Mavis blinked awake, her gaze locking first on the dusty pallet leaned against her hiding place. The faint, grimy light of morning filtered through cracked and broken windows, painting the air in muted amber. Her eyes flicked to her HUD, the motion sharp, purposeful. A quick mental click brought Goo online, and she sent him up for a sweep of the surrounding space.

  Arthur’s voice echoed in her memory, ‘Always check your spawn zone. Always know what’s out there before you move.’ She could almost see his half-smirk when he’d said it. A tactical view meant survival, and survival meant advantage.

  A high-angle map bloomed in the upper-right of her HUD, a ten meter radius of her immediate surroundings. Empty. Or… still. She remembered Arthur’s warning: ‘Sometimes they don’t move until they have a reason.’

  She eye-clicked the 360° scan. Goo’s feed shifted as he drifted in a lazy, methodical circle. She studied the returns, no shuffling shadows, no telltale sway of a corpse waiting to be triggered.

  “Come on back,” she whispered. Goo zipped down, the gentle whine of his rotors rising before fading as he hovered into place at her right shoulder. Mavis exhaled, rolled her shoulders, and turned her focus to the pallet.

  ‘Rules,’ she chided herself. Arthur and Bobby had drilled them into her: ‘Weapons ready, always.’ She drew her 9mm, the metallic clack of chambering a round strangely comforting, then sighted down the barrel before holstering. Her hand dropped to her blade, loosening it in its sheath. ‘As ready as you’re gonna be.’

  Over lunch, they’d laid out her next steps:

  “I suggest you head to Tomsville, set a new spawn point, grab NPC quests, and solo grind to level 10 for an Antumbra transfer,” Arthur had said through a full mouth of grilled cheese. Bobby had shaken his head, thrusting his spoon at Arthur like a weapon.

  “Naw Mavis, team up with other players for safety, slower for the leveling, but there is strength in numbers.” He’d said while reapplying the spoon to its intended use in the soup.

  “Why the heck don’t we just jump in and get Mav started?” He’d asked the table of gamers, “this way, we have people on the ground she can trust and lean on and get that safety in numbers.” There he paused and looked at Mav with a small smile. “It’s not my type of game at all, but I’d come help you out.”

  Arthur had shot that down reminding Jim that they had to be in Atlanta for a tech conference that they were the keynote speakers at. “Two day’s, max,” he’d said, giving her ribs an “innocent” poke that had felt more like an open handed squeeze. She’d blushed then, and even now the ghost of that warmth tugged at her.

  Shaking off the memories, she slid from hiding and into the warehouse gloom. “Goo, scout the exit,” she murmured. He shot off with a high-pitched whirr, voice crackling in her ear seconds later: “All clear.”

  Mavis heel toed her way toward the door they’d entered through and stopped short. A frown pulled at her mouth. “Shit, the boxes are still there!” She turned to Goo’s hovering camera and gave it the middle finger, knowing the team would see it.

  Back in the ‘real, after the video ran through a decompression filter, Arthur barked a laugh, elbowing Bobby. “Told her we’d work on brawn,” he said, standing. “Me and Jim gotta head out, keep her alive, okay?” His eyes lingered on Olivia and Bobby until they nodded.

  Thirty minutes later in-game, she shifted the last of the boxes, leaning the pallet neatly aside. Her chest rose and fell with a slow exhale. “Fun,” she muttered. “Thanks for that, Arthur. I’ll remember.”

  “Okay, Goo, up and out the window.” The second HUD screen flickered on with his feed: same exterior she’d seen twice already, warehouse exit, Tomsville sign, container maze. “Pan the edges,” she instructed. His range wasn’t far, Arthur had told her it would grow as they leveled together. No threats visible but the corpses they’d already dropped.

  Knife in hand, she eased the door open and stepped into the open air. The Tomsville arrow was painted on the side of a container. She spotted another arrow farther down, and another still, a breadcrumb trail that meant she could bypass the maze entirely by following the roadside. “Tomsville,” she mused, “who names their town after themselves?”

  She moved slow, checking each corner before passing. ‘This scenario must eat paranoid players alive.’ She was already feeling the constant shoulder tight anxiety of it and she’d barely been here an hour. Arthur’s advice repeated in her head: ‘Perception skills come with time. Until then, keep your head moving and watch your feet.’ She did exactly that.

  At the container yard’s end, she stopped. The narrow road met a larger two-lane street littered with abandoned cars, some crashed, some left mid-escape, doors yawning open. Across the way, another arrow painted on a four-door sedan pointed north, Tomsville.

  Arthur had told her to loot as much as she could, check each building, container and car but only after she had made it to ‘Tomsville’ and secured her respawn point. Bobby and Jim had agreed with the idea and while she felt confident she could do some looting while moving to the encampment, she chose to trust the advice of those who have played these games rather than her novice understanding.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The wind moaned through skeletal trees and rusted frames, its sound curling cold fingers down her spine. She’d always loved suspense films, but now she understood the physical pull of one. The first pop-crack shattered the quiet. She flinched, body twisting toward the sound. Birds erupted skyward. More shots followed, the rhythm breaking into chaotic staccato. Then a muffled boom and a pillar of smoke.

  The gunfire cut off. Multiple groans started nearby. ‘Motherfucker, that’s a player. And now they’ve rung the dinner bell.’ She checked a nearby minivan, found it empty, slid the side door open, and ducked into the second row, crouching low between the captain’s seats. Outside, a trickle of zombies shuffled past, their heads snapping toward the distant commotion.

  ‘Lesson learned, noise equals trouble.’ When the street quieted again, she slipped out, scanning. The quiet lasted only a few paces before she caught it, a faint scraping, punctuated by a small, wheezing squeak ahead and to the right.

  Crouching low, Mav eased her shoulders to peek under the chassis of a large truck. The cool shadow smelled faintly of oil and rust. Beyond the front axle, the source of the noise revealed itself, a zombie dragging itself across the pavement, one leg trailing behind, connected only by ragged strands of sinew. With each pull, it made a strange squeaky wheeze, like someone squeezing the air from an old balloon.

  Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she forced herself to take a slow, steadying breath. Arthur’s voice surfaced in her mind, firm but patient. ‘You gotta learn to be easy at taking zeds down, it’s that simple. The more times you do it, the simpler it’ll become. Take each easy kill so the hard ones won’t rattle you.’ Bobby and Jim had backed him up, grinning like they were remembering their first kills.

  Adjusting her grip, she flipped the knife so the blade pointed down. Her fingers flexed once around the hilt before tightening again. Crab walking along the truck’s side, she crept toward the front tire, her eyes locked on the uneven shadow just beyond the bumper.

  A broken nailed hand slapped down, fingertips clawing for purchase in the cracked asphalt. The head snaked into view, slack-jawed, milky eyes scanning and Mav didn’t hesitate. She lunged forward, driving the blade down through the skull.

  The knife slid in with almost no resistance. The weight of the head dropped to the pavement, the steel ringing faintly against the road. She’d expected more pushback, and the lack of it pitched her forward. Releasing the hilt, she rolled over the body, gravel scraping her palms. Spinning to her feet, she reached back for the knife, just in time to see a second zombie rounding the far side of the truck.

  “Shit!” she hissed, the word sharp in her throat. She yanked the blade free from the first corpse. “Shit,” again, lower this time, teeth clenched as she took a step back, shoulders squaring. One deep inhale steadied her grip. She stepped into the zombie’s reach, shoved its grasping arms aside with her left forearm, and drove the knife into its temple with her right. The head jerked sideways, body collapsing like a marionette with its strings cut.

  “Shit…” she murmured a third time, this one shaky but laced with relief. Her pulse was still pounding, but not from panic, this was the rush Arthur had described. ‘First two of many,’ she thought, straightening. ‘Not so hard. I can do this’. A grin, small but genuine, curved her mouth. Her stomach did a few flops like riding a roller coaster.

  Wiping her blade on the first corpse, she crouched to check both bodies for loot. Nothing. With a soft sigh, she leaned against the truck, letting the rough metal press into her shoulder. ‘Time for some self-talk. Enough sulking,’ she told herself. ‘Yeah, what happened sucked donkey balls. But they’ve given me a chance to heal and they’ve had my back since the start. And what have I done? Pouted like some angry little bitch princess. I got myself stuck here because I did what I wanted. Time to own it.’

  She looked back toward the smoke curling in the distance. ‘It’s only a game,’ she reminded herself. ‘No matter how real it looks, it’s still a game. I die, I respawn. So screw this gloom, I’m gonna treat it like a race and have some fun.’ The roguish grin returned, and with it, a faint lightness in her chest.

  “Goo,” she said, tilting her head slightly toward her shoulder drone, “give me a view, then head as far ahead as you can. If there’s anything in my path, outline it for me if possible.”

  “I believe I can,” Goo replied warmly. He lifted off in a smooth arc, weaving between the rust-scarred cars. Three humanoid outlines flared in her HUD, all moving slowly toward her. ‘They must’ve heard that… what, an explosion?’ she guessed, scanning for a good choke point.

  “That’s perfect, Goo. Do that anytime you spot a zombie, and give me whatever details you can.”

  Small letter Es popped over each outline. “This is all I can do for now, Mav, highlight enemies and mark their class. As we level, I’ll be able to give you more intel,” Goo explained, circling back overhead. While he spoke, Mav slipped into position between two wrecked cars whose crumpled hoods formed a natural funnel.

  The first zombie emerged from behind a bus, nearly naked save for a pair of shredded boxers. Deep scratches marred its skin, and its left arm ended in a ragged stump that oozed a thick, blackish fluid.

  “Use the terrain,” Bobby had told her. “Low level zeds in early zones are stupid. They’ll bash against barriers and stay there, growling, while you stick ’em.”

  She let the zombie stagger between the cars. As it leaned over the dead space, she batted its arm aside and drove her knife into its eye. The body folded instantly, blade halfway in. ‘Not so hard,’ she thought again, confidence growing.

  The next two shuffled forward side by side, forced into the narrow space by the V shaped wreckage. Both leaned over their fallen comrade, hands clawing for her. She tightened her stance… “Mav, we have a problem,” Goo interrupted.