Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel

  Copyright © Dave Bakers, 2014.

  Published by DIB Books

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design and layout copyright © DIB Books, 2014.

  Interior design copyright © DIB Books, 2014.

  Cover art copyright © Anastasios Kandris / Shutterstock, 2014.

  Cover design and layout for Inside Kids: The Second Zak Steepleman Novel copyright © DIB Books, 2014.

  Cover art copyright © Isoga / Shutterstock, 2014.

  Smashwords Edition

  This work is fictional. None of the characters or events depicted in this book are based on real life and any resemblance to real events or persons is purely coincidental.

  Neither this book, nor any part of it, may be reproduced without express permission from the publisher.

  All rights reserved.

  THE ZAK STEEPLEMAN SERIES

  Novels

  (in suggested reading order)

  Gamers Con

  Inside Kids

  Phantom Arcade

  Echoes of the Undone

  The Spread

  Collections

  Getting into the Game

  Short Stories

  Bubbling Morons

  Chess Knight

  Dust Devil

  The Gatling Gun of Hell

  GlueFoot

  The Whistling Kingdom

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  For more information please visit: www.davebakers.com/free-book-promotion/

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  The Zak Steepleman Series

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  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Full Table of Contents

  THOUGH PRETTY MUCH everything was set in shadow, it was easy enough to see the archways springing up all around the circumference of the room. They coiled up around into swirling spirals before sweeping back down again to the floor.

  Just about everything was marble—and it had that jet-black colour to it.

  A pool of dark purple flecked with seemingly thousands of glinting, microscopic stars, occupied the middle of the place. It spun away at a steady pace, like a whirlpool, almost.

  Or a galaxy.

  What illumination managed to penetrate the hall came from the dark-purple pool, setting everything in its ever-shifting silvery glow.

  A cloaked figure emerged from the shadows. He held his arms down at his sides and appeared to almost float across the marble floors. His face remained steeped in shadow.

  When he reached the rim of the purple pool, the Cloaked Figure stared down, long and hard, into it, as if struck with some deep thought of his. It was only when a voice called out from the shadows that the figure turned away from the pool.

  Looked off behind him.

  A boy, with blazing-red hair and pox-white skin, emerged out of the shadows.

  He looked somewhat out of place here, in this dark landscape . . . which was to say that he was wearing a pair of light-beige cargo shorts—which exposed his knobbly knees—and he had on a bright-yellow t-shirt which read, ‘Santhers Crossed’ in bright-green lettering across the front.

  The way he walked, too, seemed just about the opposite of the Cloaked Figure, who now stood with his back to the purple pool. The boy kind of minced his way along with a sort of pigeon-toed step, the way that he seemed to rise about an inch or two with every stride.

  He wore leather-strapped sandals with white socks on underneath.

  And his footsteps slapped loudly as he approached the figure.

  As the boy drew closer to the Cloaked Figure, his expression was dour. “I’ve done it, sir,” the boy said, his tone deadpan.

  The Cloaked Figure stared at the boy. He didn’t reply or so much as flinch.

  The boy scratched his arm, looked beyond the Cloaked Figure, to the still-swirling purple pool behind him. Then he turned his attention back to the Cloaked Figure. “Is that all you’ll need from me now?”

  The Cloaked Figure made no reply.

  The boy looked down at his sandaled feet. He absentmindedly scuffed the toe of his sandal across the sleek, black-marble floor.

  It made a high-pitched squeak.

  “Well?” the boy said, glancing up briefly.

  The Cloaked Figure still said nothing in reply.

  He just kept on staring, apparently, at the boy.

  The silvery gleam from the purple pool continued to set the two of them in an oddly flickering glow.

  Finally, the Cloaked Figure spoke.

  His voice boomed, echoing about the hall.

  “Did you bring them back?” the Cloaked Figure said, his voice sounding at once weary and booming . . . filling out the whole of the hall.

  “Bring them back?” the boy said, frown lines appearing in his forehead. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand, sir.”

  The Cloaked Figure continued to stare holes in him. Apparently would not look away. “You were supposed to bring them back with you.”

  The frown lines in the boy’s forehead grew even deeper, and, very slowly, his mouth formed an ‘oh’ shape. His eyelids fluttered upwards till they showed off his eyeballs for anybody who cared to see: communicating, effortlessly, True Terror.

  “But,” the boy said, “it’s not time yet, sir, you’ll have to be patient.”

  The Cloaked Figure smouldered away in silence.

  Apparently biding his time.

  Thinking over his response.

  Then the Cloaked Figure said, “Yes, I imagine you are telling the truth.” He paused for a few moments. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I forget where here is and where there begins.”

  1

  I GENTLY SLAPPED the plastic grip of the control pad against my bare thigh. Watched my lardy thighs jiggle, kind of like watching a tsunami happening in miniature scale.

  Just like the kid in the game, I was wearing cargo shorts—who wouldn’t, what with it being thirty degrees Celsius out?

  Even in my bedroom, with the window wide open, the sound of traffic from the main road which runs past my house thick in the afternoon air, I couldn’t help but sweat all over the place.

  I reached down for the bottle of iced water I kept propped up against the wooden end of my bed, savoured those few moments of the coolness against my skin.

  And then I whipped off the screw cap and poured the contents down my throat.

  Felt it wash away that stale taste in my mouth.

  As I propped the bottle back down on the carpet, I breathed in the gentle smell of leaves, mixed in with the odour of the car exhausts, and I couldn’t help but sigh out a little contentedly.

  Yup, summer was here.

  And, in approximately five minutes, I’d be heading off to Gamers Con—the biggest event in the whole of the UK, if not Europe too.

  A solid long weekend with nothing but gaming competitions, fast food and sleeping in.

  Summer was great.

  But this was the pinnacle.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  When I turned my attention back to the TV screen, I saw that it was fading to black. That the cut scene which had seemed to go on for about an hour or more—okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a tad—had finally wrapped itself up.

  And I didn’t even get to see how it had ended.

  In fact
, all that I caught as the screen dissolved into complete darkness was the Cloaked Figure standing there in the hall, standing before that dark-purple pool.

  Just as I prepared myself to return to the actual gameplay, I heard my dad calling me from downstairs. Telling me that it was time to get off to Gamers Con.

  . . . Now, ordinarily, I’m pretty reluctant to lever myself up off my bottom for whatever reason I’m being compelled to leave the house, but, in this case, I knew that I was heading to the greatest place in the world . . . so how could I not get just a little excited?

  So, moving just about as fast as I could, I unplugged my Sirocco 3000—my games console—and then set about taking it apart, slipping it into its nicely padded carry case . . . the one that I’d received in the post a couple of weeks back along with my official invitation to Gamers Con.

  Just as I was on the point of zipping the case up, I remembered something.

  Something that I would’ve scolded myself for later if I’d overlooked it.

  Working quickly, knowing that—with getting to Gamers Con on the line—I really had no time to waste, I bashed the Eject button and pulled out the disk inside.

  It was a simple DVDR, one of those that I often get from game developers, especially around this time of year with Gamers Con on the horizon . . . all these game developers that want me—Zak Steepleman: Aspiring Pro Gamer—to stop by their booth and check out their latest work.

  Because, after all’s said and done, it’s people like me, those who want to make their living playing games, who are the developers’ bread and butter.

  And I’d found—from experience—that my main sponsor, Alive Action Games, who’d sent me this game, had more intense developers than most.

  I glanced at the green felt-tip pen all scrawled onto dotted lines on the metal-grey disk: the words which read, as far as I could make them out: Halls of Hallow.

  I gave a shrug, thought about tossing it right into the bin . . . it was only a good throw away from me . . . but then I spotted the featureless case it had come in and decided to put it back inside.

  And then, against all odds, rather than slipping the case back onto my bookshelf—which has no books, but a whole bunch of video games—I decided on placing the case into one of the pockets of my Sirocco carrying case.

  What I’d learned, after many—many—years of going to Gamers Con, was that I couldn’t count on a developer who had sent me a game in the post not coming up to me and asking for my opinion.

  And, to be honest, I really hadn’t spent all that much time with Halls of Hallow . . . it had only come in the post that morning, and without any sort of explanation.

  I’d literally only just fired it up about ten or fifteen minutes ago, and found myself stuck with that cut scene: that Cloaked Figure, and the weird, ginger kid.

  But, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from developers, it’s that they can tell whether or not you’ve actually played their game just by looking at you.

  Or maybe it’s just that I’m not a very good liar.

  I don’t spend all that much time with humans after all.

  Just another of those sacrifices a pro gamer has to make.

  If I’d just had enough time to play with then I would’ve wandered around the back of the console, brushed my fingers up against that infrared strip and transported myself into the game.

  . . . Oh yeah, that might be something that I failed to mention, that aside from being an aspiring pro gamer I can actually set foot inside video games . . . can transport myself into the game itself.

  Maybe I’d give it a try later, if I was forced to.

  And so, hoping against hope that the game would’ve saved my progress—that it wouldn’t make me watch that cut scene again—I bucked on out, lugging my Sirocco 3000 along in one hand, and my sports bag stuffed full with my clothes for the long weekend in the other.

  This was going to be great.

  I just knew it.

  2

  THE ONE THING that those videos of convention centres can never quite capture is the smell in the air. It’s kind of a smell of plastic and paper—all mixed together into a single mass. And though it’s definitely not the most exciting smell in the world, to me, while I’m at Gamers Con, it’s probably the greatest odour ever.

  I munched up the last of my Chewy-Tang Worms. I’d got my hands on them when Dad had to stop for petrol on the way, and I’d cajoled him into getting them for me, telling him that this long weekend was only once a year, and that—really—it didn’t much matter what the doctor said about me losing weight.

  That just one packet of Chewy-Tang Worms would hardly make a difference.

  I could feel the blood pumping to my cheeks, could hear it swelling in my ears, and I just about lost myself to that chemical-sweet taste of the Chewy-Tang Worms, wondering to myself what colour my tongue would be when I found a mirror.

  It usually ended up a kind of shade of turquoise, or light green . . . but, once, when I spent a really good amount of time chewing on them, my tongue ended up being a deep-purple colour . . . not really sure what that might’ve meant though.

  As we turned the corner, Dad near enough winded himself.

  It was the queue for the All-Access Passes, which was to say my pass.

  There had to be about two hundred people—mostly kids, like me, with a parent in tow.

  I caught Dad adjusting his gold-framed glasses in that nervous way he does when he’s thinking of suggesting something controversial. He flashed me a glance as if I didn’t know just what he was going to say . . . and then he went ahead and said it anyway, “Uh, why don’t we come back in a little bit?”

  I breathed in deeply. Tried to calm myself.

  I didn’t want to play the stereotypical, petulant thirteen-year-old.

  But, sometimes, Dad just gave me no choice.

  “Look,” I said, crunching up the plastic bag of Chewy-Tang Worms, and dropping it into a rubbish bin as we passed by it, “I’ve been coming here for five years now—five years.”

  I gave him a couple of moments just to absorb how long that period of time really was.

  Then I said, “Ever since I was eight years old I’ve come here to play games, and every one of those years I’ve been along with the first to arrive—the first to go and check out the booths, to see just what’s what.”

  I breathed in deeply again, tried to get my thoughts straight.

  Again, tried not to turn into said petulant thirteen-year-old.

  “And you’re saying that we should come back?” I held off for a couple of beats, again so that he could get a gist of the depth of what it was that he was suggesting. “That we should go off someplace, grab a cup of coffee, wait to come back later?”

  Dad was now looking about nervously.

  I was betting that he wished he’d brought Mum along with him so that he’d have someone to help back him up. But Mum had managed to dodge coming to Gamers Con this year because she’d claimed she needed to go visit my aunt.

  “Dad,” I said, now with us approaching the tail of the queue, “do you realise how big Gamers Con truly is? If we don’t get our passes now then we might have to queue up till midnight . . . I might miss the beginning of the Grand Tournament tomorrow, do you understand that?”

  Dad did that rapid blinking thing of his that he only ever does on two specific occasions.

  One, when he’s playing chess and someone makes a move that he didn’t anticipate.

  And, two, when he realises that he’s just being unreasonable . . . yeah, and just listen to me, I guess that is the petulant thirteen-year-old coming out . . . nothing much I could do about it then, though . . .

  Then Dad started nodding. Gave a couple of smiles, then said, “Fine, we’ll wait.”

  “Good,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, then looking off to the queue as it snaked away from us. “That’s fine.”

  3

  AFTER ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES my feet were sore.

 
; Okay, fine, yeah, you’ve got me.

  I’m a fat kid, right . . . that’s what happens to fat kids.

  Even standing up is somewhat stressful for us: what with the sweating, and the aching, and the losing calories . . .

  To be honest, I was actually wondering if I should’ve taken up Dad’s idea for us to go and wait out the queuing, go sit off somewhere for the queue to get shorter.

  But, as I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that the queue had definitely got a solid fifty or a hundred metres longer behind us.

  So I was pretty sure I’d made the right call.

  We kept shuffling along, neither me or Dad saying anything at all.

  We don’t really have all that much in common.

  For one, my dad’s thin.

  I mean stick-thin.

  And don’t get into telling me that I should be happy because I’ll shed all this ‘puppy’ fat and turn out to have the same physique of my dad when I grow up, because I’ve seen the pictures of my dad when he was my age.

  He was always stick-thin.

  For another, my Dad’s thing is chess.

  Mine’s video games.

  And those two things very seldom mix.

  . . . And when they do, the results are often not pretty . . . I still remember the experience of playing Chess Knight . . . of actually inhabiting that game . . . yeah, actually stepping into that game will make it feel like you’ve played enough chess—video games, or otherwise—to last you the rest of your life.

  As we queued, Dad swiped along at his mobile phone, playing this chess game he has there. He likes to play about a dozen or more games at the same time, with his chess night group. I guess that I should’ve been thankful seeing as he had agreed to take me along to Gamers Con this Saturday instead of going to his chess night.