“He was a Torcher,” Firecracker said defensively. “He should know.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hotchkiss. “Well, I’m sure we’re all very thankful to him for his service. Now if you’ll access sequence 1872-A, this will show you how the zombie flu virus interrupted the messages sent from one part of the brain to the others. This is going to be on your test on Friday, so let’s go over it and see if there’s anything you don’t understand.”
Josh keyed the number into his NoteTaker and looked at the diagram that appeared on the screen. He listened as his teacher went over the various parts, but mostly he was thinking about his aunt Lucy, his mother’s sister. He’d never met her, but he’d seen pictures. She was really pretty, just like his mom. And she had turned into a zombie.
She was only sixteen when she got sick, one of the first in the country to get the virus. He’d heard the story several times from his mother, but they didn’t talk about it too much because it made his mother sad. And Josh didn’t talk about it with anyone else. Not even Firecracker knew. Josh wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell anyone. He wasn’t ashamed, exactly. Having a zombie in your family wasn’t the terrible thing it had once been; it just wasn’t something most people talked about.
I guess it doesn’t really make it any better to know that she was just sick, he thought. It was amazing that something as tiny as a virus could turn someone into a monster like that. But she probably didn’t even know it was happening, he told himself.
Mrs. Hotchkiss continued to talk about zombies, and for a change Josh listened to every word. When he heard the bell ring, he was actually disappointed that class was over. Reluctantly he gathered up his things and filed into the hallway along with everyone else. Firecracker caught up with him as he walked to his locker.
“You up for hunting reptile brains tonight?” he asked.
“You know I am,” said Josh.
“Excellent,” Firecracker said. “We’ve got some work to do if we want to get our rankings back.” He punched Josh hard in the shoulder. “And this time, try not to screw up.”
“Hey!” Josh protested. “You’re the one who got—” But Firecracker was already making his way upstairs to his next class.
“Bit!” Josh shouted after him. “You got bit!”
3
“All right, let’s do this.”
Josh spoke into the small microphone mounted inside his helmet as he prepared to play. He had already put on the interactive gloves that allowed him to move his character through the holographic landscape as if he were really there. When he looked through the lenses of his helmet, instead of his room he saw the front doors of the downtown public library building.
The creators of the game had mapped the entire city, and gamers could play in holographic recreations of every building, subway, and sewer. The zombie generator was random, so any place you went into could be infested with the creatures.
Josh leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, allowing the sense stimulators in his helmet to kick in. They allowed him to feel, smell, and sometimes even taste things he came into contact with during the game. Of course some sensations—like zombie bites or the effects of torching—were blocked to prevent players from becoming overstimulated. Still, when those things happened in a game, the sounds and sights alone were enough to make a player imagine what it would feel like.
He knew he shouldn’t be playing, but he couldn’t resist. Torching was exciting. Hunting for z’s and wiping them out made him feel like a real soldier. He loved the way he got more and more tense as he searched for the zombies, the way his senses became so intensely focused as he worried about staying alive and saving the other humans. He especially liked the adrenaline rush that came when he finally found the z’s and torched them.
He looked to his right, where Firecracker stood checking the controls on his flamethrower. “Ready?” Josh asked.
“Let’s torch some meatbags,” Firecracker answered. He flipped the safety on his flamethrower, which erupted in a short burst of fire.
“Easy,” Josh warned him. “We don’t want to burn the place down.”
Josh pushed open the huge door, which swung inward with a groan, and he and Firecracker stepped into the cavernous lobby of the library. The marble floor stretched away into the darkness, while the ceiling towered four floors above them. Books, most of them torn apart, were strewn everywhere. A thick smear of blood ran the length of the circulation desk, as if a body had been dragged along it.
Josh followed the trail to the end, and saw the body of a woman crumpled among a pile of books. Firecracker approached the woman, his flamethrower held out in front of him. When he was a dozen feet away from her, he turned back to Josh. “She’s gone,” he said. “Well, her head is, and she’s not going anywhere without it.”
“Just leave her there,” Josh said. “We’ll clean up on the way out.”
Leaving the woman behind, he and Firecracker advanced deeper into the library. Josh listened for any sound of moaning or shuffling, but there was nothing. Then, all of a sudden, a figure burst from the shadows. Josh aimed his flamethrower at it, but a voice called out, “Don’t shoot! I’m human!”
“Stand down!” Josh ordered Firecracker, who he could see was itching to set something on fire. Reluctantly Firecracker lowered his weapon.
The figure came closer, and Josh saw that it was a girl. She wasn’t dressed in a Torcher uniform, which meant that she was part of the game, a character generated by the system itself. These characters made the game even more fun, but they could also make it more difficult, especially if they got in the way.
The girl was wearing a fluffy black fur jacket with a white hood. The hood had two small, round, black ears on it, and around the girl’s eyes were large black circles. Josh looked down and saw that she was wearing white fur shorts and knee-high boots made out of black fur. She’s supposed to be a panda bear, he thought.
“Great,” said Firecracker. “A Zooey.”
Zooeys were a problem. In real life they were people who liked to dress as animals. They listened to Japanese pop music and spent their time watching horror movies and eating candy. They were freaky but harmless, and Josh had no problem with the Zooeys generated by the game. In the game, though, they were unreliable. Sometimes they gave you good information, but sometimes they just made stuff up—stuff that would get you killed if you weren’t careful.
“What are you doing here?” Josh asked the Zooey.
“Nothing,” the girl said. She was breathing heavily and kept looking behind her.
“Nothing?” said Firecracker. “You mean you always run around the library playing hide-and-seek?”
“Okay,” the girl admitted. “We wanted to see them for ourselves.”
Firecracker groaned. “Of course you did,” he said. “Stupid tourists.”
“What’s your name?” Josh asked.
He wasn’t surprised when the girl answered, “Pandy.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Just two,” she said. “Me and Monkey. Oh, and Rabbit. I guess that’s three.”
Firecracker looked at Josh. “Please just let me torch her,” he said.
“No,” Josh answered. “We could lose points.”
Pandy came closer, and Josh saw that there was blood on the fur of her jacket. He also saw that one hand was covered in a mitten that resembled a bear paw. The other mitten dangled from a string attached to Pandy’s jacket. The nails on that hand were painted bubble-gum pink.
“We were downstairs,” Pandy said. “In the children’s section. Monkey was reading to us from Alice in Wonderland,” she continued. “Then one of them came out of nowhere. It grabbed Monkey and it…” Her voice trailed off as she started to cry.