The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  But today was the one exception.

  Malcolm had allowed him to spend the entirety of the loop with his physical self, instructing him to maintain physical contact with “Alive-Kevin” as a reminder for what he could go back to if Kevin would just cease his infernal resisting and work with him.

  And it certainly looked as if the only way out for him was to do just that.

  Work with Malcolm. Those were the terms.

  Terms which led him to break away over the past few time-loops from the psychopath and strike out on his own. But the fog grew denser, his memories were beginning to fade, a side-effect he had no way of knowing was being caused by his inability to interact with another person matching his current condition.

  With that, resentfully, he was here. The exact point in space and time that Malcolm had told him to meet him should he ever grow weary of bouncing backwards through time with only the lakes for company.

  “The lakes and Jerry,” thought Kevin.

  ‘I trust you sent your past-self back home as instructed?’ asked Malcolm, referring to the other prerequisite for Kevin being granted time alone with his alive-self.

  Kevin nodded.

  ‘Don’t look so sour faced!’ said Malcolm, with menace-filled levity. ‘Once you have assisted me with this final deed, I’ll be free of this place. We both will. I will spare both you and your animal.’

  ‘His name…is Jerry,’ he replied icily.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Malcolm dismissively. ‘Whatever. Now, do we have a deal?’ and he held out his hand to Kevin, then nodded advising him to proceed.

  Kevin stared up at the lodge thinking of the lives within, realising he was essentially aiding and abetting a murderer. He then looked down at Jerry, standing next to his master, his vacant expression implying his father already knew what needed to be done.

  Kevin mimicked Malcolm’s gesture, outstretching his hand, then pulled it away at the last moment.

  ‘No,’ said Kevin.

  ‘No? No?!’ the killer broke out into a hideous laugh.

  ‘I’m not going to help you kill a bunch of kids. As far as I can tell, you being stuck here keeps the outside world safe. You’re powerless here. And we’re fading. I can feel it.’

  Malcolm knew what he meant. If he strayed too far for too long from his alive-self, his thoughts became blurry. Clouded. And a literal black fog would creep its way over everything, rolling across the grass as if reclaiming the world. The same fog that reclaimed him moments before the end of each Cerebral Reversion.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ lied Malcolm.

  ‘I think you do,’ said Kevin, a bold smile stretching out across his own face and, for the first time since he got here, feeling like he knew something Malcolm didn’t want him to know. ‘We may not feel pain here. Or hunger. Or even thirst. But there is one thing we can feel that not even you can escape, isn’t there?’

  ‘And what would that be,’ replied Malcolm, feigning boredom but willing to let Kevin have his moment just so he could rob him of it afterwards.

  ‘Fear.’

  Malcolm took a step towards the man and his dog, dropping the pretence of civility.

  ‘I fear nothing. I do not fear you, these children, or–’

  Kevin cut him off. ‘Or eternal damnation once the fog claims you permanently? It’s getting thicker, Malcolm. It’s just a matter of…’ he chortled, ‘time.’

  ‘Oh Kevin, you’ve been here for less than seventy loops. No energy to draw from, no physical-self to interact with, except today of course. A gift I gave you as a peace offering, no less. You’ve spent so long in the woods you haven’t even figured out that music can refuel your focus.’

  Kevin was dumbfounded.

  He was about to ask if music really could keep the fog at bay when Malcolm quickly grabbed his hand, causing a reasonable bounty of blue sparks to fly from Kevin and into Malcolm’s body, draining a confused Kevin of every last drop of his retained temporal energy.

  The killer looked back at him with a smirk, his eyes a savage red, as he released his firm grip on Kevin’s hand.

  Kevin pulled away from the loaded handshake, resentment in his eyes, knowing something awful had just happened.

  ‘No one will know, Kevin. Of that, you have my word.’

  ‘I don’t even know what just happened! What did you do? And your word is worth shit,’ he added boldly.

  Malcolm chuckled.

  ‘I’ve killed some for less than that. But I’m feeling…positively reinvigorated. Now run along.’

  ‘What was that? That blue energy?’

  ‘’Let’s just say, the time you spent with your past-self today was not what you thought it was.’

  ‘What are you going to do to them?’ asked Kevin, feeling utterly drained, his thoughts fuzzy.

  ‘I said leave.’

  The killer’s smile waned to reveal a subliminal reminder that he rarely asked twice, let alone thrice. And on that note, Malcolm turned his back on Kevin and made his way back inside Fir Lodge.

  Kevin stood there, he and Jerry alone on the gravel, feeling cheated as the prospect of the consequences that would surely result from a handshake with the devil dawned on him.

  He had been tricked. Whatever that energy was, Malcolm had stolen it from him. And the way it had left his body caused him to think that trying to steal it back would just empower the monster even more. All he could do now was hope whatever Malcolm was planning wouldn’t work. He’d be more careful tomorrow when the nightmare started over. Would learn what the blue energy was about. Learn to wield it to fight Malcolm.

  He continued to lie to himself, not wanting to admit that he knew there would not be a tomorrow at all. At least, not for him.

  As he looked down at Jerry, an idea began to swirl in his mind. Maybe it wasn’t too late. If he could just keep Jerry from accidentally luring the occupants to his home, maybe he could save them.

  Maybe…

  Jerry was important. He just wished he knew why. And then he wished he knew who Jerry was. Perhaps the dog in front of him knew the answer. But as the white fog swirled around him, it stripped him of the question. Then his mind. Then his body entirely.

  *

  Malcolm had been watching closely; the balloons, the falling wine bottle, the dog chasing phantoms that weren’t really phantoms at all…

  He was shaken from his ruminations as the golfer approached the door that led to the one called Robert’s bedroom he was currently waiting patiently inside of. As the footsteps grew louder, he took a deep breath, and placed his hands against the door, positioning his legs to take the brunt of the incoming onslaught.

  The door handle rattled, as it always did, and Malcolm envisioned the energy he had siphoned from Kevin building from his core and into his hands. The door began to move inwards, the killer gritting his teeth and channelling his hatred into something he could use; a manifestation of power that would act as a key to finally freeing him from this place. The door slammed shut under his force, and he heard the young man from the other side – both figuratively and literally – mumbling a quizzically-toned hum of perplexed confusion.

  He was done in this place. He felt saturated by it, as if the moronic exchanges of those residing in Fir Lodge were somehow infecting him with their banality. The door handle quivered again, and Malcolm growled, as the door began to give way under his ever-depleting charge of residual energy.

  The door crept ever further open, and Malcolm heard the golfer speak.

  ‘Rob, you in there, mate? I need to borrow your charger.’

  Images flashed through Malcolm’s mind, fuelling his anger, haunting his sense of self; one image in particular, of a young rat-catcher and his orange secretary.

  He snarled at the thought of them, his eyes igniting with a reinvigorated red electricity that would’ve filled the dark room, had light been able to reflect from between Malcolm’s present and the pocket of the past he was locked in.

  Malc
olm yelled in defiance, until the door gave way under his sheer refusal to accept that he would be beaten, and slammed shut.

  And then Malcolm waited.

  And waited.

  Eventually, he allowed his lips to form a malicious smile. His shark-like teeth glowing under the other-worldly red hue being cast from his own eye sockets.

  As the black fog arrived, much earlier than usual, he knew he had done it, the energy leaving him, rendering him powerless once more.

  Coils of darkness wrapped around his body like starved snakes, ready to transport him, to spit him out on the other side of eternity for a job well done.

  Malcolm fought against it, and looked up to the ceiling, knowing his alive-self was still on the roof. He transmitted one final instruction and heard the reassuring creak of his weight walking across the tiles above him.

  ‘Not yet,’ Malcolm whispered gently to the universe. There was still one more loose end to take care of.

  But the clutches of time itself refused to listen and claimed him as its own. Malcolm’s last thought being that of a singular hope that his physical self could handle the last will and testament of his own superior intellect.

  *

  ‘Jeez,’ said Peter from the other side of the door. ‘Whatever,’ he grumbled, heading back down the corridor to continue what was starting to feel like a never-ending side-quest, shivering slightly as if someone had stepped over his grave, entirely unaware that the reality was much more like someone had actually just dug a fresh one for him. ‘Oh,’ said Peter, stopping by the double entrance doors of the lodge.

  The mischievously-adorable springer spaniel sat there patiently in the moonlight, as Peter looked up the communal staircase and called out to Fearne, who was utterly preoccupied with assisting Daisy in clearing up a spillage of some kind.

  ‘Guys?’ said Peter, turning around to face Jon and Will who were playing a rather rambunctious game of pool. ‘That dog’s back.’

  ‘Jerry? He’s out late?’ said Jon looking over at Peter briefly before lining up his next shot

  Peter shrugged and opened the front door, allowing Jerry to strut into the lodge and towards the pool table, then making his way up the staircase.

  ‘Grab the dog Peter, there’s glass everywhere up here!’ Daisy shouted down, uncharacteristically stressed.

  Sighing at the realisation that his quest for a phone charger had run its course and silently blaming Fearne for not packing such an essential item, he squatted down to get Jerry’s attention, turning the silver disc attached to the dog’s collar in his open palm.

  ‘Number 51…’ he said out loud. ‘Guys, what number are we?’

  Jon and Will made some contradicting noises of cheers and groans as Jon sunk another yellow into the corner pocket.

  Growing irritable, Peter shouted out to anyone who would listen.

  ‘Going to take the dog back guys!’

  He gestured towards the now-open door before them both. ‘I’m so under-appreciated,’ he mumbled. ‘After you, good sir!’

  Jerry wagged his tail and followed Peter’s instructions.

  As he stepped outside, the sound of an old-fashioned song from what must have been one of Jon’s Royal Air Force playlists faded in volume, and the cool air seemed to flood against his body, causing another involuntary shiver. He reached back for the door handle and pushed it away from him, his ears greeted by a satisfying “click”, indicating it was fully closed.

  An action that wasn’t in and of itself too concerning. Unless you were a Restarter on your 165th restart, watching helplessly as their entire plan had just gone well and truly to shit, her hands pressed against the glass of the door, unable to open it with her slowly dwindling charge. A door which wasn’t really a door at all, but had suddenly transmogrified into the vertical lid to Peter’s coffin.

  A Restarter, for example, who was now screaming through the glass trying to get the attention of her friend, knowing that in less that twenty-two minutes his act of apparent kindness was going to erase her from existence, sending her back to the present day, where she wouldn’t be able to remember needing to help him, let alone be in a position to–

  Peter stopped for a second, cocking his head just a little, as if he had heard something on the wind, then turned back to face the glass. Seemingly staring into not only Kara’s eyes, but Hal’s as well – who had returned from tripping the hot tub and was as equally imprisoned behind the door – he raised an immaculately crafted eyebrow.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ said Peter, to no one in particular.

  Hal mouthed words that seemed to run along the lines of “he did not just say that?” as he and Kara frantically bolted through the corridor that led to the rear garden, darted to the right, and backtracked along the driveway. Their feet stopping soundlessly atop the shingle as they looked at each other and nodded, knowing Peter’s only hope depended on them reaching the boundary line of Pentney Lakes in time.

  But time, as always, was not on their side.

  And with one simple change, a man operating in a slightly different phase to the two of them had achieved the impossible. After 1,060 Cerebral Reversions (or Restarts, depending on who you asked) everything that Hal and Kara had fought so hard to set in motion unravelled at the seams.

  Their past restarted, their future changed, into an alternate reality entirely of Malcolm’s design.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Brave New World

  R.I Timestamp Error: Recalculating…

  Jess ran down the eerily quiet alley, vaulted over a fence, and moved deeper into the now abandoned amusement park, crouching down behind an overflowing litter bin to take an ill-advised but much needed moment to catch her breath.

  Her stamina all but depleted, she slipped her backpack from her shoulders to take stock. As she unzipped the bag, she winced, knowing that whilst the sound may not have drawn unwanted attention, she was still hideously exposed.

  She listened for a moment, satisfied that the only groans she could hear were the ones ingrained in her imagination, then ran a quick inventory; her trusty Glock, a measly two magazines, a single grenade that in her hands was more a liability than of any real use, and a hundred or so tickets that she’d stolen from an abandoned theme park store room that were good for little more than kindling. She hadn’t eaten in hours, and her bottle of water barely contained the remnants of perspiration, let alone any viable means of hydration, and she cursed herself for travelling too far for too long without replenishing the crucial supplies she needed to stay alive.

  “Stupid.”

  Jess took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, acknowledging that she was being too hard on herself. Pressing her earpiece, she called out to her fellow survivors.

  ‘Is anyone close to the east wing, I’m low and need back up.’

  She was greeted by unhelpful static.

  ‘Great,’ she mumbled. ‘Guess I’ll have to do this myself. As always.’

  Her earpiece startled her as it crackled to life and a familiar voice responded.

  ‘I’m here,’ said the voice. ‘Little busy at the moment. How long can you hold out?’

  It was Hal.

  Not really who she was hoping for, given that her fiancé had a tendency to make terrible decisions when it came to thinking on his feet. Since the outbreak started, he often took a lone wolf approach when it came to supply-runs, and was incredibly wasteful with his ammunition.

  ‘I have a few minutes,’ she said snippily.

  The earpiece crackled again, a playful tone in his voice.

  ‘Don’t get snippy, I’ll be there.’

  It was then that she heard the shuffling, followed by a sickening groan.

  ‘Shit,’ Jess whispered, quickly shoving her arms back through the straps of her pack and loading a magazine into her gun, making sure to keep a spare on standby.

  And there it was; a decaying reanimated corpse, shuffling towards her, its eyes a fluorescent blue, equal in vibrancy to the neon signs surrou
nding her which were being powered by unseen generators, fortunately operating separately from the national grid.

  “The Restarted,” as Hal called them.

  She pulled herself up from the ground and strode towards what, judging by the name-badge affixed to the now-filthy clothes it was wearing, used to be an employee of the park. Jess stuck out her tongue to concentrate, raised her gun, looked down the sights, and fired off a single bullet.

  The projectile pinged off of a vending machine, a metre or so to the right of her intended target.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said, glad that Hal hadn’t been around to see that. She hated smaller firearms, feeling much more confident with weapons that offered a wider spread.

  Slumping her shoulders, she sulkily plodded closer to the afflicted reanimated cadaver, wondering for the billionth time if a cure would ever be found. It had been so long now. She had killed so many that they didn’t even register as human to her. All she saw at this point in her zombie-killing career was a violent, rabid animal that needed to be put down so that it could finally find peace. It was a matter of survival, and death was a secondary concern to becoming infected. Coming back…becoming one of those things. They had all, at one point, seen it happen to the ones they loved.

  Now a mere metre away, she re-raised her weapon, applying slight pressure to the trigger, then hesitated. There was only one. Noise would draw more, and she was low on ammo. Pulling her knife from its holster, she flipped it in her right hand so the blade was facing outwards, swiping savagely, placing the blade firmly into the creature’s right temple.

  Jess pulled the blade out quickly, fearing the weight of the zombie might pull her down with it. Absent-mindedly, she envisioned the act of wiping the blood from the blade on her jeans, trying to decide if she had time to nip into the nearby arcade whilst it was quiet, in the hope of finding a melee weapon with a bit more range.

  Having calculated the risk, she jogged briskly and made her way into the claustrophobic room, the wonder of the rows of retro gaming cabinets lining the walls completely lost on her, realising immediately she had made a terrible mistake. A quick headcount indicated there were at least twenty of The Restarted shuffling around, trying to gain access to a barricaded room on the far side. She instinctively took a step backwards, ending up in the clamouring arms of another monster that was hiding in the shadows behind her. Jess yelped in what was both a combination of surprise and pain, as her attacker wrapped his arms around her and dug their nails into her forearms.