Crowbar Nurse Chapter 7

“—Sera, hold on. There’s something weird.”

Our silly conversation ended abruptly when Kiryū raised his palm up, halting me in my tracks.

“The h.e.l.l is going on there?”
“Ah, that’s…”

I squinted into the distance.
Ahead of us in the street was a crowd of people.

A crowd of people? Or was it a crowd of zombies?

There was a middle-aged man waiting around three zombies that were standing up straight with very good posture. It’s seemingly as if the man was just waiting to be attacked.

The only real movement was his breathing. Other than that, the man didn’t look like he is even trying to get away from the zombies. That’s a very curious situation.

“Hmm… it’s shocking how they are all just standing up so stiffly… maybe the three zombies are scripted to attack the NPC and correspondingly, the NPC is scripted to be attacked by them?”
“Say what?”
“In this game, there are often times where you can save people who are being attacked by zombies… they call them ‘survivors’.”

I pointed over to the four of them.

“The middle-aged man should be one of the survivors. He’s always scripted to be attacked around there… but I’ve never seen them just standing up straight like that. Maybe it’s a bug.”
“Or maybe we just haven’t triggered them yet.”

“You know how we’re backtracking through the stage? Well, I’d wager that the zombies are scripted to attack when the protagonist gets close enough when going the correct way.”
“Oh, I see, that makes sense.”
“I’m not 100% on it, but it sounds reasonable, right?”
“No, I’m confident you’re right.”

I had the feeling that Kiryū is someone who speaks almost too carefully as I shouldered my rifle.

“… well, that works to our advantage. Let’s do it.”
“Hey, don’t go killing every zombie you see.”
“But I’d like to save him.”

My bullets quickly found their way to the zombies and we walk up to the middle-aged man.

“… I’m guessing he’s thanking us in English.”
“That’s right, as the official language of Confi City is English. This is exactly how they say thanks in the game as well… he’s a bona fide survivor.”

I ran around the NPC and then walked away from him with a satisfied smile on my face. The middle-aged man maintained a small distance as he followed me around. He would sometimes roll his neck or look around frightened at his surroundings with fright, but otherwise, he was generally emotionless.

… just like how they are in the game.

The man kept a blank face as he followed us around. When I picked up a broken off chunk of concrete off the street and handed it to him, he looked a bit more stern and brave as he wielded it a weapon.

“—Alright, we’re in business! That’s step one to raising an unstoppable army from h.e.l.l!”
“Wha—?!”

Kiryū was bewildered by what I had said.

“This regular everyday normal geezer… is our unstoppable army from h.e.l.l…?”
“…”
“…”

We stood there in mutual silence.

“… sh-shut up! I told you it’s step one!”

I scrambled to quip back before falling back into silence.

“When you rescue NPCs in this game, they’ll follow the protagonist around. Give them a weapon and they’ll help you fight too!”
We’ll rescue more and more of these survivors to build ourselves an unstoppable army. It’s all part of the plan!”
“Man, you sure about this? The dude looks like he’s never even gotten in a fistfight before.”

Kiryū spoke as he pointed at the man.
He’s right in that the middle-aged man is scrawny and doesn’t look like he’d be good in combat.

“The more we fight, the more we’ll level up. We’ll be fine.
You get only a maximum of five followers in the game, but we’ll be so much stronger even with just five extra people… we’ll be an unstoppable h.e.l.lish army….”

I pondered on my plan to raise an unstoppable h.e.l.lish army to which Kiryū had nothing he could say but to simply mutually make eye contact with the old man.
—but eventually, Kiryū’s eyes opened wide as he snapped his fingers.

“… I’ve got it.”
“Huh?”
“We can the soldiers in our ‘unstoppable h.e.l.lish army’ as item boxes.”
“What do you mean?”

I blankly blinked at Kiryū and he flashes a grin at me.

“I’ve got pockets of my own, but… look at them—they’ve got side and rear pockets too.
We can stuff their pockets with herbs too and use them as walking inventory s.p.a.ce, right?”
“Oh, no…”

In other words, his plan is to pack items in the survivors’ pockets much like how Kiryū’s doing it right now. It looks so lame, I couldn’t stop myself from voicing my displeasure.
However, Kiryū didn’t seem to care for my opinion and was already cramming herbs in the NPC’s pockets already, dirt and all.

“No matter how you slice it, that’s just too cruel…”
“The end justifies the means, right?
… besides, how much longer do you want to hold your phone in your hand?”

He points at the NPC with recently-filled pockets.

“You’ve got no pocket, right? Just stick it in any of his.”
“What if he dies and disappears? I don’t want to put my phone on his body.”

I gripped my phone tightly as I shook my head at which Kiryū shrugged his shoulders.

“Alright, then pa.s.s me your phone; I’ve got an empty pocket.”
“Thank you. If anything happens, could you please toss it back to me?”
“Of course.”

We walked and talked at the same time and found yet more NPCs just standing around waiting to be triggered.
There was a sickly pale white lady, a bad-tempered middle-aged white man, a lanky nerdy-looking white man… most of the characters in this game are white.

“… they get killed off pretty quickly, but let’s name our devils so we can tell who’s who.
Let’s see… from the left, we have Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Buffett, and Zuckerberg.”
“You’re really hoping for ‘eat the rich’ to happen literally, huh?”

Only a little ways more until we reach the Vital Watch.
There weren’t any periods of awkward silence… or more accurately, we made sure to keep making small talk.
Not that it was a bad thing though. This way, it was easier to distract ourselves from the fact that we’re inside a horror world… we were doing quite well in that regard.

—That’s right. We were merely distracting ourselves. Even in this bizarro world, it was important we stayed human and grounded.

On the way, we saved quite a few more people standing still.
We gave them metal pipes, hammers, and other objects found on the ground so that we could fight and gain more experience. Everything was going smoothly.

“It looks like we can’t have more than 10 people in our squad…”

The NPC gave their thanks before continuing to stand up straight. I couldn’t help but feel a little disheartened.

“Probably because you and I are both considered as player characters and each of us can have five followers.”
“Speaking of which, where’s the actual protagonist to this game?”

I scanned my surroundings as I asked my question to no one in particular.

“I wonder if we’ll meet at the starting point…”

We kept moving and came across a strange watch laying conspicuously on the ground.

“Oh, there’s our Vital Watch.”
“Why’s it just sitting there in the middle of the road?”
“Good question. It’s always just lying here in the game, but I’ve never really wondered why.”

I bent over to pick up it up.

“We don’t have much time to play with it, so let’s just keep it safe for now. We should hurry onwards.”

I strapped the Vital Watch to my forearm, just before the elbow.

“… why are you putting it on such a weird place?”
“Huh? Because it’s more hygienic? Otherwise, it’ll get so dirty.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?!”

… though health professionals and engineers may disagree on where to wear a timepiece, at least we were successful in retrieving the Vital Watch.

It was no easy task, but we’ve finally made it to the beginning of the game.
We were at a parking lot with spots for eight cars.
Concrete walls surrounded us with burning cars and toppled trucks.
There were also two zombies which were supposed to attack the protagonist… but maybe because they haven’t been triggered yet, they stood rigidly upright as well.
Then I found something big.
There was someone else standing upright… or it’d be more accurate to say he was standing in an odd pose—it was the protagonist of this game.

“Gah, look! It’s Nick! That’s Nick over there!”

I screamed out loud as I rushed over to the middle of the parking lot.
Every one of the devils in our unstoppable army from h.e.l.l clobbered the zombies with their weapons.

“Oh, I’ve seen Nick at the game show. So, he’s the protag, eh?”
“What’s wrong with him…? He’s standing there like his character just got dropped into a level editor.”
“You’re right… he’s just posing there.”

Kiryū corrected me with a more technical, detailed term.

“What… what should we do? We’ve got to get Nick out of here.”

Pus.h.i.+ng and pulling did nothing to awaken him.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

Kiryū said with a smug look on his face.

“Wow, okay…”
“You know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator? Hey, those were great movies.”
“I mean, sure, but it sure dates you.”

Nick didn’t react at all to Kiryū’s one-liner, for better or for worse.
I tried dragging him by the arm again. It was an odd sensation, so smooth and weightless. Nick didn’t seem like a human being… but rather an object.

“Well, we can just leave him here, can’t we? It might be safer if he stayed put so he won’t trigger any event flags.”

Kiryū shrugged as he spoke.

“Umm, would that mean that we won’t have to fight any bosses? That sounds too nice to be true…”
“Iunno. Since we were able to get these survivors to follow us around, that would make us the protagonists… it might be possible that we’ll trigger the flags and we’ll have to fight the bosses like in the actual game.”

What he meant was that we’ll have to find out ourselves.
I nodded along to him… until I remembered something he said.

“That reminds me, Kiryū. I’ve brought you here to the start of the game. What did you mean by breaking out of the game?”
“Oh, that’s right. I was watching a video about bug testing and I was just thinking… if we keep our chins up and look for them, I’m sure we’ll come across some.”
“Look for them?”
“Yeah.”

He walked over to the far end of the parking lot… and before I knew it, he jumped head-first into the wall.

“Ow! That hurts!”
“I would imagine so! What are you doing?!”

Kiryū squatted down clutching his head.

“I was hoping to find a buggy spot in the physics engine…”
“What do you mean?”
“Like clipping through walls and such.”

He might have hurt his head, but he was still able to thoroughly explain what he meant.

“In some buggy spots of a game, you can jump over and over again into the wall and slowly go deeper inside it. Then, eventually…”
“You go out of bounds…”

I didn’t know you could do that.

“Now that you mention it, I’ve written about bugs in this game on my personal walkthrough blog… but I don’t want you to hurt yourself trying to find them either…”
“…”
“Kiryū, I think you’re an incredible person, but perhaps… you’re incredibly dumb.”
“… shuddup…”

I let him stew for a moment, but then suddenly, there was a loud scream outside of the parking lot.

“Wha… what was that?!”

We both looked behind us…

Oh, no, no, no, no…!

Our unstoppable h.e.l.lish army (all 10 of its members) were being attacked by a swarm of special zombies!

■Doom

A retro PC shooter, Doom is considered a cla.s.sic by most people in their 30s and 40s in the West.
For years, Doom was considered to be the game that defined the first-person shooter genre.
Players control the protagonist—a brawny man slightly younger than middle age—and his a.r.s.enal of guns to single-mindedly blast away hordes of monsters from h.e.l.l (sometimes depicted as an army from h.e.l.l).
Some may find this novel to be grotesque with its merciless depictions of gore, but it was for that exact reason why Doom was an incredible success in its day. The gibs and gore won the hearts of kids and the kids-at-heart. With over 10 million copies sold across every conceivable platform, this game is also famous for being ported to everything from cell phones to calculators. It has even seen theatrical releases and novel adaptations.
In its day, Doom was notorious for the amount of gore, as unrealistic as it may be. It was perhaps the first video game to have such a great controversy over its graphic depictions of violence. Still, Doom is a game cherished by many and players continue to modify and add to the game—early versions of which were labeled “Doom clones”. Doom leaves behind a great legacy, both technical and historical.

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