Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel (7 page)

She giggled girlishly, covering her mouth with her hand.

I blushed a little, though I was pretty sure she was teasing me.

Her eyes wandered over the crowd behind me, and then she looked over my head. “Uh, isn’t that guy over there with you?”

I turned to look where she was looking. Saw that Dad was just then climbing the steps.

Sure enough, he had his mobile in hand, and I realised that—against all odds—he actually
did
have that app the invigilator had pointed out to us that morning on his screen.

No chess.

Just for a couple of seconds.

That made me feel better—that he valued his son at least a little above chess.

“Hey?” she said, as if I’d just done something rude. “Kate,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, not sure if we should shake hands or hug or kiss on the cheek or what . . . though since we were both thirteen-year-old kids, and thinking about the way I was blushing, I guessed that it made sense for it to be awkward.

“I’m in Group D,” she said, “so, maybe we’ll see one another in the next rounds.”

Though I was sure that my heart was pumping gallons of blood per second into my cheeks, I couldn’t help thinking, in a snide way, that, most likely, she would get knocked out soon enough.

I wondered if she was going to intercept this thought of mine, but, instead, she just gave me a sliver of a smile, showing off a tiny glimmer of her
very white
teeth, and then she shimmied on away, lost herself in the crowd.

“Dad?” I called out.

He glanced up from his mobile screen.

Only about ten paces away from me now.

He caught my eye.

13

“SO?” Dad said. “All set for the matchup?”

Though Dad had picked the right terminology, I couldn’t help wincing just a little.

I stared down at my half-eaten hamburger, lying there on the greased-up, thin paper. I decided that now was the time for me to make inroads into my fries—so far I hadn’t touched them. There’s definitely something to be said for salt before a gaming tournament.

If nothing else, it gets your heart pounding just that little bit harder.

Can help you hit those split-second reactions.

“Uh huh,” I replied, snatching for a handful of chips, stuffing them between my lips, chewing up the salt and fat, and all that goodness, washing it down with a good slurp of Brizzmere Buzz.

The sugary bubbles seemed to lash their way right into my bloodstream.

Again, some pretty good energy.

I breathed in the fat on the air, found it reassuring, and I did my best to block out the blabbering crowd that sat at the food court.

I didn’t really want to run into another meet-and-greet situation.

It was enough for my inside-kid nature to have the stress of ‘getting to know’
two
people in one day.

Kate and James.

That meant two more names I’d have to remember.

I reached down for my lukewarm hamburger.

Bit off another quarter.

Chewed it up thinking that—to the casual observer—I no doubt looked a little like a cow chewing away on some cud.

Let them think what they want.

Because I was going to show them
all
who was boss just as soon as I found myself at a gamepad.

It was then that I realised that I hadn’t called Mum, and that I had
told
her I would ring her the day before.

I looked to Dad, who was currently pondering his next move in his computer chess game. I saw that the other player was ambiguously named Nemux5 . . . Dad really did have some of the geekiest friends, and that’s coming from his video-game-playing
son
.

“Can I give Mum a ring, Dad? I told her I would, and I don’t have any minutes.”

Okay, that was kind of, sort of accurate.

The truth was that I never
really
liked to use up my minutes.

I always get a little paranoid that I might end up somewhere—
someplace, sometime
—and not be able to make a potentially life-saving phone call . . . yeah, or something like that . . . but, long story short, why should
I
have to use
my
phone to call one of my parents?

. . . Couldn’t they call me?

Dad pondered his next move for half a minute or so, long enough that, if I hadn’t known him so well, I might’ve thought that he hadn’t heard what I’d just said.

But, sure enough, after he’d made his move, he slid his mobile across the table to me.

I checked down the list for Mum’s name and number then hit the Call button.

The dial tone chirped away in my ear.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I checked the time, saw that it was around midday now—hence the hamburger.

I guessed that, maybe, Mum had gone to have her own lunch with my aunt, and that she had perhaps left her phone behind in the guest room.

Still, I tried another couple of times, and then settled on leaving a voicemail message.

I handed my dad his mobile back.

He near enough snatched it out of my fingers, and I saw that he already had five moves to see to . . . five different games that were awaiting his input.

I rolled my eyes and tried to get my brain into gaming mode.

To get myself all revved up.

14

ALL THE GAMERS in our group—Group M—were clustered around our invigilator: the same guy from this morning who had taken us through briefing.

I looked across to James, caught his eye.

He smiled at me.

I smiled back.

Then I remembered that
he
was the competition.

That I couldn’t afford to think of him as a friend.

. . . At least not till I’d crushed him, and the rest of the players in my group, beneath my oversized bottom.

The invigilator, like the rest of the staff at Gamers Con, wore a dark-purple polo shirt. His name badge read: Steve, though since he never
formally
introduced himself to us, I guess that he might’ve conceivably been called something else.

Steve was one of those trusty guys.

He was well-built, which was to say that he was
fat
—fat enough that a fat kid like me could comfortably get away with calling him fat.

He’d obviously taken the extra-large size of polo shirt, but that was still struggling to cover his belly which kind of flopped out over his waistline showing off the fuzzy black hair which clung to his skin.

A couple of times, when I got too close to Steve, I caught a whiff of his sweat—realised that there was maybe a lingering odour of chip grease there too . . . and I wondered if, maybe, he’d eaten in the same food court as me and Dad.

But Steve was serious about what he did. Not once, throughout the entire explanation, did he crack a smile or even hint at a dry-humoured joke . . . I like that.

The First Round was to be shooting games using peripherals.

There was a bit of a collective sigh around me.

I knew just what everybody else was thinking, because I felt just the same.

That peripherals were below me.

Of course they were.

They weren’t
serious
.

But, then again, I knew that this was Gamers Con, and whatever they said was Law.

If they wanted to tumble us into a bunch of giant inflatable balls and have us try to knock one another off a narrow ledge then we would’ve had to do it . . . or admit defeat.

Nope, this First Round would be a true challenge of our gaming credentials.

The first step to proving the all-round gamer who would eventually take the trophy.

We filed along, away from the meeting area—that section beneath the large letter M which was, logically, where our group: Group M, would get together before each of these First Round events.

I felt pumped looking upwards, seeing all the people looking down on us from above, looking down into the area restricted to
only
All-Access Passes, and, for the first time at Gamers Con, I felt, well and truly, like I belonged.

After a five-minute walk which got, at least, both me and Steve breathing heavily, I found myself facing off with a whole row of arcade machines, all of them with a shooting peripheral.

Again, I sensed that heaviness in the air, that sense that these gamers were all about to take part in something that was beneath them.

Well, the only ones who’d end up thinking this was beneath them would find themselves knocked out of the Grand Tournament.

Strangely enough, nobody quit there and then.

We all listened attentively to
yet more
instructions and then it was playtime.

I lined myself up at the machine I’d been assigned.

I checked out my competition, the rest of them all at their own machines.

The rules were simple.

Whoever scored the most points would win.

We wouldn’t know which game we were playing till the screen blazed into life.

That suited me just fine.

I could sharp shoot in just about
any
shooting game.

I picked up the plastic gun from its holster, checked to my left, then my right, saw that neither of the gamers who stood beside me was James, and then I held the gun straight.

Stared along the sight.

15

I GOT LUCKY.

The first game that fired up was
Zombie Harvester III
.

Though I’d never played
Zombie Harvester III
on an arcade machine—not even with the gun peripheral on my Sirocco 3000 . . . did I mention that
serious
gamers
never
use peripherals?—I found my feet quickly.

We were on the final level, taking part in a customised scenario.

On the top floor of
Pentwhistle Mansion
, the part where you have to face off with a bunch of demented—possessed?—puppets.

The strategy is simple.

You’ve gotta shoot at the cords.

Take those down and you get a flat two or three seconds, while the puppet sprawls about on the floor, to shoot them like little baby ducklings.

Like little
demon
baby ducklings, make no mistake.

The only minor difference—what made this a
customised
edition—was that there seemed to be about twice the number of puppets as usual.

It was a bit of a mindless mod, to be honest.

But I guess that it would throw a couple of the less-experienced gamers.

As I flushed out the puppets, I thought about how there’re often message-board arguments over whether or not
Zombie Harvester III
is superior to its sequel,
Zombie Harvester IV
.

As for me?

I guess they both have their merits.

The story of
Zombie Harvester IV
is certainly better—a little more
global
in scale—and there’s that great part where you actually get to hop onto a combine harvester and mow over an entire field’s worth of zombies.

Then again, there are those who like to argue for
Zombie Harvester III
because of the more claustrophobic feel to the game . . . wow, look at me, maybe I’d already been spending too much time with Kate, and her extended vocabulary had begun to rub off on me.

Whatever, I was seriously donning
Zombie Harvester III
—just flat killing the whole thing.

I didn’t even think to glance at my points at the side of the screen till I reached the victory screen for that particular scenario.

My points had a comma in them, and a whole bunch of zeroes.

When I glanced around, getting that skin-itching sensation that somebody was looking over my shoulder, I saw Steve—clipboard in hand—clicking his tongue . . . apparently impressed.

He met my eye for the briefest second, scrawled something down on his clipboard, and then wondered along to the next player: this guy who looked like he was maybe in his mid-thirties and who was already sweating all over the place.

Another four games followed.

All of them ones that I’d played before.

I really didn’t have to think at all.

The peripheral gun just became an extension of my hand.

I lined up the shots, fired them off.

Bagged the points.

Nothing else to it.

Several times, as we finished up each of the games, I noticed Steve behind me.

Though I wouldn’t say that his features lit up, he certainly looked
somewhat
positive . . . which was to say
not quite
neutral . . . as he scrawled down the numbers beside my name.

With that done, I holstered my plastic gun and went over to where Steve was processing the results for the First Round.

As we all stood around, I noticed James come up beside me.

He clapped me on the shoulder, almost laughing.

It was funny. Looking around the rest of the faces, to the other gamers, I saw that they were pretty much all wracked with tension, some of them biting their fingernails, others pacing back and forth, only pausing to glance up at the plasma screen to see if Steve had put up the results yet.

Finally they did come.

There was a collection of gasps and swearwords.

All around.

Sitting there, right at the top, tied for first place, was me and James.

James had got the top spot because of his first name . . . because J comes before Z in the alphabet . . . but both our rankings
did
read first.

So that was something.

Steve read out the summary, told us just who had gone through.

The top five gamers of our group.

I looked about me, again finding it funny that there were several grown men: men in their twenties or thirties—at least one
surely
in his forties—and that they were casting those glares of theirs at the two
kids
who’d managed to beat them.

I wondered if they’d simply go back home now, all angry, or if they’d stay out the rest of the convention just to see who did take the Grand Tournament Trophy.