There was a threat hidden in those words like a knife.
Florence paused, turned halfway toward him. She narrowed her eyes. “I trust you because you’re the exact same kind of bastard I am.”
“True.”
Florence continued pacing. “And if you were going to shoot me in the back, you already would have by now.”
“You know, I have the same warm fuzzy feelings about you.” Atlas exhaled and gave her a smoky smirk.
Florence crossed to his side. She leaned against the wall beside him, and he wordlessly offered her the cigarette. She took it and inhaled, deeply. Wished this level had anything better than just fucking cigarettes and beer.
Even though her body didn’t need sleep anymore, she felt the strain of weeks without real mental rest, like a piece of leather, stretched too thin. She napped, now and then, but there was no real mental rest in sleep. No escape.
There was only Hell. That HUD glowed behind her eyelids, even in her dreams.
Florence passed the cigarette back. “I have to go out and say something.”
“We could just lie to them,” Atlas said. “Tell them it was one of our scouts, and they’re making sure the way is clear before we go.”
“That works until we can’t fucking figure out where to go.” Florence balled her hand into a fist and tapped it against the wall, over and over, hitting harder and harder the more her thoughts spun uselessly for traction.
Atlas considered the end of his cigarette like it would give him the answer. “We could have a stress-reliever. Take our minds off all of this.” He glanced at Florence from the corner of his eye.
Florence instantly remembered that first night they were together. When they found a case of beer and a quiet place in the woods and she figured, what the hell, if she was going to die anyway…
God, she was stupid then, and so fucking lucky that Atlas was just as horny and stupid as her. It didn’t occur to her until after they were back on the road just how reckless it was to trust a near-total stranger with her life.
Atlas became the exception that proved the rule: someone as trustworthy as him was rare in life and even rarer in death.
Florence wiped the surprise from her face and made a noise that was part laugh, part scoff. “Oh, honey. You haven’t showered in two weeks. Not even Hell can make a girl that desperate.”
“Ah, well. Can’t blame me for shooting my shot.”
She nudged him lightly with her elbow. “Well, I can, but you’re lucky I’m patient with you.”
From outside the armory doors, the soldiers were starting to talk loudly. The voices were heated, even when she couldn’t pick out individual words. Everyone sounded stressed to breaking point.
Florence pushed away from the wall and went to the med-safe. She only gave the password to a handful of long-time members. Anyone going AWOL would loot that box before they fled, and she didn’t hoard all those pain meds for someone else to steal.
“You want me to go with you?” Atlas said.
“I get the feeling it might get bloody. Bunch of angry, scared people out there with knives and machine guns.”
“Come on, cheer up. Not all of them have machine guns.”
Florence smirked at him, wryly, and tossed a bottle of painkillers to him.
“What’re you going to say?” Atlas asked.
“The truth.”
“Oh, excellent. Let’s tell them we have no idea what we’re doing.”
Florence rolled her eyes. “I’ll dress it up better than that.”
“Uh huh.” Atlas unholstered his Glock for a moment, probably to inspect his ammunition in his HUD. He grabbed another magazine off a shelf and stuck it in his front pocket.
“Just try not to get us killed,” he said.
“I’ve managed that so far, haven’t I?” Florence plucked the cigarette from his lips and inhaled, deeply, letting the burn in the back of her throat and the dull blood-buzz fuel her. In life, she’d never been much of a smoker.
Fuck it. No need to worry about lung cancer when you’re dead.
She flicked the cigarette to the floor and crushed it beneath her heel before striding out, confident, her shoulders high.
At the end of the day, all her players wanted the same thing: to stay alive. They craved the certainty that they would wake up again one day—and that Florence was the only person who could lead them back to life.
Even under that anxious, chaotic tension in the air, there was a yearning to be comforted and know that they really would win, in the end.
Florence threw open the back doors of the school and faced her soldiers. She had seventy-something players marshalled under her now, split into platoons led by senior players, a reward for sticking with her for level after level. It used to be around eighty, but she’d taken a big hit today.
Hell of a day. Lost at least ten soldiers, lost the race to Level 2, lost those low-level bastards who spat in her face and ran away.
Florence smoothed a prim smirk over her face.
If she could win them over now, she had the rest of the game in the bag, no sweat.
Seventy-something glares turned on her. The crowd had been arguing amongst each other, buzzing like a swarm of hornets.
One of them yelled, “Boss is back!” and they all went silent.
“Well, boys and girls.” Florence put her hands on her hips and regarded her players, letting her gaze linger on their faces, one by one. They looked the same way she felt: exhausted and hopeless.
“Today has been a complete shit-show of a day, hasn’t it?”
That earned a few grumbles. A few grunts that could have been approaching laughter.
Florence folded her hands behind her back and walked toward them, pacing along the length of the crowd. Uncertainty still knotted the air, but she could feel the tension easing, just a bit.
“We lost some new recruits on our scouting missions. And, well. We all got the same message, so I’m not gonna pussyfoot around it. Someone already made it to Level 2. We’re not going to win every fight, my friends.”
Her stare caught on Boots’s, over the shoulders of the players standing in front of him. He was watching her like a vulture. Like he was already looking for which parts of her had begun to rot.
“This isn’t a fucking Xbox game in your mom’s basement. This is Hell. Nobody said this was going to be easy or painless. But we’re still alive. We’re still the strongest team on this map. We’re going to be the next ones to cross over, and you can bet your last fucking bullet that no one will knock on the door to Level 9, except for us.”
Florence’s heartbeat rushed in her ears. She could already feel the mood shifting. A bit of an empty pep talk and a good party should get them all back to fighting form.
“How?” a single voice said.
Florence snapped her stare toward the person who spoke. There was Boots, standing in the center of the crowd, his pale eyes doubtful.
She nearly said, You sure picked up a lot of that for a guy who pretends not to understand English.
“What was that?” she said, keeping her tone sharp and even as a good knife.
If Boots heard the challenge in her voice, he didn’t even flinch. “How you do this?”
Florence dared a glance over her shoulder at Atlas. He stood behind her, his hands folded behind his back. She knew him well enough to know he had his Glock, tucked into the back of his pants.
There was no doubt in her mind that he was gripping it, even now. Ready to take cover and fire.
“That’s a fair question.” Florence turned her head to regard the crowd, letting the pause draw their attention away from Boots, back to her. She kept that easy smirk on her face, just to convince them all that she could control this game like putty in her hand.
She nearly had them. She could feel it. The mood was shifting uneasily, like a dry wind.
“And I’ll be honest,” she said. “I don’t know how to g
et to the next level.”
That sent murmurs churning through the crowd like waves on a stormy sea.
“Do any of you bastards know?” Florence held out her arms, expectantly. “Anybody?”
The next few seconds of silence were so tense, Florence could feel the air tightening around her throat like a pair of hands, choking her.
She said, forcing that same cool confidence, “But I do know this: we’re going to fucking find out. I don’t care if we have to kill every other player on this level so we can scour the map. We will be the next ones to go through. If any of you don’t like the way I’m leading this team, you can walk away now. No grudges. No punishment. You can go out there and figure it out on your own.”
Florence pointed at the open field spread out behind them. Half the crowd swiveled their heads, staring out at the dusty expanse. The wide level beyond.
But nobody ventured out toward it. Not even Boots, who just glared at her, unconvinced.
“Or,” Florence said, “you can stay here. We’ll have a fucking pity party, get wasted, have a good time. In a couple of hours, when we’ve all sobered up, we’ll get back at it. You’ve all earned a break.”
Atlas let his hands slip into his trouser pockets as he swaggered forward. “We have friends to mourn and bastards to curse. I say that’s worth breaking out the good whiskey.”
That got a few whoops of support and scattered applause. Plenty of faces still looked bitter, but none of them had the guts to speak out against her now. Not when the choice was shut up or fuck off.
They would pep up, the drunker they got.
And while they drank, Florence would figure out a plan. She’d pour over and over Death’s hint, looking for what she must have missed. If she didn’t find a way forward, it was only a matter of time until her soldiers turned on her.
She wasn’t going to give them a chance.
CHAPTER 21
T
HEY WALKED FOR HOURS, CHASING shadows, ducking behind bushes when the occasional car or party swept past. Now they were deep in the forest, far from any roads or buildings. Everything was just thistles and trees, as far as Clint could see.
Clint’s stamina level could keep up with the brisk jog, mostly. They went quickly enough that he burned one stamina point as fast as he earned a new one, leaving his NRG suspended at 32/100.
But his feet ached and his shoulder burned with every step, and he knew Death was a special kind of evil for even allowing wounds to linger like this when he could give them the reprieve of real game logic, where Clint could take a bullet to the chest and shake it off the moment he was out of combat.
They had made it to the western edge of the map now. Malina had them walking along the boundary line of the map, where the forest hit a brick wall too tall to scale over.
Clint appraised the trees as they walked, but none of them were climbable. Even if he somehow scrambled up there, the branches became too thin to support any weight.
No way in or out, except that hidden doorway to Level 2.
“Remind me again,” Clint grumbled, “why we have to take the longest, thorniest path possible?”
“You’re one step up from a little kid whining are we there yet.”
Clint almost impulsively replied, Should make you feel like you’re right at home, then, but he knew better than to banter about a wound that raw and deep.
“Just saying. It’s not efficient.”
“Your stamina is already fucked until the next time we can safely rest. Every minute we’re in combat, you burn up five NRG points. That means you’d go unconscious after six minutes.” Malina smirked over her shoulder at him. “And I’m not risking my life to save you because you passed out twice.”
“Oh, so that’s where the line is.” Clint grinned. “I’ve used up my one-time pass?”
“Once is an accident. Twice is you being stupid. Anyway, when we reach Level 2, we’ll grab some easy side quests and raise your level a bit before we keep moving.”
“Assuming no one else catches up.”
“Yes, assuming Florence stays firmly up her own asshole.”
Clint wrinkled his nose, cursing the fucking bullet in his shoulder. If he had just killed the bastard, he could have used this journey to grind XP, pick off other players as they went.
But it was easy to say in retrospect. Just kill him. Easier than looking a man in the eye and shooting him dead.
Clint tilted his head to scan the trees as they walked. In the corner of his eye, every darting swallow or squirrel became the barrel of a gun or someone moving through the brush, hunting them.
“Now I’ll actually be that kid,” he said. “How much longer, do you think?”
Malina paused and retrieved the map from her pocket. Squinted at it. “We’re getting close to the edge of the forest. Maybe another half hour of walking. There are a few camps throughout here. So we’re better off staying fuckin’ quiet. Including when we’re walking.”
“I’m trying. I do have a bullet in me, you know.”
“So do I! It’s not the bullet’s fault you’re a city boy.”
Clint bit back a smirk. “You don’t strike me as a mountain lady.”
“I take my son camping all the time.” She paused. “Used to.”
“You’ll keep doing it,” Clint said.
Malina didn’t say anything. She just looked over her shoulder and offered him a bleak smile.
Clint already started mentally steeling himself against the pain of using his rifle. Better to let it hurt like a bitch and still be alive. He twisted the strap so his gun hung forward, just in case.
They walked for a few more minutes, wordless, scouring the brush as they went.
Something moved in Clint’s peripheral vision, just a blur, a feeling of motion. He snapped his head toward it and nearly blamed it on his gun-shy paranoia when he saw it again: branches, twitching.
He froze.
Adrenaline flooded him instantly, cold as saline solution jolting up his veins. His entire body felt heavy and unanchored all at once.
His rational mind tried to talk him out of it. It could have been a bird or a squirrel or a deer. Or it was someone waiting there to kill them.
The ache in his shoulder pulsed like a second heartbeat.
“What’s wrong?” Malina said.
Clint shook his head, fiercely, and grasped Malina’s sleeve with his good hand, yanking both of them down. They hunkered together, knee-to-knee, down in the brush.
Malina gave a wide-eyed, bewildered scowl that meant, more or less, What the fuck is going on?
Clint pressed his finger to his lips and pointed at the brush ahead of them, then tapped his ear. I heard something.
Malina nodded. She shifted her shotgun onto her knee with the dullest click of metal.
A rapid-fire poppoppop resounded in the distance. This far away, it almost sounded distorted, billowy. It carried from somewhere in town, east of them. Too distant to come from anywhere in the trees, but it still made Clint’s skin go tight.
The player count was down to 153 now. No telling what was from Florence’s gang and what came from other anonymous souls, tearing each other apart for the chance to live.
Clint squinted through the leaves, picking out the darker green of the opposite bush. Trying to see if it was still moving. His vision felt sharp enough to kill, as if this gut-deep fear honed his attention into a knife.
Maybe he and Malina weren’t as quiet as they thought. Maybe they were being hunted, someone circling closer and closer around them, even now.
He dared a glance at his HUD. 80/120 HP, 32/100 NRG.
They had walked long enough for Clint’s HP to regenerate, but it wouldn’t keep going past 80. Clint figured it wouldn’t fill itself up completely until his bullet wound scarred over.
He slipped his backpack off as noiselessly as he could and took his rifle in both hands. He’d put in the spare magazine. 30 bullets, acco
rding to his HUD.
Clint watched that number carefully. He was never going to let himself get caught out in a fight with an empty magazine. Not again.
The forest was so silent, he didn’t dare flip the safety off. There was only the roar of his own blood in his ears, twittering songbirds, the occasional echo of gunfire, somewhere out there in Hell.
Then, there it was.
Clint heard it before he saw it. A near-silent zippering wind as something sliced through the air, whistling past his ear, and then clattered against the brick wall behind him.
A fucking arrow. Fiberglass, with plastic feathers.
Blood dripped down his earlobe. His HP ticked down to 79. Fuck. He had to end this quickly, before he could take real damage.
For it to clip his ear, it had to come from…
Clint didn’t hesitate. He turned his rifle toward the bush and fired, slicing a horizontal line of bullets across that patch of brush. Great fucking stars of pain exploded in his wounded shoulder.
Blood arced out, and Clint’s heartbeat ratcheted upward. There was some old and animal part of his brain that thrilled at catching the hunter and winning. It let him ignore the stabbing burn in his shoulder now.
“What the fuck?” Malina sputtered, but she grinned when she saw the blood spattering the leaves.
Single Kill (+25 XP) scrolled across Clint’s HUD.
He punched Malina’s arm, gestured toward the brush, and took off, still hunkered low.
Malina followed, just as another arrow whizzed weakly over her head.
“Fucking ambush,” she said.
“Who ambushes with arrows?” he muttered back.
Clint broke through the brush to find one dead player, face-down, wearing camo and carrying a compound bow, a quiver of arrows.
Another player was sitting up, blood weeping from bullet wounds in her right elbow and chest. Her arm hung limp, sinew and splintered bone spilling out of her skin. But her fingers still fumbled to get an arrow on her bowstring.
When she saw Clint, her eyes went wide with panic, and she started babbling in a language he couldn’t understand. Mandarin, maybe.
His conscience screamed at him to stop, but the burn in his shoulder hissed, over and over, all poison and pain: it’s you or them.
9 Levels of Hell: Volume 1 Page 12