Chapter Eleven: The Game of Four
I didn't know whether it was my mind or my eyes that had been playing this fucked up trick on me. We were going to play a game, and it wasn't just Sarah and me. We also had a stowaway; an intruder; a breaker of the peace, and his name was Wilson Huchinson. The final thing scratching at my mind was Sarah. He body was shaking almost hysterically, but her face was looking tough as nails. She intrigued me so much.
Three players in a "game of four." I was confused, scared, and for the first time tonight I was tired. I went through so much, and I have so much more to go through. It sure as hell was one long night.
That was when the next few hours of the night opened its door. The door fell as if it went down a hole, which it did. But I didn't have time to think what was going on, for something scurried along the floor of the giant room we stood a few feet from.
The large open room was filled with a trees, canopies, rocky soil, and things filled to their bones with a purple virus that depletes the soul from their body, yet keeps its brain working. "Keeps its brain working until it decays into mush," I though just before I heard a howl that sounded like the scream of a jungle animal.
I took out my gun and checked my ammo. I had nothing in there, and thank God I checked. I loaded it with my third to last clip. Wilson took something out of his trousers that looked like an automatic gun of some sort. I'm an expert at weaponry, but I hadn't a clue what this was. It was definitely old.
Sarah uttered, "Let's play this game." We took seven to eight paces until I heard the first shot go off, and the thump of something that was high up fell to the ground filled our ears. I looked down at a missive bird with a hole through its chest area oozing with thick red blood.
The blood was too thick to be normal. It was gagulated, which blood didn't do until the thing dies and is decomposing. Sarah didn't make the perfect shot into the flying monster, but it was Wilson. Sarah's words rang through my mind before I blew the head off of another swooping bird.
Just before I took the remaining life away from the creature, I saw its cold black eyes. The reason I didn't feel pity for anything here is because they have the intention of taking my life. Yet, seeing a little girl or boy infected with the virus makes me think about how sorry I feel for the innocent people that I have no choice but to kill for they will kill me if I don't.
Our guns roared with fire as the jungles woods came to life. Birds came from the sky, snakes came from holes in the ground they borrowed, (I had enough snakes for one night) and spiders five times the size of normal spiders climbed down the many trees in swarms of hundreds. We began firing and pressing forward, trying to hold the creatures off.
Wilson stopped to reload his gun, which I noticed was obviously an automatic, and must have taken one second to long. One of the beastly spiders pounced into the air, and mad it inches from his face. In the nick of time, Sarah threw something towards Wilson. I couldn't make out what it was until it pierced through the flying spider and into a tree. It was an all to familiar knife. My knife.
The spider burst open in purple juices when it splattered against the tree. I gave Sarah a confused look, and she scream through the ear splitting gunfire, "I yanked it outta the tree earlier, and bent it straight!" I nodded quickly and looked high into the dark green trees above us.
My thoughts were hammered to hell when I felt some brush past my pant leg. My face's remaining colors were stripped away. I stomped down hardly on the ground, feeling very vulnerable. I felt something squish. I looked down at the dirty ground to see what it was. It was nothing more than a scurrying rat that probably wasn't infected, just there. I ran over to the tree my knife was jammed into. I yanked it out and the foul bloody remains of the spider fell to the ground. I slipped the knife into my unused left pocket and began shooting.
In a few minutes of firing and slowly moving forward, like the devil showed his face, we all ran out of ammo at the same time. We looked at each other, wondering why the next person stopped shooting. In the moments it took us to load, everything moved in on us. The spiders hopped and scurried towards us, the snakes slithered by, and even a few wild boars came in with drooling bloody lips.
They all made there way to us. We felt exposed and dead, and just before they attacked and killed us something began to roar furiously. The beasts seemed to back off, but Wilson planted the first bullet of his new clip into the head of the boar. It fell to the ground dead, lying in a pool of its own blood that gushed from the tiny hole between its eyes.
Everything seemed to leave. The roar scared them off, but I wasn't relieved about the departure of all of those beasts. I was too busy wondering what the hell made that blood curdling noise. The roar ran throughout the jungle level once again. Only this time, it seemed closer. "What the heck was that noise?" Wilson said in a hushed voice.
Sarah shushed him and in moments spoke out as well. "I don't know, and I sure as hell don't want too." I gave Wilson a dirty look, but I don't know why. For some reason I hated him because he looked so utterly calm. The way he asked what the noise was stumped me. Why was he calm in a life and death situation?
We heard a rustling noise in the bushes ahead of us. We felt eyes watching us, waiting for us to be totally desperate. Just then a thought flashed through my head. "We need to go through three more of these goddamn things!"
Wilson looked at me funny and asked, "Did you just say something?" I looked confused and Sarah answered for me.
"He's mute and won't be saying much, now please be quiet." Wilson didn't seem to like being told what to do by a girl who was a lot younger than him. With his free hand he caressed her cheek. She threw it off her face and lifted up her gun to his sweaty head. "Look, if you ever fucking touch me again, I will have no problem killing you. I killed enough shit tonight I will do another!"
"Wow, baby! You sure are tough for your age. How old are you? Seventeen? Twelve?" he joked.
Just as Sarah looked at me and began to ask me to back her up and shoot him, but something cut her off with a roar that was right near us. Silence encoded us and Sarah let her guard down. Wilson jumped on top of her and knocked her gun away. I stood and watched, to dumbstruck to think straight. "Oh baby! You like this?" Wilson said as he rubbed her all over her chest and she scream for him to get the fuck off.
Before I could run over and help her, something else seemed too. A large orange beast leapt from a heavy clump of bushes and stopped me in my advancing tracks to save Sarah. It slammed atop them both, but sent Wilson flying through the air.
He screamed in fear and pain and his head landed hardly on a brown stump sticking from the ground. Everything Wilson saw faded to black, for the blow to the head rendered him unconscious.
I finally realized what the beast that tackled him off the ground was. An orange animal with black stripes down its whole body advanced toward the knocked out body of Wilson. It was a viral infected tiger. I'd never seen anything like it. The animal was once beautiful and ruthless, but now it stood before us with a murderous stare that could stop a person like a deer in front of headlights.
Its mouth drooled with blue and purple virus, and its teeth glowed in the dimly lit room with dark red blood. Its claws dug into the ground with each step. It was a few mere paces from its prey. The brightly color tiger bent its legs and jumped straight for Wilson. It landed atop him and swung its massive arms across his chest. Blood spewed into the air violently.
I screamed for that mans life, and before I knew what happened, I fired my entire clip into the head of the beast. Its scalp blew off along with skull and bloody matter. It lay atop the most likely dead Wilson.
I had felt hot tears fill my eyes. I blinked and they rolled down my cheeks, touching the corner of my mouth. I ignored the salty taste, and grabbed my gun. I didn't know what I intended to do with an obviously unloaded Magnum.
"Why are you crying for him?" Sarah asked oddly. I sobbed and felt lost again. I tucked my gun into the waste of my bloody, dirty jeans. I wiped my tears away and turned my back to her, as I walked over to the dead body of the monstrous beast of a tiger and Wilson.
I kicked the thing off him and looked at his face. I rubbed his hair off his face when I felt his chest rise and fall. I laughed happily and thought, "He's fucking alive! Thank you, God, he's alive!"
I slapped the unconscious man back and forth across his face, and he came to. His eyes slowly began to open and he smiled. He whispered something only I could hear, and I smiled, too. I lifted him to his feet and embraced him.
"What the hell? We should have left him to die, Mike!" Sarah bellowed fearlessly.
Wilson responded, "This mans hearts isn't black like yours, bitch! Now I'm going to run through this level, and we can check my wounds later."
Sarah smiled and retorted, "You're infected. There is no reason why I shouldn't have to put a bullet through your head right now." Sarah must have picked up her gun, for it was in her hand and aimed at Wilson. I stared them both, waiting for Wilson's replying remark. He finally said, "You aren't going to shoot me 'cause two people can't make it through this. You absolutely cannot!"
Her gun seemed to weigh and extra ten pounds just then because she put it down into her pocket. Her berretta was as sweaty as my Magnum was, but it wasn't nearly as empty. I reloaded while Sarah stared at Wilson, who was stripping off his shirt. He revealed ten deep cuts across his belly and chest. "This does hurt, and I would like to beat this goddamn level and get outta here!" he said quickly. I nodded, and noticed Sarah was hardly breathing. She was suddenly completely spooked, and I noticed why in seconds. The sound of a thousand tiny footsteps was heard, and we knew the large tarantulas knew the T-Virus filled tiger was dead.
"Run. now!"
Both of us followed Sarah's order and ran through the thick wooded jungle. Spiders covered the ground at our thumping feet. One leapt onto my pant leg and began crawling quickly up to my face. I made an odd noise from my throat, and Wilson brush the eight-legged thing off my shirt roughly.
I nodded my thanks, but he didn't see me. He began running faster than both of us, and even got ahead of Sarah. She didn't seem to think it was wise of him to do that, for blood oozed from his wounds, and splashed the ground. The blood drew the hungry creatures from the other side of the oddly shaped room towards us. The only thing that was a major threat to us was the wild boars.
The large spiders were semi-easy to dodge, but the boars came out of nowhere along side of us. Then, I saw something not to far through the trees. It was a large garage-like door. I felt my legs and stomach burn, but I never stopped running.
Sarah and Wilson both touched their hands against the door to stop their quick dash, and were fiddling with the handle at the bottom of the door, trying to get it open with all their might.
My heartbeat was going fast as I got close to the door. I dodged an exceptionally larger spider just as I noticed they had the sliding door up. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I had never been more thankful.
Though, my thankfulness didn't last. A vine wrapped around my ankle viciously, and before my face could hit the ground Sarah screamed in terror. The hard ground shook my body.
I felt weak and sick, but I didn't notice that the vine that wrapped my ankle was wrapping itself around my entire leg. When I looked down at it, I couldn't see my faded blue jeans. All I saw was green rope covering me. I pushed up with my hands, but as I began to pull my gun out with the intention of shooting one of my final rounds into the leafy vine, I notice what would very well be my death.
The 'exceptionally large spider' I had dodged seconds earlier was making its way toward me. It moved quickly and I saw sticky, gooey stuff drip from its two fangs. I guess this wasn't the time to wonder if it was poisonous. I tried to get up, but every time I moved my leg, the plants grip tightened almost to the point of snapping the bones within my flesh.
"Mike! Hang on, I'm coming!" shouted Wilson. I didn't hear him though. The spider hissed, and it was only a few inches from my face. I closed my eyes and waited for death, as I could feel the furry eight-legger's steady insect breath on my sweaty nose. Just as it began to sink its teeth through my pale flesh, the vine pulled me into the air.
I hung upside down above all the spiders and boars and many other things I had recently shot in the jungle room. I breathed roughly, and though, "If I could scream 'get the fuck off me' right now, I'd be taking a heavy burden off my chest."
The grip on my leg tightened, and I heard (and felt) my leg crack. It didn't hurt, but I didn't know what it felt like to have a bone broken. I reached down for my gun, but before I could grab it, I felt it slip out of the waist of my pants. I tried to reach for it before it went to far to the ground, but I missed it. Eight feet in the air, being held up by a phantom plant. how couldn't anything get worse.
Sarah screamed loudly once again, and I heard my gun hit the ground. Fuck.
I looked at my leg, and followed the vine with my eyes. It led me to see what the actual beast looked like. It was beautiful, yet massive. A round green, yellow, and orange decorative plant covered the ground, not to far from where Wilson and Sarah were running too.
Sarah must have felt a lot for me because she began pumping round after round into the colorful plant. It screamed in pain, and that was the first time I noticed a large crease in the top of the thing I was directly above. The crease opened, revealing what looked like a hungry mouth. Razor sharp teeth cover the insides of its mouth.
The thing felt none of the bullets pierce it, and it slowly began to lower me into its widely opened mouth. I was weaponless and defenseless against the beast. I writhed around back and forth, hoping for a way of escape.
It then occurred to me what to do. I reached into my sock and pulled out a pack of matches. The very same matches I snatched from the helicopters glove compartment. I work quickly, lighting a match, then torching the rest of the pack. I tossed it onto the beast, just missing his mouth.
I smiled as the fire spread across the thing's side, soon making it entirely ablaze. As my eyes twinkled starry from the fire, I realized how stupid that idea was. When this vine burned off, I'll be dropped into the open mouth of a burning monster.
I dangled for a few more seconds above the fiery monster that not to long ago was a beautiful thing to be marveled at a distance.
The vine snapped and I was flying straight down into fire. My eyes hammer shut, and I crashed down through the hot air. Wilson ran through the fiery beast, and I landed in his outstretched arms. He dived out of the fire, clutching my scared body.
It all happened so fast, and I never opened my eyes. He carried me all the way to the opened door leading to the next level. I never opened my eyes until I heard the garage-like door slam shut. "Hey Mike, are you alright bud?" came the calm voice of Wilson. I looked into his familiar eyes and smiled.
"Hey bro, I don't feel like playing this game anymore. I guess its effective, since I am infected and you're in pain and your gun is gone," Wilson said to me, ignoring Sarah's presence.
"Don't expect him to respond, he's fucking mute!" Sarah shouted at Wilson. I smiled and began to stand up. She stared at me confusedly. I looked around the room and recognized it to be a bit like the room Sarah and I went into that turned out to be the Game Of Four.
Yet, in this room, there were four doors. Each one had a label.
The City The Desert The Sky and The Child of the East.
The doors were large, just like the one we just went through. I reached into my left pocket and grabbed the knife. I lifted it up and put against Sarah's throat. I laughed hysterically and whispered, "Who ever told you the famous Michael Birkin couldn't talk, Miss Sarah Mick!"
My cover was blown.
I didn't know whether it was my mind or my eyes that had been playing this fucked up trick on me. We were going to play a game, and it wasn't just Sarah and me. We also had a stowaway; an intruder; a breaker of the peace, and his name was Wilson Huchinson. The final thing scratching at my mind was Sarah. He body was shaking almost hysterically, but her face was looking tough as nails. She intrigued me so much.
Three players in a "game of four." I was confused, scared, and for the first time tonight I was tired. I went through so much, and I have so much more to go through. It sure as hell was one long night.
That was when the next few hours of the night opened its door. The door fell as if it went down a hole, which it did. But I didn't have time to think what was going on, for something scurried along the floor of the giant room we stood a few feet from.
The large open room was filled with a trees, canopies, rocky soil, and things filled to their bones with a purple virus that depletes the soul from their body, yet keeps its brain working. "Keeps its brain working until it decays into mush," I though just before I heard a howl that sounded like the scream of a jungle animal.
I took out my gun and checked my ammo. I had nothing in there, and thank God I checked. I loaded it with my third to last clip. Wilson took something out of his trousers that looked like an automatic gun of some sort. I'm an expert at weaponry, but I hadn't a clue what this was. It was definitely old.
Sarah uttered, "Let's play this game." We took seven to eight paces until I heard the first shot go off, and the thump of something that was high up fell to the ground filled our ears. I looked down at a missive bird with a hole through its chest area oozing with thick red blood.
The blood was too thick to be normal. It was gagulated, which blood didn't do until the thing dies and is decomposing. Sarah didn't make the perfect shot into the flying monster, but it was Wilson. Sarah's words rang through my mind before I blew the head off of another swooping bird.
Just before I took the remaining life away from the creature, I saw its cold black eyes. The reason I didn't feel pity for anything here is because they have the intention of taking my life. Yet, seeing a little girl or boy infected with the virus makes me think about how sorry I feel for the innocent people that I have no choice but to kill for they will kill me if I don't.
Our guns roared with fire as the jungles woods came to life. Birds came from the sky, snakes came from holes in the ground they borrowed, (I had enough snakes for one night) and spiders five times the size of normal spiders climbed down the many trees in swarms of hundreds. We began firing and pressing forward, trying to hold the creatures off.
Wilson stopped to reload his gun, which I noticed was obviously an automatic, and must have taken one second to long. One of the beastly spiders pounced into the air, and mad it inches from his face. In the nick of time, Sarah threw something towards Wilson. I couldn't make out what it was until it pierced through the flying spider and into a tree. It was an all to familiar knife. My knife.
The spider burst open in purple juices when it splattered against the tree. I gave Sarah a confused look, and she scream through the ear splitting gunfire, "I yanked it outta the tree earlier, and bent it straight!" I nodded quickly and looked high into the dark green trees above us.
My thoughts were hammered to hell when I felt some brush past my pant leg. My face's remaining colors were stripped away. I stomped down hardly on the ground, feeling very vulnerable. I felt something squish. I looked down at the dirty ground to see what it was. It was nothing more than a scurrying rat that probably wasn't infected, just there. I ran over to the tree my knife was jammed into. I yanked it out and the foul bloody remains of the spider fell to the ground. I slipped the knife into my unused left pocket and began shooting.
In a few minutes of firing and slowly moving forward, like the devil showed his face, we all ran out of ammo at the same time. We looked at each other, wondering why the next person stopped shooting. In the moments it took us to load, everything moved in on us. The spiders hopped and scurried towards us, the snakes slithered by, and even a few wild boars came in with drooling bloody lips.
They all made there way to us. We felt exposed and dead, and just before they attacked and killed us something began to roar furiously. The beasts seemed to back off, but Wilson planted the first bullet of his new clip into the head of the boar. It fell to the ground dead, lying in a pool of its own blood that gushed from the tiny hole between its eyes.
Everything seemed to leave. The roar scared them off, but I wasn't relieved about the departure of all of those beasts. I was too busy wondering what the hell made that blood curdling noise. The roar ran throughout the jungle level once again. Only this time, it seemed closer. "What the heck was that noise?" Wilson said in a hushed voice.
Sarah shushed him and in moments spoke out as well. "I don't know, and I sure as hell don't want too." I gave Wilson a dirty look, but I don't know why. For some reason I hated him because he looked so utterly calm. The way he asked what the noise was stumped me. Why was he calm in a life and death situation?
We heard a rustling noise in the bushes ahead of us. We felt eyes watching us, waiting for us to be totally desperate. Just then a thought flashed through my head. "We need to go through three more of these goddamn things!"
Wilson looked at me funny and asked, "Did you just say something?" I looked confused and Sarah answered for me.
"He's mute and won't be saying much, now please be quiet." Wilson didn't seem to like being told what to do by a girl who was a lot younger than him. With his free hand he caressed her cheek. She threw it off her face and lifted up her gun to his sweaty head. "Look, if you ever fucking touch me again, I will have no problem killing you. I killed enough shit tonight I will do another!"
"Wow, baby! You sure are tough for your age. How old are you? Seventeen? Twelve?" he joked.
Just as Sarah looked at me and began to ask me to back her up and shoot him, but something cut her off with a roar that was right near us. Silence encoded us and Sarah let her guard down. Wilson jumped on top of her and knocked her gun away. I stood and watched, to dumbstruck to think straight. "Oh baby! You like this?" Wilson said as he rubbed her all over her chest and she scream for him to get the fuck off.
Before I could run over and help her, something else seemed too. A large orange beast leapt from a heavy clump of bushes and stopped me in my advancing tracks to save Sarah. It slammed atop them both, but sent Wilson flying through the air.
He screamed in fear and pain and his head landed hardly on a brown stump sticking from the ground. Everything Wilson saw faded to black, for the blow to the head rendered him unconscious.
I finally realized what the beast that tackled him off the ground was. An orange animal with black stripes down its whole body advanced toward the knocked out body of Wilson. It was a viral infected tiger. I'd never seen anything like it. The animal was once beautiful and ruthless, but now it stood before us with a murderous stare that could stop a person like a deer in front of headlights.
Its mouth drooled with blue and purple virus, and its teeth glowed in the dimly lit room with dark red blood. Its claws dug into the ground with each step. It was a few mere paces from its prey. The brightly color tiger bent its legs and jumped straight for Wilson. It landed atop him and swung its massive arms across his chest. Blood spewed into the air violently.
I screamed for that mans life, and before I knew what happened, I fired my entire clip into the head of the beast. Its scalp blew off along with skull and bloody matter. It lay atop the most likely dead Wilson.
I had felt hot tears fill my eyes. I blinked and they rolled down my cheeks, touching the corner of my mouth. I ignored the salty taste, and grabbed my gun. I didn't know what I intended to do with an obviously unloaded Magnum.
"Why are you crying for him?" Sarah asked oddly. I sobbed and felt lost again. I tucked my gun into the waste of my bloody, dirty jeans. I wiped my tears away and turned my back to her, as I walked over to the dead body of the monstrous beast of a tiger and Wilson.
I kicked the thing off him and looked at his face. I rubbed his hair off his face when I felt his chest rise and fall. I laughed happily and thought, "He's fucking alive! Thank you, God, he's alive!"
I slapped the unconscious man back and forth across his face, and he came to. His eyes slowly began to open and he smiled. He whispered something only I could hear, and I smiled, too. I lifted him to his feet and embraced him.
"What the hell? We should have left him to die, Mike!" Sarah bellowed fearlessly.
Wilson responded, "This mans hearts isn't black like yours, bitch! Now I'm going to run through this level, and we can check my wounds later."
Sarah smiled and retorted, "You're infected. There is no reason why I shouldn't have to put a bullet through your head right now." Sarah must have picked up her gun, for it was in her hand and aimed at Wilson. I stared them both, waiting for Wilson's replying remark. He finally said, "You aren't going to shoot me 'cause two people can't make it through this. You absolutely cannot!"
Her gun seemed to weigh and extra ten pounds just then because she put it down into her pocket. Her berretta was as sweaty as my Magnum was, but it wasn't nearly as empty. I reloaded while Sarah stared at Wilson, who was stripping off his shirt. He revealed ten deep cuts across his belly and chest. "This does hurt, and I would like to beat this goddamn level and get outta here!" he said quickly. I nodded, and noticed Sarah was hardly breathing. She was suddenly completely spooked, and I noticed why in seconds. The sound of a thousand tiny footsteps was heard, and we knew the large tarantulas knew the T-Virus filled tiger was dead.
"Run. now!"
Both of us followed Sarah's order and ran through the thick wooded jungle. Spiders covered the ground at our thumping feet. One leapt onto my pant leg and began crawling quickly up to my face. I made an odd noise from my throat, and Wilson brush the eight-legged thing off my shirt roughly.
I nodded my thanks, but he didn't see me. He began running faster than both of us, and even got ahead of Sarah. She didn't seem to think it was wise of him to do that, for blood oozed from his wounds, and splashed the ground. The blood drew the hungry creatures from the other side of the oddly shaped room towards us. The only thing that was a major threat to us was the wild boars.
The large spiders were semi-easy to dodge, but the boars came out of nowhere along side of us. Then, I saw something not to far through the trees. It was a large garage-like door. I felt my legs and stomach burn, but I never stopped running.
Sarah and Wilson both touched their hands against the door to stop their quick dash, and were fiddling with the handle at the bottom of the door, trying to get it open with all their might.
My heartbeat was going fast as I got close to the door. I dodged an exceptionally larger spider just as I noticed they had the sliding door up. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I had never been more thankful.
Though, my thankfulness didn't last. A vine wrapped around my ankle viciously, and before my face could hit the ground Sarah screamed in terror. The hard ground shook my body.
I felt weak and sick, but I didn't notice that the vine that wrapped my ankle was wrapping itself around my entire leg. When I looked down at it, I couldn't see my faded blue jeans. All I saw was green rope covering me. I pushed up with my hands, but as I began to pull my gun out with the intention of shooting one of my final rounds into the leafy vine, I notice what would very well be my death.
The 'exceptionally large spider' I had dodged seconds earlier was making its way toward me. It moved quickly and I saw sticky, gooey stuff drip from its two fangs. I guess this wasn't the time to wonder if it was poisonous. I tried to get up, but every time I moved my leg, the plants grip tightened almost to the point of snapping the bones within my flesh.
"Mike! Hang on, I'm coming!" shouted Wilson. I didn't hear him though. The spider hissed, and it was only a few inches from my face. I closed my eyes and waited for death, as I could feel the furry eight-legger's steady insect breath on my sweaty nose. Just as it began to sink its teeth through my pale flesh, the vine pulled me into the air.
I hung upside down above all the spiders and boars and many other things I had recently shot in the jungle room. I breathed roughly, and though, "If I could scream 'get the fuck off me' right now, I'd be taking a heavy burden off my chest."
The grip on my leg tightened, and I heard (and felt) my leg crack. It didn't hurt, but I didn't know what it felt like to have a bone broken. I reached down for my gun, but before I could grab it, I felt it slip out of the waist of my pants. I tried to reach for it before it went to far to the ground, but I missed it. Eight feet in the air, being held up by a phantom plant. how couldn't anything get worse.
Sarah screamed loudly once again, and I heard my gun hit the ground. Fuck.
I looked at my leg, and followed the vine with my eyes. It led me to see what the actual beast looked like. It was beautiful, yet massive. A round green, yellow, and orange decorative plant covered the ground, not to far from where Wilson and Sarah were running too.
Sarah must have felt a lot for me because she began pumping round after round into the colorful plant. It screamed in pain, and that was the first time I noticed a large crease in the top of the thing I was directly above. The crease opened, revealing what looked like a hungry mouth. Razor sharp teeth cover the insides of its mouth.
The thing felt none of the bullets pierce it, and it slowly began to lower me into its widely opened mouth. I was weaponless and defenseless against the beast. I writhed around back and forth, hoping for a way of escape.
It then occurred to me what to do. I reached into my sock and pulled out a pack of matches. The very same matches I snatched from the helicopters glove compartment. I work quickly, lighting a match, then torching the rest of the pack. I tossed it onto the beast, just missing his mouth.
I smiled as the fire spread across the thing's side, soon making it entirely ablaze. As my eyes twinkled starry from the fire, I realized how stupid that idea was. When this vine burned off, I'll be dropped into the open mouth of a burning monster.
I dangled for a few more seconds above the fiery monster that not to long ago was a beautiful thing to be marveled at a distance.
The vine snapped and I was flying straight down into fire. My eyes hammer shut, and I crashed down through the hot air. Wilson ran through the fiery beast, and I landed in his outstretched arms. He dived out of the fire, clutching my scared body.
It all happened so fast, and I never opened my eyes. He carried me all the way to the opened door leading to the next level. I never opened my eyes until I heard the garage-like door slam shut. "Hey Mike, are you alright bud?" came the calm voice of Wilson. I looked into his familiar eyes and smiled.
"Hey bro, I don't feel like playing this game anymore. I guess its effective, since I am infected and you're in pain and your gun is gone," Wilson said to me, ignoring Sarah's presence.
"Don't expect him to respond, he's fucking mute!" Sarah shouted at Wilson. I smiled and began to stand up. She stared at me confusedly. I looked around the room and recognized it to be a bit like the room Sarah and I went into that turned out to be the Game Of Four.
Yet, in this room, there were four doors. Each one had a label.
The City The Desert The Sky and The Child of the East.
The doors were large, just like the one we just went through. I reached into my left pocket and grabbed the knife. I lifted it up and put against Sarah's throat. I laughed hysterically and whispered, "Who ever told you the famous Michael Birkin couldn't talk, Miss Sarah Mick!"
My cover was blown.