Game Slaves (5 page)

Not a memory, though. More like a glitch. Something we weren't supposed to see.

But really . . . what was to fear, a few ghost images? With all we went through? Hell, maybe they
were
just clues for an upcoming mission.

Our town was still quiet. We owned it. I thought I should maybe make a run and repaint the sign on the edge to read
NEW PHOENIX
, but didn't want to give away my position. Or Mi's. We had a good spot.

So where were the gamers? Strange they weren't just rushing in. Most of you gamers play a pure hack 'n' slash game. Your kind relies on brute force, overwhelming firepower, and plenty of health packs or shield regenerators to wade through my NPC team. Very few of you are truly strategic. Some of you are outright stupid, and it takes you dozens of tries to figure out how to defeat us. You just blunder around over and over again until you eventually stumble on the correct tactical solution.

But again, this was a bit odd. This
game
was odd. Most of the time, for us, it's deep space and alien monsters and super-high-powered weaponry. This place, though: regular shotguns and Uzis and pistols. Most of us even had bats or machetes as melee weapons. Very unimaginative at our level of play, and it was puzzling why my team would be assigned to second-rate programming like this. It just didn't make sense.

 

The first thing we heard was the crunch of big rubber on gravel. Nothing in nature makes that noise. And these tires were huge.

On a distant hill, a vehicle appeared, rolling easily over the boulders in the scree field surrounding the town. It was a monster jeep, and from the looks of it, the gamers had spent time piecing it together from the scrap remains found back at the research lab.

Six huge tires. A massive roll cage on top. Each corner had a gunner with some kind of harpoon launcher. And behind the buggy—very strange—it was towing a trailer that looked like a circus cage, only the top was left wide open.

What was going on here? Wasn't this just another first-person shooter? Why all the machinery? Why give the gamers the option to stop and make new vehicles? Why not just give them bigger guns and some kind of prefab tank?

“Should I pick one off?” Mi asked, hoisting her sniper rifle, laying the crosshairs over the closest gamer's head.

“You'll give away our position.”

“I think I can get two of them before they fire back,” she muttered. “Wanna bet?”

I believed she could pull off the shots, even at this distance, even with the targets bouncing and moving. She was that good.

I radioed York and Reno to ask if they had clear lines of fire yet. Nope. But Dakota, over on the gasoline tanks, promised she could also open up. That helped. See, if you ambush an enemy from a single firing position, it's easy for them to spot you and get to cover. When you catch them in a crossfire unexpectedly, it's completely different. They have very little opportunity to spot either position or find a place that's safe from both vantage points.

“OK,” I announced, “when the vehicle reaches the second stop sign, Dakota and Mi, take out the front corner gunners. You two coordinate your targets. The dual gunners behind them have limited visibility. Reno, can you get a grenade or Molotov on top of their RV while they're still trying to pin down our positions?”

“I can try.”

“That's the plan, then. I'm going on foot. Once they're occupied with you, I'm going to flank left. Let's end this weird session once and for all.”

“Roger that.”

“Jevo, get ready for dessert.”

“Here comes my morning bacon.”

Little did we know.

It got ugly. It got ugly very quickly.

Mi was true to her word and her aim. As soon as the nose of the massive buggy was even with the second stop sign, the front gunner's helmet exploded into crimson spray. Chunks of brain splattered the roof of an abandoned minivan. On cue, Dakota took out the other, and it looked like we'd gotten the upper hand.

A vehicle that size, especially towing a trailer, could never turn around and scoot for cover. It was a sitting duck, and the only way to go was right into the teeth of our ambush.

The enemy's back gunners opened fire, but fortunately, Dakota and Mi had planned their shots perfectly. The gamers were spraying wildly. The idiots had no clue.

I pulled up my scope, was off at a 90 to the enemy's right, and surveyed the remaining force. The front two players were dead and useless. Gone from this world. I panned over the back two gunners, looking for their tags floating over their heads. I'd take any advantage to try to isolate a target.

But that's when I saw the bad news.

The big buggy wasn't just a big objective. It was a moving screen.

Behind the rig were four gamers, and I knew they were the shot callers by the gold lettering floating over their helmets. Gold is the prime color. That's the highest level you can achieve online. And they were waiting, like a second wave. True veterans. Thousands of hours playing vids between 'em. Mad skills, to be sure.

Each was throttling a modded dirt bike with machine guns where the headlights should have been. The tires were rimmed with razor-sharp spikes. On the back, where another passenger might sit, a robot gunner added even more firepower to the arsenal.

The big buggy had been used to get the cycles in close. A mobile diversion. Nice move. We'd been so focused on the strange contraption and taking out the easy targets that we'd never realized those were just sacrificial offerings to our snipers.

I'd blown it. Now, unfortunately, they'd had a chance to narrow in on our positions.
And
get close.

Clever jerks. Gamers just have to show off, don't they?

Two of the riders broke left and the other two went right. That was a small mistake; they didn't know it yet, but I was to their right.

I hoisted an AK-47 on one arm and a giant revolver in my other hand. I'd only get one chance, but they had no idea I was hiding over here. A good spot too. Down behind a rusting mailbox. They split up to move around it, zipping past me on either side.

One motorcycle raced by, then the second, the riders' backs fully exposed. I stood, steadied my legs, and opened fire. The AK was full auto and cut the rider on my left in half; he died, tumbling like a rag doll into a low wall.

But on the right, my hand-cannon's first shell bounced off the mechanized soldier in the passenger seat. No damage. Still, the rider felt the impact or heard the ricochet: he ripped a neat cookie in the street and zeroed in on my spot.

Bummer for
me
now. Before, I'd had perfect cover. Now I was just a guy in the open with a machine gun that needed another clip and a mailbox behind me that was of no use whatsoever.

I dropped the AK and tried to sight down the barrel of the nickel-plated handgun. I had five shells remaining, but this next shot would have to be
perfect
.

If I hit the charging rider in the body, it wouldn't do enough damage. Anyone who games knows that
only
head shots are any guarantee of a fatal blow.

The bike's front-mounted guns started peppering bullets, but they were wild, hitting my legs, arms, shoulder, nothing vital. Sure, it hurt, and it knocked down my health a lot, but he too would need a head shot to guarantee a kill.

The notch on my gun centered right over his facemask. That was the most vulnerable point. Any revolver these days, in any game, packs a massive damage rating. The downside? Slow rate of fire. Slow reload. Only six bullets in the chamber. Each bullet does a good job, you just have to make sure every shell counts.

KABOOM!
I fired. I missed. It did occur to me, so you know, that Mi would have picked him right off.

But he was, after all, on a motorcycle, speeding and weaving. A tough shot. You try to make it.

KERPOWWW!
The third bullet glanced off his temple. Not a direct hit. No solid damage at all.

His machine guns kept up their chatter—
RAT-A-TAT! RAT-A-TAT!—
the bullets stinging off my knees, elbows, making it almost impossible to line up a fourth shot.

Still, that's what they pay me for. I make my living putting up a good fight, right to the very end.

The sights finally found a home. Right over the middle of his helmet. It would be a nose shot. Nice splat on impact. Nothing left inside but cerebral soup.

I win
.

I pulled the trigger.

CLICK!

What?

Out of bullets?

I began counting. One when he passed. It hit the robot.

Two more at him after he spun around to take me out? Had I gotten trigger-happy and emptied the cannon by spraying fire . . . ?

Wait! No! I'd only fired
one
at the bike as it passed. Then two. I should have had three left.

Had I forgotten to reload earlier? Yesterday? Had I been packing a half-full gun all this time? No way. Not a chance. I never forgot to reload. And the weight of the gun would've felt funny.

CLICK!
I tried it again.

CLICK
.

Click
.

What was the use? I was a sitting duck. No shots left. So much for unlimited ammo . . . What kind of crap game was this where the NPC
ran out of bullets?
Or was loaded with duds? How could that be fun?

“Go shoot hillbillies whose weapons are empty or jammed!”

It'd never sell.

So I waited for the guy on the motorcycle to finish me off. Or run me over with those spiked tires. Or rope me with a steel cable and drag me to my death all over that scraggy landscape.

But he didn't. The rider fishtailed to a stop right at my feet. We were almost nose to nose, but I still couldn't see a face behind the smoked helmet visor. Nor could I pick out any skin behind his full-body riding armor. Bullet marks and skids were all over him, including a big dent where my last bullet had very narrowly missed center-skull.

“Gotcha!” he yelled.

Funny. When those guys spoke into their wireless headsets, we usually picked up the chatter. Now this one was talking to
me
. Directly?

What the . . . ? OK. Why not talk back?

“I ran out of shells,” I told him, popping open the chamber to show him six spent cartridges.

“Lucky for me,” he responded. “You're Phoenix, right?
The
Phoenix? Your scores are off the charts.”

Scores? Charts?

Not me. I have no tag. I'm an NPC. I have no rating he could access. I die for a living. How could he have known?

He lifted a hand-cannon of his own. At least this time, for me, the end would come quickly.

In just a few digital seconds, I'd be back home. Climbing out of the Re-Sim. Good thing, too. This had been a really long session. I was starving.

“You win . . .” I smiled at him through my gnarled, inbred teeth.

He nodded.

“. . .
this
time,” I added. “Next time, who knows?”

He shrugged too, taking his time with the mercy kill. Why? Behind him, I could see his crew laying waste to the rest of my team.

And still he waited. Why not shoot? He just sat there on his bike, pointing the massive barrel at my forehead, in no hurry at all. What kind of juvenile, violence-crazed, prepubescent carnage machine
was
he? Get on with it, already! I was hungry!

“Game's over,” I finally told him. “Finish it. You've been chasing us for days, I'm starved.”

“Starved?” He cocked his head.

Then I heard the crunch behind me. That unmistakable crunch. You already know nothing in nature sounds like that. Tires on gravel.

The buggy. It had driven up.

And then the gamer said one last thing, and it completely gave me the creeps.

“It's not over yet, cannibal.”

A harpoon fired and a shaft of metal as big as a baseball bat sliced clean through my leg. It hurt, it hurt bad, but that wasn't the death blow.

No death blow would come. The gamer was right; the contest was not nearly over yet.

The harpoon was attached to a steel cable that hoisted me up, over the buggy. The arm of the crane then swung me like a sack of dirt. At the last moment, the hook released and I was tossed, very roughly, in the back cage. Into the circus trailer.

Quickly, the whole craft lurched forward. On with the mission.

These guys weren't killing.

They were
hunting
.

What kind of game was this?

They moved in to try to capture Mi, but she got shot down. York and Reno were fried to a crisp when the gas tanks went up. The rest of my team, unfortunately, was wiped out soon after by mortar fire.

I watched them try to do the same thing to Jevo. They cornered him, put a spear through his neck, then stood there and watched him bleed.

That same rider, I believed, was over there talking to him. Then he was talking to his buddies. For some reason, Jevo wasn't the right catch. A bigger guy knocked my bigger guy to the ground, sat his rear motorcycle tire on our goon's head, twisted the throttle, and ground the skull down to the pavement. Jevo died. Mercilessly. Never saw the big man again, either. Not like that, anyway.

Then, as it always happens in war, everything went from pure chaos to dead silence.

Nothing marred that perfect quiet. Even the tires had stopped rolling.

And that's when I heard her voice.

Dakota.

She was lying in a heap on the other side of the cage, pinned down under some concrete debris. Her leg, too, was sporting the shaft of one of their whaling harpoons.

“I really, really do
not
like your world.” She grimaced my way, covered in dirt.

I helped her up, brushed off the dust, but by now, the monstrous craft was leaving town. Heading off across the barren desert. Wherever we were pointed, it looked to be a long journey. At least the sun was finally going down.