Deadhead: A Zombie Apocalypse LitRPG Novella

By David Payne

Addicted to gaming and looking for his next fix, Joe Denver hears of ultra-realistic games run by the mob underground. He finds hmself in the most popular game of them all, the zombie apocalypse game called Deadhead, with a huge money prize at stake. But Joe is about to get a lot more than he bargained for.

Features character sheets, weapon stats, dice rolling and more.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: LitRPG inc
• Release date: Jul 29, 2018

Book preview

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My name is Joe, and I am an addict

I’d been able to admit that to myself a long time ago. But the thing was, I liked being addicted and I had absolutely no intention of going to rehab. Did rehab exist for gamers? In this day and age- probably, I’d have to look that one up. But on the other hand, that would be useless information for me. Why the fuck would anybody want to be cured of this?

There was a line that had stuck in my head from some old movie I had tuned into when I had been channel surfing one night. I couldn’t remember much about the movie, except that it was about junkies and that the characters were speaking in something barely resembling English that I could hardly understand. But there was one line I could understand.

We do heroin for the pleasure of it, because it feels good. We’re not stupid.

Or something like that anyway. I loved gaming. I played these games because it made me feel good, although one down side was people always telling me stuff like...

You’re pissing your life away spending twenty four hours a day in your bedroom playing damned video games! My father would scream. I’m telling you son, that’s not natural, you need to get out into the world and start living a life!

Hey man, they would say at high school, you need to go out and talk to chicks dude, like, they ain;t just gonna fall into your lap where you’re playin’ your games yo.

It all soon became a broken record. Stop playing video games all the time. Get out there and live a real life. You see, they thought I was stupid, that I was choosing the pixels on the screen over real life. But as far as I was concerned, the real life was in my bedroom.

What they could not know, what only the gamer could know, was the rollercoaster of emotion that being a gamer could give you. To escape from the fucking dreariness, the everyday sameness, the mind numbing, get up, breakfast, commute to work, spend eight hours doing something you hated, sigh with relief when the clock hit five, commute home, maybe pick up some fast food on the way, watch some TV, jerk off thinking about that girl at work who didn’t even know you existed then head off to bed shit that as far as I could see, most people called life.

No thanks folks, you keep your real life, and I’ll stick to my rollercoaster. You see, unlike the masses, I actually felt things, I went through whole gamut of emotions on a daily basis. Imagine the following:

Your entire world is the screen in front of you, you’re up against the end level boss, this huge multi-tentacled motherfucker, shooting a hundred lasers at you ten times a second. You’re swerving this way and that with your ship, bolt after bolt missing you by a millimetre as you go crazy on that controller with your thumb, pounding on that button as much times per second as humanly possible. You’re unloading on this motherfucker. He might be ten times as big as you, but goddamn if you’re not giving as good as you’re getting.

This is the boss who killed you in seconds the first time you met, the boss you couldn’t put a scratch on the first ten times you met him. But now you’ve got his number. Your heart is pumping, the adrenalin is coursing through your veins. You’re scoring hit after hit-critical hit! Your mana and his mana are low, you’re both severely weakened, but if you can just avoid those red bolts he’s firing, if you can just land one more shot where it hurts...

This boss has kept you up at night, consumed your every waking thought. When you’d been having your morning coffee you were thinking about what manoeuvres you were going to use to finally kick his ass.

His mana is one percent, yours is one percent, next blow wins. You dodge in between two bolts, you have him in your sights. You’re mine now, you say, just like in the movies, say goodbye...

And then you’re hit. The screen is filled with a burst of orange and yellow that was once your little ship, the explosion sound fills your ears as the words ‘Game over’ flash in huge red letters, taunting you, saying ‘So near yet so far-tough luck chump’.

And then the rage comes.

You become a madman, it’s like there is volcanic eruption inside you as you take hold of your controller and smash it into the ground repeatedly.

Motherfucker! Motherfucker! Cunt! Cunt! Fuck! Stupid motherfucker! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

The controller then goes flying across the room with considerable force, somehow not smashing into pieces as it hits the wall. You are now on your hands and knees, issuing the same cuss words over and over again, slapping the palm of your hand on the ground so hard it’s like you are trying to slap a hole in the floor.

Honey is everything all right?

It’s the voice of one of your parents, naturally they are wondering what the hell is going on. Though eventually they will get used to your rages and refrain from asking so much.

But you are not done yet. Now literally frothing at the mouth, several strands of spit hanging from your lips, you rise up to your feet and give the ‘Game over’ screen the double middle finger.

Fuck you! Fuck your game over! Fuck who created this game and fuck their mother for having had them! Take your fucking high scores and your fucking XPs and shove them up your fucking ass! I’ll kill you motherfucker, I’ll come over to your house and I’ll rip your fucking head off. Like that huh? Then it will be fucking game over won’t it? You won’t be laughing in my face then will you? We’ll see who’s fucking game over cunt!

And then you lie back down on the bed, staring at the ceiling, getting your breath back. You think to yourself that if that controller is fucked it’s the third in as many months and you need to calm it down a little.

There have actually been occasions when you have stopped yourself from physically putting your fist through the screen, so you’re not completely without restraint. In that moment you realise the immense satisfaction you get from venting rage, how it’s weird that while you never aim to be frustrated, you feel truly alive when boiling with anger, destroying equipment, hurting your hand, and threatening the creator of this game whom you have never met with physical violence.

But there’s another side to this coin. When you kill the end level boss.

He has got the better of you a hundred times, but slowly but surely, you’ve come to realise that he is very far from invincible, that he is no god. This is somebody that you can take down.

With his mana down to one percent, you weave in between his red bolts.

Oh you’re getting weak my friend, not so big and bad now are we. You fire...bullseye! Just like an x-wing on the Deathstar! The screen goes orange and red, the sound of explosion fills the room. But this time it is not your ship. This time that boss ship that was ten times the size of you a few seconds ago is now space dust. No more. He has ceased to exist. He will stand in your way no longer.

Level seven complete! Those are the words that flash in huge red letters on the screen. A wave courses though your body, but this this time it is not one of volcanic rage. This wave is one of pure euphoria-of pure release. Instead of pummelling the floor in frustration you pump your fist in the air.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fucking yes!

You keep repeating the word ‘yes’ over and over with various expletives thrown in, then leap up onto your bed and start jumping up and down like a five year old child.

It is like you’ve injected some fantastic drug into your body. You fall down onto your bed, stretch your arms out and just revel in the exhilaration. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Victory tastes so sweet when you’ve been defeated a hundred times beforehand.

That was the rollercoaster of the gamer. The rage and the exhilaration that made me feel alive. What did the masses know about the rage/exhilaration rollercoaster? Nothing. They wanted to live their little lives, with their commutes, their nine to five jobs, their white picket fences, two point four children and then call me a loser who spent all my time gaming. Call me what you will folks, you keep your white picket fence, I’ll take my rollercoaster addiction and let’s go our separate