I was in a Berlin library researching suitable properties, and suitable sellers, when the beeper appeared. It was simply there on the table beside me, which a moment before had been empty. I glanced quickly about, but saw no one who might have left it.
It was a clunky, old-school beeper, of a style that hadn't been used for years. The display showed nothing but an address, which I verified was for a nearby private airport. It seemed likely that I was being called to a Game. If so, this was a new method. Perhaps a new sponsor as well?
I arrived at the airport and boarded the plane at the indicated hangar, despite considerable misgivings. The plane looked even older than the beeper, and not nearly as solid. The name “Frugal Airlines” didn't inspire confidence; nor did the duct tape that appeared to be holding critical parts together. Such as the right wing.
I boarded and started looking for parachutes. Fortunately, I found three, and they seemed to be in better condition than the plane. I selected the best for myself and sat down by the rear emergency exit.
The plane flew west across the Atlantic. In the United States, Lu boarded. At the next stop we picked up Drew. Each took a parachute at my suggestion.
Three parachutes, three High Rollers; perhaps we had a full crew, and would now proceed to a Game, or crash, or something. But instead we flew to Florida and picked up Just John.
No parachutes left. The three of us smiled uneasily and looked away.
As the plane took off, flat-screen televisions unfolded from the ceiling and began giving the standard spiel about using your seat cushion as a flotation device. For some reason I paid more attention than usual, especially once I noticed that we were headed east across the Atlantic. Was that duct tape loose?
Suddenly a harsh female voice cut in across the stewardess's pleasant tones. We were ordered in a sharp staccato to get the crown – intact; use the box; go to Goma. Then the flight safety announcement resumed.
The fact that we were supposed to “use the box” implied that we should have one, so we began looking to see if it might be aboard. Sure enough, a small black box was in the compartment in which the parachutes had been stored, which I was certain had been empty before. Once we figured out how to open it, we saw that it contained only a copper square, two inches wide and long and half an inch thick. A circular impression was probably intended to hold some sort of jewelry, perhaps a circlet – or a crown.
We settled in for the flight. Most of us managed to get some sleep, though John didn't seem to need any.
I was awakened by the sound of silence. The left engine had stopped, and the right had caught on fire. The plane began to nose downward.
Could any of us manage a crash-landing? For that matter, was the pilot alive – if we even had one? We had to get into the cockpit. John broke down the door in a few brutal blows and we rushed in.
Sure enough, the pilot was dead. None of us could fly a plane, though Drew thought he might be able to crash one. We decided he might as well try.
Turned out he could. We even walked away from the crash. I was relieved the whole “more High Rollers than parachutes” thing hadn't become an issue, though I wondered if it was an element of foreshadowing.
After bribing the officials who showed up to investigate the crash, and failing to find the crown in the immediate vicinity, we set out for Goma. Unfortunately, this involved crossing the border from Rwanda into the Congo, and we didn't have a way to smuggle John past the guards. We decided to circle around through the jungle.
Shortly we learned why the border guards didn't see any need to put out patrols to deter smugglers. We were attacked by … things. Their bodies seemed to be composed of nauseating pinkish vines that somehow resembled muscles; they looked almost like people who had been skinned. Small sucker mouths opened and closed all over their bodies, making disgusting obscene noises. John called them Creepers, which seemed appropriate enough. They didn't die easily.
The most dangerous aspect of these Creepers was that they were indeed very good at creeping through the jungle. The second group got the drop on us, and things were tight for a while. Finally we emerged from the jungle into the … city of Goma.
I had never seen anything like it: Row after row of ramshackle huts made of mud, brick, or sheet metal. The entire city was an incredibly massive slum. The night sky was too cloudy for starlight, but the dull red glow from Mount Nyiragongo provided enough light to see by, as well as an undoubtedly appropriate sinister air.
No sooner had we started looking for a store than we heard screams. We moved to investigate, and came upon a burning church. Perhaps a dozen dark figures were crowded around the front door, preventing those inside from escaping the flames. A mob attacking a rival religious or ethnic group, perhaps? A woman in the back seemed to be directing them.
We opened fire on the mob. Regular rounds didn't do much, but incendiary rounds proved spectacularly effective. Too much so. The resulting explosion destroyed the mob and almost blew us up as well.
Examining some of the corpses, we discovered that they were filled with some sort of miasma or gas. Explosive zombies. Nasty.
While we were distracted, the woman leading the zombies got into the church through a side window and then fled with something in her hands. The crown? I fired at her, and briefly gave chase, but I didn't want to go haring off after her by myself.
Just then a zombie wandered out of the church and attacked us. It was the more traditional sort, and went down relatively easily.
Inside we found three more animated zombies hacked to pieces, and two men: One dead, one alive. The man who was still alive, named Marcus, told us that the dead man, named Mwami, had been a witch doctor of some sort and had hired him as a bodyguard. Apparently he thought someone was trying to kill him. Apparently he was right.
Marcus was certain Mwami had not had a crown, but he did have a necklace with a single bead. I had noticed the woman wearing a similar necklace. Was she collecting beads?
We bandaged Marcus and helped him to a vacant building nearby. (There was no shortage of those.) Then we set out to track the woman. That didn't go well. I discovered that soldiers were patrolling the streets for marauding zombies. Unfortunately, I discovered this by being arrested. The soldiers seized my gear, and started an interrogation that could have turned very unpleasant. Fortunately, they were distracted by a massive explosion near the center of town and lost interest in me.
Meanwhile, John had tracked the woman to a garage, where she was joined by a man. They loaded a truck with zombies and left. John stowed away on the truck, and the rest of us finally managed to reunite and follow in another vehicle.
The zombie masters drove to the jungle just outside of town. Then John decided to stir things up. Rising from concealment in the back of the truck, he fired into a cask of what he thought was gasoline, then jumped down and ran. The cask turned out to hold water … . Shortly half a dozen bomb zombies were closing on him.
He opened up at them with an incendiary clip on full automatic.
We were close enough to see the explosion, and arrived to see the two zombie masters racing around crazily for inexplicable reasons. Unbeknownst to us, John had gone invisible. None of us had any idea he could do that, so the thought that they might be grappling with an invisible John never occurred to us. We decided to run them over.
Things went downhill from there.
The next few minutes were a haze of adrenaline and panic, machetes coming through the roof, mad zombie masters clinging to the windshield, Drew driving like a maniac while I frantically tried to get out of the car – and never quite managed it, somehow, though I was almost crushed in the door at least twice. By the time the zombie master drove a machete through the engine, I hated that car passionately and cheering him on. Then I noticed that he was wearing the crown.
The car was leaning against a tree at that point, rear wheels in the branches, hood against the ground, machete set rather artistically amidst the steam rising from the radiator. Drew was wedged half-in, half-out the window, which would only open halfway. I crawled over and began trying to force him through so I could get to the crown.
He came free and plummeted to the ground just as John reached the zombie master. (This was the man. The woman had died somewhere in the confusion.) I jumped down after him, thanked him for cushioning my fall, and ran towards John, screaming at him not to damage the man's head. We needed the crown intact.
A moment later the zombie master's head was rolling across the ground; John had severed it cleanly. Nice shot. The crown fell into the grass. John reached down to pick it up, and started to put it on. I slapped it out of his hands. Then I picked it up.
Suddenly I knew that I absolutely had to wear it. I put it on.
Or tried to. John, that ingrate, knocked it out of my hands.
Okay. The crown wanted to take over our minds. We should have expected that.
We examined it carefully without touching it. It had seven diamonds inset around the rim, and settings for three more. There was also a triangle of rubies in the front.
The bead on the woman's necklace turned out to be a diamond, so we snapped it onto the crown. It looked like it had always been there.
Obviously we needed two more diamonds. Where to find them? We placed the crown in the box and headed back to town to look for clues.
We didn't find clues, but we did find swarms of zombies threatening to overrun the town. The local garrison was engaging, but wasn't giving a good show of itself.
We backtracked the zombies to their point of origin, hoping for another zombie master with a pair of diamonds, and found a huge crater. The explosion we had heard earlier had created an opening into a cavern filled with zombies, releasing them in the middle of the city.
After being nearly eaten by zombies several times, wounded and exhausted, with no idea where the diamonds might be, we decided to try one last idea. We went back to the scene of the fight, in hopes that the zombie masters had been looking for the last two diamonds there. All we found was Creepers. Then we discovered that the box provided by the Harbinger had disappeared, and the crown with it.
A massive military convoy passed us on the road. It seemed the Congolese Army was arriving in force. The zombies would soon be wiped out, and Goma might be as well.
The others decided the Game was over. I agreed that we had won by recovering the crown, but I wanted to go after the two diamonds for the bonus. I couldn't talk the others into it, though. They headed for Rwanda and civilization.
I headed for Goma. There were diamonds to find, and zombies to study.
