[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Michael Kapok]

[Level: 1]

“And that’s all she said?” Jared pressed, looking at Verity’s sleeping form, “We gotta get a move on, and then just total system crash?”

“I wouldn’t call it crash, she was still moving and responsive and stuff.” Michael pointed out defensively, “But yeah, she was in bad condition. Running on fumes. Only went down once we got here.”

“Crashed hard, though.” Terry noted, timidly wiping at her forehead with a damp cloth.

“Why are you doing that? She isn’t feverish.” Tench frowned, watching him.

“They do it in all the movies.” He whispered in explanation, barely audible.

“And we’re trusting you to make a cure.” Tench repeated skeptically. Michael had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time he had made this observation.

“Don’t be like that, he’s been doing well.” Jared encouraged Terry, who had started withdrawing into himself again. Poor guy needed more positive reinforcement in his life, “We’ve been getting good results in the tests so far.”

“Oh?” Michael perked up, “How’s that going?” The sooner they managed to get a handle on the fungus-powered cure, the quicker they could wrap up this level, and move onto the rest. However many levels there were.

“Really well, actually!” Jared grinned, before Tench could answer, “The test zombie, Derek, has been leveling up fast, and with that there comes a… certain level of humanity. They’ve learnt to play checkers with us!”

“Every so often it falls into a blind rage again and tries to eat us and the only thing keeping us alive is the fact that we straitjacketed it to the wall.” Tench added.

“Yes, that… is bad. But we can fix it.” Terry agreed, “In my hypotheses, this should work more as an early-stage deterrent than something that will properly work after the infection has gotten its claws in.”

“But we have no way of testing that unless we want to get bitten on purpose.” Michael mused aloud, “That isn’t something I want to risk, but what else can we do?”

They sat with the weight of this proclamation. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, short of nearly half their members. It was finally Tench who spoke up, “I’ve heard rumors from traveling parties about labs. Safe cities. Places where bite victims would gather. We could gather test subjects there.”

A bit macabre, but a hell of a better option than they had sitting here.

“Any solid evidence?” Michael asked, focusing on the details that would stick out to Verity, “We can’t chase after this ‘safe city’ without having any idea of where to go.”

“Ben would know.” Tench offered, “We’ll have to wait for her to give her input on this.”

“They’ve been gone for a while.” Terry noted, his eyebrows scrunched together, “Are they alright?”

“Must be.” Tench hurried to agree, “The Console would have told us if something monumental happened, right?” It was a desperate plea, and none of them knew how to answer it. The Console would continue to be fickle in the information it gave its Players, no matter how often they felt like they had gotten to grips with the rules.

“We don’t know.” Terry sighed, moving over to look at one of the many large petri dishes they had taken to farming the fungus in. Each was plastered over on the inside with fronds of green and white, covered in a slight fuzz of blue. In the one he had picked it up, there were small bits of a more stereotypical mushroom shapes, smaller than half a pinky’s fingernail, peeking through the fronds.

It was almost magical to look at. The potential that was carried in it could change the entire world, if only they could find the exact right formula.

“Almost makes me feel like we’re making penicillin all over again.” Jared grinned at Michael, who hid his own tired smile. That had been a terrific escapade, their very first time proving to Wayside that they could save the world. Medication was a miraculous thing back then. Was the same in this world, too.

Medicine would save them all. They just needed to figure out how to make it work.

“It’s not like penicillin, we’re implanting the fungus directly into the human body in the wild hope that it will graft itself to the shape of the human nervous system.” Terry explained, his knee jumping up and down, “And for some reason, it really is working. Mycelium potentia is the most perplexing thing I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t work the way any other fungus does.”

“Don’t think too hard on it.” Tench suggested, “Magic is real. As long as it follows the broad strokes of what we need, then it’s fine.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Michael had no idea what a normal fungus was supposed to be doing, so he nodded along and pretended to be interested, even as his hands wandered over to the bag of pretzels left on one of the shelves placed over the windows.

There was a square of light coming from the ceiling where they had sawed a hole in to provide easier access to the people coming in and out of the supermarket. Even in her delirious state, Verity had jumped it easily, which made Michael a little antsy about its effectiveness in keeping strangers out.

Maybe he was tempting fate when he crossed over that patch of lime-green sunlight, but the idea of pretzels, a strange luxury he had thought he had left behind when the world ended, urged him to take the quickest route available. Of course that was when the orange-brown blur jumped from the trap door, and landed on Michael’s back, pinning him to the ground with all the breath knocked out of him.

“Astaghfirullah, sorry.” Asadullah whispered above him, the translated subtitles hovering over Michael’s watery view of the empty shelves and linoleum floor. He wished he could say something cool and suave, but as the catboy was climbing off him, all that came from Michael’s mouth was a weak moan.

“Don’t. Don’t mind it.” He managed out through the weak ribs, “Good that you’re here. Glad to see you. Did you get the stuff you guys needed?”

“Hope so.” Asadullah agreed, rubbing his bangle-covered wrist as if it was suffering from some kind of muscle cramp.

“You better be satisfied with this.” Ben grumbled to Tench, climbing in after Asadullah, with giant canvas bags over her shoulders, “Because I’m not going back there again.”

“Did something happen?” Michael asked, immediately worried, “Is the building alright?”

“Alright, sure. But infected by a hundred and ten rotters.” Ben shuddered, “One of the more high-leveled zombies must have broken the fence, and they got through.”

Despair ebbed through him, the loss almost profound, despite the short time he had spent in the butchery. He couldn’t imagine how Ben and Tench must feel, after losing their home for several years.

“Are you okay?” He asked her warily, “Do you need… time to mourn?”

Ben laughed, “That place? Why would I need to mourn it? Spent my entire time there trying to escape it, and now you want me to feel sad?”

“I feel sad.” Tench announced, not ashamed in the slightest of the admission, “It’s just… a level of security, you know? Trauma bonding.”

“To a place?”

“To a place. It doesn’t make me weak to admit that.”

Their eyes met in a steely competition, as if the outcome of this staring match would prove their ideological superiority.

The tension was cut by Verity lunging upright, breath ratcheting up into sharp panic as she looked around. Her eyes were so different, Michael was instantly put on edge. Verity always had this faraway look in her eyes, and it never changed, no matter how long he knew her. But now, she was present in the moment, and she was scared.

It was such an alien experience that his body was instinctively readying itself for a fight. What had made her feel so scared? What had she seen?

He didn’t have time to question her about it as she began ranting, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear her words. “We need to move faster.” Verity insisted, picking up her train of thought exactly where she had left it off when she had fallen catatonic before. She hurried over to Terry, who shied away from her in the face of her wild face.

“How is the cure going?” She asked, reaching forward to grip Terry by his arms, the feverish shaking of her hands all the more apparent.

He gaped, words failing in his panic, and instead going for his hand signs to say, “There’s some time left. Just a few weeks. Maybe more. Very fast for a cure-making process.”

“I don’t care how fast it is compared to something else.” She scoffed, releasing him, “It’s not fast enough. They’ll catch up by that point.”

Everyone exchanged concerned glances at her erratic behavior. This was highly uncharacteristic of her.

“Who’s going to catch up?” Jared asked, his voice careful.

“The Harbingers!” Verity wailed, as if that name was meant to invoke some kind of reaction from them. Michael couldn’t remember that name being mentioned even once. But it seemed to have some kind of special meaning to her.

“Run us from the top.” Jared remained calm, as if seeing their friend falling apart wasn’t dearly upsetting to him.

Verity seemed to latch onto his calmness, though, and nodded sharply, “The Player Michael mentioned.” She explained, her breathing becoming more measured and sharp, “I found them. And it was Burks. The same Burks from Wayside.”

“So, the Gunnersons are meant to be the same group from Wayside, too?” Ben asked, who had heard only heard one part of this story. The others, however, who were aware of who Burks were, stood frozen.

Asadullah’s eyes darted around, his tail bristled like a brush.

“How?” He asked, “That guy has, what? A Console like ours? How is he doing this? Why was he so pathetic before?”

“Because I stole his things from him.” Jared realized with a thousand yard stare, “I was a stupid little kid, messing with things I didn’t understand and I broke his Console.”

“Yeah.” Verity nodded, “That’s what he said.”

“I don’t know what’s going on.” Tench interrupted, “But this guy sounds like bad news. Any way he could follow you from outside the Tracklands and into ZombieWorld?”

She nodded, “It’s very much possible, yes.”

Cursing from every direction, “We need to get the hell out.” Ben decided, “Grab everything you need. Don’t panic. Don’t rush. But be as fast as you can manage. We need to evacuate.”

Everyone immediately split off, lost in their own little worlds, but Michael remained rooted to the spot, staring at the newest member of their little group.

Terry could either stay and accept death, or face his greatest fear and grab a chance of survival. And Michael didn’t know him well enough to guess what choice he’d make.

“Come on, Michael, help us stuff things in the inventory!” Tench called out to him crossly.

“Yeah, of course!” He nodded, hurrying over, the anxiety nipping at his heels. There was no time to be wasted, now that a very sentient threat was after them. Those were always much more dangerous than an unfeeling, uncalculated disaster slamming down anything that got in its way.

With humans, there was always the terrifying truth that you in particular had been selected to face this person’s ire, when they could have easily picked someone else.

The hunters didn’t really know you, but still, they wanted you dead. How could you deal with that?

[Player Log End!]