Here it is guys, hope it's a good read: What follows is an exact account of what happened last night when my friend and I decided to visit Green Mountain after reading the stories on the DayZ forum. The story is not written for entertainment purposes, or to embellish the facts. With the events fresh in my mind, what follows is the truth. “Green Mountain”, I eagerly typed into Skype. “Google it, apparently some weird shit happens there.” I had just spent the past 50 minutes or so reading everyone’s account of what had happened to them up that Mountain on the forums, and was ready to have my own unique experience. However, I wanted my friend to share in the supposed horror. “I know dude, I’ve already seen stuff about the radio messages up there”, came his reply, quickly followed by, “Cig?”. I decided to meet him outside for a smoke, with hopes of roping him in for the promised terror. However, what I did not already know was that my path to The Mountain had already been set, and I was in for a shock I never would have expected. We spoke of the Mountain a great deal during our break. I mentioned to him the things people had said of it, and promised a link would be sent upon his return. With our minds conjuring dark ideas, and evil events, we returned to our homes. Then, the call came in. “Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s do this.” A low population server was selected for the journey. ” I have worked quite hard to survive a month”, I remember thinking. “I’m not getting PVP’d over a ghost story.” The loading screen dragged as my mind raced. “This should be fun”, I thought, sipping my beer. And then, finally, the dark cool Vybor night came bleeding onto my screen. A quick inventory management was needed for both of us, as we hadn’t been back to this place since vacationing in Lingor. I remember how excited I was to be setting off on this journey; it was such a perfect night for it. I had a beer in my hand, and a fresh crisp night lay silent over Chernarus, it was perfect. And, we only had around a 15 minute trek to our destination. “I’m turning the light off in my room,” I told my friend, hoping to add to the atmosphere of this endeavour. “Alright, I will do the same,” he told me. Looking back now, I think we done this because we expected nothing at all to happen. We were probably trying to scare ourselves in a way, make our own horror story. Well, a horror story is what we would get. Vybor was left far behind as we zigzagged across fields; unseen snipers threatening us at every turn. The occasional map check was needed as we veered through smalls forests; the darkness looming. “Only a few more grids before we should see it”, I muttered into my microphone. Gradually, through the foggy distance of the Mountain, the infamous tower came into view. “I can safely say I’ve never been here,” my friend’s response echoed through my headset. We had arrived. The trip up was filled with a thick presence, as if the tree’s themselves were watching us. The light had been so abundant before, but now, the canopy of leaves above dropped the visibility to minimal. “Follow my line,” my friend suggested. “We’re almost at the top.” And so I did. Sticking relatively close to my comrade, we made it to the peak. In front of us stood a gate, open and still; personifying silence. A burnt out humvee stood between us and the entrance, telling forgotten stories of death long passed. We stood watching the opening, waiting for what we knew would approach. “Here they come”. Shuffling through the open gate came the mass of zombies we had come to expect. With a month’s worth of unlikely training we dropped prone, knowing that in this light we would be practically invisible. “Let them pass,” I whispered, as if my own voice would attract the horde. Our visibility meter read zero. Our audio meter read zero. And yet, the group of dead that stood about 10-15 meters away let out the high pitched, blood curdling scream we had came to fear. They were on us. “How the fuck!” was the only thing that came from my friend as the dead rushed us. Before we could even work out what had happened, how we had alerted these things without even so much as a peep, I was hit. I was bleeding. It was bad. And we hadn’t even reached the front gate. Chaos; the only word I know that can describe what followed. “I’m bleeding!” I exclaimed, managing to focus on what was happening before me. “We need to leave.” The Zeds were attacking me, ignoring my friend all together. The only thought that raced through my mind was retreat. We had to retreat. “Why did I bring us up here?” Just when I was about to leg it through the forest, back down the Mountain came my companion’s courageous plan. “I’ll lead them away from you, so you can bandage up,” he suggested. As I was about to protest, he sprinted my direction, attracting the creatures and leading them off into the night. I sat, dumfounded and afraid. The only thing that made me hit the “G” key was instinct. Bandaged up, a little beaten and bruised I realised I was still at the side of this dark and dreary road. The howl of the deceased continued to pierce the night. They were getting closer. On a sickly feeling of foreboding alone, my eyes turned to the now vacant gate. “I’m coming back up,” a call came from my friend. The only way left was in. I raced towards the entrance, passing through and into the compound, my eyes searching for a hiding spot. Mouse left, mouse right; nothing. Panic hindered my senses and sent me darting off past the entrance to the tower, my friend now following closely on my back. “Here!” I cried out, noticing a small crack in the bottom of the concrete perimeter fence. With lightening speed and the ever closing promise of death on our backs, we crawled through the tiny gap, into a tiny alcove in between the concrete fence and another wire fence. They had given up. Regaining our composure, we sat in silence for a second. We were in. We spent the next few minutes checking ourselves, to make sure we weren’t hurt more than initially thought. “Well that was easy”, I thought. We decided that now we were here, we should continue on our mission. No use turning back now. In retrospect, thinking about it, we should have taken our “welcoming committee” as a sign of terrible things to come. The Zeds seeing us a mile off, the eerie presence the place seemed to reek of, all of it stunk. But we were in, and there was no turning back. Slowly, we both crawled back into the abbess. Everything seemed a lot quieter than how we had left it just a few short minutes before. The hauntingly sinister group of things that had chased us not so long ago seemed to have vanished into thin air. A good sign, we had thought. But we were wrong. In front stood a building, drenched in shadow. To our left, another equally menacing structure. And then the tower, stood proud in front of us. With unspoken words, we knew we were heading for the large radio transmitter in front. “Let’s do this right,” I said. Immediately, we began to crawl through the pitch black night. The noise of the grass, swaying in the wind was our only comfort. Slowly, we edged round the building to our right, anticipating danger at every turn. But none came. Then, the noise of an approaching zombie startled us. Through the shadows, came the sight. “One Zed to the front,” I informed my friend who was closely following behind. “Let him pass.” The creature continued its aimless quest as we lay perfectly motionless in the grass. Almost holding my breath, we lay silent, even through our mic’s. This experience was truly affecting us. Thankfully, the lumbering corpse moved passed us, and out of the gate we had darted through not so long ago. The danger had passed, for now. With no sight of any more of the death incarnate, we finally got to the entrance to the tower. Inside the door, lay a narrow, claustrophobic hallway, which led off to the right. Looking back now, I don’t know how I was the one made to take point, but I was. Slowly I entered the structure, closely followed by my partner. To the right of the tight corridor lay a ladder, stretching up into the heavens. I span my mouse, to look at my friend. “You first,” he said, almost as if his player model had uttered the dreadful words. Me first. The clanging of metal echoed the tiny tunnel as I ascended the ladder; the only sound to be heard in the night. “Let me know when you reach the top,” I heard from bellow. The theme from Snake Eater played in my mind as I got higher and higher. My brain was trying to alleviate some of the stress. I was at the top. “Okay,” I signalled bellow. “I’m at the top.” As soon as the words had left my lips, my friend began the climb I had just made, either not wanting to be left out, or not wanting to be left alone. And, as quick as I had reached the summit, he was by my side again. “Okay,” I exhaled. “Let’s check outside.” Leaving the sanctuary, we made our way out onto the platform which formed around the circumference of the tower. One pass, two passes. We couldn’t believe it. There was nothing up here. No loot, no ghost, no legends or myths. Nothing. For now. Disappointed and maybe a little relieved we made our way back down the tower. This time, he was first, and then me. “I didn’t leave this door open,” came the call from bellow me. A shot of panic washed over me, then I realised the tone of his voice. “Fuck off,” I called down to the sound of his laughter. Once we were both at the bottom, we agreed we had made this journey, so the only logical thing to do would to be to check the rest of the place for loot. Calmly and surgically, we opened the door and exited, checking our flanks for unseen assailants. Thankfully, there were none. My friend took point, moving our two man group to the left. We had made it about 5 steps before he stopped, and his microphone filled with worried words. “Dude, stop, stop,” he stammered. “I’m getting something close by with an ‘unknown’ tag”. Immediately, a sense of fear I had never felt from playing a video game consumed me. In a second, my palms went clammy and all sense of reason evaporated from my mind. The stories I had read earlier came flooding back, the ways they spoke of the ‘unknown’ tag. My lips opened without me thinking, “Back inside,” was the first thing that came to me. Within seconds we were back in the tight hallway of that tower, the door closed and me pointing a measly G17 at the entrance. We were truly at that moment hiding from the unknown. What seemed like an eternity passed before my logic kicked in. “He’s trolling you, you idiot,” I thought. “Remember when he said the door was open?” “You’re lying man,” I laughed. “You’re bullshitting me. What followed were a few seconds of silence within our Skype call, to which he replied quite simply, “Go look for yourself then dude.” With a bravery only bought on by my third beer, and a conviction that I would not be made to look a fool, I opened the door before me, and stepped back outside into the ever growing darkness of the night. “Well, where about did you see this then?” I asked him, strafing my mouse around the compound. Slowly, he crept from the radio tower, and stopped just behind me. “Over there, just to the right of that humvee,” he whispered. I casually targeted the vehicle, moving the reticule around with no intention of discovering a thing. And then, as my mouse stopped, just to the right of the humvee, just where he had said it would be, it showed up. The orange writing ever apparent that he was not lying. “Unknown - 60M”. “What do we do, do we log out here?!” We found ourselves back within the confining confines of the tower’s entrance. Once again, guns trained upon the door. I had instinctively and cowardly suggested logging out. The whole situation could not be put into words. I had come here, expecting nothing, but hoping for something. But here I was, given which I had hoped for. And all I could feel was scared, scared from a game. The unfamiliar feeling, once again, could not be put into words. “We run,” my friend stated, albeit frantically. “I ain’t fucking logging out here.” In seconds my mind imagined the journey, the run through the dark forest; and everything that could go wrong. We would get separated, unable to find each other in the chaos and the impossible darkness. I felt an attachment to my character. A video game character became more real to me than ever before. I felt for him, I wanted him to make it out of this alive. Every possible scenario ran through my brain, every, daunting and terrifying scenario. But my friend was right. “Okay,” I stammered, “We make a run for it, straight North.” “Wait!” he said, almost turning the handle to the door and running off prematurely. “Straight out of the gate and then North?”. “Out of the gate and straight North,” I said, double tapping “K” on my keyboard. “Straight North”. We both took a physical breath over Skype, psyching ourselves up for what we assumed would be the final run we would make. We both were ready. “One”, my friend gasped, getting ready at the door. “Two”, he stuttered, getting ready to run. And on the count of three, the night was shattered by the shot of gunfire. “Are you trying to fucking kill me?!” I bellowed through Skype. My friend, as he was about to open the door on three, had fired a single shot from his FNFAL, accidently. For a few seconds we were dumfounded by the mistake. But then we realised our time for planning was up. Whatever was out there, whatever was waiting, be it Zed, or unknown; if they didn’t know we was here before, they do now. “Dude, fuck it, go!” he said throwing open the door. And we run, straight out into the nothingness of Chernarus. I found myself running as hard as I could, following a barely visible silhouette of my friend as he descended the mountain. “Keep running, I thought”. Even though I had no idea what I was running from, or even if there was anything worthy of being terrified from, I found myself struck with fear, a finger planted firmly on the worn out “W” key. “Keep running.” We kept going, down and down through the darkness, not one of us uttering a word through our microphones, each centered on reaching the ever drawing loveliness of the moonlit field not 100 meters from our position. “I’m gone as soon as I reach this field”, I informed my friend. However, he didn’t respond for a few seconds. When he did, my stomach done turns. “Dude, there’s a black figure chasing you.” I kept running, not thinking about what I had just heard, but all the time thinking of it. “A black figure?”. The field was so close, it was within reach. My heart beat hard in my chest, my finger wedged hard on the “W” key, my hand shaking on the mouse. “A black figure?”. I fought with myself, I reasoned with myself, not to look, but as I reached the apparent safety of the field, my curiosity gave way. As I escaped the tree line, I hit number pad three, briefly looking over my shoulder. Here’s a sentence I thought I would never say: it was a Zed, thank god. But this seemed like no ordinary Zed. The ones we had seen up at the Mountain had been covered in camo gear, clearly military. But this Zed was different; he was fully clothed in a black ensemble. And, to add an increased sense of paranoia, once I cleared the treeline, and essentially escaped the Mountain, he stopped. He broke off his pursuit. Almost as if that was as far as he was allowed to go, or as if he had done his job. I didn’t stop to think about it. The only thought was run. And that’s what we did for the next 3 minutes, across a field paved in moonlight. “Here?” I asked, as we kept running. “No,” my friend replied. “I can still see that tower; I don’t want to log out near that thing.” He was right, the tower still stood tall in the distance, watching our escape. So, we kept moving through night, until finally, stopping within the confines of a few trees, the iconic thing was no longer visible. “Here,” he said, stopping dead. “Great, finally I thought,” about to log out. But the final shock was about to hit, right when we thought we were safe. The whistle came as a surprise. It was high pitched. The sort of whistle you would imagine that someone would employ in an attempt to get someone to turn around. It played clear through my headset, eerily close to my head. It was the sort of whistle that suggested another, sentient being. And I’m sure, it was directed at us. Well, not at first. At first it was disbelief. At first it was me assuming it was a sound within the game. At first I thought it was my friend. At first I thought it was us, nothing else. But, my brain forced me to speak. “That was you whistling?” I stated to my friend, almost as if I was telling him rather than asking him. “What, no?” came the confused reply. My heart sank. And then, the whistle came again. Paranoia probably caused me to think it was closing in, but I’m still sure it was. At this point I knew it was only me, my friend and one other on the server. The direct chat icon was not coming up. This whistle seemed to come from nowhere, but still managed to find my ears. The fear took over and I responded, the only way my confused brain could. “Get out of the game,” I exclaimed, throwing my headset to the ground as I disconnected. What followed was kind of a dream like state of consciousness. My friend and I met for another smoke, each challenging the other, each accusing the other of the whistle. We both swore, swore on things we care for, each saying it was not us. We left, both confused, both wondering exactly what had just happened. I can say, thinking about it now, I don’t actually want to know where the illusive whistle came from. I honestly don’t care how those Zed’s saw us a mile off. I don’t want to even known why my mouse showed an ‘unknown’ tag. I realise now, that I got exactly what I set off for that night, that cold dark night in Vybor. I got my mystery; I got my unique experience on that Mountain. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted that strange sense of dread, I wanted that fear. All for the reason that I knew this game could give it. I knew that this was a game unlike any other. I found out exactly what I already knew, and maybe, what I subconsciously trekked up that Mountain to prove. That just when you think you know everything about this game, that just when you think you know the rules, it throws you a curveball. It’s that night you set out for a run into town, within a server with only one other person. It’s when you encounter the other face on, strangely drawn together within the entire map. And a massacre ensues. It’s that moment you think your alone in the Northwest Airfield, and all of a sudden you hear gunfire. It’s when you track that gunfire, and carefully observe a stranger from afar, trying to tell whether they are friend or foe. And the tension ensues. It’s that moment when you first spawn on the beach, and see the Zed’s for the first time, and the way the A.I reacts within this world. It’s when they chase you, and your character is screaming in shock from the way you have treated them on your noobish first life. And then you die. It’s that moment that you realise that this game is like no other, and you know the industry hasn’t lost its sense of unique ideas. It’s when you play it, and you realise that this is the zombie game you have been waiting for all your life. In essence, I don’t care what happened. Hacker, troller, or Alpha error. It’s that moment you realise this is DayZ; you have your story. And you realise that you will be playing this for a long time to come. If you got here, thanks for reading. Can't wait to continue the story.
