Tutorial's Gate: Hammerhead
"Ghk. Ghhhk."
The zombies of Concrete Under had one particularly annoying trait.
They weren't infected by a virus. A parasite burrowed into the brain and puppeteered the body from the inside.
I didn't know the exact mechanism, but the things reproduced by opening a wound with mouth or nails and stuffing eggs into the victim.
So when a parasite decided its current host was "broken," it thrashed around trying to jump ship to the next sacrifice — crawling on its arms if the legs were gone, hurling the whole body if the arms were gone, clawing for bare skin to tear open and crawl inside.
Of course, they couldn't even rip through a layer of clothing, and once outside the body they dried up and died within thirty seconds. The ugly part was that the parasites knew it themselves — they always went for the eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears.
Which meant the best solution was to blow the head clean off, parasite and all. Or cook the whole body with fire until the thing inside was charcoal.
Problem was, gunfire brought every living thing in the area running straight at you. Fire advertised your position from a distance and risked smoking you out if you weren't careful.
So my method was…
"Not cigarettes — a lighter, a lighter, a lighter… There. Got it."
I left the wrecked drawers behind and traced the exposed wiring running along the upper wall with my eyes. A proper blaze needed fuel, and the fuel cans would be in the generator room.
I grabbed the shotgun James had given me and the dagger I'd used to jimmy the locked drawer, then stood.
— Clank, clank, clank, clank…
Something was skittering around inside the ventilation ducts.
"Squeak. Skreeeee."
The church people still hadn't shown up. If they had, those little noises wouldn't be audible.
"Hoo…"
The Omen family had to be a wreck right now. Their granddaughter and daughter Sarah was paralyzed, and the stress would have them too rattled to fight clean. Lose your cool and your aim suffers. Get worked up and your melee damage goes up, sure — but accuracy tanks and your dodge rate drops with it. Against church fanatics who ran night vision as a base passive and threw around poisons of unknown composition, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Which meant I had to draw the church people to me.
I had no intention of dying in their place, of course.
The tutorial boss only spawned once every prerequisite objective was cleared. In other words, if I controlled when and where those last conditions finished, the tutorial Hammerhead would appear exactly when and where I wanted it.
— Creeeak.
I found the generator room, pushed the door open, and started shaking plastic and steel cans. The first few swung light and empty — whoosh, whoosh — but when I grabbed the one in the corner…
"Up we go."
— Slosh. Slosh.
More than half full. Liquid slapped cheerfully against the thin steel walls. Fuel secured. Tools to start a fire secured.
I stepped back into the corridor and moved fast toward the hallway where the zombie pack was waiting.
Crafting materials: bag full of bolts, nuts, and scrap plate that all registered as scrap metal — well past the three-piece threshold. Melee and ranged weapons: dagger and shotgun, already cleared. Armor: I'd tried on James's ballistic vest under the pretense of wanting a look and handed it back, so the acquisition check should have ticked. Giant Spiders: I'd killed more than five of them in that room and "processed" them by severing a leg. All done.
All that remained was drawing the ambushing church personnel toward me.
"…"
I pulled a cigarette from the pack I'd scavenged and stuck it between my lips. Cigarettes carried a debuff — once you were hooked, not smoking doubled your anxiety — but while you were smoking, they kept you calm through most combat situations. Stay calm and you got an aim bonus and a better chance of landing weak-point hits.
"Hff— koff! Koff, koff!"
The smoke burned. Too hot, too sharp, too foul to even pull into my lungs. My mouth went desert-dry.
"Ugh…"
I couldn't manage a second drag. How anyone ever called smoking enjoyable was beyond me. Was I even going to get the buff like this?
…Or maybe the real mistake was assuming everything from the game would map one-to-one onto me. The muscle aches were real. The bone-deep fatigue every time I moved was real. Would a cigarette actually settle me down if I got hurt?
"Tch."
I kept the cigarette in my mouth and grabbed the duct tape I'd found with it. I switched on the flashlight and taped it to the shotgun's long barrel.
— Skreeeeee.
In the game, even a simple mod like this would have required a crafting kit. Here, I could do anything. And that was what unsettled me. No status window, no interface of any kind — yet a Crafter was supposed to be the class that could pull bullets out of thin air with a crafting kit and a pile of scrap.
What if the Hammerhead didn't show?
"…Koff, koff!"
I stood with the flashlight-mounted shotgun and forced my shaking legs to move, blowing smoke out on every exhale. I'd come this far. If I didn't help, three people were going to die. So far everything had followed the game's script, so I had to keep following it. I'd found a community. Encountered zombies. Met the spiders. Other mutants had been strangely absent.
Which meant kill exactly five more zombies and the Hammerhead would spawn.
"Hoo…"
— Ting. Ting. Tingtingtingting…
I listened to the creaking and settled into a stance. Smoke curling from my mouth, I put the muzzle on the zombie pack shambling slowly toward me. Just having the flashlight strapped on made aiming so much cleaner.
…The moment I fired, the ambushers would come check my condition.
The corridor I was standing in was shaped like a — four rooms ringed by a central cross-hall and a square outer loop. Two external corridors fed into the structure. The Hammerhead would come from one of those outer halls, and the church people would walk right into it.
— Tick.
I dropped the nearly spent cigarette, crushed it under my heel, and felt the tension in my shotgun hand ease just a little. A baseless certainty started to settle in — that I could do this.
"Let's start."
I put the bead dead on a green-haired zombie's skull and counted with my eyes. Exactly ten. Good. I tightened my grip on the pump.
Five kills and the mini-boss pops. That boss needed to fight the church, not me.
Thoughts locked into place. I squeezed the trigger.
— BOOM.
The steel shot turned an O of a head into a U. The body, brain gone, staggered and face-planted where it stood.
"Uek. Grlk. Kehek."
The zombies began shuffling toward me. Some didn't even notice the corpse in front of them and tripped over it. Getting back up would take them time. I sighted on a head coming in stacked behind another.
Buckshot — absolute penetration was trash, just a spray of steel balls. I closed the distance a little and aimed where two of them overlapped.
— Thwack-thwack.
Flesh burst. An ash-blond zombie went down in a heap of gray dust and meat. The one with half its head gone flailed its arms and toppled backward.
— Chk-chk.
The second spent shell hit the floor. I pulled two fresh rounds from my pocket and fed them in.
— Shnk. Shnk.
The spring seating and the scrape of steel on steel traveled up through my hands. The zombies right in front of me were gouged open, unhealed skin crawling with maggot-things — and still I could move the bead calmly to the next one.
"Hoo…"
Dark red blood slapped the wall like a tomato crushed on a pan. A fat black thread of a worm writhed along the blood trail, lost its strength, and flopped to the floor.
"One more."
Before that, I opened my ears. When church people were nearby, ambient noise cut out. And right now — the metallic racket from the vents that had been so loud a moment ago was gone.
— BOOM.
The fifth zombie hit the floor.
— Chk-chk.
An empty casing rang off the concrete.
— …
Silence. Silence that shouldn't have been silence —
"ROOOOOOAAAR!!!"
"AAAAAGH!"
A deep, chest-thumping boom rolled through the hall, followed by the sound of something being pulverized. Gunfire. Then steel smashing the floor flat.
"—!"
Behind the remaining zombies, shapes in black cloth rushed through the corridor. Through the flapping fabric I caught a clear flash of red skin.
No question. Rebirth Church.
— BOOM. BOOM.
I put the rest of the zombies down immediately and moved toward where the black silhouettes had vanished. Against my fears, this place really was the world I knew.
And in the beam of my muzzle light —
"WAAAAAARGH!!!"
Black fur covering every inch of its body. A massive anvil of a head-plate clamping down over its face. A spine bowed under the weight. And, to carry all of that, a pair of arms far too enormous for anything human.
It beat its chest and roared like a beast.
It really was a Hammerhead.
"Brothers, do not retreat! You have been chosen for a new worl—"
The one who looked like the leader never finished the speech. The massive head came down on him before he could react. Not even a flinch.
"Uh… uhh…"
— CRUNCH. CRUNCH. WHAM.
Straight out of the Hammerhead's execution animation. It hammered its own head into the floor like it was tenderizing meat and turned the sacrifice into literal paste.
And the Rebirth Church members watching…
"G-God, look upon us with m-mercy…"
"I-It's hopeless, we have to run…"
They stood there, souls gone, without so much as their vaunted high dodge rate to save them. The Hammerhead finished the execution and swept an arm, slamming one into the wall. It braced both hands and set for a second execution —
"AAAGH!"
— and the merciless hammering filled the corridor again.
Watching it, I… wasn't even shaking. Maybe it really was the cigarette.
"G-Get ahold of yourselves, brothers and sisters! Any abomination that refuses the guidance of the Chosen must be purged!"
Three of the remaining church members finally clawed their way out of the shock. They pulled a knife, a suppressed pistol, and a syringe from their robes.
"Death to the abomination! Blessings upon the Reborn!"
They charged the Hammerhead.
"KRAAAAGH!"
Bullets aimed at the head only pissed it off. The dagger aimed at the hide couldn't leave more than a scratch. The one who leapt on its back to plant the syringe —
"W-Why won't it— AAAAGH!!"
— couldn't take the weight when the beast simply dropped and crushed him into the floor.
— Crack. Crrrrunch.
The sound of bones being mulched flooded the hall.
"G-God, why have You forsaken us…"
Shock again. One of them took a fist and went flying. And then —
"We who are Reborn, how can You—"
— the hammering resumed.
I'd figured even early-game church fodder would at least stack some damage. They didn't leave a single scratch. Every last one of them was paste.
"Gruuuh… uh."
Not that I was complaining. The Hammerhead clutched its head in agony and sank to the floor. Rough breath rasped out from under the steel plate as it tried to hold up that massive skull — then —
"Uuh!"
— it set the blunt face of its head on the ground and let its hands hang. Rest phase.
All that head-slamming left it with chronic exhaustion and a mild concussion built into the design. Defective by nature. This was my window.
— Clank. Clank. Click.
I cracked the fuel can open and started dumping it over the collapsed body. Once a Hammerhead entered rest, it wouldn't move until a new "stimulus" hit it — a loud threat noise, a wound, a taunt, a drug injection, and so on. Pouring oil made no real noise, and the helmet already choked its vision and sense of smell.
Which meant the already flammable fur ball was soaked through without a single twitch of resistance.
And the lighter in my hand —
"Hyunwoo?!"
Another light appeared at the far end of the corridor, past the steel-headed gorilla. I snapped the shotgun flashlight that way. James.
"W-What the hell is…"
His hands were shaking on the rifle. And because he'd just shouted my name…
"Grrruuuh."
The massive body started trying to stand, bracing its head against the floor and pushing up with both arms.
"James. Stay calm. Don't shoot. No matter what."
I moved slowly around behind its spindly legs, outside its field of view, toward the narrow gap leading to James's corridor. The second the Hammerhead was busy heaving itself upright, I slipped through.
"E-Explain later…"
"Yeah. Later."
A Hammerhead held up that heavy head with its arms. The legs, as a result, were only a little thicker than a human's — the weak point. I chambered a shell into the empty shotgun and worked the pump.
— Chk-chk.
"Uuh?"
Before that sluggish body could turn, I pulled the trigger. A horrible scream tore through the corridor. I ignored it, flicked the lighter, and threw it.
"GKRAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
The roar shook the entire hallway. I grabbed James as his knees started to buckle and hauled him upright.
"Run!"
A monster gorilla that shrugged off guns, knives, and syringes had about a minute of thrashing left before the fire finished it. We had to be gone before then, full sprint.
This was the last hurdle.