Chapter 1

Now

A bunker in Fairfax, Ohio

Hidden deep within an underground bunker is where you be when world is coming to a violent end. No one would spend a long time in one otherwise, because without power or people to talk to it is only slightly less boring then watching the grass grow. Not right at first, obviously. At the beginning the apocalypse was full of interesting things. Violence and mayhem ran rampant through the streets and the human race was quickly dying off. Comfortably concealed in my bunker, I had court side seats to all of it while it played on the news

But slowly, the anticipation of death wore off. Even the excitement, if it can be called that, of knowing that I’ll likely die a grisly manner, drifted into the past. After so long, sitting in my own personal fortress of solitude, it was nothing boring.

It was weird how you miss the feeling of hopeless rage if you are bored enough.

A damp, dark bunker certainly lends itself to intense brooding. My most recent intellectual pastime has been judging my life’s worth. Had I lived it to the best of my ability or had I just let life pass me by? It was easier to look back at my life and focus on the things that I have not done, rather than then seeing I have accomplished. For a time I felt that my life had been a waste. I had not really done anything of any merit. I have just gone with the flow, and now that the flow was gone I recognized that it had not been good enough.

Life is an extremely individual and personal experience. Deep down I knew that as long as I had found some happiness and helped a few other people along the way, that my life has had some worth. My life had not been all that pathetic, ansd over time I began to convince myself of it.

I used to have a few people in the bunker with me, but even then it was still a shitty time. When the power was still on there were some small forms of entertainment, like watching movies or playing video games. It wasn’t that we no longer had fuel for the generator; it was some other weird magic shit that caused electricity to fail. We had known it was not going to last, but having it quit early still shocked us deeply.

Now, when someone mentions a bunker most people would probably think of some rugged, dug in and fortified building. A structure that was built to endure and outlast any assault that may come its way. Mine, not so much. It is much more of a basement then a bunker really. But as this is possibly the humanities last stand, a bunker is what it will be called. Besides, no one is alive to tell me otherwise, well alive near me anyways.

Something could be said for my half-assed preparations as they have kept me alive so far. That is even without a ton of effort and a startling lack of forethought. Others must have done far better. I am sure that there are more survivors out there, presumably a plethora of them. Everyone was given ample warning that something like this was going to happen. Individually people seem to be smart and decent human beings, but group us up and we can easily turn into a mob of morons playing follow the leader. So even with the warning, just like the near certainty of death by cancer from smoking cigarettes, the vast majority of the population ignored it.

My basement, a former cellar, had a farmhouse on top of it which was built in the late 1800s. The whole thing started off as a two story building with an attached and covered wooden front porch that runs the length of the front. Later renovations expanded the cellar which was originally only accessible from outside the house into a roughed in basement, manly used for more dry storage. It is separated into three rooms. One used for storage, the other a bathroom, and the rest an open area with racks on the wall, a TV and a few chairs, my deep freezer, a small kitchenette and two beds.

The ceiling was fairly high for a basement, being around eight foot tall. It would have been a fairly comfortable living space for a single person. There used to be city water in the basement, but the grounds had an old well which I was able to rig to the waterlines. It allowed still have water when the city services went offline.

Walking to one of the windows, I took down the cardboard covering and attempted to look outside. I knew it would accomplish little and not much would be visible due to the deep recession of the window well. A sliver of the sky shown through and clouds still completely covered the heavens. Flashes of brilliant lightning cut through them, forking again and again. The constant dull roar of thunder throbbed throughout the basement like the soundtrack of a bad horror movie. I tried to ignore it but it weighed on me, leaving me in an unending state of anticipation.

The clouds were dark and heavy but no rain would fall today. Rain is a sign of health and renewal. I understand the importance of rain. Water is essential to all life and I am almost out of it.

Continuing to look upwards I again observe the unnatural ambient lighting. The horizon is filled with what I would call a light purple but an ex-girlfriend of mine, who thought herself an interior designer, might call periwinkle.

Day and night the strange weather persisted. No hint of the sun can be seen and it is impossible to tell if it’s even day or night. The air itself shimmers with color. The purple seemed to be carried with the light, but it crepts along like a slow moving plague. It slowly filled the empty spaces of the room. Kept uncovered the window leaked the miasma until it illuminated the basement almost as bright as good old fashioned sunlight used to. It was slightly dimmer though, like an overcast day. The strange color had a weight to it.

Taking a breath felt smoking a heavy cigar. The air burning in my lungs as it is pulled in. It may have been a trick of my eyes, but when I expelled it there was a fog coming from me, like breathing on a cold winter day. The small cloud that came out of me seemed lighter shade of purple then its surroundings, but only for a moment. It was quickly recharged by the surrounding light and caused me to doubt my own eyes.

The miasma continued to creep into the bunker from the outside and seemed to weigh down everything it touched, pressing down on my shoulders, an unwanted burden, as I gazed uselessly out the window.

If my friend Big Gay John was still alive, I bet him and his fellow members of the LGBT community would all be dancing and possibly having a parade to celebrate that the end of the world was covered in periwinkle.

“Dumbass” I whispered. Then I started laughing. It slowed to chuckle, but even that lasted for an unreasonably long time. “Yup, I may be losing it.”

My skin started to feel the burn of the periwinkle and the thought sent me into hysterics a second time. If possible my sanity seemed to slip even farther away each moment I was exposed to it. I placed the cover back over the window and watched the light take a slow moment to fade away. My arms glowed a soft purple as the poisonous light clung to them just a little longer than the rest of the room. Finally the last of the miasma faded away, and my heart was heavy as the dark fully encapsulated me once again.

I shrugged my shoulders and rubbed my forearms as they tingled from the exposure to the filth. It left me feeling dirty and in desperate need of a shower. Just that short time touching it and I could feel it changing me. I did not know how or why, but it was having some an effect on my body. I was trying to limit my exposure to it because I have seen the changes the light has made. Both on the news and in person, and I sure as hell do not want anything like that to happen to me.

A decision needed to be made soon. I had no watch and no way to tell night from day, but I was able to extrapolate sleeping a rough estimate time’s passage. Around seven weeks have passed since this all began. At my current rate of consumption in two days the water will run out. That meant going outside enduring more exposure in an attempt to survive.

I recalled watching documentaries on prison inmates who were placed in solitary confinement or the ‘hole’ as it was sometimes called. I always blew off how the bleeding hearts of the old world thought that it was cruel and usual punishment. I have dealt with some pretty awful people and I know how the world works. There are just some people who cannot interact with others and they must be segregated from normal human contact for the good of others. To me, it justified solitary confinement a necessity in certain cases.

Advocates against it say that it further unbalances the human mind, as we are a social creature and cannot survive mentally without regular human interactions. I think that those people were right. I have a new appreciation of their views because I have not even made a week alone in the dark without becoming unhinged. I now truly believe that we are not meant to live alone, let alone confined and alone.

Of course, even when there were three of us down here it had felt like solitary to me, so maybe I am just tired of the dark.

I started exercising for entertainment of it. Like I have seen prisoners do on television. Without room or equipment the workouts consist of body weight motions like pushups, pull ups, burpees and the like. I do a little yoga as well for the peace of mind it brings me. The exercises feel more natural to me the more I do them. Even with rationing food and water I feel strong. It probably helps that my gut is shrinking. Pushups are easier the less you way after all.

After a few short weeks of training like an inmate I think may be stronger then ever. I have worked out before and I could tell where my body should be after this amount of effort. Such huge gains in such a short period were nothing but unreal, magical even.

I was procrastinating, like normal. It seems like even after the end of the world, I tended to put off what could be done today until tomorrow, or the next week. A decision must be made on what to do. Should I try another supply run? The last one ended in the death of my best friend. He had been killed by a creature out my nightmares. I lost track of time after that trip. I don’t know how long I was unconscious from burn and blood loss after my return, but miraculously I lived through it.

Oddly, my body actually felt stronger when I finished healing up. But that didn’t make sense. Since when does injury make a body stronger rather than weaker? Nothing heals back perfectly. Our bodies remember injury and pain. Even all of my usual aches have faded into the background. Those old wounds and injuries that had stuck around for years, never truly healing no longer trouble me at all. My body used to be a roadmap of pain. I have taken so many impacts and broken multiple bones through the year that I could tell when it was going to rain just by the aches in my joints.

Even the constant hurt of my lower back was no longer there. That sharp involuntary spasm of protesting muscles near my spine that protested whenever I moved my body in a motion it no longer wanted to was gone. None of those aches were disabling, but they were recognized as part of the aging process. Those types of pains are supposed to stay with you forever, until you finally give up to the pain and let yourself die. Now they have just faded into the background as if they never existed.

I assume that the changes in my body have been caused by my exposure to the periwinkle light and whatever it contains that is causing the world to mutate. Hopefully all of these will be for the better, like my newly gained healing ability.

I should be dead right now from the bite I sustained, but something kept alive instead. Something made me better. A chunk was missing from the meaty portion of my right forearm, a victim of the same creature that killed John. The wound was a mess and at the least I expected to have to amputate the forearm.

I had no real expectation to survive more than a few days after receiving it. The lack of antibiotics and proper medical care should have been my my death. Judging from the horrid smell of the creature an infection should have overwhelmed me in no time. To my surprise the wound healed in just less than a week, fully. The bone could be seen in my arm and it healed with nary a scar in less than a week. Even the chunk of missing muscle in my forearm filled back in. Don’t ask me where the extra mass originated. I assume it was from my tremendous belly.

On a whole, other than my current loss of sanity, I feel fantastic.

The series of decisions and phenomena that led up to the death of John, why I had to put a corpse in my non-functioning deep freezer, was currently locked in my basement, and was in the best shape of my life started about a little over a year ago when everyone on the planet earth heard the same Voice.

It was not a voice like you would expect from a heavenly being, like God with a capitol G. No, that kind of voice would make you feel that hollowness in your chest, down deep into the pit of your stomach. That fear of death and of being completely insignificant in a universe that generally ignores your pathetic little existence. The force from that type of voice would likely have had the world down on the ground groveling for mercy and forgiveness.

This Voice was not like that at all. It was a simple Voice and not even really that loud. The Voice’s volume was soft, what a kindergarten teacher would refer to as an inside voice. Though soft, the Voice had strength. Whether they were in a crowded bar or all alone in the wilderness it had been extremely clear to everyone’s ears. Although deep and masculine it was without inflection and feeling. It spoke to everyone in every language, but to no one did it sound like a native. The Voice was something you heard clearly, but did not believe it was directed at you. Nothing it said made anyone believe that it was human, but everyone instantly understood it.

The Voice announced to all, “You have been chosen to play the game. Prepare for change.”

Back in my bunker, right after I saw red and committed my first murder, I heard the Voice again. It gave me an announcement.

My name is Darren Desmond Slattery and I am level 2.