Chicago

by Wyatt Savage

  Species: Insectum Monstrum

  Level:1

  Class:Monster

  Health:10/10

  Attributes: Slender body, flattened rib cage, and thin legs minimize air resistance, permitting speeds of up to thirty miles per hour; the lower portion of the legs have a telescoping capability, and barb-like protuberances on the bottom of the feet allow it to spear prey.

  The monstrosity drew back on its legs as if to appraise the city. Kurtis tried to clear his mind, but it was racing on overdrive and that’s what saved his life. Before his brain could form a conscious thought, he drove directly at the monster, holding his breath, thankful that Jimmy Mulvey had splurged on the V6 engine. The monster’s legs came down and the Camry accelerated, barely squirting between them.

  Kurtis let rip a war whoop, pumping a fist, his body surging with adrenaline. He spun the wheel and stopped in front of a fallen light pole that was blocking the road. Leaning over his seat, he caught a glimpse of the beast attacking the other participants who’d foolishly pursued the Camry. There was a rippling wave of gunfire and somebody triggered what looked like a rocket launcher, sending a projectile into the monster’s face, pissing it off.

  The thing recoiled and one of the participants ran past it, streaking toward the Camry. Kurtis recognized the figure. It was the young punk in the yellow hoodie and nose ring, the kid whose life he’d spared back in the parking garage.

  The kid in the hoodie had what looked like a tomahawk over his head. Drums were pounding in Kurtis’s ears, the opening beat to “When the Levee Breaks” as he exited the Camry to move the light pole. He screamed for the kid to stop and when he didn’t, Kurtis squared up on him. He aimed at the kid, who was bellowing, ready to strike Kurtis down.

  Even though it was still a choice, Kurtis felt angry that it wasn’t actually what he wanted to do. But time had run out. The kid had become an enemy for no reason other than survival. There was no reason to delay any longer. Kurtis screamed and the kid’s chest exploded in a red spray.

  Kurtis shielded his face, staring at his gun. He hadn’t fired. It was the monster. One of the thing’s telescoping legs had rocketed out of nowhere, the barb on the end of the foot skewering through the meat in the middle of the kid’s rib cage. There was a further explosion of blood and gore as the hooked barb rotated around, gripping exposed bands of chest muscle, yanking the body back.

  The punk in the yellow hoodie dropped the tomahawk, pulled back through the air like a puppet on a string. Kurtis watched as the monster flipped the kid into the air and then bit him in half.

  Turning from the gruesome sight, Kurtis moved the light pole out of the way. Then he grabbed the kid’s discarded tomahawk, which was made of a single piece of hammered metal. It was heavy and felt good in his hand. The creature continued to rage at participants, carving them to ribbons as Kurtis moved toward the Camry.

  Something up in the sky caught his eye and he squinted, watching the parachutes float toward the ground. What was it? The military sending it troops to assist? Some foreign force invading America? The parachutes drew closer and Kurtis saw that they were attached to shipping containers, mighty crates of various shapes and sizes. The crates struck the ground, kicking up little funnels of dust. A few seconds of silence fell and then the walls on the crates. Kurtis blinked. A clawed hand emerged from the closest crate, followed by a monstrous beast. Jesus, Kurtis thought, the crates were filled with monsters. A shitload of monsters.

  Kurtis was exhausted, but he drove his limbs to motion. He hustled to the Camry, climbed inside, and stashed the tomahawk under his seat. He put the car in gear and drove around the junked bus and away from the monsters that were barreling out of the crates.

  “What the hell is the point of this game?” Kurtis asked, spinning the wheel.

  “I do not understand the question.”

  “Why are you forcing us to play it?’

  “It is a gift bestowed on your world by the Noctem. Hundreds of millions shall play, but only a fraction of that shall taste victory.”

  “That’s some bullshit,” Kurtis said.

  “The Melee has always been played. It is old beyond measure.”

  “What’s the point of a game where everyone dies?”

  “Not everyone will die.”

  “How do you win?”

  “Participants must use any means necessary to reach the pyramid in nineteen days.”

  “Which pyramid?”

  Images appeared in Kurtis’s HUD, a cluster of pyramids along with a red line that ran east, across Lake Michigan and seemingly across the Atlantic Ocean to a spot halfway across the world.

  “There’s no fucking way anyone can do that.”

  “Those who fail will know the peace of the great void.”

  “I saw green dust back there,” Kurtis said, shivering. “And there was this kid, this child really, who just disappeared into it.”

  “That is what happens to those who meet their journey’s end. Especially those who are not between the ages of eighteen and fifty-four.”

  “Why those ages?”

  “Because self-control is more attenuated in the more virile of your species, particularly the males. The portion of your brain that stimulates anger and aggression is larger, and the part that restrains anger smaller,” Nadine said. “This means those between the ages of eighteen and fifty-four make the best participants.”

  Kurtis let up on the gas, staring at the maps, mindful of the fact that he had a weapon and a car and enough gas to get the hell out of the city. He could do it if he wanted to. Just angle the car west, game be damned. The younger, less mature version of him would’ve done it. Would’ve broken his promise to Jimmy and just kept on driving. But he wasn’t like that anymore. He’d sworn to do something for the man who’d saved his life and so he banished any thought to the contrary and drove on for a block before slamming on the brakes.

  What the hell?

  Kurtis squinted at the two objects in the middle of an intersection that he’d nearly run down. He flashed the high beams. It was woman in a heavy coat slumped over what looked like a baby carriage.

  “Christ,” Kurtis muttered.

  His eyes roamed to the right and left. There were gangs of Melee participants rampaging through the neighborhoods, destroying property, setting off explosives, killing each other. Kurtis checked his gun, sliding out the weapon’s magazine, slotting the other magazine in, the one that Jimmy said contained overpressure rounds. Kurtis had heard about such ammunition before, about how it was manipulated to create rounds with higher muzzle velocity that were better for taking people down.

  Kurtis exited the car and strode five steps and then stopped. The figure, who appeared to be a woman, hunched over the carriage was ten feet away from him. Kurtis checked his HUD, but no stats appeared on it, no information at all on the woman or the carriage.

  “Ma’am,” Kurtis said.

  No reaction from the woman. Just dead silence. Fuck, Kurtis thought, how much worse could it get?

  “Ma’am, you need to move and get that baby out of here.”

  The figure rustled and sobbed. Kurtis advanced. “Ma’am, did you hear me?”

  Kurtis lowered his gun and the hunched figure turned in a flourish to reveal a mixed-race woman who was nineteen or twenty. She was breathtaking in appearance, her dark hair slicked back, angular cheeks shiny with sweat. But what got Kurtis’s attention the most, was the silver revolver in her hands.

  “Back,” the woman said.

  “What about your baby?”

  The woman tipped the carriage over. There was a fake baby doll inside.

  “I fooled your old ass,” the woman said.

  “I’m thirty-nine,” he replied for some reason.

  “Then you’ve got no excuse to be this stupid. Now drop your gun and move back.”

  Kurtis dropped his gun and the woman grabbed it and wagged her own piece at him. Kurtis retreated to the Camry.

  “Gimme the keys,” t
he woman said.

  “They’re inside.”

  “Go get ‘em,” she spat.

  “I don’t think we’ll have time,” Kurtis replied, pointing. Shouts and gunshots filtered down the street. The other participants were drawing close. In seconds, Kurtis and the woman would be within range. “Choose your madness, lady. Them or yours truly.”

  “Get in and drive!” the woman said, flustered.

  Kurtis opened his door, entering, and the woman climbed in through the passenger door. Kurtis put the Camry in drive and monkeyed the wheel, accelerating through an alley as the participants pursued.

  Kurtis pulled the Camry down one side street after another, losing the desperate participants in the rear view. The woman sat perched on the edge of her seat, her weapon a few inches away from Kurtis’s head.

  “What’s your name, sunshine?” he asked.

  “Shut the fuck up,” she answered.

  “That’s a very unusual name.”

  The woman tapped the gun barrel against Kurtis’s ear, but he didn’t flinch. Instead, he said, “Put that thing down. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  “But I will hurt you if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

  Kurtis assented, searching the woman’s face. There were bruises he hadn’t noticed before and scratches and welts around her neck. She looked like she’d been through hell. “Okay, where to, Ridezilla?”

  “Turn around.”

  Kurtis slowed the car. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Turn around.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause there are tons of people back there.”

  “Yeah, tons of armed people.”

  “Points,” the woman said. “That’s all people are now. Just…points. Enough to get me a Ragetag.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Ask your Sherpa.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  An exasperated look gripped the woman’s face. Kurtis let up off the gas as the Camry coasted. “The voice, man. The alien voice inside your head.”

  “Oh, you mean Nadine.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I call mine.”

  The woman looked around, recognition on her face. “Wait? Why are you slowing?”

  “’Cause I’m not going back there. I have somewhere to be. I have to save a woman and her kid.”

  “On your own fucking time,” the woman hissed. “Now drive.”

  “No.”

  The woman placed the gun against Kurtis’s head. “I don’t have time for your heroic bullshit. It’s kill or…you know the saying. You’ve got five seconds.”

  Kurtis lifted his hands from the steering wheel. “I can tell by your eyes that you won’t do it. You don’t have it in you,” he said, holding his breath. “You won’t pull that trigger.”

  A nerve in the woman’s jaw twitched. She exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

  6

  Rage

  Kurtis blinked eyes that were tired and gritty. He expected to feel a bullet pass through his gray matter, but instead, the gun rolled over empty.

  The woman’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Kurtis was surprised too.

  This time it was the woman’s turn to blink. She did and Kurtis flat-palmed her in the face. The gun went flying, the woman’s head slammed against the passenger side window, and she blacked out.

  Snagging the woman’s revolver and his own sidearm, Kurtis parked the Camry, popped the trunk, and exited. First, he cursed himself for letting down his guard. He was getting old, losing his edge, his ability to read people. Moving to the trunk, he took the Christmas wreaths out and began dismantling them, undoing the lengths of wire that held the swatches of what smelled like fir in place.

  Coiling the wire into a usable length, Kurtis returned to the car, pulled the woman’s hands together in front of her body, and wrapped the wire around her wrists. He fished in her pockets and pulled out some ID cards, a set of house keys, a box cutter, and some money secured with a silver clip, all of which were included as part of his chattel on the HUD. He tossed this stuff on the backseat, then stretched the seatbelt over her breasts and tugged it tight to keep her in place before climbing back behind the wheel.

  He stared at the woman. She had a passing resemblance to someone he’d encountered in the past. The female prosecutor, an AUSA she was called, Assistant U.S. Attorney. The woman who’d prosecuted Kurtis and argued in favor of a stern prison sentence in federal court. Most of the other defendants that day had armies of people attesting to their character; but not Kurtis. His folks were dead, taken by cancer. His lady and little boy were taken as well, killed on a snowy day in February three years earlier. It was just Kurtis up there that day in court, hanging his head, admitting that he’d fucked up. He’d hoped for mercy from the judge, but the judge said mercy wasn’t his to give. “When you push drugs laced with fentanyl, Mister Evinrude,” the judge had said, “you push death.” Pushing death meant doing time. Real time. Hard time. Thirty-five years in the slammer, with all but twelve of it suspended.

  “Why can’t I see anything about her, Nadine? I can’t read her stats.”

  “Once a participant reaches a hundred and fifty experience points, they have the option of preventing others from seeing their stats. Her life is worth twenty-five experience points.”

  “I know that.”

  “You currently possess a hundred and fifty-five experience points. With an additional twenty-five experience points you would be able to heal yourself.”

  “But only if I kill her.”

  Silence from Nadine.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “The choice is yours, Kurtis. Free will. One of the hallmarks of the Melee.”

  Kurtis got behind the wheel and drove off, mindful of the HUD that was showing streets off to the right and left in flames or overrun by participants and monsters. He floored the Camry, driving due south, cruising down State Street before stopping at the intersection of State and Roosevelt Road. Remnants of men and women in National Guard uniforms were fighting a running gun-battle with wolfpacks of Melee participants.

  Kurtis was shocked to see one of the participants, a man in some kind of silver jumpsuit, running faster than any human had a right to run. His hands were on the ground, like a gorilla, and he was gaining speed, covering ground in twenty and thirty-foot leaps. The Guardsmen fired at him, but he vaulted into the air, jumping over the troops while dropping explosives or possibly grenades, it was impossible to tell which, down on their heads—fire from above. The explosives detonated, atomizing the Guardsmen as roars of triumph and vengeance went up from the other Melee participants, who fired their weapons into the inky black sky.

  “Who is that guy?” Kurtis asked, zooming in on the man in the silver jumpsuit via his HUD.

  “That participant just acquired a Bounder Ragetag,” Nadine replied.

  “I should’ve asked before, but what’s a Ragetag?”

  “An upgrade, a force-multiplying mode that places the user in a trance-like state of fury where he or she is immune to death and insensitive to pain for precisely four minutes. There are an endless number of Ragetags including Bounder, Immolator, Hater, Dust Devil, Whirlwind, and Triple Point. All of these, along with every other Melee Totem, is available for acquisition with the requisite amount of experience points.”

  A status message appeared on Kurtis’s HUD, a collection of holographic images that floated in the air. There were magazines of ammunition, grenades, cutting instruments, battle helmets, a few pieces of ordinary body-armor, gloves, boots, and what looked like satchels filled with vials, powder, pills, and patches.

  Above these items were various other classes of weapons and gear that could only be obtained with many more points. Stuff like machine-guns, rocket-launchers, laser guns, jet packs, tanks, armored motorcycles, and exotic battle suits of all shapes and sizes, including the silver jumpsuit worn by the man with the Bounder Ragetag.

  The f
ighting continued to the west and Kurtis stood on the gas as the Camry shot forward, rocketing across the street to the safety of the darkened road that lay beyond. With Roosevelt Road safely in the rearview mirror, Kurtis pulled over, close by a looted Walgreens, to figure out the best and least-dangerous route to Jimmy Mulvey’s place.

  The woman in the passenger seat roused awake. She jerked forward, then saw that her hands were bound and began screaming. “Hell! Fuck, shit...aw, god what the hell?! I’m into some kinky shit every now and again, but this is not the time.”

  “Stop it,” Kurtis snapped, cutting her off.

  The woman looked over at him and gasped. “You.”

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  “You’re still alive,” she guffawed.

  Kurtis tossed the woman’s revolver to the ground near her feet. “Funny thing about guns. They need bullets to work. You learn those kinds of things the older you get.”

  The woman’s face fell. Her eyes hopped from Kurtis to the Glock that was visible on the seat between Kurtis’s legs. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

  “You punched me.”

  “Damn straight,” Kurtis said.

  “Your momma teach you to hit girls?”

  “Only when they’re trying to blow my head off.”

  “I’m only worth twenty-five points,” the woman replied.

  “I could use another twenty-five points. Buy me some medicine, maybe a new pair of shoes or some tasty tic-tacs…”

  “Seriously?”

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Taylor,” the woman said. “Only everyone just calls me Tae.”

  “Kurtis.”

  “I know. I read your stats.” Several seconds of uncomfortable silence fell before she continued. “A Camry? Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “It’s the end of the world and you chose a Camry?”