Chapter 31

  We reached the Safe Zone. After eight exhausting days . . . we finally made it. There was no visual indicator that we had reached its protection, but looking at the map confirmed that we were indeed right inside of the white ring.

  Other parties moved around us like carpenter bees, zooming in real close, curious about my army, then zipping away as quick as they came. I expected that once they were able to read the text on a nameplate and realized the NPCs were followers of someone else, they figured out they had nothing to gain from being near such a large entity. I didn’t blame them for turning sharply and heading in the opposite direction, or for continuing further into the Safe Zone. And I couldn’t help but feel like we were playing the game well. It came at a potential moral price . . . but the army was saving us from countless encounters with other players.

  We journeyed a few more miles into the Safe Zone, and after a shorter rest than the soldiers we intended to keep, we had the women and children continue further into the Safe Zone. As I watched them fade into the distance, I finally let my responsibility over them fall off my shoulders. I had done what I could. It wouldn’t amount to anything in the end, but I’d done what I could.

  Their departure left us with five remaining battalions. We had lost well over half our damn army. Screams and shouts echoed through my mind, and I felt nauseous as I remembered the rotting wall of ghouls throwing themselves time and time again at the invisible barrier. That wall of undead ghouls contained the fathers and husbands. And the kids and wives . . . watched as their own family sought to kill them. It didn’t sit well with me as I watched the families fade into the distance. It wasn’t right. None of this was right.

  “We just gave someone else a huge dump of XP . . .” Mie said bitterly as she watched the children and women fade from sight.

  I ignored her, unable to stomach the idea of killing the children again. Matt approached. He galloped at a quick clip and swung off his mount in a graceful motion. The guy was slick.

  I had asked him to coordinate scouting parties and so he personally went to put those teams together, placing someone he trusted at the head of each one. He had organized an entire battalion’s worth of scouts. The more eyes and reports we had, the better we would be informed, and the better informed we were, the better decisions we could make.

  The four of us, along with Matt, retreated into the Commander’s tent that had been erected on our arrival to the Safe Zone. It was a special ability that Commanders had . . . an edge I didn’t even realize we had. A really, really good edge.

  Inside there was a large wooden table with a map on top that was zoomed in on the upper part of the island so that the Safe Zone was the primary focus. I watched as the Black Zone continued its approach. It was still a few minutes away from reaching the white ring. The map was updating in real time, showing us movements of our troops. Like I said: a realllly good edge.

  I looked around the room. The table was surrounded by sturdy hand-crafted chairs. A small table sat in a corner with a squat Perdon bottle and some low-ball glasses resting upon it. There was also a long narrow table on the side filled with a feast fit for a king. There was fresh fruit, vegetables, breads, meats, and oh my god. The cheese. So many kinds of cheese. When I asked Matt if we had carried this the entire time, he looked at me as if I was dumb, prompting a laugh from Mie as she overheard the interaction. Oh right . . . infinite inventories. I am dumb.

  I watched Fred start shoveling something that looked like mashed potatoes into his mouth before I inspected the map. When I did, a prompt appeared.

  Sync Commander Matt’s Map with your own? {Accept}, {Ignore}

  I didn’t hesitate. I accepted the prompt and saw my map icon start to flash. I opened up my own map and was afforded the same view the table’s map in front of me was showing. It displayed our army’s movements in blue, and as I looked closer, I saw the one hundred groups of ten blue dots each spreading out and away from our other four battalions. I assumed these represented our scouting parties. White and yellow dots would flick in and out of existence as either neutral NPCs or players came into the view of those scouts. This was insanely helpful. Like . . . really damn helpful. It reminded me of what a minimap in a real time strategy game might look like.

  I sat down at the table and folded my arms as the others grabbed refreshments. I watched silently as one of those scouting units vanished after coming across a group of ten yellow dots. The yellow dots all turned red after engaging our blue. Ten red dots . . . must be some other followers of another player? Parties are capped at four. Or would there be parties working together? I asked Matt.

  “It works just like your map system. White dots are NPCs that are neutral, yellow dots are players, mobs, or followers who are not hostile. Red dots are those that have dealt damage to your forces. If a single yellow dot from a group of followers attacks your men, their entire force will turn red.”

  Okay, that made sense. So then yeah, it was probably a party with six followers or so. Or I guessed it could have been a random group of mobs, but that somehow seemed unlikely to me at this point.

  I was tired, and I felt off, too stressed to eat. It was like the others had no idea how lucky we were to have been able to just march into the Safe Zone uncontested. I knew as I looked at the player count: that had not been the case for a lot of people.

  Players Remaining: 80,000

  I looked back at the map in front of me. Red dots near the edges of our forces were winking out. Not because of our troops losing sight, but because—to add to my discomfort—they were getting killed by my men.

  I looked to the edge of the Black Zone as it crept closer to the boundary of the white ring. There were yellow dots in the Black Zone too. They would falter, disappear for just a second, then reappear as black dots. Sometimes, when a yellow dot would disappear or turn black, I would see the player count in my vision tick down. My stomach clenched in discomfort. My nerves were starting to get to me.

  I thought about all the players who had been as far south as us, and those that hadn’t been able to get their hands on a mount or hadn’t been surrounded by an army. There was no question in my mind that the main cause of the steep death toll was the Black Zone. We had barely made it as is, and we had constantly been taking the horses that had the most energy.

  Clara sat down next to me, a bowl of grapes in her hands. “Not hungry?” she asked.

  I shook my head slightly as the others found seats. Matt and Mie sat across from us; Fred sat at the end of the table where his two plates would be the least obstructive. “Nerves. I think.” I shut my mouth, feeling like I might throw up if I kept going.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Clara stared at her grapes but didn’t touch them. “Same.”

  It felt like the hours leading up to a big game or presentation. I looked around. No one was eating . . . except Fred. Everyone looked grim . . . except Fred. Everyone understood how close to the end we were . . . except Fred. Or maybe he does know, and this is just how he copes. I watched him stuff a large brick of cheese into his gob. Nah. He doesn’t know.

  Matt started the council by clearing his throat. “Okay, so like we decided, we set up camp to await more information. Black Zone is just a few more moments away.”

  Mie said, “I still think this is a bad decision, Sam. We should have followed on the heels of the women and children and gone further toward the center of the Safe Zone. From there we would’ve had to travel less distance to make it to the next one.”

  “What’s done is done,” was all I said. No point rehashing the conversation again.

  We all leaned in slightly to watch the Black Zone reach its destination, and just like Tittles described, as it closed the remaining distance and locked into its new boundary, a new white ring appeared. It was labeled ‘Phase Three.’

  This new white ring was much smaller than the first. I breathed a sigh of relief as it appeared. Since half of the remaining Safe Zone was in water, I’d half expected it to appear somewhere out in the middle of the sea.

  It hadn’t. Instead, it appeared to the far northwest of our location, close to the water on the north side of the far left-middle of the Safe Zone, but still on land. I zoomed in on the new ring. It looked to be about the size of a small city, and was located just north of a small village called The Keys in an area called Jenkins Hills. I squinted at the terrain near the center of the white ring. There appeared to be some sort of small structure there, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  I watched the Black Zone resume its journey, moving faster than it had before.

  Shit. The end was upon us.

  I didn’t know what I had expected. I was sore, dirty, and exhausted. We all were. I guess I had thought there would be some kind of break between the phases—that the fog’s advance might pause at least for a while—and I was frustrated I had made that assumption.

  I looked at the speed of the Black Zone again . . . We had some time before we had to start moving, but Matt got up promptly. “Send me your orders with the runners stationed outside this tent. I need to get the army organized with our new destination in mind.”

  I nodded, and he left. I continued watching the map and asked Clara, “Where is Mike now?” I had been asking this about every hour, and every time she looked at me in disgust.

  “Again?” she said with a dismayed tone.

  “We need to keep an eye on that little shithead,” I said with a shrug.

  She sighed and pulled out one of Mike’s party members’ hands we had taken. Using her ability to track other party members, she looked at her map. “Looks like he is already inside the Safe Zone . . . Lucky bastard.”

  “Damn. Okay. We are going to need to keep an eye out for traps when we get there,” I said as she tucked the hand away with a shudder.

  We all watched the map as our scouts continued to spread out in all directions. The ones to both the east and west followed the boundary of the Safe Zone and had come upon a large mass of yellow dots. Each mass was in a put-together formation and indicated that two other armies had appeared. One was between us and the Safe Zone to the northwest, and one was to our southeast.

  Fuck. It should have been obvious that other players would have figured this out, but I had really hoped they hadn’t. Who is leading those armies?

  The scouts hadn’t made it all that far, so I had no doubt that there would be more forces. I tried to compare, and it looked like we had a numbers advantage compared to the other two armies in view. It was meaningless information without knowing the average level of their NPCs. I watched groups of unorganized yellow dots move away from both those masses too, toward the Safe Zone. More women and children?

  We talked for a while about the potential scenarios and obstacles we might run into, both on our way to the Safe Zone and once we got inside.

  I shook my head as the scenarios played out. No matter how we looked at it, it was going to be absolute chaos in that final circle.

  Mie looked at me and forced a grin. She saw where my head was going and said, “It’s going to be a shitshow no matter what, Sam. We can’t plan our way into that Safe Zone.”

  “We can try,” I said.

  “Sure. But when shit hits the fan—and it will hit the fan—we need to have each other’s backs.”

  “And fronts!” Fred said, slamming a glass of whiskey back down on the table.

  Mie turned to look at him and worked her mouth, trying to figure out how to respond. Finally, she got out, “Weird. But okay. Sure. And each other’s . . . fronts.”

  I got up and went over to the small table where the Perdon sat and noticed it was already a third gone. I raised my eyebrows over at Fred. “You better ease up there. Things are about to get real real fast.”

  I poured three more glasses though and passed one to Clara and one to Mie. After we all had a glass in hand, I raised mine. “I want to say real quick, that if this is the end . . . ”

  “It’s not the end, Sam,” Clara cut in sharply. “We fucking got this.”

  “I know. But. IF, for whatever reason, this is the end, I just want to say thanks to all of you. I didn’t expect this.” I moved my glass around in a circle. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

  “We can tell,” Mie said. “It’s super awkward. Please stop.”

  “I know. I know. But I guess what I’m trying to say is—ugh yeah, it’s cheesy sorry—what I’m trying to say is . . . I’m glad I didn’t have to do this all alone.”

  Then I downed the glass and slammed it onto the table with a satisfying knock. Fred had a tear coming down his cheek as he drank, which was somewhat expected knowing him. But Clara just looked mad as she drank. When she sat down the glass she said with a strong, stubborn voice, “IT’S NOT THE END, SAM.”

  “Fair.” I poured out another shot to everyone and raised my glass as I started to feel the effects of the first. “To never the end.”

  “Damn right,” Clara said. “TO NEVER THE END!” We all drank.

  Mie grabbed the bottle from me. “My turn.” She started pouring. “I just want to say that it’s been something.” She nodded as if she had just said the craziest thing ever and started to move the glass to her lips. I stopped her. Fred let the Perdon fall from his mouth back into his cup.

  “Wait, what? That’s all you got. ‘It’s been something’? That doesn’t feel like the Mie I know,” I said.

  “What? Are you for real right now? Dissing my toast in front of my friends?!”

  I realized I went too far. “Uh—no—I—” She cut me off.

  “Actually yeah . . . that was lame . . . TO BLOWING UP GREG’S HEAD!” We all drank, choking and spitting as we laughed, and slammed our glasses down in unison.

  Greg: Wow. But :shrug emoji: :raises glass emoji:

  Theodor: What are you drinking, Greg?

  Greg: Earth Bourbon, something called Blanton’s Gold Label?

  Theodor: Oh nice. Can’t say I’ve had that one.

  Sam: Greg. I’m going to kill you. You did not just swipe that from my room.

  Greg: :raises glass emoji:

  Sam: You’re dead, frog man.

  The bottle had cost two gold coins. Stuff wasn’t cheap.

  Suddenly, the ground began shaking slightly. The glasses clinked, the bottle tipped over, and food toppled off the long table. Then as fast as it came, the shaking stopped.

  “What the?! What was that?” Mie said.

  “No idea,” I said, glancing at the map. “But we had better get going.”

  As much as I wanted to keep the cheers going and to just stay in the tent and forget about all the bad that had happened and would happen . . . I knew that it was time to keep moving.