Beth spent the night under the dock, shivering and praying that she’d make it out of this. The game kept tricking her mind, telling her she was freezing. Around four, she actually started to feel warm. She’d heard that was what happened with hypothermia patients in the last stages of the illness. They began to sweat and feel warm. So much so that they’d found people frozen to death, naked, because they’d stripped their clothes off.
A shotgun blast brought Beth back to the present, and she pushed from under the dock and toward the center of the lake. Luckily there were no fish zombies, and the other zombies couldn't swim.
With the sunrise, some of the zombies had dispersed, others had jumped to their death in the lake, but there was still a small group gathered on the docks.
She hoped to see Mav behind that shotgun. Hoped her new friend would be the one blowing heads off zombies and pulling her from the lake. But as Helios came into view, Beth rolled her eyes and leveled him with a look.
He ignored her, continuing the destruction on the zombies, spraying them with whatever it was that shotguns shot. Shells? Bullets? She really should learn more about guns. And where the hell had he gotten the gun? She’d killed him, buried his corpse, and took the backpack he dropped.
As the last zombie dropped backwards into the lake, Beth swam toward the dock. Helios met her there and reached a hand down to her. “Rough night?”
He pulled her from the water and helped balance her on her shaking legs. As soon as he let her go, she pulled her gun from her inventory and pointed it at his head. Okay, the slide thingy was open, and there were obviously no bullets—err, ammo—inside, but it helped her feel powerful.
“Wake me up.”
A guilty look flashed across his face. “We actually can’t figure out how.”
Beth’s legs gave out and she collapsed in a heap on the dock. She blamed the night spent in the water, but suspected it had more to do with the shock. “What do you mean?”
“You won’t wake up. We’ve tried.”
Beth looked up at the time over her head. Day: 5, Time: 09:01. “What does that mean?”
TJ walked over and crouched beside her, grabbing the gun from her loose grasp and tucking it in his waistband. “You’re in a coma.”
With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she equipped her club and got to her feet. TJ held up his hands. “I’m really sorry, Beth. Truly.”
She swung the club with as much force as she could. It hit his shoulder, then his forearm as she swung again.
“You bastard. Son. Of. A. Bitch.” She accentuated each word with a blow to his body. He stood there and took it, allowing her to get her anger out.
Angry tears trailed down her cheeks, and if she hadn’t been completely out of stamina, she would’ve run from him to hide them. She hated that her tear ducts seemed to be attached to her fury. She’d worked damn hard to keep people at a distance so she didn’t feel anger. If you didn’t care what people thought, then it didn’t matter what they said.
But TJ had put her into a coma. A. Coma. She was in New York, and her mama still had no idea where she was. Celeste was probably happy to be rid of her. No one would be looking. When she realized Mav hadn’t logged on for two days, a sinking feeling filled her gut.
“Is Maverick online?” she asked, wiping the tears away.
TJ shook his head. “He, and all the other betas, went home.”
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. She was alone. Pathetically, and completely alone.
A thought occurred to her. “Um. How did you know where I was?” Did he have some sort of tracker on her?
“Your game is live-streaming in my home as my programmers try to figure out why you’re stuck and how to get you out.”
“So, you’re watching me?” Beth knew she should still be angry, but she felt oddly satisfied that he, or his programmers, had seen her bury his headless corpse, and mark it with the Tiny Johnson gravestone.
TJ cleared his throat. “Yes.”
She nodded. “Will they be able to figure out how to get me out of here?”
“Yes.” He said it quickly, and with too much bravado, and Beth wasn’t convinced it was true.
“Okay, then. Let’s go build a base.” It was day 5, and according to Maverick, on day 10 was Horde Night. She needed to be prepared for next time. She wouldn’t get caught overnight outside her base again.
As they were heading back to the base, they came across a silvery stone. It looked suspiciously like iron. It was one of the metals Mav said they needed in the later game stages. She pulled up her map and figured out how to create a waypoint so she could come back later.
“Do you have a forge yet? Or a cement mixer? Or a bike? Those are items we should get right away.”
Beth shook her head.
“We should spend time clearing buildings and getting items then. What level are you?”
Beth looked at her character sheet. “Level five.”
“Great, where have you been focusing your points? You’re a fighter?”
She nodded. “Um.. What points?”
“The ones you get with each level.”
“Oh.” Beth shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to tell the man who was paying her to play a game that she didn’t actually have any gaming experience, and therefore had no idea where or even HOW to spend said points. “I’ve been saving them up.”
“For what?”
Beth shrugged, and her voice sounded small when she said, “For later.”
“Well use them, “TJ said with a note of exasperation. “You’ll need the extra stamina, strength, luck, and intelligence.”
Beth clicked on her character sheet and noticed a small red 5 icon on the top left beside her name. She clicked it.
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Intelligence
Strength
Luck
Stamina
Caveman
(1 point)
String Bean
(1 point)
Jinx
(1 point)
Weakling
(1 point)
Minor Moron
(2 points)
Soccer Mom
(2 points)
Even Steven
(2 points)
Two-minute Turbo
(2 points)
Street Smarts
(3 points)
Fit
(3 points)
Happy-go-lucky
(3 points)
5k Walker
(3 points)
Bright
(4 points)
Body Builder
(4 points)
Lucky Larry
(4 points)
10K Runner
(4 points)
Einstein
(5 points)
Roid Rager
(5 points)
Jackpot
(5 points)
Marathoner
(5 points)
She went right across the top of the board, giving herself a point in each of the first tier, and unlocking the second. She still had one point to spare.
They stopped at the base, and though she didn’t want to, Beth reluctantly gave back all of TJ’s items.
When he was taking the backpack from her hand, she didn’t release it, waiting until their gazes collided. “You’re gonna get me out of here, right?”
She searched his face, his drawn brow, his pinched lips, the slight lines around his eyes. “I’ll do my very best.”
And she believed him, which was the only reason she didn’t shoot him in the head again when he handed her the gun back and she reloaded it with the bullets she found in the storage boxes.
“Hey, is there any way to fix my club? It’s down to 36% durability.”
“Yeah, there are repair kits. We can loot some, or make them if we find the schematic.”
She nodded. “Okay.” She could do this. She could do whatever it took to get through this. Beth was a fighter, and had been her entire life. She’d had no choice but to be.
She decided right then and there to build her base as good as she could get it, if for no other reason, then to give herself something else to focus on. Some way to get through this until they could figure out how to wake her up.
=|==>
They spent the rest of the day killing zombies and clearing buildings. The small town they were next to had a hardware store, and they managed to get a cement mixer, and several pallets of cement to fill it with. They also scored more guns and ammo, several machine parts and coils of wire. Other nonsense she had no idea what to do with, but TJ seemed pleased to get.
And she got an item that she was pretty excited for.
Level 1 Mining Helmet
+10% load when mining
Durability: 100%
Enhancement Slot: (Empty)
Enhancement Slot: (Empty)
As the sun started to go down, Beth placed the flashlight mod into the helmet, and switched it on, then descended into the mine they’d dug below the base.
She spent the entire night mining, only stopping when she heard the telltale signs of zombies that her noise had attracted. She climbed the steps to find Helios slumped next to Maverick. “Wimp,” she muttered, hoping he was listening.
Beth grabbed her gun and sprayed the zombies attacking the pillars below. A dog looked up at her with reflective intelligent eyes, and she shivered. It was creepy as all get out, and the dog looked like a real German Shepherd. It was more than a little unnerving.
She put a bullet right between its eyes, and kept shooting the zombies. When the sun came over the horizon, she went to the cement mixer that they’d brought back yesterday. She unloaded the wet cement that TJ made yesterday and placed it into a brand new storage container he’d created that was labeled cement. Then she loaded it up with the next bag.
She drank water, and ate a stick of beef jerky, then climbed down the ladder. Her plan was to spend the day trying to find useful things for her base, maybe another hardware store, or something of the like. She walked through the town to the trader.
“Hi, Skip.”
Would you like to buy and sell?
Go on an errand?
Never mind.
“Go on an errand,” she said.
Tier 1
Clear
.6 miles East
Tier 1
Clear
.2 miles West
Tier 1
Retrieve
.4 miles North
Beth selected the clear that was just west of her, then left the trader.
She followed the yellow bouncing arrow to the house, then stepped on it and entered through the front door of the small double-wide.
Beth tried to ignore how much this particular trailer reminded her of the one she’d grown up in. Down to the chipping teal paint on the exterior of the home, to the TVCR—TV VCR combo—on a worn table in front of a couch. It was unnerving.
And quiet.
Too quiet.
Beth quietly walked into the dated kitchen that looked straight out of the 80s, and screamed when a hand gripped her ankle. She bashed the zombie, which dragged itself toward her by its hands since the lower half of its body was missing. She refused to think of the woman as anything other than an it.
It’s just a game.
When she got the experience notification, she rummaged through the drawers and cabinets, finding food, ammo, mail that she could use for kindling, and a wooden spike schematic.
Wooden Spike Schematic—Required Intelligence: 1
50 Wood
10 Wire
Beth seemed to remember getting wire last night at the hardware store, too. She finished clearing the trailer, which was only two more zombies, then stopped at the trader to collect her reward, which was a waterskin that she could insert into her backpack like a Camelbak.
Curious about her new find, Beth went back to base to see what the wooden spikes looked like.
She found the wire in one of the storage boxes, then created the first wooden spike. It was two feet by two feet. The wood criss-crossed at the center and created a spike on each of the four corners, with wire twisted between them.
Maybe she could create a perimeter around the base to keep zombies out. Grabbing her ax, she went toward a tree line to the north, chopping down trees until she had four stacks of 5000 wood. When she got back to her base, her muscles ached.
She made a hundred and twelve wooden spikes, using up 5600 wood and all but eighty of her 1200 wire. Working quickly, Beth placed the spikes in a perimeter around the base, leaving a space for the ladder that she placed on the outside pillar.
The sun set, and Beth climbed the ladder, letting her stamina refill.
“Tell Tiny Johnson I want Maverick back!” she shouted. Someone was probably watching her and could pass the message on to TJ.