Chapter 3.

- # -

The notion that I was experiencing a holo-VR simulation was quickly dispelled from my mind. Even now, I like to think of myself as an open minded person, something that benefited me greatly when dealing with the blunt reality I was facing. However, while I had acknowledged that the situation was indeed real I nonetheless chose to refer to it as The Game, and while taking down zombies in quick succession, I made mental notes regarding my observations of The Game.

To begin with, I considered the lightguns.

It was obvious after the first few shots that the weapons were actual firearms. However, they were unlike anything I’d heard of. They fired mini caseless bullets, perhaps no more than four or five millimeters in diameter, and with a very short body. Calling them bullets wasn’t entirely accurate as I noticed later – when the shooting had finally stopped – they were like a cross between tiny arrows and bullets. The effective firing range wasn’t so good – fifty meters at best – and their effective penetration was poor. A hit to their bodies was insufficient to stop them, and sometimes it required to shots to their heads to bring them down for good. So despite the oversized magazines containing some ninety rounds, I had to avoid being liberal with my shots.

The second item of note was The Game itself.

Necropolis was a game played through three to five stages. Because of my lack of stamina, I usually played it for three stages, rarely going as far as five. So the question plaguing my thoughts was whether The Game had stages, and if so, how many could I expect. However, the more dire consideration was whether or not The Game had an actual ending, or was I expected to travel the zombie infested city, fighting to the death until I ran out of ammunition? In short, this was a waking nightmare, and thus far I had seen nothing that suggested a way out of it.

The third item of note were the zombies.

To confirm they possessed physical bodies, I kicked one over after killing it. It felt very real to my foot and shoe, and in addition to its wounds, the condition of its skin and flesh implied rather explicitly the horrid fact that zombies did exist. Needless to say, I was quite familiar with their lore so knowing that these were actual zombies sent my panic gauge roaring skyward. It came back down over time as I forcefully immersed myself into the act of killing the undead, but the knowledge that zombies were real continued to trouble me greatly.

Thankfully, it wouldn’t be long before I learnt the truth, and thereby avoided being traumatized for life.

However, I would eventually learn there are worse things in life than a zombie apocalypse.

- # -

When the shooting stopped, silence befell the plaza of the entertainment complex, and a deathly stillness spread throughout.

I noticed I was breathing harder than usual, The Game stage – if indeed this was a stage – proving to be more taxing than I was accustomed to.

Carnage surrounded me, countless bodies lying everywhere, including a few children lying prone in the fountain pool, dying the water red.

It was all very visceral and traumatic, and certainly not for the faint hearted.

I swallowed hard, wondering how something virtual could have turned into something that was evidently real.

I silently pledged that if I found a way out I would hang up my lightguns for good.

Afterwards, fear gripped me as I wondered if I was trapped in this Necropolis.

I glanced at my wristwatch, and realized I’d been shooting away for almost twenty minutes, though it felt like an hour since entering the booth. Maybe I’d experienced some sort of time dilation phenomenon without knowing it. Looking down at the weapon in my hands, I saw that the ammo count or charge was almost empty. Thus far I’d employed only one lightgun as I massacred the undead, so I still had a full magazine in the weapon slung across my back. However, I didn’t know if there were other stages, or if I was doomed to wander the city of undead for an unforeseeable future.

On the assumption that this environment possessed some of the attributes of a game, I wondered if there were hidden items for me to find, ammunition being one them.

On a hunch, I made my way back to the information kiosk, and searched about the place. My intuition served me well, and I found a cardboard box containing about a dozen ammunition magazines under the kiosk counter. After quickly emptying my school carry-bag of anything I felt wasn’t essential to my survival, I tossed the magazines into it. I also dropped a couple of magazines into my trouser pockets, and swapped out the empty mag in the lightgun for a fresh one.

Emboldened by my newly acquired stock of ammunition, not knowing how much longer The Game would persist impinged upon me the need to be frugal with my expenditure of ammunition.

After searching the kiosk for other useful items, and finding none, I slung the carry-bag’s straps across my body, careful not to tangle them up with the straps of the lightgun, and then stepped away from the kiosk.

Although the plaza and arcade were still, there was no indication the stage would end, if indeed this was but one stage of the game.

Spotting a drink vending machine in the near distance, I walked up to it, and saw that it was receiving power and thus refrigerated. Looking around me, I noticed for the first time that the shops of the arcade were well lit, though the plaza lights were yet to turn on. The sky overhead was grey and overcast, and despite my watch claiming it was after six pm, I could be forgiven for thinking it was midafternoon.

I was able to observe this now that peace and quiet had fallen upon my surroundings.

Thinking of survival, I turned back to the vending machine. After carefully placing the lightgun on the ground and beside my feet, I waved my phone over the vending machine’s scanner, by no means confident that I could make a purchase. To my surprise, the machine beeped in response. Thus encouraged, I bought a half dozen bottles of water, depositing all but one of them into my carry-bag.

Regardless of the carnage, my thirst overrode my stomach. Opening a bottle, I drank down a third of its contents while keeping my eyes averted from the plaza. After another long gulp where I consumed half the water in the bottle, I capped it, then dropped it into my carry-bag. Only then did I turn around and search the plaza with my gaze for signs of movement and anything that caught my eye.

I suspected that perhaps I hadn’t cleared the level, so I picked up the lightgun, and began walking through the plaza. Regardless of the stillness surrounding me, I was wary of the dead as there may be undead still ambulatory hiding amongst them. Despite the need to be prudent with my ammunition, I fired a few rounds into bodies that didn’t look dead enough to me, and continued onward cautiously.

The sounds of an infant crying in the near distance brought me to a stop.

Slowly turning my head left and right, I isolated the direction from whence it came – a pram rocking against a shop door roughly a hundred feet down the plaza. Holding the lightgun in a firm two-handed grip, I cautiously approached the pram. Standing over it, I peered at the child lying inside, wailing with its short stubby arms and legs kicking futilely at the air like a turtle on its shell.

To my horror, it was undead, its skin ashen like those of the other zombies I’d killed.

However, within moments a more horrifying thought slunk into my mind.

I stood for a minute or more beside the pram, wondering if this was the key to ending the stage.

Would I have to kill this baby zombie in order to gain my freedom from Necropolis?

I felt a wave of revulsion for whomever was behind The Game. If I ever discovered who they were, I would find a way to exact retribution from them, the so called pound of flesh.

It took me another minute to garner the grim resolve I needed to aim the lightgun at the child’s head, and then to pull the trigger. A single round blew a hole through its small soft head, silencing its cries permanently.

I felt bile work its way up my throat, but I pushed it back down, wiped the back of my mouth though the sour taste remained, and then walked back to the center of the plaza not far from the fountain where a group of zombie children had fallen in after I shot them dead. At sight of them, the pressure of being surrounded my dead overwhelmed me, and I turned around in a hurry, and walked fast toward the northeastern end of the plaza. In the distance, I could see a handful of large megascrapers as large as mountains with birds flying in small flocks between them. There were lights on the buildings’ exterior surfaces, so it was clear they were drawing power from somewhere. At the thought, I began earnestly considering the possibility that I was inside a real city, one that had suffered a zombie apocalypse.

“Maybe this is Necropolis…maybe there are survivors….”

I was nearing the end of the plaza, and thereby approaching a deserted street with vehicles strewn about haphazardly. The area was as deathly still as the plaza behind me, devoid of movement or any signs of life. With the lightgun at the ready, I slowed my pace as I drew closer to the street.

“BRACE FOR TRANSLOCATION.”

My heart jumped into my throat. I spun around and faced the plaza, searching for the owner of that female voice, soon realizing it was coming from the public address system mounted in the arcade.

“TRANSLOCATION IMMINENT.”

I dropped to my knees in a hurry, but the hard shove I’d experienced before made an encore appearance, and knocked me down onto my chest before I could stop my fall with my hands and arms. Wincing in pain, I was soon thrust into darkness and weightlessness that made my insides swim about for several nauseating seconds before I sensed a return to gravity and hard ground beneath me.

Lying on my stomach, I pushed myself up onto my elbows, and then stared up into the dim darkness.

I was back in the domed booth.

The words CONGRATULATIONS appeared above me, quickly changing to NEXT STAGE LOADING.

If this was indeed the booth, then I resolved to flee it immediately.

I was upon my feet in a matter of heartbeats, and searching for the control pedestal at the ‘back’ of the booth. I ran to it as soon as I caught sight of it, but my hopes were dashed when I saw that it was dark and dead. Slapping the emergency open button made no difference.

BRACE FOR TRANSLOCATION.

Realizing my carry-bag and the lightguns had made the return journey, I ran back to the middle of the booth and picked up the closest weapon. With a two handed grip, I aimed the lightgun at the wall of the booth were I judged the door to be, and pressed the trigger. The weapon failed to fire, and I looked down to see the safety was on. Flicking it off, I took aim once more and pressed the trigger.

The weapon discharge bullets every half or quarter second, stitching the dark wall with small explosions.

WARNING. TRANSLOCATION FIELD DISRUPTION.

I kept firing, swinging the weapon a few degrees to the left and right, tracing a line of fire up the wall, hoping to trigger some kind of abort that would cancel the so-called translocation process and open the doors.

EMERGENTY TRANSLOCATION ENGAGED.

I clenched my jaw and kept firing. It was reckless since I was expending ammunition that I would need later, but I couldn’t bring myself to hold back as desperation overrode me.

TRANSLOCATING—

The hard shove was as bad as before, the weightlessness just as stomach twisting, and then the ground was pulled out from under me, tossing me face first into hard darkness.

“Damn it!” I yelled into the void.

- # -

I turned around smoothly to look around at my new surroundings.

It was a school not unlike Telos Academy, and thereby a disturbingly familiar sight.

I could almost imagine someone laughing wickedly at my expense from somewhere in the darkened corridors as cold sweat trickled down my back.

Yet what unnerved me the most was the utter stillness of the air, as though my surroundings were locked in time. I wondered if the stage had actually completed loading as nothing moved around me.

Taking a quiet breath, almost fearful of breaking the enveloping silence, I stepped cautiously forward with light-guns at the ready.

From my memory of Telos Academy’s layout, I judged I was close to the entrance of the high school building, standing on the third level – the second floor if you counted the ground floor. I had classrooms and stairwells to my left, and the floor-to-ceiling windows of the main corridor to my right. The unbroken corridor circumnavigated the inside of the horseshoe shaped building – otherwise known as a broken circle – and if I followed it, I would eventually at the five-storey library constructed of transparent permaglass.

The interior lighting was still on, and I saw signs of damage, with tables and furniture thrown out of classrooms and into the corridor. Some of the overhead ceiling panels had fallen away, exposing air conditioning and electricity conduits.

The entrance to a stairwell was about twenty meters ahead of me. Approaching it with my right shoulder inches from the glass windows, thus giving the stairwell a wide berth, I trained the lightgun’s targeting beam on the landing.

A heartbeat later, a girl dressed in a school uniform stumbled up the stairs.

I held my breath and waited for her to see me.

When she looked up, I saw a very attractive face with large doe eyes and pale pink lips. She didn’t look frightened. She just looked….depressed. At sight of me she froze, but her gaze soon fell upon the weapon in my hands. A heartbeat later, she pointed down the stairs.

“Ah…help?”

I kept my gun up, certain she wasn’t an undead, but the same couldn’t be said about the owner of the shadow climbing up the stairs behind her. When it came into light, I saw it was a male teacher, eyes glazed, mouth wide, a hunger for living flesh contorting his features.

The girl cocked her head, then took a few steps away from the stairwell. She sounded depressingly bored as she waved her hands about gently in a dreary panic. “I’m being followed. I’m going to be eaten. Kyaaa.”

I blew the teacher’s head apart with two well-placed round to his forehead, then approached the stairwell to see two more undead faculty members crawling up the stairs behind the dead teacher. I brought their journey to an end before they arrived at the landing, then turned to look at the girl I’d just ‘rescued’.

She was a pretty thing, like many of the girls of my Academy, with long dark hair, an oval face, and expressive eyes. There was no need for me to doubt or question whether she was real, long since convinced that The Game was not a holo-Virtual simulation.

I surprised myself by asking her, “Are you alright?”

She looked sadly at the deceased undead. “What a tragic end to a teaching career.”

Her response and demeanor confused me. It wasn’t what I expected from someone fleeing from flesh eating zombies. Clearing my throat, I asked, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she replied with a weak shake of her head. “I’m fine….”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Again, I found her response and forlorn mien uncharacteristic of someone caught in this kind of scenario. Then again, was my response to The Game any more or less unusual? It clearly wasn’t the game I remembered playing, yet I was treating it like a game that had stages to be cleared. Was I being open minded, or just simple minded? And if I considered this another stage of The Game, what were the conditions for clearing it?

Peering up and then down the stairwell, I gave the corridor a quick look before asking the girl, “Are you the only one alive? Are there any other survivors?”

“Hmm…survivors…I have no idea.”

What is wrong with this girl? Is she traumatized? Has her mind retreated or something?

When she turned and pointed through the corridor window, I saw that she was indicating the library that intersected the broken circle, thereby dividing the middle school from the high school arcs of the building.

“Over there,” she said despondently. “I noticed them hiding in the library. Not very smart though. The library walls and floors are completely transparent.” She lowered her hand. “Well, it may be too late for them as well.”

The five story section of the building – the apex of the broken circle shaped high school – uncannily resembled the library at Telos Academy, and that included the transparent permaglass floors that gave a person the impression they were standing on air. Unfortunately, it allowed anyone on the floor below to upskirt the girls on the floor above. So the library at Telos Academy that was meant to be shared was now the exclusive domain of the female student body. There had been complaints from the male students inspiring a proposition to coat the glass with a material that would turn it into a one way surface, allowing people to look down but not up. However, this ran into problems when the girls demanded the library remain a sanctuary for the fairer sex.

I found the whole situation irritating as hell, and it reeked of gender bias. Coating the floors would have solved the problem, but the Student Council President, a buxom brunette beauty by the name of Aleena Saint-Pierre, campaigned to shoot the plan down with the added backing of her mother who sat on the board of the school’s directors. If I ever had the opportunity, I would do my utmost to have that decision overturned. At the very least, they could finance a library for the boys, one that was strictly off-limits to the girls.

I realized I was glaring at the library, and hurriedly tried to dispel my heated emotions. The best way to do so was to focus on dealing with the situation at hand.

After taking a deep breath, I rolled then relaxed my shoulders. Looking down at the lightgun, I checked the ammo count. Of the ninety mini-bullets it originally contained only forty remained.

I gave the library another long look. “Let’s go.”

“Hmm…go where?”

“To save the survivors.”

“Oh…but they could be zombies by now.”

I turned my head and faced her. “What do you mean?”

She looked up at the ceiling, then replied in a downcast voice. “They turned to zombies without warning. One moment they were normal students. The next moment they were zombies.”

“Care to elaborate.”

She tilted her head while looking up with a detached gaze. “What’s there to say? They were normal one moment”—her body contorted strangely for a short while—“then they were zombies the next. Very odd indeed. Very troublesome too.”

Though I was keeping an eye out on our surroundings, I turned my body toward her. “What exactly happened here?”

The girl looked down at me and shrugged, with her palms upturned. “I don’t know. I decided to ditch class. I was smoking behind the gym. Then I heard a voice say, “Translocation imminent. Brace for Translocation.” She lowered her hands and looked at me dispiritedly. Everything went dark. Then whack—I woke up on the ground. I went back to class in time for homeroom. I was sitting in the back looking out the window when some of my classmates began acting strangely. They attacked their neighbors.” She raised her hands and mimed a mushroom cloud. “Pandemonium soon followed. Running. Screaming.” She shook her head. “I jumped out the window. Landed on cafeteria table. Made my way inside and hid in a storage room at the back of the kitchen. Waited for the stampede to end. When I came out, I saw zombies in the grounds surrounding the school, so I went back inside the building. I saw students sheltering in the library.” She pointed at me. “I was looking for a way out when the teachers found me. Chased me. You saved me. End of chapter, and a new chapter begins.”

My reaction was hard to pin down into few words. I can best describe it as being both confused and surprised by her story. I was also quite distinctly afraid as a dire scenario began to form in my mind. The Game was a survival simulation that pulled people into its stages, and thrust them into a life or death situation. I was at an advantage because I possessed the lightguns, and carried a sizeable quantity of ammunition. However, others might not be so fortunate, this girl being one of them.

Turning around, I regarded the library visible through the curved corridor’s window.

“What school do you attend?” I asked her.

“Telos Academy. First Year, Class One-Eff.” She bowed politely. “Tabitha Hexen. Nice to meet you.”

I started to return her bow when her words abruptly drilled through my awareness. “Telos Academy? Did you say Telos Academy?”

“Yes, I did.”

I glanced at my watch, reading that it was well after six pm, but when I then looked out the corridor window at the overcast sky, I noted it was bright enough for late afternoon.

“…that can’t be….”

I faced the girl, Tabitha.

“How long have you been here?”

Unexpectedly, she looked up at the ceiling rather than pull out her phone to get the time, and I noticed she had no wristwatch.

“An hour? Maybe less.” She shrugged a shoulder dejectedly. “I don’t really know.”

What the Hell is going on here? Was this really Telos Academy? If so, had I somehow been displaced back in time?

I noticed movement behind her down the corridor. “Ah—could you stand still for a moment.”

Raising the lightgun with two hands, I aimed at the two students stumbling and staggering toward us. One of them was a girl, and she was helping her wounded companion, a boy. Catching sight of us, the girl cried out for help, and I hesitated for a moment before aiming at the boy whom she was supporting, centering the target beam on his head.

“Wait—we’re not bitten!” she cried out. “He fell and injured his leg. That’s all! Please, you must believe us.”

I stepped away from Tabitha, and shifted my aim to the corridor behind the two students. I’d like to say I was feeling calm, but that wasn’t the truth. Certainly, having the lightguns improved our chances of survival and bolstered my confidence, but the stage was fettered with unknowns such as how many zombies were we facing.

I fired at the handful undead emerging from a classroom behind the two students, two shots to each of their heads. The girl noticed and began to hurry toward us, knowing to stay out of my line of fire. When I was done clearing the corridor behind them, I gave the corridor in the other direction a good look. For now it was clear of zombies, but for how long remained to be seen.

So they’re hiding in the classrooms. Good to know.

I checked the ammo count.

Thirty rounds in the magazine. I average three rounds per zombie, that means ten more kills.

I regarded the lightgun grimly.

I’ll need to swap out shortly.

As the girl and guy neared us, Tabitha broke her silence. “You should be careful.”

“Of what?”

“I told you before…my classmates turned into zombies without warning.”

Holding the lightgun diagonally across my body, I glanced at Tabitha. “Are you telling me to abandon them?”

She shook her head sadly. “No. I’m simply saying you should be careful.”

Though I wasn’t aiming at her, I did raise the lightgun a little in her direction. “Then what about you? Should I be wary of you as well?”

“Oh, I’m not going to turn into a zombie.”

“How do you know that?” I asked her brusquely, my feelings turning blunt toward her.

“I just know.”

Now my feelings turned sharp. “And how do you just now?”

“Because I’m not like them,” she replied softly. “I’m like you.”

I almost gawked at her.

Tabitha continued. “Are you going to turn into a zombie?”

I swallowed. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Then remember, we were both pulled into this school. But they weren’t—”

The girl suddenly cried out and collapsed onto the corridor floor. At first I thought she’d tripped, but then I saw her and the male student convulsing on the floor.

“No…no…we weren’t bitten…we weren’t bitten….”

She pushed herself up to her knees, and I watched her skin become ashen like it was for the zombie’s I’d encountered thus far.

“No…no…please no….”

In the corner of my eyes, I saw Tabitha turn away. “I told you, didn’t I…?”

The girl on the floor looked up at me, and I watched in horror as the light in her eyes faded. “…help…me….”

I fired at her without thinking. The first shot created a large hole in her forehead. The second bullet sailed through the opening and exploded inside her head. I watched her fall to the corridor with blood spurting out of her nose and mouth, while I turned my lightgun on the male student reaching out for her. I waited until he touched her lifeless hand before I blew two holes into his head, and fired a third bullet that detonated within his skull.

I realized I was shaking and my heart beat with anguish in my chest.

Killing the child in the pram had been hard, more so because I’d had the time to think it over, to gather my resolve and pull the trigger. I’d felt sick afterwards. Yet this was horrible in its own way.

I clutched my chest with a hand. “What the Hell…is going on here?”

“You’re too soft…,” Tabitha whispered sadly, her arms crossed and her head bowed as she stood with her back to me.

With a loud growl, I turned upon her. Anger, fury, despair, they gave me strength and I slammed the girl against the corridor window. Tabitha rebounded straight into the muzzle of the lightgun I was shoving hard into the valley between her breasts. With the weapon pressed against her, I pinned Tabitha to the permaglass window.

“What is going on here?”

 Tabitha’s eyes had grown wide in surprise, but a heartbeat later she looked over my shoulder. Again, I reacted on instinct, spinning away from Tabitha while whirling to face the undead emerging from the classroom that had been behind me. I emptied the magazine by firing the remaining bullets into their heads. Flicking the ejection lever to release the empty magazine, I swapped it out with a full one from my left trouser pocket.

“Run,” I yelled at Tabitha.

She didn’t need encouragement from me as she ran ahead of me down the curved corridor. If we continued on this path, we would eventually arrive at the permaglass entrance to the library on this floor. As we fled, every so often I turned to check the corridor behind us. The undead students spilled out of the classrooms, but their numbers were fewer than I expected. It was on one occasion while I was looking behind us that I collided into the Tabitha who’d come to a sudden stop.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at her, then realized we’d arrived at the entrance to the library.

Tabitha pointed at the library visible through the closed transparent doors that intersected the corridor.

“No point going that way,” she muttered morosely.

“Yeah, I can see that,” I snarked back at her.

The students sheltering in the library had succumbed to whatever turned them into zombies. I watched them loiter about drunkenly within the library level before us, and when I peered upwards I saw more of the same.

Tabitha crossed her arms under her modest bust, and declared dejectedly, “This is the end. Nowhere to run. We’re doomed.”

“Speak for yourself. I haven’t come this far to give up.”

“Then what will you do now?”

I turned around and faced the corridor in the direction from whence we’d come. “What do you expect me to do? Clear the stage! What else?”

Dropping to one knee, I quickly unslung the second lightgun and placed it on the floor beside me. I did the same with my carry-bag, doing my best to control my trembling hands. Half of the shakes were caused by fear beginning to get the better of me. The other half was caused by my lack of stamina. Then again, it was likely that adrenaline was responsible for the tremors that made it difficult for me to unzip the carry-bag. I was growing quickly flustered, wondering how I could so calmly swap out spent magazines, yet faced such difficulty trying to open my carry-bag.

“You need to calm down,” Tabitha commented in her usual crestfallen manner.

“That,” I growled as I finally succeeded in opening my carry-bag, “is easier said than done.”

“Oh…they’re coming.”

“Do you wanna help?” I asked as I tossed a couple of fully loaded magazines into my trouser pockets. I then did a quick count of the remaining magazines in the bag.

Ten mags. Is that going to be enough?

I stood up and assumed a two-hand grip on the lightgun, pressed the extendable stock against my shoulder, and aimed the weapon at the oncoming undead. Their numbers weren’t sufficient to describe them as a horde, but there was certainly enough of them to keep me busy.

I don’t know if this is the final stage, or if there’s more to come.

Depressing the trigger a couple of millimeters, the targeting beam shone out and pinpointed the forehead of a male zombie student.

I’m going to need to find more ammunition.

I squeezed the trigger and fired the first round into boy zombie. It staggered, then went down when a second round widened the first hole in its forehead and blew away some of the brain matter behind it.

I shifted my aim and selected a second target, another male student, and fired a round that sailed purely by luck through its open mouth and exploded somewhere in its neck. Surprised, I fired again as the zombie chocked making me wonder if the undead breathed at all. The mini-bullet hit the top of its head, requiring me to shoot twice more into its skull in order to ensure the kill.

My third target was a girl with three pips on her blouse collar identifying her as third year senior. With three mini-bullets to her cranium, she collapsed to the corridor floor and lay still.

My fourth target was another girl, short with blonde hair tied in twintails.

My fifth kill was a tall, thin boy, a second year with two pips on his shirt collar. He fell with three rounds to his frontal bone.

The sixth was female teacher. She took two mini-bullets through an eye socket before going down.

The seventh…another male student.

The eighth…a portly girl, a first year….

The ninth…another girl, pretty yet with vacant eyes….

I stopped counting after the tenth, and I stopped looking at their faces, to make it easier to stomach shooting them.

When I had slaughtered the undead in the plaza, I had accepted they weren’t holographic virtual representations, but I also didn’t see them as people. That is to say, I understood they were real insofar as possessing physical bodies, but part of me refused to accept them as human beings. Because of this, I was able to kill them without being emotionally burdened with the act of taking not just one life but many, though ending the life of the zombie baby was by no means easy to accomplish.

However, my encounter with the girl and guy in the corridor had altered my perception of the undead creatures. I could no longer see them as just zombies that I needed to kill. I had no answer for the question of what The Game was, but I did know that these zombies did not start out that way. In order to kill them, to end their undead existence and perhaps release their souls, I had to refrain from seeing them as people. Yet these zombies weren’t like those back in the plaza. They were fellow students, and thereby I had a connection to them. It was this connection that provided the medium for the pang I felt in my chest every time I scored a kill.

The lightgun sounded an alarm, and three shots later the magazine was empty. I dropped the weapon, picked the second lightgun up off the floor, and continued where I left off. When its magazine ran dry a few minutes later, I ejected it from the well and slapped in a new magazine from a trouser pocket within seconds, and resumed sniping the undead.

I didn’t notice until after the shooting had stopped and the corridor was littered with dead zombies that my hands had stopped shaking. I found that odd, wondering if I was back in gamer mode as I didn’t think I’d come to terms with the act of killing what were once people. I was also breathing loud and hard, exertion weighing down my arms, and I doubled over while sucking in lungfuls of air.

Tabitha stepped up beside me. When I glanced at her, I noticed she was looking toward the library with a crestfallen appearance.

“I don’t think you’re done just yet.”

“Huh?”

A soft chime and an equally soft swish greeted my ears. I turned in time to see the permaglass doors of the library entrance part aside, admitting into the corridor the dozens of zombies already clamoring for us.

“Did you do that?” I asked her, but Tabitha shook her head.

Does that mean someone is watching us?

I brought my lightgun up, and fired at the zombies as soon as the targeting beam floated over their foreheads.

“This just never ends,” I muttered between shots.

Remembering that there were four thousand students attending Telos Academy, that was far more than my finite ammunition could handle. With ninety rounds per magazine, it took two to three shots to bring down a single zombie. That meant I could bring down thirty to forty-five zombies at best before depleting a magazine, clearly not enough to purge the school of the undead infestation. I still didn’t know what the conditions were for clearing this stage, if indeed this was a stage, but cleansing the academy didn’t seem likely with the limited ammunition I possessed, so perhaps there was another goal.

Abandoning the school was a more probable course of action.

Though my attention was focused on the zombies coming out of the library, I saw something unexpected out the corner of my left eye. Tabitha picked up the discarded lightgun. Wondering what she was up to, I spared her another glance and saw her eject the empty magazine, and then reload the weapon with a fresh mag she retrieved from one of her dress’s skirt pockets.

“…it fits…interesting….”

Though distracted, I didn’t have time to be shocked upon learning she had ammo mags in her pockets. As the zombies drew closer, I backed away a step as I targeted a short girl wearing a torn uniform. The three mini-bullets to her head knocked her back before she slumped to her knees and then fell prone to the floor.

“Where did you get that?” I snapped at Tabitha.

“It was on the floor.”

“No—the ammo mag. Where did you find that?”

“Oh…in the storage room I was hiding in.”

“How much was there?”

“A lot. Many boxes full of them.”

Was the storage room in the kitchen an item cache, just like in a real game?

I clenched my teeth as an oversized male student zombie proved hard to take down. The fifth round into his skull finally halted his advance. Before he crashed face down into the corridor, I was already shooting the zombie behind him.

“Hey—aren’t you going to use that?” I asked Tabitha.

“No. I can’t be trusted with weapons.”

“Just point the thing at them and pull the trigger.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“No it’s not, and I could use a little help, please!”

“No. I’m the damsel in distress. You’re the Princess. Save me.”

“What?” With concentric shots to the side of his head, I blew away a tall, heavyset male student. “I’m not a Princess. I’m a Prince!”

“Oh. I thought you were cross-playing as a male student….”

I retreated another step and Tabitha followed suit. “Damsel in distress my ass. You’re the Princess here.”

The lightgun sounded an alarm warning me of a low ammo count, and after firing the remaining handful of mini-bullets, the weapon clicked empty.

Slinging the lightgun across my back, I yelled at Tabitha, “Give me that!”

She tossed it over with a gloomy expression. “Here, my Princess.”

“When I’m done with them, I’m starting with you.”

“Kyaah, don’t hurt me.”

I bit down a retort as I employed the lightgun liberally on the remaining zombies.

If felt like an hour before I finally shot dead the last of the undead on this floor. Realistically it was probably no longer than five or six minutes, but by then I was gasping for air, and my arms felt weighed down by lead, while my stomach churned like a cauldron of acid. I held onto the lightgun and swept my gaze over the library interior, noting that the zombies on this floor were accounted for, but those on the other levels were now climbing toward us. I wasn’t certain, but I felt they were moving faster than before, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the darkening sky.

“There’s just too many of them,” I muttered, briefly startled when Tabitha handed me a reloaded lightgun. I took it, and handed the other one back to her. “We have to get out of here. The sun is setting and I have a suspicion these things do better in the dark.”

She arched an eyebrow at me gloomily. “You’re not going to search for survivors?”

“No.” I shook my head sharply just once, and met her gaze. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

For a heartbeat, Tabitha’s gloominess lifted, and I saw a smile flicker on her lips. At that moment my heart jumped, and I turned away hoping she hadn’t noticed my reaction. Seeking to distract myself from the memory of her faint smile, I waved the lightgun at her dress skirt and asked, “How much ammunition did you take with you?”

“Two magazines.” She turned her skirt pockets inside out. “That was all I could carry.”

Turning back to the library, I watched the zombies climb up the broad transparent stairs to the third level. The zombies from the level above had already descended, leaving those library floors clear of undead. Hefting the lightgun in my hands, I checked it was loaded and with a round chambered, then raised it up to my shoulder.

“We go through the library, then down to the ground floor. If the west gates are closed, we go through the cafeteria, then over the balcony to the grounds outside the school.”

“Why not go down a corridor stairwell?”

“Too narrow. I don’t want to get boxed in from above and below.” I started advancing toward the library entrance. “If we travel down the library, we only have to worry about the zombies below us. Plus, I can see all the way down to the ground floor, so there are no surprises on the way down.” I tapped a shoe against my carry-bag resting on the floor. “There’s another ten magazines inside. I shoot you. You reload. How does that sound?”

Tabitha looked depressed as she watched the zombies amble unsteadily yet quickly toward us.

“Sounds good.”

As soon as the words left her lips, I fired the first shot of the next round.

Two shots later, I’d claimed another kill.

Unfortunately, dozens of undead traversed the library floor toward us with ashen skin, hungry mouths, and glazed eyes.

###