I shake my head. “It was nothing,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”

  His shrug is enough to make me realize he has dismissed my ramblings, and as such, gives me the power to edge forward without much thought.

  This far out, the homes are untouched by the ash, and appear pristine in comparison to their neighbors, who happen to reside little less than a mile away. Tall, foreboding, covered with creeping vines and highlighted by cracks in their windows and foundations, they appear like lost souls bereft of their place in the world. They guard the invisible threshold most players dare not cross. It is here where I encountered the Lobo that could have easily taken my avatar’s life in my last real game of Dystopia, and here where I realize the real danger will take place.

  Briefly, I wonder if we are safe, or if my decision to lead us in this direction is merited.

  We need to eat, I think. There may be food here.

  But, I also consider, there could have been food elsewhere within the city. We’d only checked two buildings, and for that reason, couldn’t have discounted the potential bounties within.

  I come to a halt and listen to the sounds of nature.

  Birds in the trees, animals skittering in the underbrush, the wind skirting along the dusty streets—

  There is still a chance for us to go back, if we really, truly want to.

  “Leon,” I say, my voice a mere whisper beneath the din of the natural world. “Do you want to try and go back?”

  “Are you scared?” he asks.

  “Of course I am. What kind of idiot wouldn’t be?”

  To this, he doesn’t respond. Rather, he comes to a halt beside me and considers the row of riverside homes. “I don’t know if I want to go back. We’ve already come all this way, and besides—didn’t you say there might be food out here?”

  “Might being the key word.”

  “Either way, we should try breaking—”

  “Entering,” I correct.

  “—into one of these houses,” Leon finishes. “They might be a safe place to ride out this game.”

  I bite my lip to keep from responding.

  Nowhere is safe in the world of Dystopia. I want to tell him this as he advances toward a home with blue siding and an old brown door, but I refrain despite the fact that I want, no, feel I need to.

  If this game is anything like the ones we’ve played before, it will occur in its usual fashion:

  Players will attempt to find resources. Upon finding them, they will use them to eliminate one another. Sound will draw predators, who will then feast upon the unwary. Then, as the player-count begins to fall, the spawn rate of the computer-generated monsters will increase. It’ll eventually get to a point where we won’t be able to turn any corner without encountering an Ashen, or Screecher, or Lobo, or even measly bandits who will gun us down. And when that happens—

  I sigh.

  When that happens, I consider, we will be forced to outlast the best among us.

  As we draw near the home, I listen to the sound of waterbirds as they communicate among one another and jump when I hear the disturbance of water.

  I tell myself not to panic. But considering where we are, it’s hard not to.

  With his hands braced around his eyes like a child at a candy store, Leon presses his face against the dusty glass to see inside. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Have you tried the door?”

  He reaches for the doorknob.

  A twig snaps nearby.

  Every hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

  Slowly, I turn toward the street.

  I expect to see a monster who has come to devour us all.

  Instead, I see a girl who is probably not much older than me.

  Normally, this wouldn’t have been unsettling.

  The fact that she’s covered in what appears to be blood immediately sets off warning bells inside my head.

  “Leon,” I say.

  “What?” he asks, still fidgeting with the door.

  “Turn around.”

  He lifts his gaze, then turns his head. His eyes widen the moment they settle upon the girl before us.

  He raises the gun.

  The girl steps back. “Please,” she says, lifting her hands to the sides of her head. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Who are you?” Leon asks. “And what’re you doing here?”

  “My name is Cheyenne,” the girl replies, her dark, nearly-black eyes welling with tears. “I came this way because I heard people talking.”

  I curse myself for ever speaking above a whisper,r but manage to keep what little composure I have while staring at this newcomer.

  Leon is the first to speak after the girl’s declaration. “We don’t want you here.”

  “Please. Don’t turn me away.”

  “What happened to you?” I ask, ignoring the glare that Leon shoots at me. “Why are you covered in blood?”

  “We were trying to make our way into the woods when we got attacked,” she says, obviously wanting to step toward us, but remaining in place due to the gun centered on her. “My sister, she… she’d heard rumors that there were safe houses out in the woods—places where there was enough food and water where you could hunker down and last out an entire game. She was leading us there when a Lobo snuck up on us.

  “Please,” she continues, her eyes scanning what little of the dark forest she can see between the houses. “Let me come with you. I swear that I won’t cause any trouble. I just… I can’t bear the thought of being here alone.”

  “No,” Leon says. “Go away.”

  “Leon,” I whisper.

  “Please,” the girl begs. “Don’t leave me here!”

  “Be quiet!” Leon snaps.

  “No, you be quiet,” I snap, offering him the worst glare I can manage. I turn toward Cheyenne and step forward, not knowing whether or not this could be a trap. Regardless, her sobs will eventually draw trouble. “Do you know anything about these houses?”

  “Only that they’re locked,” she replies, sniffling. “I… I wanted to try and pick the lock on one of them, but… Christy said we didn’t have time to waste.”

  “You can pick locks?” Leon asks.

  Cheyenne nods.

  He sighs and lowers the gun. “I may regret this, but I guess we can’t turn you away.”

  “Thank you,” she replies, moving forward. “You won’t regret this.”

  I grind my jaw together as the girl steps up onto the deck beside us. The stench of blood on her is overwhelming, to the point where I nearly gag when she passes me, but I know doing so would be insensitive. She hasn’t mentioned it, but I’m almost one-hundred-percent certain it’s her sister’s blood staining her clothes. The idea is enough to unsettle me, but also give me cause for concern.

  If her sister was killed only recently, then the Lobo could still be tracking her scent.

  In the moments of silence that follow, Cheyenne pulls a bobby pin from her hair and leans forward to examine the doorknob.

  “Hurry,” I say.

  “I’ll try,” Cheyenne replies.

  “Why?” Leon then asks.

  “We don’t know if the Lobo is still following her.”

  “I lost it in the woods,” Cheyenne says. “I… don’t think it’s coming back.”

  “But we have no idea,” I respond. “So, please, hurry.”

  She obeys, brushing the hair out of her eyes to give herself a better view of her work while Leon and I stand guard, weapons in hand. The young man offers me an unsure look, but nods when my gaze lingers for a moment too long, as if to assure me that things will be all right.

  Somewhere nearby, something begins to move through the river.

  I swear my heart stops beating. “Hurry,” I whisper.

  “I think I’ve almost got it,” Cheyenne says.

  “Hurry,” I say again, as the sounds of movement through the shallows echo along the shoreline.

  The bobby pin twists to the side. “Got it,” Cheyenne says. “I—”

  A growl sounds somewhere nearby.

  “Go!” Leon screams.

  I push Cheyenne into the house with such force that she plummets to the floor and throw myself around the door just in time to see the Lobo rounding the corner.

  Leon raises the gun.

  “Don’t shoot!” I cry.

  He stumbles backward.

  His foot catches.

  He trips.

  I grab his shirt and haul him inside just as the Lobo throws itself onto the porch.

  It takes me and Leon’s combined efforts to force the door in place as the monstrosity collides against the wood. Snarling, baying, and screeching, it attempts to enter as I struggle to align the door against the jamb so I can turn the deadbolt into place.

  “Cheyenne!” I cry. “Help us!”

  But the girl is frozen. She cannot move, cannot act, cannot speak.

  I swear and slam my shoulder against the door.

  Leon pushes his entire weight against it.

  I scream.

  He cries out.

  Cheyenne sobs.

  I have just locked the deadbolt into place when a second howl goes up somewhere outside.

  “There’s more of them?” Leon asks, panic in his eyes and desperation in his voice.

  “I… I don’t know,” Cheyenne sobs. “I thought… I thought there was only one.”

  “Shutter the windows,” I say as the Lobo scratches at the door.

  Leon stares at me, bewildered. Then he makes sense of what I am saying and goes to one side of the living room we are standing, slamming the shutters over the glass and locking them in place.

  The windows near the far side of the house are too high up for the Lobo to reach, given the depth of the foundation and the height of the house, but still, I lean forward to see where the Lobo has gone.

  The lupine monstrosity’s face looks up at me from where it stands.

  I shiver.

  “Thank God,” I whisper as the creature howls and, somewhere, another responds.

  Cheyenne bows her head and continues to cry.

  A hand touches my shoulder.

  I raise my eyes.

  Leon looks down at me. “You okay?”

  “I think so,” I say, breathless, heart hammering and lungs throbbing.

  “Do you think we’re safe here?”

  I don’t know what to say, and for that reason, I don’t respond.

  Outside, the Lobo growls.

  And inside, I feel as though we have just fallen into a trap.

  Chapter 8

  We wait for what feels like hours for the Lobo to leave. Huddling, idly, in the master bedroom on the second floor, I watch the monster’s progress out the window as it paces back and forth, left and right, sniffling and snarling and even marking the grounds we stand upon.

  “We’re trapped,” Leon says, matter-of-factly.

  I can only nod.

  There is no denying the predicament we have landed in.

  Oh well, my consciousness says. At least you’re safe. Right?

  For now, I want to reply, but dare not, for fear of waking Cheyenne, who has finally fallen asleep after restless hours of tossing and turning.

  Rather, I step up beside Leon to look out at not only the wasteland, but the monster stalking the grounds below, and try my hardest not to falter beneath its oppressive malice.

  “It could’ve easily killed one of us,” he says. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I know.”

  “Why’d you do it?” he asks, turning his head to face me.

  “Do… what?” I frown.

  “Let her come in with us.”

  “It was the decent thing to do, Leon.”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be a competition?”

  I don’t know. On one hand, I am a firm believer that we are in it to win this game—that, regardless of the moral implications that may arise, the two of us are meant to take home the one-million dollars. On another, I am a staunch defender of the human spirit. I do not like to see people suffering, no matter who they are.

  “You heard the man get torn apart by the Ashen,” I offer in the moments following his question.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So you can only imagine how painful that must have been.”

  “Are you back on the whole we die in the game, we die in real life idea?”

  “We still have to consider that possibility.”

  “We also have to consider the fact that we’re here to try and save your mom,” Leon replies. “Did you not think of that?”

  “I did.”

  “And what conclusion did you come to?”

  “That there’s still forty-two people left in this game, including us.”

  He can only stare. “I’m not sure I can believe this,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

  “You don’t have to believe anything. There’s safety in numbers, and until this game ends, we’re better off believing that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “Unless that tunnel gets blocked off.”

  “By what?”

  “Anything.”

  The word is so final, so clear, so deliberate that it causes me to frown. I want to believe in the good of humanity. I really do. But knowing what some gamers do in virtual reality does not help my case at all.

  As I turn toward Cheyenne, and as I watch her sleep in freshly-changed clothes, I wonder: will she betray us? Will she stab us in the back? The fact that we saved her means nothing if she thinks her sister is alive on the other side, no matter how gruesome and realistic her death happened to be.

  But if she believes she died…

  The conundrum is too much to bear.

  “You’re right,” I finally say after a moment’s consideration.

  “I am?” I nod. “We have to believe anything is possible.”

  “I knew you’d come around,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. He sighs, narrows his eyes, and looks out at the Lobo. “Have you considered what we’ll do while waiting for that thing to leave us alone?”

  “We’re safer with it outside than we would be if it weren’t,” I reply. “It’s a blessing in disguise, I guess. I mean… would you want to come around here if you knew there was a Lobo in the area?”

  “Not really.”

  “Exactly.” Turning, I approach the doorway. “So, with that in mind… let’s see if we can scrounge up anything to eat.”

  “You think she’ll flip if she wakes up and sees we’re not here?” Leon asks, regarding Cheyenne with the same reservation he’s had since her arrival.

  “I don’t think she’ll be awake for a while.”

  Then we’re exiting the bedroom and stepping into the hallway.

  The cannon fires once while we scrounge through the remains of an old kitchen, bringing the total number of players down to forty-one. Cold, scared, and unsure what to think as we guide ourselves by flashlight through the darkened home, I fumble through kitchen cabinets only to find there is more food here than I could’ve possibly imagined.

  “I was right,” I say in the gloomy silence that permeates this home. “There is more food here.”

  “Probably because it’s a dangerous zone,” Leon replies, withdrawing a box of peanut butter crackers that are likely stale beyond compare.

  “The game never worked like that before.”

  “This game is different.”

  I don’t reply, mostly because I don’t want to debate the logistics of the situation, but also because I know, in the back of my mind, that he’s probably right. The moderators have orchestrated this game in a manner that makes it incomparable to any before it. Because of that, we must take everything with a grain of salt.

  Leon places the package of peanut butter crackers on the kitchen island. “Is there water?”

  “It’s in the pantry,” I reply, “on the floor.”

  He withdraws the pack of bottled water and places it next to the crackers so I can examine it. Thankfully, none of the caps have been broken, and the contents within appear to be free of contamination.

  “Well, that solves one problem,” I offer.

  “For now,” Leon says. “What happens when we run out of it?”

  “We take it from the stream.”

  “You want to take it from the river?”

  I merely narrow my eyes.

  “You can’t be serious,” he replies.

  “People did it for hundreds of years before they started purifying it.”

  “Either way, I don’t like the idea of drinking water from the Dark Forest’s river.”

  “Well, you’re going to be thirsty then, because that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

  Leon crosses his arms over his chest and sighs. “I just wish we had more answers. You know? Something we could go on to make us understand why they did this.”

  “You mean put us here?” I wait for him to nod before saying, “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a social experiment.”

  “How do you reckon?”

  “We’re like rats in here—made to wander, to fight, to survive. Put one in a simulation and you may come out with one result, put a second in and it’ll be completely different. But think about it, Leon. There were fifty of us to start. Now we’re down to forty-one.”

  “What makes you think it’s only forty-one?”

  “You haven’t been keeping track?”

  “No,” he admits with a shake of his head. “Honestly, I’ve just been concentrating on surviving.”

  “Which is what we should be doing,” I say, then nod as I consider the food and water before us. I turn my head to look up the nearby stairwell. “Should we wake Cheyenne?”

  “No. Not after all it took for her to get to sleep.”

  “I’m trying to figure out how to divide this food.”

  “There’s twelve packs of crackers and twelve waters, so… that leaves four each. Eat one now and save the rest for later.”

  “I never thought we’d have to ration food inside a video game.”

  “You gotta do what you gotta do. Right?”

  Right, I think, but find no solace in the matter.

  As I begin to unwrap my package of crackers, and as I pop the seal upon my first bottled water, I consider our families in the outside world and wonder just what they might have been told regarding our extended absences.

 

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