Beth backed away as the small horde of zombies approached. One of them was enormous, with a Hawaiian shirt on, and a big beer belly. Beth remembered from the intro that it was a “Traveler,” the only problem was, she had no idea what that meant.
As the trio of zombies drew nearer, she swung her bat, hitting them in the chest and head. The first two went down without much fight, but the third one, the Traveler, kept coming.
“Dammit.” Beth tried to swing again, only to realize she was out of stamina. She backed away, keeping just out of the zombie’s reach. After a couple of seconds, she’d regenerated enough stamina to use her weapon. She swung the bat with all her might, and the zombie collapsed to the ground.
White text overlaid the corpse on the ground.
Welcome to level 2! You’ve received 1 skill point.
Was it really dead? She had no idea how to tell. She got closer and poked the zombie with the end of the bat. Nothing happened. Carefully, she stepped over its body and deeper into the house.
“Search cupboards, behind pictures, under beds, in closets, and other hiding places for items to help you along the way,” sexy British man said.
Beth came into the kitchen and quietly began opening cabinets. She found five more cans of food, and two more bottles of water, which she was pleased to find stacked with the other items she already had. She also found a can of oil, which left her with one more slot to fill. As she checked the fridge, she noticed her character was panting, then she saw a blinking water drop icon on the top right of her screen, which told her that she was thirsty.
She grabbed one of the bottles of water and drank it, leaving the empty bottle on the counter.
“Continue clearing the building,” the voice said.
Beth cursed quietly and crept to the stairs, bat out and ready.
She ran into three more zombies, one at a time, in the upstairs bedrooms. At last, she climbed a ladder to the attic. It looked clear, but the eerie music continued to play, so she had a hunch that there was at least one more zombie nearby.
Behind a stack of boxes, Beth came across a skeleton and her stomach churned. It looked so real that she had to remind herself this was just a game. As she turned to leave, she saw another body, this one laying very still on a cot at the other end of the room. She ducked beneath cobwebs and sidestepped trunks of old clothes to get to the elderly woman.
“Ma’am?” Beth had no idea if there were survivors other than herself, but she reached over and lightly touched the woman’s shoulder.
Her eyes popped open, the whites a sickly yellow. A low moan escaped the woman’s throat and she jerkily popped to her feet. Her legs disappeared in the center of the perfect cot, and the woman tried to walk toward Beth, but just twitched in place.
What the hell? Beth glanced under the bed and saw the woman’s feet. The zombie must’ve been glitching. Beth saw it as a mercy when she bashed the woman’s head in with her bat.
“Simulation complete.”
The music returned to the cheery upbeat tune.
Where the woman had been, a treasure chest appeared on top of the cot. Beth opened it and found a backpack, three more bottles of water, a flint, a bow—but now arrows, and a jacket.
“You’ve obtained an inventory pouch. You may now carry up to forty-eight items in your inventory. Tap your left shoulder to open your inventory, and tap it twice to close it.”
Beth slung the backpack over her shoulder and noticed the trunk she’d passed earlier was open. She walked over and lifted the lid before rummaging through the contents. Inside, she found a pair of tennis shoes, pajama pants, and socks. She tried to put the items on, but as she attempted to put her foot into the sock, it kept just appearing in her inventory bag.
Level 1 Tennis Shoes
+10 Stamina Regeneration per minute.
Durability: 100%
Level 1 Wool Socks
Wear beneath shoes to prevent blisters.
Durability: 92%
Level 1 Pajama Pants
+1 Warmth
Durability: 76%
She definitely needed to figure out how to wear the items, but being in the house gave her the creeps.
Beth took the ladder back down to the second floor and used her bat to break the pictures on the walls. Behind one of the pictures she found a locked wall safe.
“Lockpicks required to open safe,” British jerk informed her.
Damn.
She finished ransacking the house, finding a roll of cloth under one of the beds. She also found a wrench and a stone shovel. As she made it back to the main floor, she heard creaking out on the front porch. She grabbed her bat and carefully snuck to the front door. Beth rounded the corner and swung the bat right at the zombie’s head, only it ducked beneath her swing and her bat shattered the porch light.
“Shhh!” the man hissed. He grabbed the bat, his warm body pressed against Beth’s.
Beth froze. There were survivors. Above his head was the name “Maverick,” and Beth stared at it.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Are you?” Beth looked up into his ruggedly handsome face.
“I’m another player, like you,” he said.
She’d seen the guys in the office, and none of them had looked like that. He obviously hadn’t used the clone feature when creating his character. The beauty of online gaming, she supposed.
“Oh.” She stepped back, and he released her baseball bat. He ran a hand through his thick dark hair, and Beth tracked the movement a little dreamily before she snapped herself out of it. What is wrong with me?
“Have you set up a base yet?”
Beth shook her head.
“What’s your specialty?”
“Fighter,” she said.
“I’m a builder. Want to team up? It’ll be beneficial for us to stick together.”
“Sure.” Beth needed all the help she could get.
“Follow me. I’ve started building a base just south of here. If we find anyone else, we should try to recruit them, too,” Maverick said.
Beth followed him. He stopped at every mailbox, gathering letters. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Makes good kindling for the fire.” Maverick continued to lead her south.
Finally, just as she was running low on stamina, Maverick said, “This is it.”
Beth looked at what appeared to be stacked wooden boxes that went about ten feet high. “This is it?” she asked, stupidly.
“Yeah. We’ve gotta start upgrading them and creating a taller base before horde day.”
Beth had no idea what he was talking about. “Okay.”
“Do you have a pickax yet?” He hefted a miner’s ax onto his shoulder and Beth just stared.
“I think I should tell you that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Maverick stopped, his gaze traveling over her. “Shit.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I lied because I needed the money.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing I ran into you then, cause I’ve beta tested a game similar to this before. I have a pretty good idea of what to do.”
Beth sighed in relief. “Thanks. Sorry to be dead weight.”
“No worries.” Maverick clapped his hands like he was psyching himself up. “Let’s do this. The first thing you need is some wood, and stone. Do you have a shovel?”
Beth nodded.
“Go a little ways away and start digging. See that tree over there? You’ll want to punch it until it falls over, and you’ll get wood from it. You need 10 wood and 5 stone to make a stone ax. I’m gonna head over here and start digging. We upgrade from wood to cobble. I also need to run into town and see if I can find some cement mix. Build your ax and start collecting wood.”
“Okay? What do I do after I have 10 wood and 5 stone for the ax?”
Maverick sighed. “Open your character sheet.”
Beth glanced around, searching for her character sheet.
Maverick chuckled. “See the silhouette beneath your health on the top right?”
Beth looked up and noticed that she now had 110 health instead of 100. That must have happened when she leveled. She reached up and touched the silhouette. A screen popped up in front of her. It was divided into three sections. The entire left side was one section, and the right side was split in half horizontally across the middle, creating the other two. At the top of the left side was a few icons. A map, a T-shirt, a hammer, and a sword.
“Now what?” she asked.
“See the hammer? That’s where you craft items. Usually you have to find a schematic, but you can make a few basic items without one.”
Beth clicked on the hammer. The screen on the left changed to a list of items she could make, including a campfire, a sleeping pallet, a stone shovel, and a stone ax. She selected the sleeping pallet first, since she knew she had all the things to make a pallet. She placed 100 grass, 50 sticks, and 50 cloth into the slots, then selected “craft.” A sleeping pallet appeared in her inventory, it looked like a sleeping bag. Next, she made a stone ax by placing 10 wood and 5 stone into the slots.
“I have my sleeping pallet now, how do I put it inside?”
Maverick took her around to the back of the square structure and pointed to a ladder about eight feet up.
“You expect me to climb that? Can’t we make it closer to the ground?”
Maverick placed a hand on her shoulder. “You can do it. Zombies generally aren’t great jumpers, so jump up and grab it. Forget the limitations of your body. You’re not that person anymore. Jump.”
Beth walked to the slot below the ladder and leapt. She easily grabbed the bottom rung and climbed hand over hand until she stood atop the wood wall. “Now what?”
“Climb down the ladder on the other side and place your sleeping pallet next to mine. That’ll be your spawn point if you die. You only get two lives, so be careful.”
Beth still wasn’t convinced that she wanted to come back for this “sleep study” or if she was what they were looking for, but she nodded anyway. She went inside the small space and put her sleeping pallet next to his. The space wasn’t very big, but for now, it would do.
As she climbed back to the top of the wall, she noticed a few zombies wandering in the distance.
“There’s some zombies over there,” Beth called, pointing south.
Maverick had wandered a little ways from their base and was digging a hole. He looked up at her and shielded his eyes from the sun. “It’s only noon. We’ll want to kill them before nightfall.”
“And what happens at nightfall?”
He shrugged. “Usually we get attacked.”
“I do not like the sound of that. What time will the simulation be over?”
“Game time and real time aren’t usually the same. We’ll probably get at least a full 24 hours in before we wake up.”
“We better get cracking then.” Beth climbed down the ladder and went to the nearest tree, which was still within view of the base. She grabbed her stone ax and began swinging. The numbers 180/200 appeared, and Beth noticed her stamina dropped 10 points, but had climbed almost to full before she swung again. Okay, this wasn’t so bad. Each tree took ten hits to … she had no idea what the right word was. Kill? Harvest? That seemed right. And each gave her between 40-80 pieces of wood. She’d also somehow gotten maple syrup, twigs, some eggs, and feathers—presumably from birds’ nests in the trees. Luckily, the like items all stacked in her inventory, and after working for a solid hour, she had two stacks of wood in her inventory, each with 800 pieces. The edges of her vision turned red, and her character panted.
“Maverick?”
“Yeah?” He looked up at her, sweat dripping down his forehead.
“Something’s wrong with me.” Beth sat on a nearby stump and stared at him. She had to admit, the graphics of the game were really cool.
“What’s happening?”
“My vision is turning red.”
“You’re overheating. You need to drink water. Do you have any?”
She nodded and pulled a bottle from her inventory, drinking it and feeling almost immediate relief. It was crazy. She actually felt better. As if she were thirsty in real life, and somehow, the water had quenched her thirst.
“Want to run to the trader and see if you can get some food and water? Look for some schematics too. And you can sell anything you don’t need.”
The problem was, she had no idea what she did or didn’t need. Or where to find the trader. “Umm.”
“Want me to go with you?” Maverick put a bottle of water to his lips and drank it.
“Please.”
He pulled out a club and Beth grabbed her bat. Maverick looked at her. “You know you can change your name to something else if you want.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything. Do you have a gamer handle you usually use?” He must have seen her confusion because he laughed. “I’ll take that as a no. I have a friend who uses the handle Goose. He’s here. I’d like to try to find him. Our best bet to run into people is at the trader.”
“Okay.”
They began walking, and Beth opened her character screen and looked at the top, where her name appeared. She put her hand on it and it disappeared. Now, what was a cool name. Her mind went to Greek goddesses, and she mentally scanned through the list until she stopped on Nyx. From what Beth remembered, Nyx was the goddess of night and the daughter of chaos. Beth grinned as she said, “N Y X.”