before I went down. I got a weird kill description.”
“Yeah? What was it?”
“Yeah. It said batter up and gave me 100 XP.”
To his surprise, Malina started cackling. “Shut up. That’s fucking hilarious. The most creative one I got was from beating some bastard’s head in with a weed whacker. Mowed down. Only got me 75 XP, though.”
Clint couldn’t help but laugh with her. “Shit, you got ripped off.”
For a second, he could forget all the terror and unease and just sit here, recouping, laughing at a stupid joke with someone he was glad to call his friend.
“Seriously, though,” Malina said, “you should know that your kills stack. So if you get a single kill and kill someone else within ten seconds, you get a double kill. Single’s worth 25 XP, double’s worth 50. But you get a total of 75 for both achievements. Makes sense?”
“Oh, shit. Yeah.”
“That’s how Florence shot up the levels so fast. She would convince small parties she wanted them to meet with her so they could team up and work together, then she’d fucking wipe them out with an IED or a rocket launcher or something stupid like that. You only need a couple pentakills to really give yourself an edge this early in the game.”
“That’s fucked up,” Clint said.
“Right? I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first.”
Clint grinned without humor. There was some real truth in that. That strategy managed to loop around from evil to clever.
“Can’t you just hunt around for quests, too?” he said. “I think I got 50 just for teaming up with you.”
“Yeah, that was a nice surprise.” Malina rolled her eyes. “You used to be able to go quest-hunting, but Florence killed most of the quest characters to keep people from easily scoring XP. Trying to make a bottleneck, basically. I think you’re the first new player who’s made it to level 3 this fast in a long while.”
Clint cracked open the last can, a tin of baked beans (Mr. Beanus’s Beans (+10 NRG)), and ate it cold. He watched his stamina level steadily rise. By the time he finished, it made it all the way to 32/100 NRG.
His body felt alive again, humming, ready to get back out there. There was still that dull, persistent pain of the bullet, but he could ignore it, for now.
“How long does one of these fucking things take to heal?” He gestured at the gauze on his shoulder.
“Usually about 48 hours of in-game time, unless you lose a limb. You never get that shit back.”
Clint grimaced down at the bandage on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be faster if you actually took the bullet out?”
“Just like in real life, you’ll cause way more damage doing that than if you just left it in. More abrasions, more bleeding, more infection. I tried it once.” She pulled up her shirt to show him the spidering scar on her back, near her hip. It was dark, fresh scar tissue.
“Jesus Christ. What happened?”
“I let someone live after they threatened me. Now, I’m more careful.”
Clint shuddered. If he’d gone for threats instead of persuasions that moment they first met, she might have gunned him down herself. He reached up to feel the warped plate of his bulletproof vest, where the bullet had chewed through the first quarter-inch of Kevlar.
“Let’s go,” he said, standing up. He almost felt bad for leaving the cans and empty bottles in the brush.
It was strange, how he could bash someone’s skull in with a baseball bat without an ounce of remorse and still feel faintly shitty about littering.
“You think you can keep up, kid?”
“I’m not the old lady with a bullet in her hip.”
Malina grinned, ruefully. “God. I really should have let you die.”
The sun winked over them like the eye of Death, always watching, as they took off into the woods.
CHAPTER 20
F
LORENCE WASN’T ANGRY. ANGER WAS something she could control. She could wear anger on her fists like brass knuckles and destroy anyone who dared mess with her. This was beyond anger. The fire in her gut was pure fucking fury, mixed with jealousy, confusion, complete bewilderment.
“How the fuck did someone beat us to it?” she hissed.
“Well. You have been singularly focused on
killing everyone you can,” Atlas said.
Florence shot him a glare that could cut firewood. They were in the armory, away from her soldiers, where she could have a discussion without worrying about anyone overhearing. The moment she got the notification that someone else had reached Level 2, she decided to let those little rat-fuckers go and focus on the bigger objective.
There would be another chance to kill them.
“That’s been for a purpose,” she muttered.
Here, at the base, anyone could be listening. Everywhere she went, she felt eyes trailing after her, in fear or admiration or both. If they saw she was shaken by this news, her authority would crumble, bit by bit. All her power came from the fact that she was always the best: the strongest player in the game, highest level, biggest inventory, best ballistics, biggest army…
And somehow, some little snake bitch managed to get to Level 2 before her.
Atlas leaned casually against one wall, a row of rifles to his left, a wall rack of bulletproof vests to his right. He dug into his front pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
“Look, I get it,” he said. “But don’t ask me what I think if you don’t want to hear it.”
Florence paced back and forth. The armory was really just a former equipment supply room for the school’s gym, which made it cramped and dim, so Florence would take two steps, turn, two steps, turn.
As she paced, she said, half to Atlas, half to herself, “We can’t change it. It’s done, and everyone knows someone made it through. Now we have to just control the message.”
“Are you scared of mutiny now, boss?”
Atlas lit his cigarette. The matchstick cast shadows on his face that made him look like a trickster god, bemused, sly.
“I never rule it out as an option. This isn’t a game where friends stick together to the end and fight against evil. Everyone’s in it to save their own ass.”
Atlas teased his cigarette against his lower lip as his stare flicked over her. “Not even the two of us?”
9 Levels of Hell: Volume 1 Page 11