I figured... why wait for Monday. Here's the first chapter for you special supporters.Genre: Base Builder/LitRPG. Medieval all the way to fucking space.Chapter 1
Bernard let out a long and heartfelt groan.
His head drooped, his shoulders sunk, and he closed his eyes.
He could hear Scott trying to push a woman through his bed just above Bernard.
Both of the participants in this would-be olympic sport being loud, grunting, and slapping flesh together like they were clapping.
Or so it sounded.
The ceiling was rather thin considering this was a half-sized basement that was more akin to a crawl space. It might as well have been happening right in front of him.
Clicking his tongue Bernard focused on his task.
He was allowed to remain in the building because he’d proved he could keep the boiler working, as well as the water heater. Unfortunately the air conditioning unit was beyond him.
Which more or less meant he was expected to also try to fix anything else in the building. Most of which was well beyond him.
Not everything though. He’d actually been able to piece together a lot of things and get more than he thought he could, up and running.
He did fairly well, all things considered.
On top of that, he was learning quickly.
“Gaaarrrghhhnnn,” groaned a zombie from outside the small window. It was laid out on the ground and staring down at Bernard. It had both hands wrapped around the steel bars that kept it out.
The gaps were too small for it to stick it’s arms through.
“Yeah, I know,” Bernard muttered as he worked his way through the diagram. He was attempting to find where the blower connector went in the control unit.
If he could get it hooked back in, he could probably get the massive AC unit running again. Admittedly it was on the roof and there was no way to safely work on that part, but he could at least handle some of it from here. Most of the control panels were all down here for some reason.
It didn’t make sense to him, nor did it seem safe, but for one reason or another, it apparently had been wired up this way. From knowing the owner of the building, it probably was some cost saving measure.
“Gnnn. Unnnnn, nn,” provided the zombie helpfully.
“Maybe. Depends on if I get this working. Then I could see about asking her if she wanted to hang out sometime,” answered Bernard at the imagined question the zombie asked him. “I need just… I need an accomplishment. Ya know? Right now I’m just… the basement Rat. Ben the Rat. And-oh? It goes to green? Really?”
Bernard, or Ben as everyone called him, eased forward over the control panel. He stuck the metal clasp into position on the green marker. Then he leaned over and looked to the power box on the side.
Nothing happened.
“Or maybe it isn’t green. Or maybe… or maybe you and your friends ate the AC and this is all pointless,” Ben hissed and looked at the zombie.
It had its rotten face pressed up to the bars and was making slow biting gestures.
With a sigh, Ben picked up a long piece of rebar, held it tightly, then jammed the sharpened tip of it into the zombies head. He’d gotten it right through it’s eye.
He felt it when the crunch of the bone at the back of the socket gave way and he punctured into it’s brain. Pushing a bit harder he made sure to skewer it’s rotting jello like brain. Then he jerked it out.
The zombie went still and laid lifeless there.
Another zombie would eventually pull it out of the way to take it’s place. Ben had killed thirty or forty like this at this point.
“Whatever. Time to go back up, I guess,” Ben lamented. “Can’t miss dinner. Frickin’ Scott gets all pissy if everyone doesn’t show up.”
Scuttling over to his pack, Ben got all his possessions put away and left. There was nothing left to do here.
***
Ben peeked out the window and to the city below. The second floor had once been a day room, office, and gym. Most of that had been converted to the “dinning room” as Scott called it. It now fit around a hundred people comfortably.
Not that they had that many.
Half of the building had died in the zombie outbreak three weeks ago. Another half of the survivors died after that as people figured out the dos and do nots of dealing with corpses and zombies.
Everyone worked to barricade the front entrance pretty quickly. Corpses were tossed off the roof toward the back of the building.
The emergency exit door had been locked, broken, and the hinges welded shut.
There was only one way into the building.
All the first floor windows had bars on them and were raised higher than expected. Because the crawl-space basement had window slits, that was.
Scott took control of the building while as the world went and destroyed itself in a hurry.
It’d only taken a simple vote and promises from him. That they would come first and no one else mattered.
“— should go take that building. We have the manpower to do it, so why don’t we? There’s no reason to stay here. The apartments there are much better and there’s way more room.”
Bernard didn’t look up to see who was talking. It didn’t matter.
The vast majority of the people in the building all wanted to move to a new building. It was only a few streets away but was a much newer apartment complex. One that would have been finished the day after the zombie apocalypse started.
No one had moved in, the building was empty.
Apparently that was preferable to the majority of the buildings inhabitants.
Bernard personally would rather stay here but that was partially more of a familiarity than anything. Of his twenty-two years on the planet, most of them had been spent here with his mom.
Biting his lip, he felt the same piercing stab zip through his heart.
He’d lost his mother in the sixth day of “The End”. She’d been trying to help a neighbor the day it all started and was bitten for her trouble. Five days later she’d died but hadn’t turned.
He’d had to drag her body to the roof himself and then shove her over the edge.
When he’d come to look for her body that evening it’d been gone. Which meant she’d most certainly turned into a zombie and was now wandering the streets.
“What’re you doing? What the fuck?” asked a nervous voice.
Frowning, Bernard turned around.
Several of Scott’s Harem were nearby. He’d made a point of going out into the streets and inviting women he felt attractive back to the building.
So long as they were his, that was.
The newest woman had her back to him and had a hand to her head. She was also trembling from head to toe as if she were about to have a seizure.
“Is she bit?” asked one of the others. “Scott said she was clean.”
“No bites. She was clean. I checked her too,” said a different woman. “Do you… is something wrong with you? Like, do you have epilepsy or whatever?”
With a staggered step the woman moved away from her compatriots. Several more and she was suddenly practically atop Bernard.
She spun, realized he was there, and moved away from him.
Or started to.
Her eyes were glassy, her mouth somewhat slack, her skin was pale and looked slick with sweat. Before Bernard could register more than, “she’s pretty and sick” she had fallen toward him.
“Gah!” shrieked Bernard, putting his hands up in front of himself. He managed to get ahold of her shoulders and force her to a stop. “What’re you doing? Are you okay?”
She groaned, then bit the top of his left forearm.
Screaming, Bernard started punching her in the side of the head with his right hand. His knuckles slammed into her temple several times and she suddenly let go.
Her body collapsed to the ground and she laid there unmoving.
“What the fuck!?” yelled Bernard, looking to his arm. There was a near perfect circle of teeth marks there with blood welling up. She’d broken the skin but hadn’t ripped a chunk out of him thankfully.
There was drool liberally smeared all over as well.
Oh shit.
OH SHIT!
Thinking quickly, Bernard rushed over to a napkin dispenser and yanked out a handful. He started to roughly brush at the bite. Trying to get her saliva out of it as quickly as he could.
His brain had gone from, “she’s sick” to “she’s a fucking zombie” and now he was terrified he’d be next. After brushing at the wound he then pushed fresh napkins into it. Trying to get the blood and saliva out of it.
“What happened!?” demanded a voice from behind him.
He looked over his shoulder to find a large man with short black hair and uncaring brown eyes. There was no one would who would call Scott attractive, but they could at least say he wasn’t unattractive.
“Sherry just went and bit Rat,” stated one of the women.
“Shit,” Scott deadpanned. He was watching Ben as he blotted, rubbed, and patted at his arm.
Not paying anymore attention to Scott, Ben looked back to his arm. He was fairly certain that if Sherry had just become a zombie, he might be alright. There’d been a few people who survived a bite that was treated quickly enough.
Or early enough in the transition.
“Alright. Time to move then. Sorry, Rat,” Scott muttered. “Best I can do is leave you here. Rather than kill you.”
“What?” Ben asked and looked up.
There was a heavy thump noise behind Ben’s head, though he only heard the start of that noise.
Because the lights went out before he’d even registered he’d heard it.
***
Ben didn’t want to open his eyes.
His head hurt.
From the top of his head, to the bottom of his jaw, it hurt.
A throbbing, aching, and equally sharp, pain that made Ben want to puke. As if his skull had been filled to bursting with cotton and it was going to split apart.
Groaning, he rolled to the side.
In that moment he realized he was actually in his bed. The covers weren’t pulled over him and he was just laying on top of them.
Then the previous interaction came back to him. The sudden and painful sting in his arm when he put pressure on it brining his thoughts to the situation he’d been dropped into.
Looking at his arm, he could see there was a very bright red bite mark there. It was very infected looking already and oozing blood.
He very much was showing signs of turning long before he died.
With a long sigh, he tilted his head to the side and looked at the clock on his bedside table. It read at six pm, though the day was the same as when he’d woken up this morning.
He’d been unconscious for at least six hours, give or take.
Then he noticed that it was running on battery backup. The lights of his room were also out.
Everything was without power.
“They took the generator and left me here?” Ben whispered to himself. Feeling pitiful and lost he didn’t even know what to do with himself.
You just have to put one foot in front of the other. Step forward, put it down, do it again.
Right, mom?
If you were here, what would you want to do. If you knew what we did now, how would you handle it?
Levering himself up to a sitting position Ben felt like the world around him was swimming. That everything was rushing past faster than he could even contemplate it. As if he were just a passenger in a vehicle and everything around him was scenery racing by.
Focusing on his thoughts, he ignored everything else.
Especially since it seemed like he might get sick if he didn’t.
Help. Help first.
Need medical help.
Medical help that… that uh… no.
No one was able to treat bites. Even doctors and hospitals.
Do I just wait here and die then?
Gnashing his teeth together, Ben shook his head.
Then immediately regretted it as his head rebelled against the movement.
A weird thought popped into his head.
That if there was anyone who could help him, it was Mr. Leery. A strange old man who lived just across the street. He lived in the basement level.
All the foraging teams that’d tried the building had avoided the basement. Even Scott had done so.
Though one team had reported making contact with him briefly in the lobby. They’d ran in the opposite direction as soon as they saw them.
Mr. Leery had been a strange man. A few people had attempted to break into his home before everything went to shit.
Before the world ended.
Every single person who had tried had gotten incredibly sick.
Sick to the point that they were practically retching their guts out over the span of three weeks.
Only to end up dying.
It’d been a public spectacle as everyone knew they’d tried to rob Mr. Leery. They’d bragged about it, in fact.
That they’d try again soon, too.
Then they died.
After that no one even said a word about the man, other than to not mess with him in any way. Whether it was true that he was a warlock or not, Ben didn’t think it mattered.
Either the man could help Ben, couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
The alternative was to slowly become a zombie anyways, which made the choice to go, pretty simple. It really wasn’t even a choice to be made.
There was no point in even bothering to bandage his arm. The damage was already done and it wouldn’t do him any good.
Ben stood up.
Or at least he tried to.
The first attempt ended with him sitting right back down as the world spun.
A few minutes later, the second attempt went much better. He got to his feet. After that he shuffled his way down to the first floor, noting as he went that the electricity for the building was definitely off.
Nor could he hear the thrumming of the generator when he got to the lobby.
He didn’t need to check the warehouse they’d built up to know it was empty. Chances were they’d loaded everything up then left. Anything they left behind they didn’t want or couldn’t carry.
At least the door was barricaded still and everything that would be needed for the defenses was in place. All he had to do was pull the bar and then shove the wooden sled over.
Even the ex-inhabitants wouldn’t be able to get back in at that point.
He only had an hour or so before the sun fell. He needed to be quick.
Zombies were always a problem, but they were more dangerous at night. They didn’t make that much noise and they were harder to see in the dark.
Ben didn’t bother to grab a weapon. He was in no condition to fight. His best and really only bet was to move with determination.
Opening the door, Ben looked around.
The street in front of him looked deserted though there was obvious evidence of a fight. Zombie corpses and a broken chair that had either been discarded or broken in the scrum.
Biting his lip, Ben shuffled forward. There was no time like the present and the light of day was fast fading.
Moving as quickly as he could, he worked his way across the street. He only had to go a single building down so he moved with speed down the sidewalk.
He could see a small gang of monsters at the intersection. They were milling about and hadn’t spotted him yet.
Grimacing, Ben picked his speed up to a very quick walk. Moving faster would just be louder and likely catch the attention of the zombies.
While their sight and hearing was considerably less given they were dead now, they didn’t seem to decompose very quickly. Everyone had half expected the zombies to just rot away swiftly.
But they didn’t.
Reaching the building Mr. Leery lived in Ben rushed up to the door.
Which was a mistake. He tripped over a shattered stair and slammed into the front door bodily. Not bothering to look at the zombies, as he knew they’d most definitely heard that, he focused on his task.
Ben jerked the door open and fled inside.
As soon as he entered he looked around in every direction. Trying to figure out which way would get him to Mr. Leery’s room.
With any luck, he’d be there. Be there, alive, and willing to help him.
There was a door off to the side that didn’t look to be damaged, torn down, or even touched in a bad way. It looked almost pristine to Ben.
Which meant it was most likely the door he needed.
Shoving the front door closed behind himself Ben rushed ahead again. He made it to the door and knocked on it several times.
“Hello? Mr. Leery?” asked Ben in as loud a voice as he was willing to risk. “Hello? I really need your help. I know it sounds really strange but there were a lot of rumors about you being a warlock and-and I could really use some help.
“I figure if there’s anyone who could help maybe it’s a warlock. Or something like that. Maybe?”
There was a boom to his left that caused Ben to look up. The front door of the building was shut and closed but it shifted around in it’s frame.
The zombies had made it to the door after his klutzy door slam. He’d led them straight here.
“Please… Mr. Leery, I’ve lived here all my life and I know you’re a bit weird. We had a few talks and you-you always seemed a bit more than most. Could use some help,” Ben pleaded. His head hanging against the door. He was knocking much more frantically now.
It was the truth, too.
Mr. Leery had been called a warlock after what’d happened with the thieves, but even before that everyone had felt he was a bit weird.
A bit off.
That he wasn’t someone you could really hold a long conversation with because more often than not he’d just stare through you. Or worse, when he actually looked at you, it felt more like he was inspecting produce at a grocery store.
“Look I know that—”
Ben had grabbed the door and pushed on the handle without really thinking about it. He was just desperate to get in at this point.
So when it easily swung inward without any resistance at all he just jumped right into the apartment and closed it behind him. Leaving him on a stairwell that led down into the basement.
Which meant that Mr. Leery hadn’t unlocked the door for him.
In fact, he’d just broken into the man’s home.
Except Ben wasn’t going to worry about that.
The far fetched idea of Mr. Leery being a warlock was much further away and bothersome than the very real pack of undead zombies that were right behind him.
Spinning around, Ben locked the door, then crept down the stairs. Taking them very slowly and one at a time. The last thing he wanted was the zombies to bust through the front door and follow him down here.
Then he’d have a pissed off Warlock in front of him and an angry zombie mob behind him. A truly untenable position.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs Ben found himself looking straight into Mr. Leery’s apartment.
As well as Mr. Leery
Or, at least, his corpse.
Mr. Leery was laid out on the ground beside what looked to be his dinner table. Further into the apartment and past the living room and entry hall.
Unmoving, laid out on the ground, and with skin the same color as the zombies outside.
“Fuck,” muttered Ben.
It didn’t seem like Mr. Leery would be able to help him.
He was quite dead.
At… least he’s not a zombie.
I guess.