[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]
[Level: 1 – Epilogue]
For a moment, things were very dire, she’d admit that easily. But they managed to buckle down and fight through the herd. They killed the zombies, only temporarily, but managed to take them down for good.
Through the combined efforts of not only their party, but all the remaining people in Hygeia managed to purge out the zombies and seal up the boundary walls. Michael wiped his brow as he pushed forward, sending the last block of cement to block off the hole torn into the walls.
It clicked into place, and a victorious cheer went up.
Beside her, Verity stood, polishing the only gun that had made it through the Boss Stage. She wasn’t cheering like everyone else, instead turning to look at Ben, “What next?” She asked.
“Huh?” Ben asked, taken by surprise.
“What next?” Verity repeated, pointing at the sky, which was still acid green, “The sky isn’t normal, yet. The Level isn’t over yet, despite the Boss Fight being over. So, what next?”
“We rebuild.” Ben replied, “Fighting someone isn’t the main goal, you know? We need to kill off the zombies. Spread the cure.”
Verity nodded, but she didn’t look certain. Ben wished to reassure her, but there was no way to convince her about this. Not without showing her what Ben had witnessed in the Tracklands. She wondered how Lucky was doing back home. If she had decided to move on to a different realm after all. It would be nice to meet her again, even if the circumstances were just as high as ever.
Once the wall was patched up for good and all the zombies inside had been permanently killed, it was time to regroup and recover. To count the people still alive and surviving. The final count came out to thirty people capable of fighting and movement. Twelve people incapacitated, but alive. Everyone else had died in the chaos. More than a hundred people had died. About as much were definitely Mobs that had been spirited away.
It was harrowing to see the sheer scale of it all.
But they couldn’t let themselves be discouraged by this. They needed to break through. Bide their time, killing more and more zombies, reaching further and further afoot.
It was hard, at first. All the zombies in the area had already been decimated. It took a lot of sweeps to finally discover more. And once they were able to chart where the zombies were coming from, they followed the trail, stopping people from turning at all, and developing more antibiotics for permadeath. Breaking the one thing that made zombies such a nightmare to deal with.
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They did this, every day, for weeks. Nearly two months. Until Ben finally laid her head back one day on a grassy knoll, confident that no rotter would get the jump on her without noticing, and she looked up at the green sky. Or… more of a teal?
She squinted up at it, wondering when exactly the slight hint of blue had begun mixing in with the strong green. With every passing second, the color seemed to be getting stronger. Pushing out the green and blossoming into oceanic splendor.
[Objective Completed!]
[Level One Ended]
[To Proceed to Level Two, All Party Members Must Be In Close Proximity]
Ben was up on her feet and running to Hygeia before she could think about it.
The guards – Erica and Landon – said something to her as they let her into the Safe City, but she didn’t even acknowledge them, too focused on getting to her teammates.
Jared was waiting feverishly outside their trailer. The team never ended up moving out of it, trying to keep this whole situation as temporary as possible. Now, it was a godsend with how easy it was to access from the gates.
“You got the notification, too?” She asked, counting quickly to confirm that yes, all seven of there were there. If they hadn’t gotten updated by the Console, the rapidly shifting sky should have been some indication. Already, she could hear whoops and hollers from outside, as people caught on.
Jared nodded, sharpening the spring-locked spike he had fixed into the bottom of his crutches, “It’s kind of hard to miss, you know?”
“Can we finally go to Level Two?” Verity asked impatiently.
“I say we quit all the dallying and move right on in.” Asadullah added, simply echoing everyone’s sentiments. No one argued, instead nodding eagerly. Michael hefted up the Console, and began typing away on it, pulling out a brand-new Compass, showing them the gate to the next Level.
“It’s not far from here.” He reported, using Computer Affinity to pull up the distance where the Console didn’t display it before, “Think, maybe few days’ travel? Wait no…” His eyes widened, “Guys, this is leading back to your hometown!”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Woah, blast to the past.” Tench laughed, “What do you say, Ben? Wanna do some sightseeing?”
“No.” She shut down immediately, “I just want to get there as quickly as possible.”
Tench nodded, sobering up, “That’s understandable. It must be… painful.” That wasn’t the reason, but if it was going to get him off her back, she would gladly take the excuse.
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Ben would spare the details about the journey. The marsh that had trapped them for so long was easy to jump over using Michael’s enhanced Sorcery ability, and there were no zombies to be afraid of. If anything, it was a breeze to march right through the terrain that had become old hate ages ago. Even Terry barely spared the burnt remains of his beloved supermarket a glance before walking right past. It was downright unthinkable.
Before she even knew it, they were standing in front of a glowing yellow portal. A green panel hovered above it, blinking cheerfully.
[Spawn Point to Level Two!]
Verity didn’t hesitate for a second, walking straight in. Jared followed after her. The boy had taken to sticking quite close, and Ben hadn’t been able to talk to them about it. She would get to it soon. Tench went in next, followed eagerly by Terry and usually in their formation it would Asadullah going after him, but he seemed to be hesitating. Terry was just about to reach into the portal before he realized that Asadullah wasn’t behind him.
He turned around, seeming to pick up on his hesitancy, and grinned brightly, “Asad, thoray jaldi chalo, na? Dusri taraf milna he hamey.” His voice was slightly less hoarse than it had been when the first met, but the words were unintelligible, and his accent choppy and stumbling.
It took Ben a few moments to realize he was speaking Urdu, and it seemed to take just as much time for Asadullah, because Terry blushed and ducked into the portal, hiding his face out of embarrassment.
Asadullah’s eyes were wide open, pupils dilated and ears standing at attention. He was down bad. And needed to wrap up this weird pre-dating circling around they were doing, because it was getting really frustrating to watch.
Asadullah followed right after, obviously, and Michael went in after that. Ben was alone, bringing up the rear. She turned around and headed back into town. Inside a nondescript building, she had hidden a zombie, during their massacre. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him. But now… she couldn’t leave behind any loose threads. She had to do this properly.
The rotting corpse that used to be her brother was lying on the floor covered in chicken wire. When she opened the door, the zombie leaped up through sheer force of will, snarling and gnashing teeth. She looked at it, consideringly, and then dropped a pinch of the antibiotics powder they had so fondly been calling zombie-cide into its mouth. It choked. It sputtered. It lay still. The kill sign about it was glitched to all hell, but it was final.
Gerard was dead. Her brother’s body would know peace.
And with that relief out of the way, she turned and headed back out to the Level 2 Spawn Point. Stuck first her hand in, and then her whole self, letting it be taken over by the green pixels.
She rematerialized on a soft and unsteady surface, and immediately fell face-first into what turned out to be sand. For a moment, she feared that they had been locked into a desert realm, but no, the air was cool and the breeze strong, carrying along with it the sound of bird calls and the taste of… salt?
[You have Entered Level Two!]
[Realm: L-32 | CephaloRaven]
Ben raised her head to get a better look. She was on one islet out of an entire cluster. A bright blue ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see. A gleaming contrast against the custard yellow sky. Because of course the sky was a different color. It wasn’t an Apocalypse without an unnatural sky.
She set out with the intention to hunt down the others, who had to have come out here, too.
There were footprints all over the islet she was on, so best to follow that lead and see where it took her. Unless that was other people. What kind of Apocalypse would this be, anyways? Something to do with rising sea levels, maybe? Or maybe something completely unrelated to the ocean, and it was all set dressing? The others had had maybe half an hour on her. Maybe they had figured it out while she had dawdled? Ben hoped that she hadn’t freaked them out too much by her delay. She hadn’t wanted to tell them that she had kept Gerard alive all this time.
A caw sounded somewhere above her. Nothing like a seabird’s call, but Ben didn’t know much about birds, so she ignored it. It sounded again. And again. Followed after her as she tried to track down the footprints left behind by her team. It was distracting and annoying.
“You guys better not have taken up using bird calls to communicate!” She called out, frustrated beyond belief once it dragged on too long to be a coincidence, “I vetoed that idea ages ago!”
“Are you a human?” A voice called back, voice scratchy and unfamiliar around the English words. It was so unexpected that Ben nearly tripped on the sand again.
“I- uh- yeah?” She replied, looking up at this… what was it? An alien? A machine? Was this another part of Asadullah’s robot infested world?
A giant raven hopped out from the branches of a coconut tree. Or, well, it was a regular raven. The size of a cat. Because most ravens were that size. But it didn’t make it any less disconcerting to see it.
The creature tilted its head, looking at her from either eye, “Where’d you come from?” It asked, and Ben knew that ravens were smart and could mimic human language, but this was a step too far, wasn’t it?
Before it could pluck out her eyes for not answering quick enough, she replied hurriedly, “I’m from another world. I’m looking for people?”
A rough, throaty… laugh(?) came from the creature’s mouth, “No people here!” It cried, “No people here! All dead!”
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. Ben’s brain was fizzing away from fear and confusion and worry, “What do you mean they’re all dead?” She asked desperately. She was only half an hour late, at most. They couldn’t have died in that time. How the hell was she supposed to keep going without them?
“Died with the bomb.” The raven explained in that grating voice, “Huge bomb! Years and years ago. Now it’s only the animals. The stupid ones, for the most part. The stupid ones, the ravens, and… the squids.” It spat out that word as if was utterly loathsome.
Ben forced herself to breathe. The bomb was years ago. It was fine. Her team was fine. Now if only she could find them…
“Hey!” She called up to the bird, “Could you help me find my team?”
“There aren’t any humans left except for you!” The raven told her, “But if you insist, then okay! I want my flock to know I met a human!”
That was something, at least. Ben had one ally now, in this strange world. And she had to make it work.
[Player Log End!]