Ruthless: Path of Conquest

“I want the car!” the man demanded.

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna do this—” James began.

The carjacker drew back and pistol-whipped him, slamming James’s head forward into the horn. His vision swam for a moment. Suddenly the stranger was much closer to him, reaching into the car and grabbing him by the necktie.

“Jus’ put the gun dow’, man,” James said, slurring some of the words slightly.

“You thought I was kidding, I know! I know it!” the man yelled. “But I’m fucking serious, asshole!”

The sight of the barrel of the gun right in his face brought James back to full reality, even as his head felt like it was going to split down the middle.

“Just put the gun down, man,” James said, much more coherently now.

“Keys, asshole!” the other man pronounced. “Outta the car, and gimme your goddamn keys!”

The timer continued grimly counting down in the corner of James’s vision, mocking him. [01:11:32] There was no way he could walk home from here in an hour, even if he had limitless endurance.

“Damn it!” James cursed under his breath. He could think of no way out of this situation that didn’t risk imminent death. And he couldn’t die here.

“I’m doing what you asked!” James said loudly. He lowered his right hand and put the car in park. Then he turned the keys in the ignition and shut the engine off.

“Great work!” the man said. “Now get out, and give ‘em here!”

“You got it, boss,” James said, forcing a smile. He pulled the handle to open the door, and then he took a step out of the car.

“The voice said they was gonna get me,” the man was saying excitedly, “but I know they ain’t!”

“The voice spoke to you, too, then?” James asked, curious despite himself.

“What’s it to you, dickhead?!” the man screeched.

“Only that the voice said something to me, too,” James said carefully. “The voice with the screens, right? What did it say to you?”

The man suddenly looked very afraid. “S-spoke to you too? The voice told me, ‘Jerry, don’t let them put you back in that cage!’ I ain’t never going back, you understand?!” At the end, his voice had climbed almost to a yell.

James nodded eagerly. “Yeah, I understand!” So it really is personalized, he thought. And oddly specific for this guy. Maybe I’m not so special after all.

“You understand?! Then hand over the keys! I gotta get away from here!”

“I can give you a ride to wherever—”

“No, no ride! I need the car. Gimme the goddamn keys!”

The carjacker’s voice had become heated again, and James tried to inject a soothing note into his own voice, to calm the situation.

“Jerry,” James said, “why are you trying to take my car? You trying to get away from this?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. He nodded frantically. “If I can get far enough away, clear my head—”

“Jerry, you can’t drive away from the voice,” James said. “It’ll find you. You need to let me help you—”

“No, I—I can get away!” Jerry was gesticulating wildly with his gun now, and James chose to back away.

“Alright, Jerry,” he said. “Take my keys, and drive as far as you can!” James threw the keys overhand at Jerry’s head, but off to the side slightly and far too hard for Jerry to catch them in his agitated state. The keys flew past Jerry, landing somewhere in the long grass that grew alongside the road. As Jerry turned to look at where they had gone, James began sprinting away.

He heard a loud sound that might have been a gunshot and might have been a car backfiring, but he didn’t look back, and he didn’t slow down.

He ignored the noises, as well as the dizziness and slight nausea that he traced to the pistol-whipping. He felt his gorge rising, but he held back vomit and kept moving, running past the other stopped cars and back up the road toward the firm. They started honking, probably at James’s stopped Civic ahead of them, but he didn’t stop to look around and find out. He stayed low and continued moving at a brisk jog until the terrain changed a bit, and he felt he was far enough away.

Finally, James turned around and made sure no one was behind him. Seeing no sign of Jerry, he slowed down, collected himself, and assessed his situation.

He felt he’d scored a small victory against the carjacker, at least. Jerry wasn’t pursuing him and was now out of sight. If this apparently apocalyptic situation they were in was real, he’d made it unlikely that the other man would escape whatever was coming in this area, assuming that the System was geographically bound as Jerry imagined.

Even if the System was some kind of mass hallucination, James had still made it a lot harder on Jerry to steal his car. And once James got cell signal again, he could call the police.

But James couldn’t fool himself into thinking his situation was good. How would he get home before the timer ran out? If he failed, what would happen to him and his family? He felt that death was a realistic risk, because the voice from out of the sky had said as much. He wasn’t willing to let Mina and Yulia face that alone.

The timer said [01:04:11]

James set his jaw and resolved that he would get home, come hell or high water. He started walking back to the gas station he’d passed driving away from the office, a vague idea in mind that he would find some way from there. He was technically getting further away from home and walking back toward the office, but at least at the gas station, there would definitely be cars.

He would find some way to get a ride there, whatever it took.

After several minutes of marching, the gas station loomed into view across a field of long grass.

James broke into a sprint, cutting across the grass toward the station. He was moving fast, landing forceful footfalls with every step, which explained how he didn’t notice any resistance when he put his foot down in a certain spot, just an alert.

[You killed one Partially Mutated Frog Lv. 0. Blocked experience gained.]

Partially mutated frog, huh? James felt only a modicum of surprise at this, he realized. By tomorrow, he would probably be taking everything in stride. But today was beginning to feel like it would be a very long day.

His mind raced as he ran the rest of the distance. I guess I get experience by killing animals of any kind. Or maybe only System-altered ones. That might be all animals now, though. Do modern weapons still work? Would I get experience for shooting an animal, or is that against a rule of some kind? There were always rules in game-like worlds, both in video games and in fiction, and breaking those rules was either a way to get incredibly unfair power-ups, or it was a fast-track to oblivion. Usually, it would be the latter in any setting with a half-decent story.

As he reached the station, he couldn’t resist bending to look at the bottom of his shoe. Sure enough, there was a smushed bit of amphibian stuck there. It looked weirdly blue for a local frog, but he supposed that must be related to the “Partially Mutated” description.

I don’t have time to unravel the mysteries of this frog, he decided after staring for a long moment. He scraped off what was left where the grass met the parking lot pavement, and he moved forward. His mind was still slightly muddled, but as he moved, his eyes took in everything.

There were more than a dozen pumps at the station, but most of them were unoccupied. He could see two of the people who were using them moving frantically between pump and car, rushing to get their tanks filled and get back on the road. Even as James looked on, a big Ram truck pulled out of the station. The driver, a beefy, red-faced man, looked like he was in a big hurry as his truck veered screeching out of the gas station lot.

But James didn’t concern himself with that man.

Five cars left, he thought. Five chances to either convince someone to take me home or…

He began walking toward the pumps.

There was a part of James that was prepared for death beside his family. Apocalypse situations tended to have high death tolls by nature, and he wasn’t naïve enough to assume that he was destined to survive. But he was not ready to die, or to let his family die, because he hadn’t taken the situation seriously enough.

He peered through the glass storefront of the gas station building. There were only one or two figures inside. Everyone was moving quickly, every motorist in a hurry to get back into their car and get away from here. They were unlikely, James guessed, to consider bringing on extra passengers who would only slow them down and provide no corresponding benefit beyond possibly gas money.

He checked the timer. [00:59:22]

Fuck. Less than an hour now!

It was time to consider drastic measures.

James untied his tie and unbuttoned his collar, and he wrapped his tie around his right hand. Then he started looking around for someone who would be easy to carjack.

He saw a little old lady wearing a black hat and limping toward her driver’s side door. She had a black cane in hand, and she seemed to lean heavily on it with each step.

Without really thinking about it, James started to move closer to her. He paused, ten feet away from the old woman and her car.

Am I really thinking about doing this? he questioned. Jesus, she looks a little like my grandmother. Surely I’m better than that, right? I just got carjacked and now I’m doing it to this innocent old woman?

He took a deep breath and let it out. He resolved that he would find someone else to carjack, if carjacking was really going to be necessary. Someone who can put up a fairer fight, an inner voice commented darkly.

James ignored that voice, turned around, and began looking for someone else he could deal with, though whether through force or persuasion, he hadn’t decided yet. The timer read [00:52:45]

But he hadn’t gotten more than five steps when he heard a cry from behind him.

“Ahh!”

James turned and saw a large man with a tire iron in hand standing in front of the old woman. The big fellow had a grease stain on his cheek, as if he’d just come from trying to work on a car. He probably has just been working on a car, James realized. His own.

James was not too alarmed by the situation to note that this old woman had terrible luck.

“I need a ride, lady,” the big guy was saying. “You can come with your car, or I can leave you here, up to you.”

Not my business, not my business, not my business. This is a distraction I can’t afford. James’s thoughts were a flood of inconsistent emotions and contradictory impulses. I need to worry about me!

Yet he ignored the sensible words, and his feet carried him forward instead. He found himself closing in on the old woman and the man with the tire iron, very much against his better judgment.

When he was within five feet, he stopped. Both of them had already taken notice of James, half turning to face him.

“Is this guy with the tire iron bothering you, ma’am?” James asked loudly, almost shouting.

I need to attract spectators, people who might intervene if this guy gets violent.

“Hey, it’s not like that,” tire-iron-guy said a little uneasily, taking a half step back. He was looking around as if there was some movement behind James, and James just silently prayed that there were other people moving to help.

James took a few more steps closer.

“Do you need help, ma’am?” he asked, voice still elevated, striding up to stand halfway in between her and the man with the tire iron.

Tire-iron-guy’s weapon hand moved unsteadily back and forth, as if he was conflicted about whether to raise the tire iron and strike or not. James thought this was probably the man’s first attempt at crime. If James was in his shoes, he’d be on the fence about whether to resort to violence or to turn and run away.

James liked to think he would be more resolute than the other man seemed, though of course, he had also just barely decided he would not rob this woman himself.

As tire-iron-guy stood, indecisively sliding back and forth between violence and peace, James tried to calculate how quickly he could lunge and grab the tire iron from the other man’s hand, but realistically, he knew it wouldn’t be possible. The other fellow was bigger than him and looked stronger too.

And he seemed to know his way around the tire iron, from the way he was gripping it. All he would need to do was raise it in the air, and a swift downward motion would break either James’s wrist or his skull. Either way, James would be out of the fight for good.

Then tire-iron-guy could do what he’d planned to do before James stuck his neck out.

This is so dumb. Is this how I’m going to die? James wondered. Trying to stop someone from doing something I was considering myself? This is such a stupid fucking way to go. Me and my big, fat mouth!