CHAPTER TWO

When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.

-Dawn of the Dead

Fairacres, England

One year earlier…

Tucker was being a total butt about the TV remote, and that was really pissing Liza off. She kicked at him from her comfy spot on the couch, under a thick warm blanket. It was bitingly cold outside even though it was only September and there was plenty more cold to get through before the weather started to warm up again.

Leaving the warmth of the blanket to kick at his ribs with her toes was a sacrifice, and she really hoped he appreciated the seriousness of it all.

“What?” he laughed, and she was not happy about this reaction at all, so she jabbed his firm side harder. He was wearing a loose black t-shirt that only served to make his skin look paler and his dark hair look darker.

“The remote!”

“Don’t give it to her,” James said, which prompted Liza to shoot him the filthiest look she could. He just laughed. The polar opposite in looks to Tucker, James was heavy, especially around the middle, and olive-skinned. She pulled her limbs back under the blanket and exuded hate.

“We should watch the news anyway, it’s good for your brain,” Tucker said, but his grin gave away that he was only saying it to annoy her.

“I read the news online,” she said hotly. “I get updates to my phone. I’m not being ignorant about the world, I just want to finish that movie.”

“Well, I want to get to the fluff pieces at the end. Revs is doing a live press conference thing and nobody can figure out why,” Tucker replied. “They’re definitely doing a promotional event on our campus since we won that slogan competition. They’re going to reveal more about what that is, and why they keep saying this new game is going to revolutionise the industry forever.”

“Live on TV? That’s a little, I dunno, self-obsessed, isn’t it?” Liza said.

“I mean, not really. But Malcolm McCray is pretty into going all out with his promotional events,” Tucker said, letting his knees spread wider and wider until she didn’t have much room. He was definitely doing it on purpose.

Liza squirmed to get comfier on the cheap fake leather couch she was sharing with him, while their other housemate James lounged on the smaller one at the other end of the room.

“You should give her what she wants, Tuck,” James said. “She’ll set her dad on you.”

Liza tutted, and leaned back, getting ready for a wave of teasing. “Why the hell do I tell you guys anything about my life?”

“Because you love to get your lady balls busted for it,” James told her, and then began to do that irritating gasping laugh thing he always did when he was about to make fun of somebody. “Hey, uh, it’s a little chilly in here, Liza, can … can you build us a fire?”

Tucker snorted, and Liza looked from one boy to the other. “You are really running out of ammunition if that’s the best you can do. You can’t build a fire? Really?” James opened and closed his mouth, and she laughed. “That’s not exactly a crazy thing to know.”

“Your family is still weird,” he said.

Liza couldn’t argue with him there.

“Did you ever get airdropped into the wilderness for five straight days and told not to come home if you died?” James asked.

Tucker laughed. “Did they ever have you and your siblings engage in battle royale for the last slice of pizza?”

“Did you have to then make that pizza using only bunker-grown ingredients, substituting sawdust and water for the dough? And red sawdust and water for the sauce?”

“No cheese?” Liza asked.

“Cheese is for winners, Liza,” James shouted in a poor attempt at a Russian accent. There were plenty of stereotypes to draw from when making fun of her humourless Russian dad, and the boys never seemed to tire of them.

“You’re both idiots,” she said. “And we’re missing so much movie right now. I came down here specifically to watch it.”

“Well, I left my bedroom specifically to watch this guy talk about this game,” Tucker said, waving the remote in the direction of the screen, which was showing devastation that was not of the fictional variety. The real reason her upbringing had been so crazy. Plenty of people nowadays conformed to the belief that they were not far from total devastation, from World War Three, and one of those people happened to be Liza’s hotheaded ex-marine father.

“Is that really important?” she asked. “More important than Dawn of the Dead?”

“First of all,” Tucker half-interrupted, “I know for a fact you’ve seen Dawn of the Dead at least twice before — and secondly, you’d be interested to hear about this game anyway. It’s all zombies and shit.”

Liza fake gasped. “Zombies and shit?”

“I know, your two favourite things.” Tucker looked surprised when her toes escaped comfort once again to prod him.

“I’m really tired of you two flirting while I’m in the room,” James sighed.

“No! God, gross,” Liza called and withdrew her toe as fast as lightning.

There was a second of silence. They collectively winced at the sight of an explosion somewhere in Eastern Europe … fuck. Things were really heating up, all over the world.

“Can we go back to the fact, for a second, that James is so unevolved that he hasn’t even unlocked the use of fire yet?” Liza said, distracting them from the sight of things they weren’t able to do anything about.

Tucker grasped at the lighter topic, pulling himself into an upright position and forcing a smile. “Wait til you see the look on his face when he discovers the wheel.”

It was a typical evening in their student house on London Road. Talking without saying anything, fighting about what was on the TV without actually minding much. “Where are the girls?” she asked. It would have been better to have a little more feminine energy in the room. The two boys she lived with in this creaky old five-person house were fine in small doses as she happened to have similar interests to them, but after a while the combination of James and Tucker’s teasing-based sense of humour became tedious. Occasionally they did make her laugh, but there were plenty of times that Liza would rather wander back up the stairs to her bedroom than hear them say another word.

It was pretty normal, since they had all lived together in a small, mostly broken house for two years now.

In terms of housemates to be randomly paired with, though, she could have done all kinds of worse. The five of them had been put together in halls in first year, and in second year they had opted to continue all living together in a rickety old townhouse across the field from the microcosm that was the Fairacres University campus.

“So … what do you know about the game so far?” Liza said, her voice deliberately cutting across horribly depressing news about war ravaging foreign countries. She had already read a piece about this particular awful event and she didn’t feel she needed to revisit it, even though the images were hard to tear her eyes away from.

She didn’t play many video games, but when she did, she found that she got pretty obsessive and meticulous. That was a big reason why she avoided them, honestly. She still found that she was interested in video game news, though; a particularly exciting jump in technology might be enough to get her into something new. And if anyone was going to change the landscape of modern gaming, it was going to be Revelations Software.

“It’s about zombies, and it’s on a new system that hasn’t even been announced — they’re going to give away free copies of the system with every sale of the game tomorrow. They want to have a huge launch, I guess; as many buyers as possible on day one.”  

“Yeah, it’ll be free — it’ll be like a £4,000 game with a free console,” James scoffed. Liza raised her eyebrows in agreement.

“I dunno, man, and I don’t care. I’m spending all my student loan on this thing if that’s what it takes. At their last big promotional event for Harp they gave away free copies of the game, so maybe I won’t even have to,” Tucker said, his face uncharacteristically animated. Liza only ever saw him this excited about three things: drinking, girls, and games.

“Can we just turn over to the movie for one little death scene and then back over for the press conference?” she pleaded. “I can’t stand more news about angry men and their big weapons.”

James snorted. “Careful, don’t want to start a civil war in this room.”

She shrugged. “I don’t actually care about politics enough to fight about it, it’s just all these shots of devastation are depressing.”

“Can’t argue with that,” James said, “I think it’s starting. Let him watch his live press conference and we can all move on with our lives.”

At that moment a female face peered through the doorway from the stairs and Celia pushed her glasses up her nose. “What are you guys fighting about?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“We’re not fighting,” Liza said with a smile. “Tucker’s just being a gamer nerd and refusing to change the channel.”

“And Liza is being a zombie nerd and insisting she watch a stupid old movie instead of the news,” Tucker said.

“And James is being awesome in the corner,” James added, causing Celia to exaggeratedly roll her eyes.

“I’m going to the lab,” she said.

“It’s seven in the evening,” Tucker pointed out. But Celia was already gone, the door thoroughly slammed so that the entire house juddered. She wasn’t angry, just intense and deliberate in everything she did. It had taken Liza a while to realise the distinction; she and her brothers had grown up with the need to utilise humour in order to get through every gruelling day.

Liza wasn’t always sure why, but she was a big fan of Celia. They almost hadn’t had anything to talk about, since Celia was a Physics major, who was pretty much also doing a second degree in Engineering she had taken on so many extra modules — she was also two years younger than the rest of them, a bona fide genius — and Liza was, well … she was just Liza. A normal girl who had gone to university to study Literature since she thought she was pretty good at reading books, and then had realised she was very bad at remembering to read a novel every single week. She had managed to switch last minute to a degree in Digital Design. The two girls were polar opposites, but they managed to get on well.

“The lab,” Liza said quietly. “I wish I could say I was popping into a lab for a bit. Don’t you?”

“No,” Tucker, who was also a Physics student, said just as the press conference flashed onto the screen.

In a weirdly arrogant move, it seemed that Malcolm McCray, the head of Revelations, had sent on his assistant to field some of the earlier questions. She was clearly an ex-supermodel or something. She had the harsh, sharp features, the impossible height, and the imposing confidence of someone who knew she was insane looking.

“Fuck me,” Tucker confirmed, shifting in his seat when she stopped at the microphone and rested a taloned hand on her hip. The equipment around her whined as if experiencing the same emotions as the twenty-year-old boy beside Liza. “What even is that?”

“Don’t be a misogynist,” James tutted. “She is clearly three things.” Liza pre-emptively rolled her eyes as he began his muted gasping laughter. “She’s a fucking fox, she is out of your league, and she is the future mother of my five children.”

“Five?” Liza repeated. “Need I remind you of what happened to Sparky the hamster last year?”

“Always bringing up Sparky,” James muttered. “So uncool.”

The woman on the screen answered some basic questions. It was a game. It was about zombies, as the rumours had implied. It was technologically more advanced than any form of entertainment to date.

When McCray himself finally graced the stage with his presence to the flashing of cameras, he raised both of his hands and did a little 360 degree spin in place before chuckling at his shoes and slapping his palms on the podium.

“Hello, New York!” he cried, and Liza squinted. He was in England. Was he joking or was he … drunk? It could go either way; the guy was famously a little crazy. He was wearing a fantastic, expensive-looking tailored suit, but the jacket was salmon-coloured, and his hair was long and unkempt, waving around his shoulders. His eyes, small and intense, darted around at the reporters, taking everything in. He didn’t just look ‘kooky’ to Liza, with his enlarged pupils and rapidly rising and falling shoulders … he looked insane. But who was she to judge? He might have a pretty fun event planned out on her campus that she was happy to attend tomorrow — especially if there was going to be free stuff. She would certainly make the sacrifice and play the most highly anticipated video game to date if she could get it for free.

“So, for a numbero uno,” he said, botching the Spanish language for no feasible reason, “I am pleased as punch to be here with you, with The Alpha Virus launching officially tomorrow.”

The reporters politely clapped, and a couple clamored for the opportunity to ask him questions. He nodded at one of them, a pretty young woman near the front, who nodded back.

“Mr. McCray,” she said in a clipped BBC accent. “You said this game would revolutionise gaming. What did you mean?”

“Great question, and a beautiful pair … of eyes!” he said, staring without blinking right at her. The woman knew she was in the shot of a couple of cameras, so her faltering expression found its way into a smile after some hesitation, but Liza could feel the creep factor crawling across her skin even from the couch — she knew the reporter felt it too. He looked to be on so very many drugs. “Listen, you’ll find out everything tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? At launch?” she repeated.

“Yes, we will launch the game worldwide at the same time to an unsuspecting population,” he said with a laugh that felt more ominous to Liza than it seemed to for the boys.

“Unsuspecting?” the reporter said. “Of course, you know that this is the most highly awaited launch in recorded history.”

“They suspect a game,” McCray said with a nod. “I don’t think anyone suspects something quite so world-altering.”

“That’s very confident,” the reporter said, and opened her mouth to ask another question while she held his attention, but he turned to somebody else before she could. He had not answered her question at all.

Liza still knew nothing about the actual game, and she was pretty tempted just to go upstairs. There was a launch event taking place up on her campus the next day that she was going to stroll over and check out, but the fact that McCray was going to be there was making her feel odd, for some reason.

In fact, the more she watched Malcolm McCray the more uneasy she felt, and she wasn’t able to explain why.

“Mr. McCray, you didn’t really answer my—”

“Yes, you.” Malcolm had already jabbed his forefinger in the direction of another reporter. This one was middle-aged, beautiful, and dressed in a sharp skirt suit.

“Mr. McCray,” she said carefully, glancing at the younger reporter quickly with a quirked eyebrow, “is it true that you believe your games to be more addictive than…” She checked her notes for the specific substance, but she was interrupted.

“Ha!” he said, rather than actually laughing. “I can neither confirm nor deny that, but I can say that it’s true.”

Uncertain chuckles rippled across the crowd onscreen.

Unwilling to be cast aside like the younger woman, she snapped back quick as a whip. “What do you have to say to the allegations that video games that unapologetically glorify violence and what is essentially genocide when a world war seems to be around the next corner--”

“Enough,” he said quietly, and Liza raised her eyebrows as the reporter shut her mouth. “There are many things I could say in answer to that. There are, as you know, many words in the English language. But I think none could convince you. Next question?” He leaned away from the microphone and addressed his assistant. “Will they all be so boring?”

“What a fucking freak,” James said lightly.

“He’s creepy!” Liza agreed.

“We’re all going to the event, though,” James stated. No arguments would be accepted.

“I do have lectures all fucking day tomorrow,” Tucker said, running his hand languidly through his dark hair. It always looked damp, the amount of product he put into it to make sure he looked like Heathers-era Christian Slater.

“I’m free tomorrow,” Liza said, shooting him a wink. “I can go and tell you what you missed.”

“Fuck that! I’m obviously skipping.”

“Again?” James scoffed. He was a Literature student, and though he only had a few hours of lectures a week, he liked to laugh at Tucker’s habit of never turning up to classes.

“We’ll convince all of us to go. Even Celia.”

“Actually I reckon Celia will be easy to convince since Malcolm’s going to be there. She gave us like a two hour lecture on exactly why his last VR system was groundbreaking,” Tucker reminded them.

“Shame it was completely unaffordable,” James said, blowing out his cheeks. “My family took me to a VRcade for my birthday but that was so expensive by itself. I don’t know anyone who actually owns Revelations’ VR console, like, in their house.”

“I don’t either, I forgot it existed,” Liza said, and then didn’t bother to stifle a yawn. “Turn it back over, he’s clearly not giving away any actual information, and we’re going tomorrow, so who cares.”

“You’re talking over the whole fucking thing,” Tucker muttered, tapping on the volume button until it was just a touch too loud, and Yana yelled through the floor above them to tell them so. Tucker tutted at the ceiling and tapped it down again. “She trying to sleep this early?”

James laughed huffily — he was about to deliver a ‘joke’. “That or she’s having a really tricky wank and doesn’t want to get distracted at the finish line.”

“Ugh,” Liza said over his final words. On the screen Malcolm was being asked what his ultimate goals for the game were.

“... as in, what is it that you actually want The Alpha Virus to be remembered for?” the awkward mousey-haired reporter asked. It was then that Liza realised that Malcolm had not accepted a single question from a male reporter.

“Great question, Barbara,” he said, and the bemused expression the girl scrunched her face into indicated that that was in no way her name, nor had she ever implied it. “And I think I know the answer.”

“He thinks? He is really bad at interviews. Bring back the random supermodel!” James yelled, punching the armrest and causing the flimsy old house to judder once again.

“Jesus, dude, you’re going to cause the walls to crumble around us all one day,” Tucker said.

“The answer…” Malcolm said dramatically, and leaned in closer to the microphone. Liza wasn’t sure why but she shifted on the couch slightly so that she was sitting up. “What The Alpha Virus is going to be remembered for…”

“What is with this weirdo?” Liza asked. Nobody replied.

“In fact — what my company, Revelations Software, is going to be remembered for, for all time … is The Alpha Virus. There are very few things in this life, in this heartbreakingly predictable, repetitive, lonely known universe that can be guaranteed, but I am about to guarantee you one thing: This game will change your life.” His eyes flicked over from camera to camera until they settled on the one that Liza was watching him through.

It felt like he was looking right at her. Her stomach felt cold.

“Whether you play it, or not. That is my guarantee.”

His eyes took a second to leave hers, and when they did Liza felt weaker, as though the strings holding her upright had been cut, and she leaned against the armrest and blinked. Beside her, Tucker massaged his forehead, uncomfortably, and James looked completely dazed. What kind of an effect had Malcolm McCray just had on them?

Liza wanted to put what he had just said out of her mind forever. After all, though he was something of a household name, she had barely engaged with any of his previous properties. She shouldn’t care so much about the upcoming game. And she hadn’t, until seconds ago, but something about him had wormed its way into her skull and she could tell it was planning to stay there.

For some reason … she was desperate to get her hands on a copy of The Alpha Virus, even though she still knew nothing about it. It was so hyped up, and this man was so confident it would blow her mind. She couldn’t wait to go to the promotional event the next day; it suddenly couldn’t come fast enough for her.

It was almost as if Malcolm McCray was some kind of insane magical force. He certainly dressed like a space alien.

“I can tell you one other thing — a select few of the students at the event tomorrow are currently, undeniably, the luckiest people on Earth.”

The laughter that spilled from him after that odd statement wove in and out of Liza’s dreams that night.