Deadwave Read online

  Deadwave

  Michael Evans

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Newsletter

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  The Story Continues...

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Deadwave (Conspiracy Chronicles)

  Copyright © 2019 by Michael Evans

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For bi-weekly updates from the author on his mission to live boundlessly and a free download of the Deadwave Official Game Guide subscribe to the author’s newsletter at: www.mevansinked.com/team-boundless/

  To Grandpa, the best man I know.

  Chapter 1

  The darkness of the elevator shaft tempts me to allow gravity to pull my body with it.

  A loud bang, undoubtedly the sound of a gunshot, echoes from floors below and hits my ears in a series of jarring pops. If I’m not careful, a simple scream, even the growls of the dead, can throw off my concentration and send me crashing to oblivion.

  I gotta go for it. I grit my teeth and exhale. I try to balance along the girdle of the elevator shaft. A chilling sensation trickles down my spine and a rush of adrenaline excites my muscles as I hold a foot out over the abyss, toying with the idea of dropping my body dozens, maybe hundreds of feet into the rusted empty elevator shaft at the center of the abandoned office building.

  This is risky. As confident (some would say arrogant) as I am, I still question if I can do it. The idea isn’t to let my body plummet to its death hundreds of feet below, it is to try and reach the rocket launcher that has spawned on the far edge of the metal casing of the elevator shaft.

  I take my first step off the cracked marble floor tile outside the elevator and step onto the few inches of concrete that I’m not entirely confident can hold my body. But after having both my feet on the concrete and my fingers grasping the rusted metal bar above me, I feel a bit more confident. I can do this.

  I sigh. Now I have to shimmy myself across the opening of the elevator shaft without being shot or looking down. Easy money. I let the thought echo in my mind only as a false sense of hope. I know how likely it is that I will die in this crazy-ass stunt. But if I don’t try something desperate, the zombies and remaining people in the building will corner me on the floor I’m on.

  Let’s make some awesomeness happen. And by the word awesomeness, I mean annihilating all my opponents with the fury of an explosive-packed rocket launcher. Maybe not your everyday idea of an awesome time, but for me it is my only chance at survival—my only chance at winning. And winners don’t die—winners kill.

  I shift my weight midair, allowing my body to shimmy across the metal bar en route to the rocket launcher feet away. Never in my life has an elevator seemed so wide; I can practically feel the vacuum of air below me sucking my confidence away in an instant. Holy crap, this is scarier than I thought. I have always had a fear of heights, one that I ruthlessly suppress. After all, there is something about most games of Deadwave that allows me to feel invincible. But not this time. There is a new depth to the darkness of the elevator shaft, a new energy, that forces my mind spiraling back to the horrors of the time that I slipped outside my house in La Jolla and almost died as my nine-year-old body plummeted to the sandy shores below.

  Not today. I grunt, feeling a rush of excitement as I reach the white rocket launcher perched on the far girdle of the elevator. My biceps, even after years of daily workouts, are shaking from the force of having to hold myself up for that long. Then I finally get to rest as I lower myself onto the girdle and pick up the rocket launcher.

  I smile, imagining Riley’s or Maken’s faces when I get to blow them to pieces with the force of the most powerful weapon anyone can get their hands on. At this moment, without a doubt, there are thousands of people in the convention center in downtown San Diego screaming as they watch the live feed of my vision. It is getting to give people joy like that and experience the pure bliss that comes with being a star that makes playing this game worth it.

  Deadwave is not a game for everyone. Having your mind all but trapped in a virtual world, with pain and visions so close to the real one, the mental trauma and physical agony that ensue make it a grueling game to play hours upon hours each day. But being one of the best in the world pays—it pays a lot. But nothing will ever be enough for my dad—enough for me.

  I hope he’s watching. I push the vision of my father and the screaming fans out of my mind, instead focusing on the sole goal ahead of me: to survive, which inevitably means to kill. I let the base of the rocket launcher rest on my shoulder, its white coat of paint causing its five-foot-long body to stick out in the darkness. There has to be only one of these in the entire building, but that also means only one chance to kill as many people and zombies as possible.

  Oof, this is tough. In a split second, practically a million scenarios run through my head as I try to make the next best tactical decision. I can wait here and let the zombies and other players outside kill each other, or I can leave and try to do their dirty work for them.

  After one loud explosion and a subsequent wave of force that knocks me back up against the wall, the answer smacks me in the face: run. One of the other players on one of the lower floors must have set off an explosion, and that explosion conveniently happened to set a massive blaze in the elevator shaft whose smoke and flames are rapidly advancing towards me.

  Without even thinking, I lower my legs and then spring my body upward to throw the rocket launcher across the now blazing elevator shaft. Immediately after it leaves my hands, I jump back onto the metal bar and begin shimmying my way across the opening in a mad dash to escape the flames, whose heat is beginning to penetrate my skin. I exhale, sighing with relief as I throw my body down from the metal bar and back through the opening of the elevator to land right next to the untouched rocket launcher.

  I narrow my eyes with determination, the taste of victory and acrid smoke fresh on my lips. I shove the thick metal doors of the elevator closed as the flames ignite that section of the empty elevator shaft, and pick up the rocket launcher mid-run.

  I’M OUTTA HERE. My legs erupt into long strides as I run across the cracked floor tiles. I dash into one of the side hallways off the central room, hoping that the walls will save me from the fallout of any ensuing explosion. My brain finally registers the bar displaying my inventory, health, and the game status in the lower left cor
ner of my vision. There are only five people left standing, and I’m in good health with a shot of adrenaline and several rations in my bag to go along with my fashionable tactical body armor (it’s not actually fashionable—it’s puffy and makes me look bloated and sad—but it suppresses 10% of hit damage, which is always a good thing). But one key thing is missing from my arsenal. Although I have a crowbar, there are only two bullets left in my pistol after eliminating Astor in an encounter earlier in the game. And this late in the game, after now more than an hour of running around trying to avoid the waves of zombie office workers roaming the halls of this building, I have lost the strength in me to slash zombies apart with a crowbar. In fact, with me holding a rocket launcher on my right shoulder, that will likely be impossible.

  I will have to resort to finding the remaining players and hope to eliminate them all at once. I stand quietly for a moment, scanning my surroundings for any signs of life in the eerie silence that has enveloped the hallway. After a few seconds, I hear the faint grumbling noise of a zombie. The dozens of zombies that spawn during each game are programmed to lock on and target Deadwave players, and although they are annoying when they target you, when they target rival players, there is nothing better.

  C’mon, go ahead, make it easy for me. I walk towards the sounds, and after a few seconds it is clear that the zombie isn’t targeting me, at least not yet. From a distance, I can tell that this zombie is particularly ugly, with a bulging belly, slightly discolored skin, scabs grotesquely lining its body, to go along with a business-casual outfit of jeans and a plaid T-shirt that are all but torn to pieces. Dead or alive, I’m glad I don’t look like that. I inhale a deep breath of the clean air from the specialized helmet all Deadwave players have to wear to enter the virtual world and look down at my avatar, which is essentially a glorified version of the man I always dreamt of being.

  My avatar has bulging muscles, instead of my thin, wiry frame that I can never seem to change no matter how much I work out or how many supplements I take. It has beautiful tan skin that makes my pasty white skin look ghostly in comparison. I even chose to alter my own face, choosing to opt for red eyes to scare my opponents, a buzz cut, and a defined jaw line that perfectly contradicts my soft baby face, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair.

  They will all be scared of me soon. I grin with my actual face, not my avatar’s face, as I walk in long, yet quiet strides to the growls of the zombies. If at this point you are asking how I am able to walk while playing a video game, I certainly understand. The first time I played Deadwave, when it came out three years ago, my depressed, socially awkward self was in awe at the brevity of the game. Using a few motion-sensor cameras positioned around the room and wearing the Chimera VR Headset, for a relatively minimal cost it was possible for me to become fully immersed into what felt like the real-life zombie apocalypse. In the virtual worlds that are created each time one enters a game of Deadwave, one’s mind and body can’t help but believe as if every gunshot, every scream, and every ounce of pain is real with the lifelike graphics and pitch-perfect audio. The first time I played the game, I felt a rush of adrenaline and a kid-like excitement at the sheer joy that came from playing it, both of which instantly made me realize that I had to do this for the rest of my life. (I also screamed very loudly the first time a horde of zombies attacked me, but we won’t harp on that.) And soon enough it consumed me to the point that it became my entire life—it became my sole escape from a life that I didn’t want to be living.

  But now I’m living the dream, or at least I should be. In three years, I have managed to become one of the best Deadwave players in the world and been able to get hundreds of thousands of people to watch my streams each day, but somehow happiness and fulfillment never come as easy as they should. It’s in the moments that the whole world would think I have it all that it becomes obvious to me that I never will be satisfied.

  No matter how many victories I garner, there will never be enough. No matter how much money I make, it will never make me happy. No matter how many people I beat, it still won’t convince me that I’m good enough.

  But I won’t ever stop trying. And blowing Maken’s brains out is a good place to start. Winning this game is one step closer to finally realizing my goal come true—winning the Deadwave World Championship—and that may be enough for me to finally smile inside and out.

  I’m getting close to these motherfuckers. I slow my pace down to a tiptoe. The corridor where the horde of zombies managed to swarm to is a few feet in front of me. If I don’t act fast, they will all surely find a way to tear my guts apart within minutes, or I’ll have to risk wasting the only rocket I have in the launcher.

  I quickly analyze my surroundings. On two sides I am surrounded by the cracked, yet thick windows that give way to the darkness of the night sky outside and the abandoned warehouses in the distance. On my opposite two sides, yellow plastered walls with gaping tears and insulation oozing out absorb the view.

  I look back around the corner, careful not to stick out my head too far into the dark corridor. To my horror, it appears as if the zombies have gotten tired of trying to force open the barricaded door that one of the players (probably Maken or Riva) have hid themselves behind, and now all are beginning to shift their desire to kill onto my flesh. I pull out the pistol, determined to use the two last bullets in it to kill each zombie that is quickly approaching. Unfortunately, although I am quick to lay down the rocket launcher and pull the pistol out of my drawstring bag, the moment I press down on the trigger, both bullets hit the shoulders of the respective zombies. Now I have one obese and bald creature with a severed arm running towards me along with a sunken-in rat-like creature that vaguely resembles a human.

  Great. In any normal situation, two zombies charging at me would be manageable, but with at least another five zombies seconds behind them, I know that this is the kind of shit that I tend to get stuck in that will cause me to lose the game. Time to use that rocket launcher.

  I sigh, mainly to prepare my muscles for the insane force that will reverberate throughout my body with the firing of the gun, but also because I know how much harder it will be for me to kill the remaining players in the game without the weapon. I take one deep breath in and exhale, firing the rocket launcher between the two packs of zombies that locked on me, the first two dozens of yards away from me. For a second, the mad reverberations of the explosion rock my body, causing me to stumble backward onto the ground. Then an eruption of fire ensues, and the dismembered limbs of multiple zombies project out of the cloud of smoke swallowing the hallway, landing feet away from me.

  That was freaking dope. I can’t help but smile at how cool it is to witness a pyrotechnic show that no sane or insane person would attempt to engage in real life due to death being a very plausible outcome. However, I don’t need to worry about death, and that thought is liberating. So freeing, in fact, that this game makes real life feel so stupid in comparison—it makes me feel trapped in my body, and like Deadwave is my only way out.

  I stand up, quickly regaining my composure as the thick, black smoke from the explosion makes its way into my avatar’s lungs. Luckily, I don’t have to breathe any of that disgusting air in myself, or else you wouldn’t see me around for much longer.

  Only a split second after the echoes of the explosion fade, the always bone-chilling sound of one of the dead connects with my ears. Dang, somehow always one of them survives. I grimace, feeling a heaviness in my right leg as I leave the rocket launcher on the ground and quickly pull my crowbar out of my bag.

  They made a mistake surviving those flames. I slowly creep backward, waiting for the zombie to emerge from the now pitch-black cloud of dust and debris that collected from the blown-apart walls. Sometimes playing this game and experiencing the satisfaction of killing a lifelike creature makes me feel like a monster. I sometimes feel guilty for getting such pleasure out of exuding violence. But deep down inside, I know that isn’t the real reason I like to feel the blood of an e
nemy roll down my arm. It really is my only way of taking out the anger and hatred for my own self. It is my only way of trying to purge myself of the regret.

  The zombie lunges forward, its one arm and half-blown-off face emerging from the smoke as if it had experienced nothing more than a gust of wind. Not interested in seeing any more of its face, or it tearing apart my own, I smash the crowbar right into its neck. The tension of its skin pushes up against the rusted metal of the crowbar, making it hard to wrench it out of its body.

  Just as I tear the crowbar out of its body, the zombie uses whatever teeth are left in its swollen jaw and its gross fingernails to claw into me. My health dips down, and a dull pain shoots through my side (luckily the pain intensity of the game is relatively low, so I don’t have to experience the actual pain of having a zombie bite into me). Watching my health go down by 100 points when every Deadwave player only has 1000 health points is always a deflating feeling, but I know I’m long from being finished.

  Not allowing the bite to shake me, I swing the crowbar into the legs of the zombie, sending its tattered body and what is left of its bald, cracked skin on its head toppling to the ground. Immediately as the zombie falls to the ground, I sprint through the smoke, hoping to catch any players that lurk on the other side off guard. However, before I can even attempt to catch anyone off guard, I hear the familiar loud, metallic clank of a grenade hitting the ground next to me, and just as my eyes, clouded in dust, are about to emerge from the smoke, I feel the pain and searing heat of the grenade exploding feet from me. Dozens of metal shards drive into my body upon impact, knocking me to the ground and causing my health to decrease by over 700 points, bringing my avatar, and my hopes of victory, on the verge of demise.

  “You’re dead now.”

  The all-too-familiar voice of Maken, last year’s Deadwave World Champion, and his low, muffled laughter makes its way to my ears, which are ringing with the force that the grenade unleashed upon them. With every muscle in my body feeling heavy and wrought with distress, I scramble for my bag, trying to intake some of the rations to increase my health before Maken makes his final strike on me.