“What the hell happened to this place Ivan?” Officer Peaks asked. The “school” now resembled ancient ruins. Only the main entrance remained, the glass doors transformed into the mouth of a cave.
“The eggheads at headquarters are saying that this is something called a dungeon. For some reason, the Upgrade has started popping these things up all over the place. I just wish it could have been anywhere but inside a school. We don’t a whole lot of information to work with, but we do know that the school layout will be completely different than what’s on the plans,” Ivan advised.
“Gee, what gave them the impression the layout would change? I mean, isn’t every school buried underground with a creepy cave mouth for an entrance?” Peaks said, completely freaked out by their situation.
“Creepy dungeon or not, there may be survivors still inside,” their captain said, walking over to the SWAT van as the team geared up. “Our town’s been relatively quiet as far as Upgrade creatures, but this is on a whole new level. I won’t force your team to go in Sergeant Ivan, but you should know there are twenty-two kids, four teachers, a janitor, and two of our officers trapped inside,” Captain Reynolds advised.
“Have we heard anything from anyone inside?” Ivan asked.
“Negative, no contact after the 911 call and the officers reporting they were entering the building. The coms cut out soon after, though the people gathering to gawk at the scene say they heard multiple gunshots and the shooting went on for a long time. The Governor has been in contact with the feds and we’re supposed to have military assets on hand shortly. If you want to wait for them to back you up, I understand. I need most of the officers already here to hold the perimeter, but I can scrounge up a few more bodies to help you if you think you need it,” the chief answered.
“I don’t want to add anyone we haven’t work with before, I’ll go in with just my team. We’ll enter and clear the place by the numbers. If things become too difficult, we pull back and let the military handle it. Normally I’d say just wait for the military, but with the kids in there, I don’t think we have the luxury of time. Is everyone good with proceeding? If anyone wants out, it’s not a problem,” Sergeant Ivan told the other officers. His team of six was good, but this was something else. He was terrified and if he slowed down for a moment, he feared he would chicken out.
After hearing the amount of shooting that had gone on, Ivan had everyone pack extra ammo. Seeing the place looked like a cave or tunnel network, Ivan opted for his Remington 12 gauge. The shotgun held one shell in the chamber and six in the tube magazine, he loaded it with buckshot and filled a pouch with spare shells.
He also grabbed a couple of water bottles and a protein bar just in case this took longer than he thought it would. A Glock 21 with two spare magazines was holstered on his belt. On second thought, Ivan shoved three more pistol magazines in the last bit of space in his plate carrier. After making sure his team was ready and had extra ammo on hand, they jogged toward the cave entrance.
There was no door over the entrance and a warm and foul-smelling breeze blew from the cave mouth. The smell was a mixture of mold, rotten meat, and unwashed animals. Ivan had driven by the school countless times during his career and it was bizarre seeing it completely gone, replaced by a mound of rocky earth with a cave entrance.
Shining the flashlight mounted on his shotgun down the entrance didn’t reveal much, the cavern turned about twenty feet past the entrance, blocking his view. The tunnel was constructed of poorly cut stone slabs and the initial passage was about ten feet wide, what happed to it after the first turn, he could only guess.
“Okay, we’ll have Peaks and me on point. Davis and Emerson will follow behind with Layton and Patel covering our backs,” He ordered.
The team sorted themselves out and they entered the dungeon. A small tingle was felt as they passed the threshold. Ivan didn’t need the system to tell him that this place was different from the world just a few feet away. He could almost feel the malevolent intelligence that controlled this place. Whatever that intelligence was, it knew they were there, and it was hungry.
The ground sloped down quickly just past the mouth of the cave. Flickering torches burned on the walls, shedding enough light to ruin their night vision devices, but not enough to see clearly. Ivan motioned for Peaks to move a few steps ahead of the rest of them. The man held the teams' large bulletproof ballistic shield in front of him. A clear piece of bullet-resistant glass allowed him to see through the thick metal shield and a powerful light was mounted next to the viewport. It was a modern-day take on an ancient weapon, and Ivan almost wished he had brought along a second one. After the first turn in the passage, Ivan heard a squelch in his earpiece.
“You guys getting anything?” Officer Layton asked while tapping at her radio’s earpiece. She was the team’s sharpshooter, but today she had traded her long rifle for an AR-style carbine like most of the others.
“Comms shouldn’t be cut off already, we’ve not gone all that far. Do we continue?” Peaks asked.
“Yes, keep moving, it looks like there are some doors ahead,” Ivan told his team. The hallway they were traveling in looked nothing like an elementary school. The floors were dirt and wooden beams like in an old mineshaft were placed every thirty feet to reinforce the roof.
A pair of doors flanked each other twenty yards further down the tunnel. The tunnel itself kept descending deeper into the darkness, a single torch flickering every twenty feet or so, adding an ominous vibe the experience. The team flicked on lights attached to weapons and helmets, cutting away at the darkness.
“Breach the right door first. Layton will cover the other door,” Ivan ordered, not a fan of there being two doors to the unknown placed directly across from each other. Layton crouched in front of the door on their left with her weapon ready, while the rest of the team stacked up on the right side. Officer Emerson moved in front of the door, sledgehammer ready to knock it open. Layton made a fist and tapped the top of his helmet three times, the signal to breach.
Boom!
The door collapsed into the room, old rusted hinges giving way from a single blow of the hammer. Ivan was first in, the Remington 12-gauge shotgun leading the way. He hustled past the entrance hugging the right-side wall. His time in the military, as well as his police training, had reinforced the idea to get out of the doorway as quickly as possible. Doorways were always referred to as a Fatal Funnel or Vertical Coffin.
Sweeping the room as he moved, he saw something frozen in the glow of his barrel mounted flashlight, it was a creature straight out of a nightmare. The six-foot-tall thing was covered in coarse hair and was shaped like a cross between a bodybuilder and a hyena. Ivan triggered his shotgun even as a name from the training they had been grinding out filled his mind…Gnoll.
Despite its fearsome appearance, the creature was no match for the load of buckshot his shotgun fired into it. The gnoll fell back as its chest was blasted open, giving only a single strange squeal of pain before dying. Ivan watched the body of the gnoll land on the half-eaten corpse of…someone.
Ivan turned his gaze from the small body as Peaks screamed in pain from behind him. A section of the floor had given way under Peaks, who had moved toward the center of the room to get a clear shot at the creature Ivan was firing at. Wooden spikes were imbedded into Peaks’ right foot and another of the gnolls leaped from the dark, clawing at the immobilized man.
A three-round burst from Davidson, the next man in the door, drilled the gnoll, knocking it back. Davidson fired a second burst, finishing the creature off as they cleared the rest of the room. The fifteen by fifteen-foot room was empty other than the body, the pit trap, and the two dead gnolls. Davidson and Patel—the team medic—rushed to Peaks. It was obvious that Peaks was in a great deal of pain but was holding together well. The two discussed the safest way to free Peaks from the spike in his foot when the door to the other room slammed open. Shots rang out from the hall as Lawson fought to hold back whatever was trying to get at them.
Ivan moved to support his teammate, adding blasts from his shotgun to help hold back the swarm of small, green-skinned creatures that were emerging from the room…goblins he remembered. The combined fire shredded the little green creatures. The only weapon the goblins wielded were sharpened sticks held like a makeshift spear.
“There must have been over a dozen of these goblin things. They came pouring out when you guys were shooting up the other room,” Lawson said as they looked at the pile of dead goblins.
The green monsters were just as susceptible to firearms and the gnolls had been. Lawson ejected the spent magazine from her rifle and loading a fresh one. She chambered the first round and pointed down the hall. Ivan took the time to thumb new rounds into the shotgun after he realized that he had emptied it into the swarm of goblins. The weapon had proven particularly effective in the tight quarters of the dungeon.
“Sergeant, take a look at this!” Davidson said excitedly. Moving back into the gnoll room, Ivan could see that the bodies of the gnolls were gone, in their place, small bundles of cash lay on the ground. Davidson gathered them up and started counting.
“Yeah, these things are Upgrade creatures and will drop loot. We haven’t faced too many Upgrade monsters, but the department policy is that we can gather up anything they drop since the stuff will just disappear after a while. The county is working out some convoluted method of dividing it up, but a portion is supposed to go to the team that finds it. How much did we get?” Ivan asked, curious to find out despite the dire situation they found themselves in.
“Hang on,” Davidson continued counting. “It’s not bad, there are some singles and fives, but most are tens and twenties. We got $147, lunch is on the gnolls,” Davidson joked.
“Just be careful, we don’t want to become their lunch,” Ivan said, forcing himself to look back at the partially consumed body. It didn’t wear a police uniform and thankfully wasn’t a child. He had to guess it was one of the teachers or a school employee, but he had no way to identify them. Forensics would have their hands full once they cleared this place.
“That’s disappointing, the goblins are cheapskates,” Davidson called out as he moved to loot the bodies there and in the hall. Each of the goblins had dissolved into only a couple of dollars.
“Loot what we can, but stay on mission people,” Ivan called, something caught his eye and he looked down into the pit trap, the spikes had disappeared, and a gleaming coin was sitting in the hole. Picking it up, it didn’t have any markings, but somehow, Ivan knew it was silver.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“This might make your foot feel better, Peaks,” Ivan said, tossing him the coin.
“He’ll be sore for a while, but I was able to heal most of the damage,” Patel announced. His training as the team medic had given Patel the ability to channel a small amount of healing power into the bandages he placed on wounds. They would help the wound heal much faster than normal and also made them much less likely to become infected.
“Heads up, guys, it looks like we’ve got more problems,” Lawson called out. Ivan looked down the hall in the direction Lawson was pointing. Glimmering eyes were seen in the distant torchlight, it looked like the creepy reflection seen from a cat’s eyes when light hits them in the dark. There were dozens of pairs of eyes…all slowly moving toward the team.
“Get a move-on with Peaks, we’ve got company,” Ivan ordered. Peaks wasn’t able to move too well, even with the healing. Patel had the wounded man place an arm over his shoulder and hop back out into the hallway as the others opened fire.
Shrieks of more goblins were heard over the sounds of Lawson’s weapon. Her skills as the team sniper meant that every round found its mark. Each shot expertly placed to do the most damage. The slew of goblins continued their assault, slowly pushing forward despite their losses.
When Ivan and the others added their fire, the goblin charge stalled about twenty feet from the officers, a pile of bodies started to grow as the small creatures threw themselves into the fight. After less than a minute, the pile of bodies was waist high and the team was reduced to sniping the occasional small green head that popped over the growing barricade of dead goblins.
“How many are left? Our ammo won’t hold forever,” Davidson shouted.
“They’ve slowed down, but I sure don’t to stick my head over the pile to get a count,” Lawson added.
“Hang on, let me try something,” Ivan said, pulling a flash-bang grenade from his vest.
The others saw what he was going to do, and once Ivan hurled the grenade over the wall of bodies, they covered their ears and eyes. The blinding flash of light and concussion of the blast were amplified in the dark tunnel. Screeches of pain were heard as Ivan rushed up to the wall and looked over. A dozen goblins still lived, each of them squirming on the ground. Ivan aimed and began to nail them, one after the other. Lawson joined him, and before any of the goblins could recover, they had finished them off.
“Vicious little things, aren’t they?” Davidson said as he approached the barricade, now holding the shield that Peaks had been using.
“Wait a second for the bodies to disappear, then we’ll loot and continue on our way if everyone’s good,” Ivan called.
The partially eaten body in the gnoll room gave him a sense of urgency. They needed to move quickly if they had any hope of finding survivors. The goblins gave another pile of cash, the paltry sums for each creature were overcome by the sheer numbers of the things. Peaks had also improved a bit and could now hobble on his own, leaving Patel free to join the fight as Davidson took up point with his shield.
As they continued down the hallway, they fended off another pair of attacks by goblins. Each attack was smaller than the first swarm, only about a dozen or so were in each successive wave. They were having little trouble defeating them, the only problem was their ammo was starting to run low.
Ivan had a full seven shells in his shotgun, but only three more shells remained in his ammo pouch. The others were also down to only one or two magazines for their AR’s. He decided that if they didn’t find survivors by the time the ammo for the rifles and shotguns ran out, they would fall back and wait for support, counting on the extra ammo they had all stored for their handguns would hold out until they escaped.
“Another group is coming in, and it looks like a gnoll is standing back there as well,” Davison announced.
Eight goblins ran at them waving primitive spears and clubs while babbling out something in their strange language. The gnoll was acting strangely, it was pawing at a large crate and was trying sniff and peer inside it. The large creature only turned its attention toward the officers when the sound of weapons fire thundered down the hallway.
Like before, the goblins fell to their accurate and deadly fire, but the gnoll was a bit more cunning. It was using the smaller creatures as cover and only popping up once the volume of fire died down when Ivan’s shotgun ran dry and most of the team were changing mags.
Ivan activated one of his Upgrade abilities that was called Rapid Reload. His hand flashed into motion, a blur as it reached into the ammo pouch to grab the last three shells, feeding them into the shotgun in less than a second. He barely had time to pump a new shell in and fired just as the gnoll slammed into him.
The huge creature knocked Ivan off his feet, the sharp claws slashing at his chest, only to be blocked by his body armor. He tried to shove the beast off him, only to have the gnoll bite down on one of his arms. Ivan could feel the bones in his forearm crunch as the gnoll began to shake his head like a dog. Ivan watched as Layton pushed a pistol against the side of the gnoll’s head and fired, spattering the side of the tunnel with gnoll brains.
“Patel get over here, Ivan needs you, everyone else, keep your eyes peeled for more of these freaks,” Layton ordered, taking over for Ivan as he tried to pry the gnoll’s jaw off his shattered arm.
“Let go, let me handle it,” Patel said. The medic gently pried the teeth apart and then placed a bandage over the gushing wound left behind. A feeling of warmth flooded the area as Patel infused the bandage with his ability. The pain was still there, and the bones were still fractured, but he could function through the pain now, so long as he didn’t try to move that arm. Patel placed his arm in a sling and strapped it tightly to his chest.
“I think we’ll have to pull back and let the army handle this, we’ve only got a few rounds for our rifles, and we may need every round in our pistols to make it back outside if these monsters keep swarming us,” Ivan ordered reluctantly.
“But what about the people that are missing in here, what about the kids?” Patel asked. Ivan hated to leave, but they’d done all they could without further support.
“Dying in here isn’t going to help them, maybe we’ve thinned out the monsters enough that we can go back in with some backup and find them,” Ivan offered. It was a weak excuse, but he didn’t have anything else. They were silent as they contemplated what they had to do. In the quiet of the moment, Ivan heard something down the hall. It wasn’t the sound of another attack, it was the sound of a kid trying to stifle a cry.
“Hello, is there anyone nearby that can hear me?” Ivan shouted out. Several moments passed before he heard a weak reply from further down the tunnel.
“How do I know your not just another monster trying to eat me?” A small kid's voice called out.
“If I was a monster, I wouldn’t be trying to talk to you, would I?” Ivan asked.
“I suppose not. If I come out, can you get me to my mommy?” The voice asked.
“Yes, come on out kid, we’re the police and we’re here to get you home safe,” Ivan said.
The top of the crate the gnoll had been clawing at creaked open and everyone started to raise their weapons before seeing a small and very frightened little girl emerge. After looking in shock at the rapidly disappearing corpses, the little girl spotted the police and ran to them as quickly as her little legs could go.
“You’re ok now honey, stick close to me as we walk out of here. If any of those creeps show up, cover your ears, because it’ll get loud when we shoot,” Ivan said. The kid stuck right next to him, not moving more than a few inches from him as the team slowly backed their way out of the transformed school.
More packs of goblins hounded their retreat, but bursts of gunfire kept the approaching monsters at bay. Their ammo was almost gone by the time they finally made it back to the entrance, confirming to Ivan that leaving when they did had been the right choice. The captain and another pair of officers came running toward them after they exited the dungeon, Ivan feeling the strange tingle once again as he left.
A team of paramedics ran forward to join the group when they spotted the bandaged officers. A pair of officers covered the entrance to the dungeon with their shotguns while Peaks was placed on a stretcher. One of the paramedics picked up the little girl and ran back toward the line of barricades that the police had placed around the former school. While they had been gone, the perimeter had been pushed back much further back from the school.
“Good to see you sergeant, we didn’t know if you were coming back out. We just got word from the military that we need to pull back to the secondary perimeter,” the captain said. Ivan jogged beside the captain as they headed toward the police barriers in the distance, brushing off efforts by the paramedics to look at his injuries. He would get them checked out after this was all over.
“What in the hell did you guys find in there?” the captain asked.
“You used the right word, sir, hell is what we found in there,” Ivan said, not able to talk further, thinking about the gnoll and the partially eaten body it had fallen across.
The assembled police and emergency responders watched the school, covering it with their weapons while they waited for the military to show up. All of Ivan’s requests to go back inside the dungeon were denied. Finally, after pulling back the perimeter once more, a Humvee pulled up with an Air Force officer and some other military personnel. They jogged over to the command post where Ivan and the Captain waited.
“Are all your people clear?” the Air Force officer asked. The captain shook his head.
“No sir, I have two officers unaccounted for and there are over twenty children and staff still in there,” the lieutenant advised. A pained look crossed the Air Force officer’s face as he waved over an airman with a radio.
“Delta flight, you are clear to engage,” the officer ordered. The captain’s protests about possible survivors went unheard as a pair of GBU-28 “bunker-buster” bombs slammed into the center of the school turned dungeon. The area erupted in a tower of dirt and rock as the bombs exploded deep underground, destroying the dungeon core that had been growing there as well as all hope of rescuing any other survivors.
***
The dungeons came as a surprise to most when they first appeared in the Upgraded world. Gamers postulated they would occur, but when nothing resembling a dungeon emerged after the first few days, the world moved on to other threats. The dungeons appeared all at once and at exactly the same time, stretching the ability of the authorities to respond to the threat and forcing drastic action to contain them as we saw with Dungeon Elementary.
Early dungeons were simple affairs, many growing quietly and slowly in out of the way areas. Those, like Dungeon Elementary, that spawned in populated areas were usually found quickly and destroyed. I wasn’t the one, but some dungeon core author or a fan acting as an advisor must have clued the government in on what was happening, prompting their swift and decisive action in many parts of the country.
The same night that the Air Force and police were dealing with Dungeon Elementary—which we now can say with certainty was a low-level humanoid populated dungeon—they were dealing with hundreds of new dungeons spawning all over the country. Today, new dungeons spawn every now and then and we know the proper procedure for dealing with and exploiting the resources found within them. In the early days, there was a lot of fumbling around and trial and error going on. The biggest comedy of errors was in the city of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is now known as a dead city; high-level parties or strong military forces are needed to enter. Some undead based, low-level dungeon spawned in an abandoned warehouse near skid row. The dungeon feasted well and grew in power quickly. People usually don’t notice when large numbers of homeless go missing, even in the best of times. The dungeon core controlling the Skid Row Dungeon was incredibly aggressive. It had happened to spawn near a smaller, vermin-based dungeon, a dungeon it quickly consumed, causing it to leap exponentially in power.
By the time the city became aware of the dungeon, they did what politicians usually do—waste time and debate over what should be done. The city council commissioned an environmental impact study and the councilmembers spent their days scheduling news conferences to show the public they were “taking decisive action”. By the time the city got around to actually doing something productive, it was too late. Most people, thankfully, made it out of the city alive, but the dungeon is now too big and its core too deep to do anything about. Maybe someday, when the level cap increases, raid parties can try to kill the core, but until then, we must be content with keeping it, and the monsters it occasionally spews forth, contained.
I tried to find out what happened to Caitlin Jameson and her daughter Lily, but her trail grew cold pretty quick. The pair were reunited, and Lily was, sadly, the only survivor of Dungeon Elementary other than the SWAT team that rescued her. If I’m honest with myself, I had no desire to delve too deep into the head of the poor woman who had found out later that night that she had lost her husband and now had a traumatized daughter to care for. I can only hope they overcame their tragic challenge that day and went on to live long and happy lives.
Not all dungeons and monster lairs caused such chaos and destruction. Most were easily dealt with by the military, some by local law enforcement, and some others…let’s just say they were handled by groups of concerned citizens…