The Adventurers of Dan and Other Stories: A LitRPG Apocalypse Collection Read online

  The New World Adventures of Dan and Other Stories

  A LitRPG Apocalypse Collection

  by Wolfe Locke

  Stories in the Collection

  Apocalypse Hero

  True John Crusade

  Arcane Summoner

  Vendormate

  Talon System

  Apocalypse Hero

  Chapter 1: When the Man Comes Around

  Have you ever had that feeling when you’re dead asleep that something is just off? Like a sense of vertigo that hits you just before waking up? Like a dream of a drowning fish. You know, that feeling of being upside down and underwater even though you’re asleep? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s just me when I drink. But as soon as I felt those stirrings of consciousness just below the waking surface, I knew that the day ahead of me was going to be rough.

  Like most stories that start off on the wrong note, mine began at a bar. I wish I could say this bar was some unique attraction or swanky hole in the wall, but it wasn’t. It was pretty classless, which tended to be my preference. The only redeeming qualities it had were the cheap drinks and a bartender who didn’t cut me off early. To be frank, not that it matters anymore if I out him, the bartender didn’t cut me off at all. This is purely conjecture; I’m gauging how much I drank solely by the scale of the massive hangover that followed.

  My night out, as far as I’ve been able to recreate from my spotty memory, was spent chasing an extremely attractive woman who looked every bit the part of Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream. If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I make no apologies; I had a type. She was definitely a bit out of my league, and it was obvious from the get-go that she had no interest in me. Judge me all you want. I know I’m not the only one to ever chase a white rabbit. To complicate matters further, somehow, well, you know, through recklessness and ego, I made one of the rookiest of mistakes during my little night out on the town: I tried to impress people I had no business chasing after.

  I went a little overboard and took a VIP pass to the future using the only method of time travel known to man: blacking out. In plain language, I drank far more than I had ever intended to, and far more than I could handle. I sound like a pretty cool guy, right? The sort of somebody you want to be bumping coffee mugs with, a bestie kept on speed dial, top eight on your friend list, someone you organize in a favorite group on your AIM chat? Yeah, I know. My sense of timing has always been a little off, and some of you might not even know what those things are.

  Before I go any further talking about my exploits and adventures, let me introduce myself. I’m Dan, Dan Hanson. Former wage slave and current Chief Disciple, 1st Chair of the Way of the Bat. I just made up that title, and this is the story of how I learned to love the apocalypse. Take a lot of what I saw with a grain of salt; the few friends I have love to say I’m full of shit.

  So if I haven’t lost you up to this point, let’s go ahead and circle back to the story. You don’t need to hear the rest of the sloppy details, but I do assure you, they were quite sloppy. At some point of inebriation, I soared straight past, surpassed, and absolutely crushed my limit. Which is to say, as I mentioned before, I found myself in a pure blissful state of blackout drunkenness. That was probably when I should have been cut off and sent home. Thankfully I wasn’t, because aside from losers, Cinderella, and married couples, who goes home before 10? Besides, the alcoholic stupor of that night might just have been what saved my life when so many other people bought the farm.

  This might not be super obvious, but despite my impressive limit breaking, which included belting out some of the best hits of the ‘80s during karaoke, I didn’t impress anyone. Rather than dropping panties like I hoped and getting lucky, I ended up all alone in my own bed. Which was impressive enough in its own right. Whoever you are who arranged that miraculous rideshare, wherever you are, thanks. I owe you. If you ever read this and need help, just let me know what I set on fire that night. That’ll be more than enough to establish your bona fides with me.

  Which takes us back to where we started. That feeling of vertigo just before waking up. So there I was, passed out on my bed, reeking of cheap booze, misery, and cigarettes. With one shoe on and the other who knew where, when suddenly the emergency horns went off and the loudspeaker on the street started blasting, “Take cover. Take cover. Take cover.”

  Chapter 2: While You Were Sleeping

  Even as drunk as I was, those horns were hard to ignore. They were built like that in the South. We had these things called hurricanes and tornadoes and needed ample warning about both. So did I listen to the warning bells? I’d say sort of. Though it was less me listening and more a response of primal fear as I heard what sounded like artillery fire in my neighborhood.

  I fell out of bed, scrambling, and hit my head pretty hard as I stumbled over to the bathroom. Which, for honesty’s sake, was actually my dresser. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time when I relieved myself.

  Did it end there? It should have, of course. But vertigo did what vertigo does, and this undeniable sense of nausea came on something fierce and would not be denied. Like most drunk people on the edge of poisoning, I threw up and collapsed on the floor before passing back out. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it went down.

  Hours later, I woke up on the floor next to my bed, a lot more coherent and hating life with the worst headache I’ve ever had outside of college during pledge week, and divorce court. I had a fist-sized knot above my temple and more than a bit of matted blood that had scabbed over to mark the spot. Honestly, I was kind of surprised I wasn’t in worse shape. The thought crossed my mind that I might need to head over to the hospital, insurance or not, but I dismissed the idea. The amount of debt a visit would put me in completely eclipsed any sort of headache I already had.

  I looked out the window to check things out and survey the damage, but the sky showed it was already dark out. The day had already passed, and I knew I was in pretty deep shit. I had an overdue project for work that desperately needed my attention. A project I was in no condition to get started on. What a damn waste, I had shit I needed to do.

  I reached over and grabbed my phone, ignoring the cracked screen I couldn’t afford to get replaced, and tried to turn it on. When I tried to get to the home screen, I found out my phone was unresponsive. The battery light on the phone was still lit up, so I knew it wasn’t dead. It was just stuck on the loading screen. After my fourth time trying to reset the cellphone to get it working again, I quit and just assumed it was fried somehow. I took the battery out, but not even that worked to reboot the system.

  My head started to clear and some of the pain went away. It was then that I got a good look at my room and cringed. Even if the previous night had gone differently, my place was still a hot mess. The relative squalor I lived in was like a Scarlet Letter explaining my singleness and relative sexlessness.

  Empty water bottles lay next to empty cases of beer, while empty green cans of soda littered my desk and overflowed from the small trash can I kept next to the computer. The can was usually reserved for paper towels, tissues, and the wrapping bits from the Hot Pockets I ate when I worked from home. I’d never bothered to clean it up before, and I should have. It grossed me out and was kind of an embarrassment. An embarrassment which lasted all of five seconds before I was reminded by the smell of piss and vomit that I needed to clean up immediately.

  I grabbed an oversized bag from under the sink of the bathroom attached to my room and started to shovel the overflowing trash into it.
Eventually, I found one of those smart alarm clocks that was always synced up to the current time. It had been hidden underneath about three months of neglect. It was the smart clock that actually let me know just how bad the situation was.

  Disclaimer: I said alarm, but I wasn’t in the practice of actually using one. It was more of a paperweight than anything. Call me lazy, or call me a victim of the second shift, your call. The clock read Sunday rather than Saturday. Maybe it was just a coincidence or a slight malfunction, but sometimes you just know what you know. This was one of those occasions.

  Chapter 3: Two Days Gone

  “Two days,” I muttered to myself, thinking over the fact that it might not have been a malfunction. I might have actually been passed out for the last two days. My head throbbed and I remembered the blood. It was possible. The last time I had done that was during a fight in Vegas, mixing uppers and downers. “This has got to be some sort of mistake. No way, that clock has got to be broken. I’ve got things I need to do. The weekend can’t be gone already.” Frankly, I was more than a little pissed at myself; I’d allocated a majority of my Saturday to a few work projects I was behind on, so I could binge-watch a new show on Sunday up until work Monday.

  Overall, it was still hard to believe it. Sure, I’d gone on a particularly aggressive bender after what had been an uncommonly shit end to the work week, but who hadn’t done just that exact thing? Add in that I had taken a blow to the head, and it was a perfect recipe to lose a little time. Even as I worked through it, I couldn’t shake the feeling I had missed something. The emergency broadcast… What else did I miss?

  Right on cue to set the mood, a loud rapping came from the window as the blackest, scariest bird I’d ever seen glared at me from the other side, and while evermore might have been the response a mall goth might have given, I just didn’t have it in me.

  I’d never actually seen a crow or raven or whatever this bird was up close like that, and here it was rapping at my window for what seemed like forever until I lost my cool and started screaming at it to leave like a small child. The creepy bird flew away, but not before glaring at me. Yes, glared. I knew it was a bird, but the damn thing glared before it flew away, showing off a wingspan the size of a small horse.

  Rather than shy away, something told me I needed to get a good look outside. Through the window, all I saw was a sky of endless black with roiling clouds of smoke that hung heavy in the air, while a thick mist had settled into the cul-de-sac, making it damn near impossible to see. I should have noticed this as soon as I woke up.

  Now that I was paying attention, some of the other details started to stand out. Like the way the trees were bowled over, or how the asphalt seemed to have split and was melted in places. Obviously, that seemed like a big deal, but what bothered me the most were the sounds of nearby screaming I heard. Sometimes the screams were in anger, and other times the screams were in pain or fear. None of the screams lasted that long and shortly after they started, the screaming stopped altogether.

  Well, that’s not ominous, now is it? I thought as I tried to process what was going on. Not that it mattered; I didn’t know what to make of it. The only thing I did know was that I didn’t want to go outside and find out what was going on. I’m not a coward by any means, but it didn’t take a genius level of deduction to figure out that whatever this happening was, it was pretty fucked. I didn’t need to head outside to prove that fact to myself.

  Braver people than me on the internet might have talked about heading outside to be a hero, but not me. Mostly I avoided looking out my window, because every time I glanced over, the dark skies remained unchanged. Sometimes you just had to stall for time and not rush into anything, and this was one of those times. I moved away from the window and set about cleaning up my room. It was sort of cathartic.

  The only thing that did change was that after a while, all the screaming and yelling stopped. I did a half-peek out the window and saw dark shadows; humanish figures moving through all the mists and smoke. I tried to convince myself it was just the neighbors choosing a terrible time to take out the trash, but I didn’t count on any such assumptions based on my own wishful thinking.

  After what seemed like ages, but might have been closer to an hour max, I built up my courage to take another look outside. The smoke had gotten so bad that it was nearly impossible to see anything without getting up on my desk to literally press my face against the glass. Doing that made all the difference. I couldn’t make out the details, but I saw what looked like mobs of people running around and down the road, fighting each other with makeshift weapons.

  From what I could make out, they all seemed to have improvised weapons, something like the LARPers at a park would use. It was oddly voyeuristic, and I felt a bit guilty watching what seemed like a life-and-death struggle. I’m not proud of it, but I was entertained and watched for as long as I could, but eventually the fighting moved too far away for me to see. I flinched when I heard the worst blood-curdling screams ever, as a much larger shadow appeared from the direction the fighters had disappeared. I was pretty sure they were all dead, and the giant looked directly at my window with eyes that glowed through the smoke, like a beast out of Bethlehem.

  The closer the thing approached, the more inhuman it appeared to be. As more and more of its silhouette came into view, it wasn’t just monstrously large, it was monstrous. Period. Something taken straight from a nightmare. I knew it was time to nope right the fuck out of there, away from the window to stop bringing attention my way.

  I scrambled off the desk and hid under it, hoping and praying for the best. I lied to myself more than once that it hadn’t seen me. That it was just a coincidence that the monster was headed my way. I prayed to anyone I thought was listening, but once my shortlist reached Tom Cruise, I was out of time. My pandering to gods I might or might not have believed in was interrupted by a low, powerful-sounding growl as something massive crashed into my house.

  I flinched at the sound of wood splintering and breaking alongside the shattering of glass. The growls were so close, I knew the monster was inside my house. I mean, the sounds of my walls breaking was a pretty good indicator. I did what I had to do: I prayed harder. I prayed even as I frantically pressed all the buttons on my cell phone, trying to get the service back on, hoping to get a hold of somebody who could help me.

  This time it worked. Within a few minutes, the phone turned on, but all I got was an error message. An internal notice that regretfully informed me the line was no longer in service. That no lines were still in service. It was a surprise to me too. As much as I wanted to scream and throw the phone across the room or take it out on the drywall, I was a little preoccupied with cowering. The only bright side was that I realized my hangover had completely passed, for whatever that was worth, and the spot on my head had all but healed already.

  Chapter 4: The Hiding Place

  I won’t say that I cried, but I might have peed a little. Especially when the walls of my room started to shake and tremble like a double-wide in a hurricane. I was 1000% certain that whatever was in my house was just on the other side of the door. The walls groaned and buckled as something massive beat on the door, but somehow, amazingly, the door remained unbroken. How it was possible, I had no idea. I mean, the answer is obvious now—it was a safe zone—but I didn’t know that then.

  Eventually, the pounding stopped and was replaced by the sounds of my furniture being tossed around and destroyed as my home was ransacked. At some point, I thought I heard something large and metallic land with a bang in the middle of the living room, but I wasn’t sure.

  It was terrifying, and I was scared out of my mind. I even rushed out from my hiding place to push the dresser over to try to barricade the door. As if a little extra weight was really going to stop that thing if it decided to force its way in. I figured the previous time was just a warm-up, and it hadn’t gotten serious yet. I knew that was ridiculous, but put yourself in my shoes. No one was a rockstar their first
time.

  I was actually a little embarrassed by how scared I was, but I couldn’t shove the fear away. I remember thinking, I need to get out of here. I can’t stay here forever. That mantra was eventually replaced with, I’ll be ok, I’ll be ok. I kept saying that to myself for hours, and I guess, ultimately, I believed what I was telling myself.

  For a few brief moments, things got super tense when the doorknob started to turn, and once again, I did a mad dash from my hiding place to secure the chain on the door. I’m not saying it did the trick, but it did make me feel just the slightest bit better. From the other side, I heard a scream of rage as the monster tried to break in again. But even though the door bulged and plaster flaked away from the doorway, the wall and the door remained intact.

  It was basically a miracle that the door held like it did, and I went ahead and gave thanks to a number of entities for the intervention. The monster on the other side growled, uselessly trying to get through. Maybe it was a good idea to move the dresser after all.

  In case you were wondering, yes, I knew this chain of events didn’t really make any sense. The flimsy little chain on the door didn’t matter at all, nor did the dresser. The door itself was barely more than fiberboard. The giant monster should have been able to break through without any effort and kill me. But rules mattered, and the rules of my new reality had designated my room, though unfortunately not my entire home, as a safe zone, and all the monster was trying to do was scare me out.

  Chapter 5: The End of the World as We Know It

  After the scare with the doorknob, I was a bit skittish about heading out, so I waited for a few hours before moving out of my hiding place. Truth be told, my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even get myself up off the ground. I waited long after the noise of destruction left in the monster’s wake had faded. You know, just for good measure.