I didn’t want to go too fast, but I felt it was important to find a denser area of the labyrinth. From what little I’d seen on the show, I knew there were areas different than this. I had the sense that these giant squares were nothing more than just filler, like the randomly generated terrain at the edge of some maps in open-world games.
As we drove, I made Donut keep her map on full screen so she could better scan the area, looking for points of interest. We saw fewer and fewer training guilds out here, but they were there. The bathrooms continued to be all over the place, and rest areas dotted the maps, too.
My thoughts wandered to my father. If he could only see me now, sitting on this thing, holding my legs out so they wouldn’t burn on the side of the glorified moped. He’d laugh, call me a damn fool. He’d been a motorcycle guy. Not a full-time, leather-clad biker. He was more of a weekend warrior.
I hadn’t talked to or heard from the man in over 12 years. Not since he’d abandoned me that day, leaving me all alone in the world.
Before today, I’d never been on a motorcycle in my life, not that this thing really counted as one. I had a bicycle now that I sometimes rode to work if the weather was good, but I’d never even ridden on a dirt bike, let alone anything more powerful.
We stopped once to use a restroom that appeared just off the main corridor. Once we entered the hallway, we were beset by a group of bipedal, raccoon-headed monsters that were as tall as my knee. These things were called Scat Thugs, and the ones here on the edge of the corridor were all level three. They were about as strong as regular goblins and were armed with needle-like spears. A pair charged me and got skewered by my knee pads. I took all their spears as loot, which were useless to me, but hopefully I’d be able to sell them later.
We used the bathroom—thankfully neither of us exploded—and we headed out on our way.
But the short excursion taught me something important. Those mobs were right there, barely twenty feet from the edge of the never-ending artery. We hadn’t seen their dots until we’d stopped the bike and approached the boundary of the alley. The fog of war encroached tighter upon us the faster we were going. That was important to know. We needed a skill or a spell or some sort of special ability that would allow us to navigate better. We were literally driving blind, and I didn’t like that. It was only a matter of time before we drove headfirst into a trap.
We decided to go back on the road, heading deeper east. I moved slower.
And then, after several hours, we finally saw something new.
I stopped the Chopper, examining the spray-painted sign on the wall.
“Two crossroads east, three south. Stairs + People.”
It was written in English in red, runny spray paint. I ran my hand across it. It didn’t come off on my finger, but it had a tacky texture. The paint was only hours old.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” Donut asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
Now that we’d stopped, I could see several x’s on my map, indicating mob corpses just down the hallways. We ventured in to get a better look. These were white, horned goat things with mouths full of fangs. I examined the first one.
Lootable Corpse. Chilly Goat. Level 4. Killed by Crawler Brandon An with an assist by Crawler Chris Andrews 2.
Inventory is empty.
I examined all the goats in the area, and I counted 15 different names who had either killed or assisted in the slaying of the mobs. The goats had been sliced, fried with spells, and I saw several broken arrow shafts, though the arrow heads themselves were all gone. Some of the monsters were literally smashed flat, like the person had an enormous hammer.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not a trap,” I said. “Let’s go find them.”
The spray painted notifications continued the closer we got to the area.
Right where the sign told us to go was a T-junction. I coasted to a stop. The Chopper made a chug-chug-chug noise. It would need another lump soon. I was getting good at understanding its sounds and vibrations. My ass was killing me, and my legs ached. On the ground was an arrow, pointing left, which was further east.
Looking at the map, I could see this area was different than any place we’d entered before. The east and west roads didn’t continue straight, but they curved away, indicating we’d come to the edge of a massive circle.
I suddenly had an uneasy feeling about what might be at the center of this area.
“I see the stairwell,” Donut said. “If you zoom out the map, it’s right on the edge of what we can see.”
Sure enough. In the area immediately south, and presumably in the center of this giant loop, there appeared to be a stairwell. I hovered over the white square on the map, and it simply read Stairwell to Floor Two.
I didn’t see any other blue dots or anything else. Just the empty expanse of the fog of war.
“Look, there’s something written on the ground,” Donut said, pointing down the left hallway.
After a minute’s hesitation, I stored the chopper, and we went toward the sign on foot.
“This road is safe. We are gathered a mile and a half this way. DO NOT go deeper into the spiral or you will activate the borough boss.”
Shit. Mordecai had said the bosses wouldn’t be guarding the stairwells until the fourth floor.
“I wonder what’s in there,” Donut asked, looking at the solid wall to our right.
Just as she said it, the wall rumbled as something rushed past on the other side. It was like we were standing on a train platform. Whatever it was, it was something fast. Something big.
Very, very big.
We walked on foot. After about a quarter mile, a rounded portcullis appeared on our right, leading toward the center of the circle. The cross-beam gate was lifted about halfway up the floor. We’d be able to slip under and go deeper into the loop if we wanted. There appeared to be another ring just inside. The graffiti had called it a spiral. Looking inside, I could see another doorway just down this wide, interior hallway. So it was more like a round maze than a spiral.
If we slid under the gate, it would no doubt slide closed and trap us.
“Let’s wait a second,” I said. “I want to see what it is.”
We didn’t have to wait long. The creature, whatever it was, rushed by in a flash, too fast for me to get an info box. It rolled like a ball. It was pink, fleshy, and it was the size of the entire hallway. It was like a nightmare Pac-man monster. It made a terrible grunting noise as it rocketed by, shaking the walls. The stench of sewage wafted up as it passed.
“My heavens,” Donut said, crinkling her face like I’d tried to feed her vegetables. “This is going to be unpleasant.”
22
“Let’s see if we can find who’s making these signs,” I said.
We passed three more of the rounded entrances before we came across the encampment.
It was a full quarter turn from where we started, at the end of another artery. My heart swelled when I saw the sheer number of people there. There were about forty blue dots gathered at what appeared to be a drawbridge leading into the round maze.
My enthusiasm waned when I saw the manner of people waiting for us.
Almost all of them were still level one. And they were elderly. Not cool grandpa dude at the club elderly. But holy-crap-I-love-you-gam-gam-but-how-the-hell-are-you-still-alive elderly. Most of them were in wheelchairs. Those who weren’t had walkers. Most were in robes and caps, and piles of blankets littered the hallway. They sat gathered together. Most appeared to be asleep.
Another older woman stood apart from the group. This one was pushing 70, not 100 like the others. She stood stiffly, her black eyes watching us. This woman was wrapped head to toe in an endless amount of scarves, and her skin was like a relief map of a shriveled prune. A red checkered trapper hat with ear flaps sat skewed on her head. She leaned on a shopping cart filled to the brim with blankets and other odds and ends including a plastic pink flamingo that had an arrow stuck in its head.
I remembered the stairs I’d had to descend, and I wondered how they’d managed to get the wheelchairs and shopping cart down here.
I caught sight of a group of younger, more able-bodied crawlers. One of them, a chubby black guy, saw us approach and waved. He came jogging up.
“Oh thank god,” the man said. “Did you see our signs?”
“We did,” I said. I examined his properties.
Crawler #12,330,671. “Brandon An.”
Level 6.
Race: Human.
Class: Not yet assigned.
He had a single bronze star by his name. The man wore a heavy winter jacket despite the heat. He had a gigantic hammer looped over his shoulder. The weapon was comically big. The round head was almost as wide as the tire on my Chopper. It glittered, obviously made of some sort of magical, lightweight metal. He didn’t appear to have any other armor or gear.
“We?” the man said, frowning as he examined my properties. He took a hesitant step back, as if he was startled. “Is there more than one of you?” He looked down at Donut, and his frown deepened.
For a moment I was afraid that I had received a skull next to my name without realizing. But then I remembered what my real title was. It didn’t say my name was Carl. It said I was Royal Bodyguard Carl, and Donut was Grand Champion Best in Dungeon Princess Donut.
I could only imagine how that looked to someone meeting me for the first time.
Another man approached, this one was Chris Andrews 2. He was also level six. The two men were clearly brothers. He was taller and less stocky. Chris wore a metal skullcap but didn’t appear to have any weapons.
“Yes we are we,” Donut said. “I mean, really. I am right here. Rude.”
Chris and Brandon just looked at each other. Then Brandon burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry man,” he said to me. “I didn’t realize. I saw your name, and I thought…”
“Yeah,” I said. “You thought I was a nut. She talks. She also probably has higher stats than anybody else here.”
Brandon went to a knee and patted Donut on the head. She looked simultaneously outraged and thrilled that he had touched her. “Well it’s nice to meet you, Princess Donut. I’m sorry if I offended you, pretty girl. I’ve never met a talking cat before.”
“It’s quite all right,” Donut said, mollified. “Apology accepted.”
We walked back toward the group. Despite what I had seen earlier with the goat corpses, it appeared there were only four people here in fighting shape. Both Brandon and Chris were level six. A round Hispanic woman—Yolanda Martinez 13—was around fifty years old and only stood about four foot 11. She was level five and carried a bow and had a quiver hanging over her shoulder. The quiver was so big on her, it almost dragged on the floor. She was in medical scrubs, and she wore a plastic ID on her breast. It read “Meadow Lark. Yolanda. CNA.”
The fourth was another woman carrying a longsword. She, too, wore scrubs, though she also wore a magical cloak. Her name was Imani C. I guessed the woman weighed about 90 pounds, if that. She looked to be about 20 years old. Her terrified, hollowed-out eyes suggested she had seen some shit.
All four of them had a single bronze star after their names.
Imani also had skulls.
A lot of skulls.
On the interface, it was one big skull followed by two more regular ones. When I hovered over it, it said Crawler Killer X 12.
She was also level 10, the highest we’d seen so far.
Donut: CARL IT IS ANOTHER VILE MURDERER.
Carl: I don’t think so, not this time. Also, I know you don’t have to type in all caps. I’ve seen you do it before. It makes you sound like you are yelling.
Donut: I AM YELLING CARL.
“We are the night staff at an eldercare facility in Wenatchee,” Brandon was saying after I introduced myself to the others. Yolanda greeted me with enthusiasm. Imani said nothing. “We had a fire alarm and were forced to go outside because someone,” he eyed the woman with the shopping cart, “started a barrel fire outside our building and caught it on fire.”
I examined the woman with the shopping cart. She was obviously homeless. We’re all homeless now. She stood there, looking off into space, gnawing on a blackened fingernail.
Crawler #7,450 “Agatha.”
Level 2.
Race: Human.
Class: Not yet assigned.
“Anyway,” Brandon said. “We had to evacuate the building, all 250 residents out into the freezing cold right when it happened.”
I looked at the group, counting for the first time. There were a total of 38 people here, including the four workers and Agatha.
“There were 250 of you?” I asked, looking the group over.
“Yeah,” Brandon said, more quietly. “Not everyone came down here. And not everyone who did is still with us.”
He went on to explain what happened next.
The fire started and quickly engulfed the outside of their building. Luckily, the fire had been on the side of the cafeteria, in an alley area where Agatha had been camped out. Nobody had been hurt by the blaze itself, but evacuations at elder facilities were always an especially dangerous affair. It was no simple task to get everyone out.
The local police and fire department had arrived by the dozens. Firefighters assisted with the fire and with handing out blankets to the freezing residents and workers of the facility. They’d been in the process of getting the keys to a nearby elementary school to get everyone out of the cold.
“But how did you get them down the stairs?” I asked.
Brandon looked, again, at Agatha. “The entrance appeared right in the street, literally in the middle of the group. A bunch of folks fell in. There were stairs just like you said. But then Agatha over there pushed her cart right onto the stairs like she was… well I don’t know what the hell she was doing. But the stairs transformed into a ramp. It wanted her to come on down. A long, easy ramp. Agatha was the first to voluntarily go down there, cackling like she always does. Hollerin’ she’d saved all our lives. The folks who fell in when it opened, we never saw them again.” He shuddered. “They weren’t there when we got to the bottom.”
“Did you go because of the cold?” I asked.
He eyed my naked legs. “We didn’t mean to go all the way in, but it was warm in there, you know what I mean? So I pushed a few residents right into the entrance where the ramp wasn’t so steep, so that hot air was blasting up on them. I figured we could wait there until we knew what we were going to do. Only a few of the cops and paramedics remained after the collapse. They just took off running in all sorts of directions, like they had some place better to go. But some stayed, and they helped me bring the residents into the warmth. It let me do it. We moved several over, but then, after we’d moved about half the residents into the warmth, it just stopped letting me leave. My foot was trapped. My brother wasn’t even in the hole, but when he grabbed my hand, it wouldn’t let him move, either. And it started hurting after a minute. It only stopped when we moved down the ramp. When we got that twenty minute warning, when it said anyone lurking in the stairwell wouldn’t get out? We just went in. We didn’t have a choice.”
“What about the cops and paramedics?”
“We had about twenty guys with us, including a couple firemen and cops who decided to go in. Most didn’t. We all helped getting the residents inside the hall.” He pointed over his shoulder, indicating the artery that led to this quarter of the circle. “It was right there, just around that corner where we came in. Most of these folks haven’t moved hardly at all since we got here. We’ve been bringing them food from a safe room that’s about a mile away.”
“Where are the cops and firefighters now?” I asked.
He nodded at the circle. “Most went in there when we first found this place. The gates closed, then about five minutes later, the gates opened up again, and those guys were just gone. Our tutorial guide lady, Mistress Tiatha, she said all borough and city
bosses will have stairwells for the first four or five levels. But there will be a bunch of other stairs in random places, too. A couple of us went out searching for them, hoping we could find a stairwell that’s easier to get to than this one. This was just a while back.” Brandon cast a nervous glance at the elderly patients. He leaned in and whispered, “They’re all dead. You can see when they die on the party menu. They all got picked off by something that’d been hunting them one by one. Even Doctor Gracie, and she was a damn MMA fighter. Us four? We’re the last of the non-residents left. Us and Agatha.”
I turned to regard the large group of elderly patients. Looking upon them gave me a terrible, sinking feeling. They shouldn't be here. This wasn’t going to end well.
Agatha had pulled a blue IKEA bag from her shopping cart. She produced a can of metallic silver spray paint from the bag. She hobbled over to the wall and sprayed a giant circle, then turned it into a happy face. Then she leaned in and sniffed the wall, muttering something to herself the whole time.
“Don’t waste the spray paint, Agatha,” Brandon called.
“It’s mine!” Agatha said, clutching the IKEA bag to herself. “You stole it from me.”
“And you stole it from Stan’s,” Brandon said. “Just… Just don’t waste it, okay?”
“Have you thought about moving all these folks to the safe room?” I asked. “It has to be more comfortable than the hallway.”
“It’s already full,” Brandon said. “It’s a damn Waffle House from Alabama. Can you believe that? The place has a capacity of 30 people, and my brother Chris has been helping the more coherent, more mobile ones get over there. There’s this gnome thing in there that’s cooking them food and singing. They all love it.” He smiled sadly. “Those folks at the Waffle House. They made a vote, and they decided they’re not coming out. They’re treating it like a giant party.”
“He doesn't talk much, does he?” I asked, indicating Brandon's brother, Chris.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 16