Headshot: One in the Gut (Book 1 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Read online

  Besides, I had no proof that the log out rules weren’t the same for them. Even if they weren’t, there wasn’t anything I could do to change them. After a quick glance around my immediate surroundings I decided that one broken down building was as good as another when it came to finding a hiding place. Even if the Survivors did need to find somewhere secure before they logged out, I didn't think that was going to be anywhere near as difficult a task as it was for me.

  I was in a bad part of town, and with this new Zombie Apocalypse paint job that it had gotten, the graffiti and the garbage blowing around in the wind was the least of my concern. There still wasn't any electricity, but the sky was getting brighter by the moment. Between the rising sun and my Lowlight Vision, I could see perfectly.

  Since the socio-economics of the player base was already on my mind, I couldn’t help but figure that nobody with the amount of money to buy a Survivor spot lived anywhere near these dilapidated buildings. They were slums, mostly made up of long, low buildings that were probably government housing commissions.

  I felt bad for the players who lived in them, especially since I’d mentally knocked the only homes they could afford. I had to remember that, just because I couldn’t hope to afford Deep Dive studio’s extortionary prices, I was pretty well off. I They weren't as fortunate as I was in the suburbs, but I doubted that that would mean that they would be immune from Survivors smashing down their doors and rummaging through their virtual houses, looking for loot and free experience.

  Hiding here while I was logged out would be an in-game death sentence.

  Then what? I was getting desperate now, and when I looked around all I could see was a dumpster leaning up against the side of the building. That wasn’t a good choice either, since it was just as obvious as the apartments…

  Even though I'd managed to hide amongst trash before, when the Survivor had passed by me in the alley without realizing I was there, I doubted that would work again. Besides, the AI was recreating everything about the world. What if there was a gust of wind that blew away whatever newspapers or random garbage I covered myself with? That would be embarrassing, wouldn't it? I didn't want to be the subject of one of those in-game videos that were constantly swirling around the Internet were some Survivor had found some humiliating way to kill one of the Zombies.

  At least we all looked the same. If I did get singled out for ridicule, nobody would know that it was me…

  I wished there was a way to minimize the clock. It just sat down there, at the bottom of my vision but somehow always in focus no matter what else I was looking at. It was 5:37, and I had to get out of this game.

  That’s what I told myself at least, but the fact that there was nowhere nearby that looked even remotely safe made me keep going. All I could do was keep searching as the world lit up and the clock ticked inexorably down. I slunk through the whatever shadows remained and crawled through broken apartment buildings, shattered by whatever imaginary past fire or cataclysm Headshot was using as a back story.

  Finally, with ten minutes to go before I had to jump in the shower, get dressed and get to the train station, I heard something new.

  I froze, still impressed at how good I was at that. After a couple of seconds I realized exactly what sort of sound had reached my ears, and I smiled a wide grin that I hoped would display my dangerous, broken teeth to anyone watching, just in case they were thinking about jumping me.

  The river…

  Well, the Los Angeles River isn’t real, at least not in the traditional sense. Not anymore. It isn’t free flowing, and the river banks are made of concrete throughout almost all its length. But it did have water in it, and from the sound of it the water was moving steadily.

  I had an idea, but that didn’t mean the game would let me make use of it. Still, there was only one way to find out. If my plan worked, I felt like I should get a fucking medal…

  I crept through the last few streets that separated me from the water source, being even more careful now as I approached the water. It was bright outside that I could be seen from some distance away, but if someone was smart enough to simply watch me and work out where I was logging out, I couldn't stop them. I wasn't fast enough to run away or strong enough to fight back against a robust attacker, so I’d have to rely on luck and brains.

  And a lenient, adaptive AI that would hopefully reward me for thinking outside of the box…

  Thankfully, the buildings went right up to the river. We don't really stand on ceremony in LA. The city's been torn down and rebuilt so many times that everyone just accepts that your apartment or townhouse or whatever is sitting on the ashes of four or five earlier builds. We can't be nice about it. There's no room for that sort of thinking, and no time for it besides.

  There were bridges that crossed the river in a dozen locations that I could see from where I was standing, but I wasn't interested in those. A low, cement wall separated the sidewalk from the water below, but instead of looking before I leaped, I just leaped.

  Thankfully, I could tuck my chin and roll with the impact enough that I slid down the manmade riverbank and plunged beneath the surface of the filthy water, only dropping my newly enlarged hit point pool from eight, where they'd been because of hunger, to seven.

  Now that I was under the water, I imagined my new Grasp ability and tried to trigger it. I knew it had worked when I felt my hands become laced with an impervious, rigor mortis strengthened grip. I found a crack in the cement about fifteen feet below the surface and plunged my hands into it, setting my fingers into place and making sure that they were going to obey my command. If I could hold on, I’d be safe here…

  If everything worked, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. And, since I didn't need to breathe…

  Once again, I willed myself out of the game, and this time instead of an annoying message dropping a bombshell on me regarding the new rules of logging out, I was simply allowed to come back to the real world, blinking and gasping for air.

  Chapter 9

  I jumped out of bed and raced for the shower.

  At least I tried to. It turned out not to be that easy, though. Now that I could actually sprint, going that fast even for a second made my legs feel wobbly. As soon as I headed out of the room and took a ninety degree turn into the hallway I realized that I’d cut the corner too close. My shoulder banged painfully into the doorframe, spinning me around and making me fall on my ass.

  That was going to leave a mark. I sat there, rubbing my shoulder thoughtfully, knowing that I should get up and get on with it since I was so late.

  Something else flickered into my awareness, though. It was the first time I’d felt pain since I'd logged in. Hell, it was the first time in a long time that I felt anything. It wasn’t so much worrying as it was an odd side effect of the launch version.

  I crawled around for a couple of seconds like some demented infant, touching everything within reach. The floor was cold, which made me realize that there hadn’t been temperature in the game either, at least not for me. It was hard too, and as I pushed myself to my feet I remembered that, even though I had been able to hold on to things, the sensation in my fingers in the Zombie world was gone too.

  Still gingerly rubbing my shoulder, I managed to get up and limp to the shower. Once the water was on me I couldn't stop thinking about the differences between Headshot and the real world. It had felt so real when I was immersed in the game, but now that I was out I could see how much of that was simply because my Zombie character couldn’t feel all the intricacies I did in my actual body.

  I didn't for an instant think that was a failure of Deep Dive’s engine, though. No way. Headshot was as high tech and bleeding edge as they came. The Zombies got less tactile input because they felt less physical stimulation, that was all.

  It made sense. They didn't breathe. Their hearts didn't beat. I was pretty sure that their skin didn't pick up on the subtleties of the wind or the coldness of the temperature, and their
fingertips held nerves far too deadened to feel something as minute as the roughness of brick against them.

  I shampooed and conditioned, though I didn't bother to rinse and repeat. Well, I rinsed, but you know what I mean… Then I threw some clothes on and dashed out of the house, running the thirteen blocks to the train station. If I missed the next train, I’d be late. As it was, I’d barely squeak in on time, and that was only if I was lucky.

  I knew that something was off when I could see the train pulling up and there were still plenty of seats on it. I raced for the doors and caught them before they closed, and when I was finally on board I couldn’t help but shake my head and smile.

  There were dozens of empty seats. Last week I’d had to practically bribe my way on, and today I could take my pick of prime train real-estate.

  Of course. Lots of people would call in sick today, if they had any brains at all. I had no doubt that pretty much everyone was either already in the game or had plans of spending the day in there. The ones who could afford to buy access to the Survivor’s side would be enjoying a day’s worth of hunting, and the ones who couldn’t would be trying to stick together.

  I took the best seat I’d ever had in my train-riding career, a primo spot away from the bathrooms and right next to a surprisingly clean window and watched the world go by. Even though I was back in the real one, I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going on in Headshot

  Once word got out to the Survivors that the Zombies log out rules had changed it was going to be a bloodbath. I could certainly picture a lot of the Zombies getting frustrated and logging out wherever they were, doing the bare minimum of concealment and then crossing their fingers. When I went back into the game after work today, I had better be wary. There was going to be a lot of easy experience flowing in the direction of the Survivors while I did my shitty data entry and, once the low hanging fruit had been plucked from the vine, the Survivors would hardly call it a day.

  No way. They would come looking for more. They would come looking for me.

  But one sentence echoed through my brain throughout the day, and no matter how hard I tried to push it away it just wouldn't budge.

  What if they've already found you?

  Chapter 10

  Work dragged on and on. I was hardly paying attention, but it didn't really matter. All I did was enter data. Most of the dinosaurs who needed the numbers crunched in the upper ranks of this crappy company were making a small fortune despite their inability to use a computer, which meant it fell to guys like me to put a Band-Aid over their uselessness.

  Hell, they and people like them were probably the only sort of people in the world that I could say with any certainty were at work today, blissfully unaware that the greatest game I’d ever had the honor of playing had launched at midnight.

  I put myself on autopilot. I needed to get through today, and if I concentrated too much on Headshot I’d drive myself crazy. I was already annoyed that I’d bothered to show up to work. Just about everyone else hadn’t. There should have been fifty people taking up the cubicles around me, and only six of us had clocked in.

  We were the dumb ones. Two thirds of the people who worked in the building weren’t even here. I was probably slacking off, but I couldn’t help but think that they should give me a raise, if anything. I envied whoever had had the forethought or lack of discipline, whichever you want to call it, to call in sick or simply ditch the 9 to 5.

  Try as I might, I couldn't stop thinking about the game as my numb fingers tapped the keys in front of me. How much experience was I missing out on right now? I was barely level 2, and I was going to get back in there and find that everyone had leveled past me.

  There was something else, too. The way Headshot was an exact recreation of the physical world I occupied gave me an almost sick sense of déjà vu. Right now, in a virtual double of this very building, were there zombies prowling the shadows? Were Survivors emptying the drawers of the very desk I was sitting at, looking for loot?

  I smiled, imagining my manager’s office being gutted. Maybe that was a plan, actually. I didn’t have a real destination in mind for tonight’s adventuring. Perhaps I should try and get in to work and see if I could at least tear the gas lines and hope for a friendly spark to make the whole place into a crater for me.

  I scanned the room, already knowing how I’d fortify the place if I had to protect it from an infestation. It was an old habit, but one I’d never really given up on. All I ever did in my daydream was work out how best to make a place safe against zombies. Everybody has a zombie escape plan, they say. It's not really true. What the saying should be is that anybody worth their salt has one.

  I certainly did.

  But now, I was on the other side of that equation. Now I had to bend my mind to working out how I would get into places. What window would I enter? And how would I do it quietly? Was it better to wait in the shadows and attack from ambush, or to slide in through a hastily and yet poorly locked door and destroy them from within?

  I had so many questions. I'd played the Beta release for a few months, but there was so much missing from the game that you could almost get away with not even calling it a Zombie Apocalypse simulator in the first place. Sure, there were lots of Zombies and a few stalwart Survivors. But the zombies couldn't spread the infection. Our bite was an attack, not a way to inspire fear and panic. The Survivors hadn't had to worry about that, and even as I let that thought run through my head my fingers began to curl up into something like the bony claws I had in the game.

  The lack of infection had always bothered me. But what if they'd fixed it? They had to have, right? I wanted to nothing more than to sink my teeth into a Survivor and see what would happen. Maybe, just maybe, even if they got me after the bite I might get some type of credit for the kill…

  I didn't watch the monitor on my desk. I was watching the clock and, right at 5 PM I shut down my workstation and hurried outside without so much as a word to anyone. I was in such a rush that I even forgot my backpack, but instead of turning around and getting it once I realized what I'd done, I just left behind. It was in my locker. It was safe.

  And it didn't have anything I needed inside of it anyway.

  Once I raced to the station, the train couldn't go fast enough along the tracks. There were still a lot of empty seats on it, and I took one of them, watching the buildings that we passed and wondering how I would get into each of them, if given half a chance.

  Instead of a sense of excitement as I got closer to my house, I started to experience a sickly cold twisting of dread circling around in my gut. Soon, I’d have a decision to make.

  Should I even login at all? It wasn't dark yet. Sunset wasn’t for an hour and a half at least. That meant it would be light in the game, which meant the Survivors would have even more advantages than they usually enjoyed.

  I didn't think I'd be discovered beneath the waters of the Los Angeles River. If some crafty Survivor had found me already, there was nothing that I could do about it anyway. Even so, I had confidence in my hiding place and was proud of myself for thinking of it.

  But should I share it with the other Zombies? I could make a post on the forums and let them know that there was at least one reasonably safe place to stash your body while you attended to the duties and tasks of the real world…

  I wasn’t sure. I always tried to be helpful in these games. Even in the simpler ones I was the first and last idiot to hand out gold pieces to every noob that told me that they needed them. I'd spent my younger days giving out free enchantments next to mailboxes in a dozen different worlds, ostensibly to level up my skills but really just for the joy of making someone's white item into something green. It gave me a thrill to be able to do kind things for other players, and since that was pretty much the sum total of my life’s meaningful social interaction, I wasn't too hard on myself when people threw my kindness back in my face.

  But this… This was different. If I let oth
er Zombies in on the way I'd hidden, it wouldn't take long for word of the tactic to spread. And the more players that knew about it, the bigger chance that one of us would be seen when we used it. From there, it didn’t take much for me to imagine a day filled with Survivors in boats, dredging rivers and lakes around the virtual world for Zombies, dragging us up with grappling hooks or simply throwing dynamite into the water and seeing if they could get a tangle of limbs to rise to the frothy surface.

  I shook my head sadly and laid it against the cold glass of the train’s window. No way. I couldn’t trust anyone with this.

  Aren't you getting a little bit ahead of yourself, I whispered. After all, in ten minutes you could log into that damn game and find that your genius solution to having to hide when you logged out was completely useless.

  But I didn't think it was.

  Once the train had stopped I decided that I was going to log in as soon as I could. I hadn't even bothered to eat lunch today, and my stomach is growling. If I was smart, I'd eat dinner first. Maybe even watch something else on the helmet, instead of going into the game. Sometimes it was good to create a bit of distance in your brain between one world and the other.

  But I knew I wouldn't.

  I hurried home, practically running the last few hundred yards. By the time I reached the front door, I was well and truly out of breath. I fumbled with my keys, almost dropping them before finally getting the place open. It was only when I locked it behind me that I let myself race into my game room, throw myself down on the mattress again and bring the helmet over my skull, at which point I closed my eyes, willed myself into the game, and arrived.

  Chapter 11

  I was ready for a message from the game cheerily telling me that it was futile to attempt to log in, since I was already dead. Deep Dive would be witty about it, saying something like “too bad for now, but tune in next week for another exciting installment of Headshot”, but it didn't happen.