Chương 374: Book Nine, Chapter 21: Zombie Squad

The explosion itself happened Off-Screen. In fact, the screen was black. Maybe that was Carousel realizing that a localized blast that only destroyed the part of the wall that Camden was trying to destroy was a little cartoonish when it was seen in full view. The noise from the explosion, however, was loud, and it drew attention from the infected all around the Speedway. This was to be expected. In fact, it was part of the plan. But in that plan, Kelsey would have been running interference in the race car.

Instead, she was crawling out the window of that very same car, heading toward the sound of the explosion. It was all falling apart.

"Just move," Camden said as Antoine delicately pulled Kimberly into the narrow passageway between two buildings that would lead to the outside. It really was quite a thin passage, but not impossible by any means. It would be slow. It would take enough time to explain the horde of infected that invaded the groundskeeping building shortly after the blast.

"Go, go, go," Camden said to Anna. He knew what this meant for him. The last player through the escape created by A Tight Squeeze was going to get caught. That was how the power worked. Camden had planned on being that sacrifice. It wasn't clear what he was going to do about the zombies pursuing them, but I knew he would think of something. Maybe he would blow them up. Anna, however, had her own compulsion to act. She shoved Camden into the tight space and grabbed the racing helmet that Kimberly had been wearing.

She had had to take it off because it wouldn't fit through the passage; it was that narrow. She placed it on her head and said, "Someone has to be the distraction." Camden gave her a nod.

"Keep her safe," Anna said as she barged out through the crowd of infected headed their way. The blast had been loud enough to attract them, but they were largely listless as they entered the groundskeeping building, having had no other stimuli. Anna managed to squeeze through and capture their attention. She was making a slow-motion break for the car that Kelsey had driven earlier in the scene. It was, after all, an essential part of the plan.

There needed to be a distraction, which meant that car needed to go through the exterior wall, pulling a few thousand zombies behind it. It was a standard play to reuse old setups. We always had backups. Even if the story didn't make sense, we would never let ourselves lose just because the perfect version of events didn't get to play out. From the very beginning, Anna was built to do this scene. She had a trope called I'm Right Here that forced the zombies to chase behind her in the finale.

She also had Final Stand-In, which allowed her to pass her Last One Alive trope to another player, which she had designated as Kimberly. It was a smooth plan. Something we had discussed from the beginning, even if we didn't know the specifics of how it would be implemented. We assumed it would happen outside the Speedway's walls, but it didn't turn out that way. Unfortunately, Carousel was where well-laid plans went to die.

Sometimes when playing the game at Carousel, it is so easy to forget what tropes are specifically designed to do. The wording on the ticket itself is often either vague or overspecific. Only through practice and deep meditation can you really understand what a trope is capable of down to its core. My Cutaway Death, for instance, was only guaranteed to get me Written Off. It didn't even mention that it could give me the Dead status if my apparent death was convincing enough. I had to figure that out through use.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Anna, and possibly Camden, didn't quite understand how A Tight Squeeze worked. The trope could materialize an exit from even the most dire of situations at the cost of one person being left behind. It was a common theme in Carousel. To get ahead, you need to sacrifice someone or something. It was built into the DNA of the game rules themselves. But A Tight Squeeze, like many other tropes, wasn't really about checking off boxes.

You get to create an exit, but you have to leave a player behind. It sounds simple, but the actual point of the trope was to create a particular scene. A specific scenario. An emotional, impactful moment. Someone was supposed to suffer greatly because they were the last one through whatever exit you conjured into existence. Anna believed she was sacrificing herself by running off and distracting the zombies, but that wasn't what the scene called for.

Someone needed to be unable to get into the passage that would lead out of the Speedway. That wasn't what happened. She ran off and used another trope to create a chase scene where she ran away from the passage. By replacing one scene with another, she accidentally short-circuited the point of A Tight Squeeze. And therefore she didn't get the benefit of it. Her I'm Right Here trope should have caused all the zombies to chase her, and most did.

But because she had not properly activated A Tight Squeeze to save the others, some zombies had to stay behind to chase Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly. It was only fair. The players couldn't get the exit passage without a sacrifice. But the consequences didn't end there. As the zombies turned sideways, literally mimicking Camden as he tried to shimmy through the passage, Final Stand-In didn't trigger either. After all, because A Tight Squeeze had failed, Kimberly was not actually saved.

Anna had not sacrificed herself for her. So Anna was still the Last One Alive instead of Kimberly. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Carousel didn't get its traumatic scene, so we didn't get the advantage. Anna seemed to realize this as she looked behind her and saw that many of the zombies had not followed her. At first she was confused, and it wasn't clear if she understood what was happening, but she decided to circle back to try to get their attention.

It worked to some degree. Some of the zombies peeled away from the groundskeeping building and started following Anna again. Normally this would have worked. Even with her relatively low Hustle, zombies matched pitch, and as long as she didn't move too quickly, they wouldn't be too energetic. They wouldn't go into kill mode. Unfortunately, Commandant Caster picked the perfect moment to finally start interfering again. The speakers started to blare with the sound bite that signaled the zombies to attack.

They moved in on her and brought her to the ground almost instantly. Antoine, Kimberly, and Camden had been Off-Screen for a while due to Anna's I'm Right Here trope and had almost managed to make it all the way through the passage to the other side when they spotted soldiers casually patrolling the perimeter. Antoine stopped short, which meant Kimberly couldn't keep going, and that Camden had to fight off the zombies behind him. It wasn't that difficult.

He had a tire iron, and the passage was so narrow the zombies could never get a good position to attack him. Unless, of course, they were willing to crawl over each other. Which they started to do after a few moments. Once they gained enough forward ground, they would be able to pour over onto Antoine, Camden, and Kimberly, and our chances of winning would disappear. The camera cut away back to Anna before I could see what happened. Dead Nerves made losing a little bit easier. It made my fear dull and distant.

I could hardly move my body. I expected that any moment I would close my eyes in the tunnels and open them again in the theater, watching as my friends and I failed. But then I heard her voice.

"Help. Please. Help." It was Anna crying out On-Screen. Who was she crying out to? It wasn't clear. Technically, she was probably breaking character, but we could say that she was talking to the dead brother that she had made up as a character motivation at the beginning of the movie.

"Please. I don't want to die," Anna said. And she wasn't going to die, or be infected, not quickly at least. She was wearing a full jumpsuit plus a helmet and gloves. The zombies were having difficulty biting through and infecting her. But in the process, they were causing massive damage to her as they pulled and tore at her clothes. I didn't want to have to see this, but it was the best thing Carousel had to show at that moment. As I watched her torturous situation, it occurred to me what she was actually doing.

She was using a Plea From The Heart. It was a special trope that allowed her to call for help from allies who heard her cry. Its effect was that any ally that made their way toward her would be healed as they went along. The question was, did that only work for living allies? What about those who were Off-Screen?

I had long since given up on moving my dying body, but at the prospect of being able to salvage our situation, I put all of my effort into pouring myself over onto my side and reaching out my hand just to crawl forward. Then another hand. I wasn't quite able to get up onto my knees, but I could move enough to squirm forward. One hand in front of the other, I pulled myself toward the exit of the tunnels, doing whatever it took to just keep moving toward Anna. And it was working.

I could feel life coming back into my body. Every ounce of effort I put into getting toward her, toward saving her, was paid back twice over. I moved faster and faster. Soon I was crawling. I looked around and saw, to my absolute shock, that I was not alone.

"I am the queen of the damned," Ramona said in her passionless zombie voice as she crawled on the ground, mimicking me exactly. And dozens of zombies, including Isaac and Cassie, followed behind her. I nodded my head.

"Welcome, queen of the damned," I said.

"We have some work to do." Where I first crawled, then I stumbled, and then I stood. Soon I was walking, and then I was running, and then the dozens of us less-than-alive creatures emerged from the tunnels with one goal.

"We have to help her," I said, pointing out to Anna. I was speaking specifically to Ramona, Isaac, and Cassie, hoping that on some level they understood, just as Kimberly had shown understanding.

"I am the queen of the damned," Ramona responded.

"I only buy used shoes," Cassie said.

"Someone set the air conditioning to 78 again," Isaac agreed. I took that to mean they understood the mission. - I had long wondered if I would ever be punished for going On-Screen after using Cutaway Death. I didn't know the answer, but I was going to have to risk it. If there was one time Carousel would allow it, surely it would be when I was leading a group of zombies through another group of zombies while looking more like a zombie than any of the actual zombies.

My wounds were healing, at least the internal ones. On the outside, I still looked horrifying. I could see on the Red Wallpaper that Antoine, Kimberly, and Camden were fighting off zombies crawling over each other in the tight passage while waiting for a moment when they could exit without being seen by the military outside. I had to make my move soon. I knew what type of play I needed to go for. Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly were in peril. Anna was apparently out of commission.

Well, what if Anna wasn't out of commission? What if she was just able to get away and to fulfill the role that she was born to? That could happen Off-Screen, especially in a moment like this. I made my way through the zombies, and they ignored me completely because of my hideous appearance, and possibly for some under-the-hood gameplay logic. But I assumed it was my ugly face. Anna was exhausted when I crawled my way to her.

They had managed to tear both the arms and legs of her coveralls, and she had received many bites. But luckily, these were just meant to infect her, not to kill her, though it was clear that she was drained from the struggle. I looked down at her, and she looked up at me. We were both Off-Screen, so I said, "Let's get you to that car." All she could do was nod. I reached down and grabbed her arm. For as healed as I had been, I wasn't in perfect condition, and I couldn't carry her.

But I could drag her, and luckily I had picked up at least a hundred zombies who were all willing to mimic me enough to help me do it. Carousel didn't dare put a camera anywhere near us because it would have been the weirdest thing to watch. A hundred zombies wading through a thousand zombies, dragging a race car driver and shoving her into the driver's seat. Ramona was right there to help me. I could see in her eyes that she understood what was going on.

"Give 'em hell," I said to Anna.

"I will," she said. If I was back in commission, then I wasn't going to sit back and watch. Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly were still imperiled. I had seen through several clips on the Red Wallpaper that one of the buildings they were squeezing past had snipers posted up in it. I didn't know if they would interfere with our escape plans, but I couldn't risk it. So I stumbled back toward the secret passage that would lead to the outside, and now 150 or more zombies followed behind.

The car's engine roared to life, and Anna went back On-Screen again. Recovered from her mistakes, she was ready to shine.