The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point (7 page)

The worm chews through the neighboring office building, deleting a diagonal slash through the structure. Two of the melee team are scraped off the side as the worm slides past the steel and concrete walls. Their limbs flail as they tumble into the black, disappearing in to the emptiness.

The leader of the ranged team, the woman with the red suit and fedora, stops firing her Tommy gun and leans in closer to me, shouting, “This isn't working!”

I grit my teeth. I try to summon the puzzle in my brain. My problem-solving abilities rise up, ready to tackle the question in front of me, but nothing happens. I hit a wall. There is no solution. The invincible worm will continue its relentless deletion until there is nothing left.

I can't kill that which will not die.

I can't escape when there is nowhere left to go.

Deep within my stomach, there's a boiling, festering frustration that burns me from the inside. I want to lash out. I want to stomp my feet and yell at the game.

“This isn't fair!”

There are supposed to be rules. There are supposed to be laws and limitations. There are supposed to be balanced powers that give everyone an equal chance. This isn't a game. I can't win.

So I decide to cheat.

“Fall back!”

I send the group-wide audio-cast and back up toward the stairs. As the worm dives at our building, the melee team leaps from its back. The remaining twelve Level Zeros land with precision on the rooftop and join the rest of the group running toward me. I hold the door open for them, and when Cyren runs in last, I spin through the opening and follow the group down.

We're racing as fast as we can, leaping four or five stairs at a time, using the railing to keep our balance. Not being able to see the worm from inside means we can no longer calculate its approach. I try to mentally picture it in my head, but by the time we've descended ten floors, I've lost track of my orientation.

We descend another five or six floors before I hear the hollow moaning of the worm outside the building. Directly below me, the beast cuts the building in half, deleting floors thirty-five through fifty-one. What remains of the top half of the building still floats in the air as if the deleted section was still holding it up. Past the blackness, three Level Zeros look back at me in horror from the lower floors. I stand with Cyren and two others, the rest of the group swallowed. Gone. Their existence erased.

Cyren's fists clench. The other two Level Zeros look at me with a panicked sadness, but we don't have time to mourn. We don't have time to remember our fallen comrades. We need to survive.

“Grab on to me,” I shout, holding out my arms.

There's a moment of confusion, but I thrust my hands toward them. They fumble, but eventually find a tight grip on my trench coat. I step off the deleted staircase and activate my Anti-Gravity Belt. The weight of all four of us still pulls us through the black at an accelerated rate, but the belt gives us enough pause to tumble on to the staircase below unharmed. We waste no more time and run down the rest of the stairs as fast as we can. I hear the worm pass overhead a few more times, devouring the rest of the rooftop and the remaining upper floors.

When we erupt from the doorway into the underground parking lot, half of the area is gone. A row of cars and trucks idle near the gate, packed full of civilians, but not as many as there were before. I can see a look on their faces that must be mourning. It deepens when they see only seven of us running toward them.

I don't have time to explain anything. I swing myself into the bed of a pickup truck and Cyren joins me. As soon as the other Level Zeros find a vehicle I shout, “Move!”

The tires squeal as each vehicle launches up the ramp, turning on to what remains of the street. I tell them to head east, toward the ocean, while I watch the worm continue its ruthless decimation of the city behind us. I can't look away, but when I hear Cyren say my name, I pull my gaze forward. The group in the back of the truck are all staring at me, all awaiting some kind of order. Some kind of direction. They want a plan.

I look into Cyren's eyes and among the sparkles of light that reflect back toward me, I see her. The real her. The girl I love. I realize, in that moment, that I'm no longer playing a game. I'm only fighting to win another day with her. So I push past my disdain for cheating and I accept the absence of rules.

“I need you to change the code,” I yell to the civilian dressed like a baker that is sitting near the back of the truck.

“What can we do?” The baker summons his code book and opens it up, flipping through the pages, showing me how many are now blank. “That worm isn't a part of the game. It doesn't exist in the code.”

“But the airport does,” I say as I look forward, toward the untouched coastline.

“The airport?” Cyren asks, flashing a nervous look over her shoulder at the rest of the group. “Escaping in a plane would only be a temporary solution. Eventually we'll run out of fuel.”

“I know.” I flash a smile of confidence at the baker and say, “That's what I need you to change.”

While our caravan of vehicles makes its way out of the city and travels down the coastline, toward the airport, I'm still watching the worm. I'm timing its consumption against our speed and I don't like our odds.

“How's it coming?”

As the baker searches the text that scrolls across the page of his code book, he holds up one finger, as if to silence me.

Cyren tries to assure me by saying, “I have faith they can accomplish a simple hack of an airplane's fuel supply. They were able to change your spawn point-”

“When they changed my spawn point, they brought down the game's firewall and let in a virus.”

She cracks her knuckles and says, “Fair enough.”

“At this point, I'm not worried about if they can do it or not,” I say, looking away from her at the great beast consuming the sky, “I'm worried about how
fast
they can do it.”

“With their combined processing power, it shouldn't be long.”

“I hope you're right. I just-”

The driver of our truck locks his brakes and I'm thrown against the cab. Peering over the top of the cab, I see two Level Zeros climbing out of a van that's now parked sideways on the street. They lift their guns and raise their barrels upward. I follow their aim, instinctively pulling my own pistols from their holsters, readying myself for whatever flying monster is approaching. But the threat isn't in the sky, it's towering over us.

Two Tyrannosauruses are charging down the middle of the road, their mouths hanging open, salivating at the sight of us. Their powerful hind legs crack the pavement with every lunging step they take toward us.

The Level Zeros ahead of me start firing and Cyren is already leaping over the side of the truck, ready to join the battle by the time I register what's happening. I'm trying to keep too many things balanced in my head. The multitasking is slowing down my reaction time. I glance over my shoulder at the worm, calculate its approximate distance, and then turn back toward the immediate threat.

As the bullets pierce the first dinosaur's hide, trails of blood stream behind it. I let out a sigh of relief. Finally something that we can hurt. My own pistols join the gunfire, tearing small chunks from its body. A Level Zero lets loose a rocket, which slams squarely into the monster's chest. The attack on the first dinosaur is continuous, draining the creature's hit points until it falls face first into the street. Its body lays motionless as the second one climbs over it.

When the remaining dinosaur reaches the lead car in our caravan, it lowers its head, sinks its teeth into the station wagon, and scoops it up from the street. The back door opens up and civilians fall out, like dolls falling to the pavement. They crash into the street, some of them able to get up and run, while others roll around in agony.

The dinosaur shakes its head, whipping the vehicle back and forth. When it opens its mouth, the empty car is flung toward our group. The vehicle crashes into the street, rolling end over end, scattering everyone. I leap to the side as the car crashes into the pickup truck next to us. The collision crushes two more civilians as I roll off the side of the road and watch the dinosaur devour the crippled civilians near its feet.

I should be sad, or at least reacting to the constant string of deaths, but all I can think about is the time we're wasting. This is taking too long, and now we're down two vehicles. Right now I'm looking at things on such a macro level that the details of individual deaths are insignificant compared to a giant virus that is eating the world.

I'm about to order every to focus their gunfire on the dinosaur's face, hoping to score critical hits and increase our damage output, but Cyren is one step ahead of me.

As she leaps toward the dinosaur, it sees her coming and opens its mouth, ready to snatch its next snack right out of the air. Cyren contracts her body at the last second and slides past the giant teeth, and as soon as she's inside the creature's mouth, she lashes out with all of her limbs. Her feet stamp down on the dinosaur's tongue and the palms of her hands slam against the roof of its mouth. Her muscles struggle for a few more seconds as the dinosaur's jaws try to squeeze shut, but her Level 100 strength wins the fight. With a sickening snap of bones, the jaw breaks, falling open and dangling loosely as the creature roars in pain. Cyren jumps to safety as the remaining Level Zeros and I unleash another hail of gunfire. The helpless monster twists and turns as each round explodes, finally toppling on to the street.

There is a strange moment of silence as we all brush ourselves off and look around in stunned astonishment at the devastation these two monsters caused. The bellowing moan of the approaching worm snaps me back into my panicked momentum.

“Let's get moving!” I yell, shouting out commands to the group, telling them which vehicle they should get into to spread the Level Zeros out among the surviving civilians.

I climb into the back of a van as it lurches forward, building speed as the worm devours the last of the city behind us. The civilians return to their task, opening their code books and searching for an answer to our fuel problem.

We travel down the coastline and reach the airport in under three minutes. Other than the wreckage of a few jets out on the tarmac, the place looks abandoned. I'm worried that we might not find a working plane, but when the lead vehicle crashes through the chain-link fence, I see a cargo jet that looks untouched on the runway.

I point us toward the airplane and watch the worm make its way up the coast, consuming the beaches and harbors that line the city. It's drawing closer. I know we don't have much time.

We park behind the plane and the civilians race up the open ramp, buckling themselves in to seats that line the walls of the aircraft. As soon as they're strapped in, they open their code books and return to their search. Two Level Zeros run toward the cabin to start the preparations for takeoff. I take position with the other four near the rear of the plane in case there are any other monsters inhabiting the airport. I'm not going to let anything else delay us.

No one speaks. We watch in silence as the worm skims the coastline, deleting everything on its way toward us. I hold on to one of my pistols, foolishly allowing it to give me some sense of comfort, even though I know it's pointless. There's nothing we can do against the virus. Nothing. Our only hope is to run.

As the mouth of the worm crashes into the side of the airport, it shaves off the tower that rises above the terminal and the body of the immense creature sinks below the ground.

I look at Cyren. She looks back at me and a smile lifts the corners of her black lips. It's weak, but I know it's taking every ounce of her strength to offer it to me.

“Arkade? I want you to know...”

“What is it?”

“It's okay if we fail.”

“We're not going to fail.”

She reaches out and grabs my hand.

“Listen to me. I want you to know that if this is the end, if we never see each other ever again, it's okay. I'm happy. I'm happy because I got to know you. I'm happy because I got to love you.”

The worm rises up from the runway a few yards behind us, its mouth letting loose a moan that shakes the pit of my stomach. I calculate its trajectory and I know when it turns back toward the ground, it will consume the plane.

I yell toward the cabin door, “We need to go!”

When I don't hear a response, I move my foot forward, ready to grab Cyren's hand and run. It's a useless gesture of course, there's no way we could make it to a vehicle in time, but my heart doesn't care. I can't give up. I need to do anything I can to fight for our survival.

The sound of the jets stop me. The aircraft rolls forward as the worm turns its head, twisting its body for its descent. The plane picks up speed. The worm drops toward us. The nose of the aircraft lifts from the ground. The spinning teeth of the worm skim the tail of the plane, missing us by inches before it plunges into the ground, mindlessly unaware of our existence as it erases more of the world.

I holster my pistol and grip on to the strap above me with both hands as the rear wheels lift off the ground. Before I manage to press the button to close the rear ramp of the plane, the wind rushes past me and my cowboy hat flies from my head. It flops through the streams of air currents caused by the jets, falling toward the deleted blackness, shrinking in size as we ascend into the clouds, eventually disappearing like everything else.

From the window of the cargo jet, we watch the virus destroy our world. The sea is gone. The horizon is black. The worm annihilates the jungle acre-by-acre. It carves open the Darkfyre Mountains, scooping out every boulder and cliff and snow-capped peak until there is nothing left. Finally it erases the sun itself. We fly away from the mouth of the beast into the endless nothing.

There is no up or down or sense of direction. There is only us and the worm, and we aim our jet away from the mouth that is always approaching. It hunts us now, moving in a straight line, sensing the last bits of information that it must destroy.