Chapter 6 –

Slate

The chaos that occurred the first time was only a precursor to what was happening now. Newly rebuilt cities were already burning after a few hours and nothing was being done to contain the damage. Most civilian emergency service workers had quit to go home with their families rather than attempt to control the civil unrest. It is one thing to risk your neck for 20 bucks an hour to help others knowing your family was safe, but another all together to leave them alone to fend for themselves when you could be there to help. I couldn’t blame them, I would have quit too.

There was one shot of an idiot reporter who standing in the purple shit describing how his skin was burning off. We watched small circular wounds open on his body as though the light was eating through his skin, pulling it apart at the seams. For all my hate of the media, I did appreciate that some of them were staying to do their jobs now. They were more dedicated to their work than I was. For the rest of the night we stayed transfixed in front of the TV and continued to attempt to contact our loved ones to no avail.

Big John was able make contact with Eric via email and they conversed in a chat room late in the evening. They had tried Skype but it was not functioning, the servers were all too busy. He told John that he had gone home with a partner of the firm he was working and would stay there for the duration. Eric told John not worry about him and to take care of himself. There was a sad look on John’s face and he wiped away silent tears as he typed with Eric. I sent an email to Jessica as well, but had not received a response. John pecking away at the key board serenaded me into an uneasy sleep well after midnight.

The second day while we were watching the news there was a banging on the steel door of the bunker that lead up into the house and we heard Seth yelling for me to let him in. Pissed off, because I was hoping the idiot had got himself stuck somewhere and was never coming back to my home again, I went to the door. I was not going to let him die upstairs even if he was a huge douche-noggle, so he was allowed in. He was wearing long sleeve clothing with a hat and sunglasses but had still sustained some raw and angry burns from the light.

“Oh my God!” He said. “It is nuts out there.” Seth brought down a suitcase loaded with clothes, camera and laptop. “This is going to be my big break. After the episodes I do surviving this I am going to be so famous!”

I snorted. “Seth you moron this is the end of the world. We are all probably going to die down here.” That idiot risked his life to get to us not because I had food, but because his equipment was here.

“Yea right,” He replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “This will be just like last time, a couple of months and then everything will be back to normal. Well if me being famous is the new normal.”

“Whatever, well if your celebrity ass doesn’t want to sleep on the floor you need to go upstairs and get something to make bed out of. My spare is already down here for John, and yours won’t fit.” I motioned to the quite man hunched over the laptop, making it look like a child’s toy as he typed away with his oversized hands.

Seth dropped what he had and made a couple of quick runs upstairs to grab some cushions and bedding. I stood guard by the door while he went back and forth. He made a nest in the corner and began deliberately making it look messier than it needed to be. He jumped on the floor landing headfirst with his elbows out. I looked over wondering what the heck he was doing. He grinned as he stood up and showed me his bloody elbows and began to smear some of the blood around his head and neck.

After setting up he began to stream about his situation, telling the camera that he was stuck in the basement of an abandoned house with two strangers. He went on to tell obviously an obviously made up horror story on his fight for survival thus far. I chuckled and told him that if he mentioned where he was, that he would not live to make it to the end of the story. Seth looked at me with angry eyes but nodded. Not sure if he believed me, and also not sure how far I was willing to go to keep my bunker a secret, but I put the threat out there anyways.

The second day had far fewer reporters and they no longer cut to discussions with high paid consultants. A few stations mentioned that most of them were unavailable due to the chaos. The new info was that contact with the light might have a mutating side effect as well as the obvious one of burning your skin off. The news flashed around from city to city showing entire towns burning in the night as no fire departments even attempted to fight the blazes. Most local news stations were already down and reports were coming in that the military was falling apart. The president did a quick address in the afternoon, he re-enacted Marshall Law like the year before and made some stupid safety comments like, stay inside, don’t stand in the burning light, etc.

I ignored him because every idiot knows not to stand in fire, right?

I received an email back from Jessica who said that she was at a friend’s in her apartment complex. She wrote that she was going to wait out the initial craziness there and we could try to meet up in a few days. I wrote back that I would come and get her with John, but she told me to stay put and would not tell me what apartment she was in. Damn that stubborn woman. I wanted to keep her safe but she wouldn’t let me. Scared that she would cut off contact with me, I gave her a whole list of do’s and don’ts. I told her to not open her door to strangers, cover the windows, be quiet, fill up the bathtub with water, and whole lot of other advice that may or may not have been useless. I am sure she ignored most of it, but it made me feel like I could help her.

The news was sparse the third day and many stations went off the air.The emergency broad cast system message played across the empty screens. Occasionally a message would scroll across the screen, advising to stay inside, don’t touch the light, and beware of animals. The caution to beware of animals was new and since the internet was still working we scoured it for updates. Bloggers and some web news sites that were still functioning so we stayed connected to the outside world a while longer.

The videos we started to watch looked like they were horror movies. Animals and people looked to have gone insane from the exposure to the periwinkle. Animals, even herbivores, began attacking people. I saw a video of a buck who’s skin was sloughing off charge down a man and stab him clear through with his eight point rack of antlers. Although it should not have been possible, the deer picked the man up and ran with him on his rack for quite some ways before dumping him on the ground. The deer proceeded to kick and stomp on the corpse for several minutes before it bent down low over him. The video was shot from a cell phone pretty far away, but I think it was eating him.

The human aspect was a lot worse. There were videos with masses of people fighting in the streets. They were literally tearing each other apart with their bare hands. Some grouped up on single opponents, quickly killing them and then moving on like a pack of predators. They were also feeding on the victims. There were still people who looked mostly normal others were changing in frightful ways. For the most part the particulars of their mutations seemed random. Some had mild to severe changes in skin color across the spectrum. Some had giant tumor like growths on part of their bodies or a disproportionally large limb. Some resembled ghouls, with claw like protrusions at the ends of their fingers and moving about more on four limbs than two.

One guy I saw leading a pack of the feral humans had light green skin and his head was mutated to where it was unusually large for his body. He looked like some comic book villain with an enlarged brain. When feral met feral in the open battles fight was always to the death. There were still cases where normal looking people without defects were seen running away from the packs. Most of those targeted by an organized pack died, but some who were singled out by solo monsters actually looked like they got away.

I looked over at John where he was seated next to me. Both of us were hunched over trying watch the screen on the same laptop. I imagined we looked like two movie goons watching the hero take out our fellow bad guys on a security video the while making his way to us.

Even though I was scared to death, I did not have the ability to shut up.

“See? Zombie apocalypse bro,” I taunted John. “What have I been saying was going to happen since this whole thing started? Now remember, rule number one is cardio. Gotta get you into shape big guy.”

John did not deign to reply as he glanced over at me shortly and let his eyes return to the computer screen. Ok, maybe that was a little inappropriate.

“I am sure he will be all right” I said in a half-hearted attempt to cheer him up. John was not speaking much over the past few days, but he was not overly talkative to begin with. He usually took a while to warm up to someone, but when he did he would usually add to any intelligent conversation. Of course I tend to run off at the mouth sometimes. I refer to my condition diarrhea of the mouth, so I didn’t expect any response.

I grabbed one of my last remaining Heinekens and began to drink it warm. I had not dragged the refrigerator downstairs because I thought it would be too much of a drain on our energy supply. There wasn’t much in the way of perishable food anyways. It was going to be sad when we ran out of good beer. Luckily we had stocked up so we still beer, but running out was going to suck.

The lights flickered for a moment and I heard the generator kicking on. That meant the city power grid just went down. I did not have everything in the basement powered by the generator and I tested my theory by flipping one of the out of network light switches. It failed to turn on. While preparing my bunker I had purchased some large batteries and rigged them into a power bank based on information I had found online. The idea was that you could save your generator and extend your fuel by running it enough to fill up the storage and then just filling it up again when it got low. It was working well and I wondered how long it would last.

The news over the web was reporting massive power outages everywhere and I doubted we would see the power back on anytime soon if ever. That’s why I had decided on hooking the generator up to natural gas rather than fuel. The gas lines ran on pressure, and I was hoping that the air compressors that moved the air were fed by the same gas that they moved. I tried to google it but never found it out. I could not have afforded to store the amount of fuel needed to keep the lights on otherwise, even with the extra money I was getting from Seth.

Financially I was kind of lucky that the world was ending. Most of the money spent I did not have, and I was floating around the debt on credit cards at the moment. If the world had not ended in the next year or so I probably would have went into collections on a lot of them. That’s right “Fuck you student loans” I muttered. John and even Seth glance over at me like I was a nutball. Oh well. I never was the most mentally stable of guys and the periwinkle apocalypse was not helping.

I don’t know why or how, but for some reason the internet stayed up longer than the power. We routinely checked the FEMA website which had minor daily updates. They still recommended everyone to stay inside, stay away from other people and animals, to stay out of the light and basic stuff any idiot should realize instantly. They had mentioned that they were organizing for rescue squads to deploy after the violence was contained. I did not believe that because videos were starting to pop up of fights on military bases with mutated soldiers attacking each other. Luckily the mutated ones attacked themselves as well and did not seem to single out normal humans.

Hopefully they would eventually kill themselves off if we could just keep isolated from them long enough. The military mutants were smart enough to use firearms, but were too aggressive to be very tactical. The normal military survivors were able to take advantage of cover and basic maneuvering to over whelm their opposition in most cases. Unfortunately there seemed to be a lot more mutated soldiers than not so no one was sure who would win the war of attrition.

Seth thought that day 5 would be a good day to play a joke on John. I thought he had learned his lesson when pranked me and got tossed, but apparently he thought it would be a good idea to bother someone a third again my size. Without being able to set up something elaborate, Seth had simply sat a bowl of water on John’s bed and placed one of his hands in it. The enormous paw would not even fit entirely in the bowl. John moved in his sleep and spilled the water, waking himself up. I had been playing on the laptop and did not notice it when it happened.

I guess John must have seen him with that stupid ass camera. I heard John roar and stand up and saw him grab Seth by the neck. John’s hands are so big, that the finger tips actually overlapped with his thumb, a real life Homer and Bart Simpson moment. I started laughing but noticed that Seth was sputtering and turning blue. I went and grabbed John’s arm trying to get him to calm down. I hung on it trying to pull it down but don’t think John even noticed I was there for a few seconds. He eventually did though and sat Seth down in a daze.

Seth collapsed to the floor gasping for breath like a fish out of water. He coughed a few times while the blood came back to his face. For a moment Seth looked enraged by John’s response. He opened his mouth in preparation to what I guessed would be calling John derogatory names and possibly insulting his ancestry. Not about to save Seth a second time and I settled down to watch the show. Seth looked like a light bulb clicked on and calmed down while mutting, “This is going to be even better than last time!”

Seth ran to his computer and huddled in front of it. I got John settled down and he fell heavily back onto his bed. I handed him the laptop and he got busy typing to Eric. Eric was still alive but there had been some issues in the neighborhood he was staying in. The colleague he was staying with had prepared a little by stockpiling some food, and had a generator, but there were not any guns in the house and no way to secure many of the entrances. Afraid of being attacked, they had been keeping the lights off upstairs and staying in the basement.

I went over to Seth and got his attention.

“You know we are going to be stuck in this basement with John for quite some time and he is worried about his friends and family. We are all under a lot of stress as a matter of fact. No more playing pranks Seth. I am letting you in here and feeding you my food but I have no obligation to do so other than basic human decency. This is my home, and I expect you to respect it and me by behaving like an adult.”

“Whatever,” Seth shot back. “You can’t kick me out of here any ways. I would just tell everyone where we are.” Seth had a smug look on his face when he turned around to his computer and began typing on it again.

Just like that I was infuriated. I let that ingrate son of a bitch into my bunker, fed him and kept him safe. He would most likely otherwise be dead and this is how he wants to treat me? I knew I was on the edge of doing something drastic and walked over and sat on my bed thinking about my options. This was the first time I ever seriously contemplated murder, but I knew enough not to do it on impulse.

I understand that I tend to brood over subjects. Over-thinking things to the point where I focus so much on certain details that I forget ignore common sense. Right now, I was weighing the potential risks killing Seth, be it kicking him out of the bunker or outright murder, verses the gains of having him gone. Having him gone would keep the stress down a lot, that’s for sure. It would also be less of a strain on my limited amount of food, and more importantly the beer. John and I on limited rations could probably make six months of food for one person last about four for the both of us. During that time, if we could handle it, we could safely stay in the basement waiting on the shit-storm upstairs to end.

Exiling Seth would just be too much of a risk. He could do something stupid like set my house on fire and put the video on YouTube. With the poisonous atmosphere outside we wouldn’t be able to watch for his return. If he able to stay alive long enough to find another group of survivors, he would tell them about our place. I am sure that in a few weeks the world would be out of easily accessible food and everyone would be struggling to survive. People would be searching for resources and would quickly come our way.

There was also the long shot that society was restored. In that case if I straight up murdered him I could spend the rest of my life in prison.

We needed to bunker down and wait until the worst was over. The weak and unprepared would die off or be killed by other survivors and we would only come out when most of the mayhem was over. Yea yea, I don’t want people to die, but what could I do to prevent it? With people turning into insane cannibals we did not want to go out until they had slaughtered off most of their kind.

But I also needed to go out. I had not been able to get in contact with Jessica and although it tore me apart inside, I had not after her. The chance of surviving to save her with 2.1 million people turned monster in the city was like a snowballs chance in Hell. John also would not let me go alone, and I could not risk his life without even knowing what apartment she was in.

The world was fucked and murder was on my mind, but instead of killing anyone I just sat on my bed brooding and thinking deep and ominous thoughts.

Unable to sit there any longer, I got up and started pacing. John and Seth glanced at me but went back to their screens after a few moments. Deciding to burn some of the angry energy and I began to do a body weight workout. After 45 minutes I was pleasantly exhausted and I drank some water and sat down in the corner for some light stretching. After cooling down I gathered myself into the lotus pose and attempted to meditate. I couldn’t reach Zen that day because I just couldn’t focus out the typing on the computers, let alone the occasional grunt of the generator kicking on and the snorts of derision coming from Seth’s corner. Oh well, I tried, time for some more beer.

The internet shut down on day eight. We were all in a shell shocked state after our last line of communication with the outside world as cut. It didn’t help that we had most of a conveyance store’s worth of beer and had spent most of the week drunk. I talked with John about what we could do, but the big fellow had fallen into a depressed state and wouldn’t reply. We both knew that we were stuck here until the purple lifted or we ran out of food. I continued with my workouts and meditation, getting stronger even with the alcohol in my system.

Until day 44 we did not have it that bad. Seth, who had taken the fall of the internet harsher than the rest of us, had opened up and become a fairly decent sort to live with. I never forgot his threats, and still thought about killing him occasionally, but most of the rage faded with time. We played video games, a lot, and ended up running out of beer. I mostly had single player games so we would have to rotate, but with no other entertainment available it becomes pretty fun to watch someone else save the universe in Mass Effect 2. I continued to work out and meditate, and got better at focusing out the others in the room. I was starting to get in really good shape and was trimming up a little. The only thing memorable that happened during that time was that the earth had become completely covered in clouds. They spat lighting back and forth and we could no longer tell day from night without the clocks.

On day 45 the generator stopped kicking on. The problem was that without the generator we would run out of water fairly quick. I cursed myself for not buying a hand pump for the well to put in the basement and spoke briefly with John. John and I were fairly handy guys when we were building a house. I had no problem with basic installation of plumbing, electrical wiring, or pretty much anything to do with residential building. I had learned some about battery banks by building one but did not know much about fixing small engines. Between the two of us, we thought we would be able to fix the generator and prepared to head outside.

We bundled up to try to limit our skin exposure and headed out with Seth holding down the fort. It did not take long to figure out what was wrong with the generator, it was out of fuel. We walked back inside and told Seth what the problem was. Seth laughed at us. He held up his phone and told us that it didn’t work. He told us that his laptop didn’t work, and ours didn’t either. He said that he had been saving the charge on his camera and laptop in case we lost power and they both should be fully able to turn on but wouldn’t. He said it happened sometime while we were outside. We all thought back to the brief loss of electrical power that happened the first time the voice spoke. Our best guess for the situation was that electricity no longer works.

I did not have many candles so on day 46 we were sitting in the dark talking about our options. We decided that we had to go out for supplies, mainly water. Only had a few gallon jugs of water were left since I relied upon the well and had not stored much more. We also needed some information on the outside world and were going stir crazy from just sitting around. After a short discussion, John and I decided to both go out again and left Seth in the bunker. I grabbed my Glock and asked John if he wanted a gun. John shook his head and we headed out.