NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Jake watched the zombie run toward the window. It moved amazingly fast for an undead being. Though it was probably too early to call it a zombie. He had no idea what happened to the world and what the people who had lost the game of chance had been turned into.
As the creature got closer to the window, he made out more details. Its skin was very pale, its fingers ended in long curved talons, and its huge mouth was filled with sharp teeth resembling those of a shark’s. So a mutant was probably a better term for that creature than a zombie.
The sight of the frightening creature seemed to paralyze Jake with horror as he watched the mutant reach the building. Only when the scary monster bumped against the window pane did Jake come into motion. As he stumbled back clumsily, his feet tangled up with each other. Losing his balance, Jake collapsed to the dust-covered floor. He rose on his elbows just as the mutant launched its body at the window again. It shook in its frame but held. It seemed to make the mutant even angrier. It let go with a terrifying scream before assaulting the window once more. A spider web of cracks appeared on the glass, and when the mutant launched its body against the window another time, it finally shattered.
Jake raised his arms to protect his head against the shards raining down on him. He expected the mutant to grab hold of him and tear into his body with its nasty claws and razor-sharp teeth. However, when he looked up, he saw that the mutant’s hands were clawing at the air just a few inches in front of his face. The monster was draped over the window frame—its upper body was inside the room, but its legs were still outside. Some of the glass pieces that remained protruding from the frame must have pierced its flesh, trapping the monster in place. The mutant’s arms flailed before Jake but couldn’t quite reach him. Its huge jaws clacked audibly as the monster opened and closed its deformed mouth repeatedly.
For a moment, Jake was too terrified to move. Then his instinct for self-preservation finally kicked in, and he crab-crawled back away from the window, in which the mutant got stuck. A couple of seconds later, he reached the other side of the room, bumping against the wall. The monster still couldn’t detach itself from the window frame—the glass fragments remaining in the frame must have stabbed deeply into its body, holding it fast in place. The dreadful creature kept swinging its clawed hands in the air as it emitted screeching sounds from its throat.
Jake watched the creature flail its limbs, too terrified to move. The mutant had definitely been human once, but there was little resemblance to an actual human being about it now. Its skin was deathly pale. The mouth was so wide its corners almost reached the ears. The creature kept snapping its jaws repeatedly, opening its maw impossibly wide, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth, before abruptly shutting it with loud clacks. As for the mutant’s eyes, there was not a trace of an intelligent thought behind them. All Jake could see in them was primal rage.
The mutant kept thrashing around in place but couldn’t free itself. Every time it jerked its body, the glass shards that had pierced its body speared deeper into its torso, slicing open its flesh. Giving no heed to it, the mutant continued to thrash around without realizing that by doing so, it wasn’t accomplishing anything but only making its situation worse. The mutant was bleeding profusely, and as it grew weaker, all its movements became more and more sluggish.
A couple of minutes later, the mutant finally went still, its body draped over the windowsill, its hands dangling down, reaching the floor with the tips of its claw-like fingers. Jake kept staring at the now motionless mutant, not quite believing that it was dead. At that moment, his PDA emitted some kind of notification sound, and Jake suddenly realized he no longer had the device on him—he must have dropped it when the mutant bumped against the window, causing him to stumble back in fear and fall. He quickly scanned the room, searching for the device. He spotted it lying on the floor just beneath the mutant’s upper body dangling down from the window.
Jake got to his feet. His eyes never leaving the seemingly dead mutant, he slowly approached it. The closer he got to the dead body, the slower he moved. He half-expected the mutant to suddenly spring to life and lunge at him with its clawed hands, as often depicted in horror movies. To his relief, the creature remained still. Jake retrieved the device and quickly made his way back to the other side of the room, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the dead mutant.
When he got back to the other side of the room, he looked at the screen of his PDA and saw a piece of text in the center of the screen – THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE! THE DEVICE HAS FINISHED SCANNING YOU, AND YOU CAN FREELY USE YOUR PDA NOW. THE DEVICE IS CONSTANTLY CONNECTED TO THE SYSTEM, SO ANY PROGRESS YOU MAKE WILL IMMEDIATELY BE SAVED AS A BACKUP IN THE SYSTEM’S DATABASE.
Jake read the message and dismissed it with a tap. The device ran on an unfamiliar operating system, but he quickly got the hang of it. There were several tabs along the bottom of the screen. When he tapped the first one, a piece of general info filled the screen. Name: Jake Turner. Level: 1. Race: Human. Mana: 0. XP: 0/100.
Huh? What the hell does it mean? Jake thought. Has the world really been turned into a video game?
It was strange but not overly so. After everything he’d recently experienced, it wasn’t easy to surprise Jake anymore. He tapped the next tab, and his attributes appeared on the screen. Strength: 7. Constitution: 6. Agility: 8. Perception: 12. Intelligence: 9. Magicka: 1. Luck: 15.
Jake was surprised to see that his Luck was the highest. He’d never felt particularly lucky in his life—it was quite the opposite in fact. Life had always been difficult for him. However, a memory stirred within him. He’d won the game of chance against the System even though his opponent had a huge advantage over him. So yeah, maybe he was a tiny bit lucky every now and then after all.
He switched to the next tab. It contained lots of miscellaneous skills such as Walking, Running, Climbing, Observing, Thinking, Programming, Driving, and whatnot. Each of these skills had a numerical value representing the current level of the skill. The list was pretty long, and it took him some time to scroll to the bottom. He noticed that some of his skills had zeros next to them. For example, Swimming, which wasn’t surprising to him, considering he’d never learned to swim.
The list included numerous combat skills too, but most of them were level 0 as well. His Pistols skill was at 15, though. Having visited shooting ranges in the past and tried his hand at various firearms, mostly for leisure rather than practical purposes, he had some experience with pistols. With other kinds of weapons, not so much.
The remaining tabs appeared locked, yielding no response when Jake tapped on them. He figured they would unlock when the right time came. The last tab that was available contained what looked like a camera application. He opened it, and the feed from the outer camera filled up the screen. Positioned at the bottom edge was a round button with the word SCAN inscribed within it.
Jake pointed the PDA’s camera at the dead body draped over the window frame and tapped the button. On the screen appeared the text: DEAD EX-HUMAN MUTANT: EMPTY. TIP: IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS TYPE OF MUTANT, SCAN A LIVING SPECIMEN.
He dismissed the message and then panned the camera around the room, hoping to glean some valuable information or maybe find something of use. However, the app didn’t provide him with any information on his surroundings at all.
Jake deactivated the scanning app and stowed the PDA in his jacket pocket. He looked around one more time to make sure he didn’t miss anything and then left the room to explore the rest of the house.