Chapter Eight

“I don't see any. Maybe it's not as bad as all that. Oh, no, wait, there they are.”

-Shaun, Shaun of the Dead

“McCray told me that the reason he did this to us was partly because every human seems to have a plan to survive the zombie apocalypse,” Liza explained to the girls over a cup of tea.

Outside the screams had dissipated, but flames still crackled. The air was hot and dry even indoors, and neither of them cared to mention it.

There was no way for them to contact James. They had called him and it had rung out, and there was no telling what exactly that meant.

“So, is that true?” Liza prompted. Celia and Yana sipped, heads lowered, not speaking. Liza felt like, somehow, she was processing all of this a little bit quicker than the others. She had accepted it.

Maybe McCray was right, with what he had said — maybe deep down she was kind of ready for this.

“I always said I would build a bunker after I graduated,” Celia admitted finally, and blew on the hot liquid. “I don’t have the money right now. But I knew that something bad was going to happen.” She looked up and pushed her broken glasses up her nose. “I thought it was going to be nuclear war.”

“Apparently you weren’t far off. That was what McCray said. Every society wipes itself out once it reaches a certain level of knowledge or … society. Or something.”

“He did say something like that, didn’t he?” Celia sighed. “I don’t feel very proud of being right. It didn’t amount to anything.” Her lip quivered. “After everything … I’m never going to amount to anything. I spent my whole life so far working towards the real world and I’m never going to see it. The world ended while we were still preparing for it. How sad is that?”

“You’re right,” Yana said, her eyes still swimming, as they had been on and off since she had returned to the house. “We’ve wasted our lives getting ready for something that isn’t going to exist when we wake up tomorrow.”

Liza shrugged. “That might be what McCray believes — and hopes — will happen, but it isn’t necessarily true. What about the army? They’re going to fix this. This thing won’t last more than a couple of days. Zombies have what? Teeth?” She snorted. “The government has—”

“Nuclear weapons,” Celia laughed. “I guess that would be nicely ironic, if McCray caused the very thing he was desperate to avoid. But I don’t know — I guess he would have thought about that.”

“I just see no way at all that a pack of stupid shuffling corpses could defeat a team of highly organised trained soldiers,” Liza said. “They have a plan for things like this. Maybe not … the actual zombie apocalypse, but … maybe they do. They’ll wipe it out in minutes.”

“Or they’ll be so busy wiping it out in the highly populated city areas that they will let it fester out here in the middle of nowhere for weeks until we’re all dead. They’ll win, but we’ll still die,” Yana said quietly.

They both looked at her. “I don’t think so,” Liza said, but she didn’t have anything else to add.

“I was going to go find my older brother and his husband,” Yana said. “We were talking about it last Christmas. Bobby is an amazing carpenter and Christian is an amateur gardener and chef. I figure they would do pretty well if the world ended. Bobby is working on a canoe right now and Christian makes dinner using only homegrown stuff.”

“That sounds idyllic,” Liza said, leaning back just as two cars collided deafeningly down the road from them, causing all of them to wince weakly. But still nothing breached their non-existent defenses.

It would be only a matter of time before the looters began to break into houses, assuming them abandoned or not particularly caring. If they managed to wait out a few extra days, then they would have to beware of survivors simply searching for supplies. And if a ground floor window was smashed in, they would have to leave; it wouldn’t be safe any longer.

And Liza had no idea where else they would go.

She tried James again on Yana’s phone, and felt her hope begin to slip away.

“We have the advantage here,” she said to nobody in particular. “We should be able to find him. Where would he be?”

“He was actually right behind me when we ran,” Celia said. “So was Blazer or whatever. I turned around after a while and I couldn’t see them anymore.” She raised her arm in a makeshift sling made of a torn shirt. “I fell, and by the time I got back up I had lost everyone completely. It took me a while to get back. It’s really hard to shoot with a useless dominant arm.”

“I can imagine,” Liza muttered. She stared at Celia’s glasses, and thought for a moment. “You smashed your lens,” she said.

“Yep, and I’m blind as a bat. I basically lucked my way back here. I don’t know how I made it.”

“Could you pass them to me?” she asked, holding out her hand.

“Uh, why?”

“Tucker is an interactive object and we didn’t find him in the crate.” Liza’s heart kicked up a beat. “What if everything for us is an object in this game?”

“Huh?”

Liza looked around for something relevant that hadn’t arrived in that crate, and grabbed the first thing she could see in the room: a lonely plank of wood behind one of the sofas that had curiously come with the house.

She concentrated hard on it until, sure enough, a shimmer of light ran along its outline and a table appeared before her eyes. “Yes!” she cried.

Wooden Plank

UP to Next Level

Features

Empty Slot (Unlock)

100

Empty Slot (Unlock)

200

“Hang on.” She pulled it out, leaned it at an angle on the floor, and then stomped on it so that it splintered down the middle and flopped awkwardly when she lifted it again. “Come on, video game. Let’s do this,” she muttered.

Broken Wooden Plank

UP to Next Level

Repair?

33/100

70

Features

Empty Slot (Unlock)

100

Empty Slot (Unlock)

200

“Yes!” she cried, and tossed the wood under the sofa. “I know you didn’t see any of that, but please trust me. Give me the glasses.”

Tentatively, as if she really was not used to anybody apart from her having wild brainwaves and not explaining it, Celia pulled off her big round spectacles and placed them in Liza’s hand. The left lens was almost completely broken away, with just a couple of shards remaining, which looked very dangerous, but Celia hadn’t been preoccupied with that.

Celia’s Glasses

UP to Next Level

Repair?

49/100

120 (+glass)

Features

Empty Slot (Unlock)

100

Empty Slot (Unlock)

200

They were less broken than the plank, but they needed more points to repair. Liza wondered if that was because they were a higher priority item — more important to them. Or if the repair was more difficult to pull off.

Heart pounding, Liza selected the repair option, but was refused. “Shit!” she muttered.

Requires ‘glass’ to repair.

“Any glass?” she said aloud, though no one else could see what she was seeing. “Hang on.”

She walked confidently to the ugly beach painting hanging above their TV that had come with the house, carefully pulled it off the wall, placed it on the floor, and stepped on it so that the glass smashed.

“The hell are you doing? You can’t just replace a glasses lens with any fucking glass you find!” Yana yelled at her. “You’re going to cut somebody!”

“Wait,” Liza said sharply over her shoulder, and then turned back to pry a long evil-looking glass shard from the frame and inspected it.

Shard of Glass

UP to Next Level

Features

Empty Slot (Unlock)

100

Empty Slot (Unlock)

200

The hell could she do to upgrade a shard of glass? Stupid game. Did it just say that with everything even if there were no options? Was that what had happened with the gun? That would be weird, because she was certain there were plenty of ways to potentially upgrade a Glock; she just couldn’t think of any.

She selected ‘repair’ again and a little countdown appeared, from 10 down to 0. When it hit 0 the glasses in her hands vibrated a little, and the shard of glass disappeared from sight.

Celia’s Glasses are fully repaired.

Shard of Glass was used up.

“Jesus,” Liza said, raising her eyebrows. “I actually didn’t really think that was going to work. Put them on?”

Celia stared at them incredulously for quite some time before snatching them up and popping them back on her face.

“Wow,” she said after a second. “It even repaired the wonky arm.” She wiggled it and swallowed, staring through them. “It worked perfectly.” She gripped at Liza’s arm. “This changes everything.”

“It does?”

“Everything,” Celia said. “How many points do you have?”

She checked it out quickly. “620.”

“I have 300. Yana?”

“110,” Yana said, still frowning deeply at the smashed picture frame in the middle of the floor.

“You must have encountered quite a few more on your way back home,” Celia said. “Listen, I think I have the start of a weird idea. I need to try something first. Can you update the prescription?”

“Ha,” Liza said uncertainly, “I don’t think so.”

“Would you see if it’s possible?”

If she could put them back together, could she update the prescription? It seemed insane. “Umm.”

She inspected the glasses and stared at the sheet again.

Celia’s Glasses

UP to Next Level

Features

Empty Slot (Unlock)

100

Empty Slot (Unlock)

200

She swallowed, and then shrugged, and spent the 100 points.

You have unlocked a slot for a new feature for this item.

What would you like to add?

Updated Prescription — 200 (+known prescription)

“What?” she said suddenly, and stood up. “Yes. It’s actually there. I can’t believe it. Because you said it out loud? Because I had a definite idea of what I wanted? This is … amazing. Should I do it? It’s 200.”

“Wait, not yet.” Celia stood up too, looking as excited as Liza felt. “If that came up because we thought about it, then what else could we do? Think of something crazy. Something SciFi.”

“Optional zoom,” Liza said, clicking her fingers. “That’s something a spy would have. You can zoom in and out.”

Celia pointed at her, grinning. “Yes, that. Look again.”

Liza brought it up again.

You have unlocked a slot for a new feature for this item.

What would you like to add?

Updated Prescription — 200 (+known prescription)

Optional Zoom — 900 (+basic blueprint)

“900,” she said, and tutted. “And a ‘basic blueprint’, it says.”

“But it came up?”

Liza smiled wide. “It came up.”

“Everybody shut up!” Celia suddenly yelled and spun around to face the wall, punching her thigh rhythmically as if to speed up her own thoughts.

“Yeah, Yana,” Liza said. The other girl glared at her. Celia turned again, her face filled with colour and her eyes bright.

“I have an idea, to keep us safe, for sure. But it’s going to require a hell of a lot more points.”

Liza looked over to the front door and thought about what was beyond it, and what kind of danger James was currently in. “How many points?”

Celia grinned and sat down, spreading her arms out wide. “A fuckton.”