Faking Apocalypse (The Apocalyptic Games Book 1)

by Damien Steinfield

  “Man, it’s me this time. I’m real.”

  I look at him as if at a ghost. “Why should I believe anything you’re saying? For that matter, how would you know about the other time, if you’re really you?”

  “I sneaked up on it, man. I’ve been scrutinizing this whole thing in detail. Remember, I was in the tower, while you were heading for the hills, literally.”

  I wish so bad I had a knife right now. I was clenching my fists closest they could get, and shuttering my teeth in jitteriness. I can’t handle anymore being fooled over by a numerical envision. He’s just nothing but a bunch of ones and zeros and yet expects to pull a fast one on when it didn’t work out the first time to begin with. I mean, I almost did, had it not been for Zoey’s neat perception at that. But, anyway, the deterrence why it didn’t work out is not the point.

  “So if you’re real,” I try to play along, and moderately step back, one foot at a time, so that I can get closer to the stump where Zoey is having a nap and steal her knife. Boy, I just wanna get rid of this deception in front of me. “Tell me, how did you manage to find us here? How could you escape in the first place, with this much of enforcement that the tower incorporates?”

  “Well, I must say you get impudent and willing to rout in pursuance of erudition by means of furtively undercover manners. When in loneliness and tedium, only chances you got is revealing as much as you can in order to fulfil that quango. You’d be surprised how fierce and bacciferous you can be!”

  Why did he have to mention that word? Now all I’m thinking about is berries!

  “What are you implying?” I just wanna make sense out of all the nonsense he’s babbling over me.

  “I’m not here to stay.” He mumbles, softly. “Just to help.”

  “What do you mean? Why come all the way up over here, if not to join?” I cannot believe I’m letting myself being put across again.

  “The chip is not in the drive.” He totally ignores my question. But; the chip? What is he talking about? “You’ll have to hack into their system using manipulative electronic deception which enumerates a bunch of generic codes, which I tried to memorize, but at this point, my memory failed.” He squints up in the air. I think he’s losing it. What is he talking about? “Anyway, point is, you cannot do anything about the it. Unless, you just download as much data as you can and then turn GPS off and Wi-Fi likewise. That’s the only way you can scramble into their system, well, in a limited edition, nonetheless without being traced.”

  At this point I think he’s trying to help me. I just puzzle over and deicide he’s gabbing in regards to the tablet. By the way, why in the world would a numerically complementary deception wanna help me?

  “Cody,” I mumble. And then I want to slap myself for referring to that thing as my friend.

  “I have to go now,” he interrupts me. “Just remember what I said.”

  “What are you talking about? Where would you go?”

  “Well, it seems like my job here’s done for.”

  “What job? What do you mean?” at this point I’m more fuzzled than ever. All I do is frown at him—at myself, if I could come across an imaginary interreflection—and scowl at my deficiency in the realization department.

  He stays there for a moment, though doesn’t look as though he’s ruminating over my inquiry. I hate it when people snub my inquiry! And after having embraced whatever dimension he was lodging into, he’s looking at me and cracks his mouth open to say something. I’m waiting expectantly.

  “I missed you buddy. It was great seeing you.”

  Now of all the things I was anticipating to hear, this was far off it all. You get surprised when you least expect it! I was waiting for him to keep on with gabbing over some undecipherable matters where he left off a couple of minutes ago.

  Boy, life’s fool of surprised.

  And then again, I cannot believe I was overthinking something trivial, when he opened up, no-barriers, right there, in front of me. Question is, should I let myself be hoaxed by someone, who after all might not be who he’s implying to be?

  Aww, sure I’d let myself be hoodwinked. After all, that’s what I do! Duh. I’m not Zoey! Now she would not have given it a second thought and stabbed the guy right away.

  Some spirit!

  “I miss you too, man.” I manage to say. Though at some point, I don’t know if I’m opening up to a total hologram. Though he feels so real. I can perceive it’s him, that is minus a bizarre aureole swirling around.

  And that’s when I realize he’s poring over me and eventually starting to vanquish and puff up. Like, dude, what am I supposed to do with that? This will just make me more befuddled than all the series of weird things happening lately.

  I’m shocked, perplexed, dispirited at this weird of events. I feel like a snowicane is happening inside of my head. I can’t just take control of it. It all feels like a vortex, going around my head like a myriad of scale-like leaves. That is until I feel something bump into my head, like an entire meteoroid collided against it and I’m trying to recover.

  I open my eyes.

  I find myself in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. I’m holding my head with my hand, one eye squinting while the other is trying to make out of my surroundings. There are spruce cones on the ground nearby my leg. Now I realize where the headache comes from. Zoey is leaning next to me and we’re all tangled up against that stump where we tried to catch a wink prior to this day.

  “What happened?” Zoey is now awake, probably by the howling fuss I was causing a couple of seconds ago.

  I frown and squint at the same time, hand rubbing against my cortex, and make myself the same question. “I just had the weirdest dream.” I say and leave it at that.

  Zoey, for some reason, has decided not to be her pestering self and doesn’t inquire anymore.

  But I am. I can barely recall what has just happened, but I have this feeling it has captivated me all over as though I’ve seen snow for the first time.

  15

  These last couple of days have been nothing but exhausting. We’ve been crossing rivers, climbing mountings, and resting under trees, and it has come to the point when I don’t know how much more I can take. We’ve not found anything that would be of any interest, for instance, a city, or an inhabited area, or just a stranger at that. I think I’m at this point where I’m almost losing hope, that is minus ‘almost’.

  The only thing that keeps me going is seeing how Zoey is comping with all this. She’s so positive we’re gonna find a sign soon enough. I guess that’s what she does. She’s the spirit of the posse, the life of the party. I’m sorry. I just realized how ironic that felt under the current circumstances. But you get the idea anyway. What I’ve come to realize all these days with her is that she’s hands-down first-degree nuts.

  As for food, we’ve been collecting coconuts, and berries and the craziest thing we’ve gotten to so far is roasting a rabbit on a campfire. Needless to say, I felt so bad about the poor thing, I couldn’t take a single bite first, but looking at those crisp edges, delicious bulbousness (and considering the fact I’ve been holding myself on berries for the last couple of days) I grabbed my portion of meat and enjoyed that unfortunate, tricked-on rabbit.

  It was delicious.

  What I’ve come to notice during these multiple-days journey of ours across the various reliefs earth has to offer, is how drastic, rapid and bizarre the climate change can be. We’ve seen it all. We’ve had rays of beams hugging our skins until feeling like we were gonna erupt, we’ve had breeze and wind, dew and rain, but this was the strangest we’ve come across to this far.

  It was snowing.

  Exquisite snowflakes were floating gracefully in the air, embarking on our hair and cloths. It was magical, considering that we’ve had nothing really riveting to divert ourselves with.

  “Have you gotten at any significant point?” I ask Carter, after having been hastening my steps so I could level up; and now I’m walking synchronously.<
br />
  “Nah, man. It’s been driving me nuts. Seems way more complicated than I thought. I guess if we could connect to the web then…”

  “That’s not an option.” I say firmly. “We can’t risk having them know our exact location. That would be too hazardous.”

  “I mean, we’ve been waddling aimlessly around unknown territories for days now. I don’t think them pinpointing is any worse than what we’re actually doing.”

  “Man, I don’t think it’s such a good idea. You know what they’re capable of. They have all the means. We have nothing, but this trivial piece of metal. Now I want you to get yourself together and make this tablet of any use.”

  He doesn’t talk anymore for the next few minutes. I think he didn’t really relish the way how I was bossing him over. But it’s not really my fault. We’ve all being going crazy over the fact that we kept walking towards unknown territories, with nothing but a strange map and a useless compass to guide the way. If we could get inside their data using the tablet, I think we’re gonna have to learn much more than what we’ve gathered all these days together.

  “Where is our next stop going to be?” Zoey has approached us and asks casually. I feel a drain vibe in her voice that suggests how tired and bored she is at this point. We all are. But we have to keep going. I don’t think I’m in the mood to stickle right now, being that, as it is, we’re all running out of energies and forbearance.

  “Hey, man, I don’t think I can keep going anymore,” Colin joins the discussion that never was, but that seemed to just have started by now.

  “We don’t have that luxury to cease any time one of us is getting tired and doesn’t feel like going anymore.” I say stubbornly and avoid as much as possible making eye contact to any of them, that’s because I don’t like being this peremptory, but I know I have to.

  “Dude, what’s wrong with you?” Andrew frowns. Good! What seemed to have been just an attempt to catch up on Carter’s scrambling progression in regards to the tablet, has now turned into a proper fuss that kept accruing bigger and bigger any time someone new decided to join. “We’ve been waddling for hours. It’s only fair we made a stop and got some rest.”

  I don’t know where this jitteriness and impetus to bring it out comes from, but it’s what makes me cease at the moment, turn around and meet his face. “If you wanna stop and take a siesta, then go ahead. But don’t expect us to go by your demands.” Even I hate the way I growl at him and somehow make him the basket where I collide my anger to.

  He just looks at me infuriatingly as though he doesn’t recognize me.

  I don’t recognize me anymore.

  I hate what this trip is turning us into. We’ve been facing with sides of ourselves we didn’t know excited, I’ve seen stages of anger in me I didn’t know that were there. We came with big expectations and no expectations at all at the same time, when we left the Eatonii. First, we didn’t know if we were gonna make as much as a couple of minutes out here, but we did, and now that this gist was out of the way, we were just getting angrier at the nonaccomplishment of the expectations that never were.

  After a few other wanders onwards a direction we aren’t cognizant about, just as my friends, I’m starting to feel the ankles twinging and slowing in detriment. I might use some retrieving time too. I can only imagine the look on their faces if I confess to my exhaustion now. They might wanna keep going, even though raddled and worn-out just so that I could realize how selfish my prior behavior has been.

  “Dude, I think we can keep up with that resting time we were talking about.” I whisper to Colin who happens to waddle adjacent me at the moment.

  “I knew you’d run out of energies soon,” he smirks at me, “though I can’t deny, I can only imagine Zoey’s feelings on this! And what’s her reaction gonna be?”

  This thought frightens me too. Zoey has a way with anger no other person that I’ve known this far drenches over. She sweeps into you and makes you wanna hide away to the most secretive parts of your creature so that she cannot reach out. It’s not like I’m having the time of my life here and I don’t want anything held back. This is nothing but the opposite. And from here on out, I’m not just gonna do what’s best for me. I should compel myself to conjoin the other and empathize their necessities too.

  “Guys,” Colin claps his hands for attention above his head. “Gather around. We’ve come to a conciliatory point. And this is gonna be our time-off for the day.”

  I hear them mumbling and mourning joyfully.

  Meanwhile, I, imperceptibly, approach Zoey and casually try to spark a conversation with her.

  “I’m sorry for being a douche.” I meet her eyes. She doesn’t respond, but quietly wants for me to fetch up. “Or whatever I came off as.”

  “So, first off, let me just say, a douche would’ve been way more acceptable than you earlier.” She tells me like she’s disappointed at me, but not at the point where it subjectively affects her.

  Despite our differentia, I feel like her and I are on the same page. I’ve always been having this perception like we’ve been rendering throughout the same aureole ever since I first saw her at the Eatonii. Zoey is not the kind of person who just, like, pours their soul out to you and that you can connect with on that deeper level. She seems stubborn and, come to think of it, a front-runner. I bet she’d be a way more compassionate leader than me. Maybe I can let her co-lead with me. If only I could penetrate through her impenetrable soul.

  “What’s it?” she looks at me confused, after having noticed my inner giggling, that turns out wasn’t so inner-y.

  “It’s funny.” I say shortly.

  “What’s funny?” other than confused, I think now she looks angry.

  “The white on your velvety blonde hair.”

  She’s clearly not following up. And that’s why without giving it a second thought my fingers glide gently into her hair, dusting fragile snowflakes off them.

  “You look Christmassy.” I’m still mumbling instinctively, and don’t think about the words that come out of my mouth, but not long after a couple of seconds I realize that I’m starting to use words that don’t entail a specification in me.

  “Christmassy?” the same exact word seems to have enchanted her too. I think she’s scrambling into her for unspecific, emotive-indulging and warm-fuzzy events that she can’t correlate to, just like I am.

  I thought that I was gonna have no conjoined emotiveness with Zoey today. And just having her join me to drench into the indulgence of something unrecognizable but spuming nonetheless… I didn’t expect to come into this and feel this way uncontrollably. But how could I not. Uh, she’s real bubbly.

  “I don’t know why I said it. I just chased after my instinct.” I try to make an excuse for my inappropriate words. I mean, I’m not really sure they’re really inappropriate or just flattering, but at this point, I really cannot tell the difference anyway.

  “I like it.” she gives me a genuine smile. It’s the first time I see her smiling at me like that, and even so it still feels so recognizable and perceptible as though I’ve been smiled at that way millions of times.

  “Bizarrely, I do, too.” I say, and there’s a cozy vibe in the air. Feels like we’re catching feelings.

  We leave our little, nice chit-chat at that, and help the others fix the tents to the spot we’ve decided to camp down. It’s calming down having little, insignificant moments at this point, like this silly pinning down process, since all we’ve been engaging yourself with so far is gists and disquietude.

  After we establish our slumbering composition around the forest, underneath a bunch of gargantuan trees, I determine I might need a little intimate time, ruminating over my peace of mind and trying to scramble inside of me for some serenity and calmness.

  The best spot I decide to do that is adjacent a ledge that feels so scary at first and makes me realize that I might be frightened of heights. The rock cascades down like a muddle and lends to a green, abandoned field hundred
s of yards down from where I’m standing. I’ve never seen a relief like this until now throughout the long journey from the Eatonii to this point. It’d have been the perfect composition for a waterfall. I could only imagine the magnificent view of the waters climbing down from this hill to the field downstairs.

  “Where’s your head at?”

  I’m almost encumbered when I hear a dear voice interrupting me. Usually I hate being interrupted while in a process I’m totally involved at, but not when Zoey is the bargee.

  “I’m just trying to gather my energies.” I lie. Well, not really. Or half so. Anyway, it’d have been hard to put into words what’d been running into my head.

  “I thought about what you said earlier,” her voice is mild and I lose into the magic of her eyes. “This journey has been facing us all with sides of ourselves we didn’t know existed. And I don’t want you to feel sorry or bad about it.”

  I just look at her perplexed. She’s so amazing (and don’t forget nice!) and now that she’s put down the stroppy beaver she enjoys to be, I can be sure of how much more I like her like this. It’s so clear and intense I can almost admit to myself that she’s got a special spot in my heart.

  And somehow these thoughts and feelings altogether confuse me. That’s why I don’t allow this realization to happen. And instantly that smooching moment strikes me. I was dying to kiss her for the second time. And a million times after that.

  “Hey, guys, look, Avery found this fruit, camping adjacent, that could serve as our meal for now.” Carter says excitedly holding some green, rounded thing in his hand. Of course, we don’t have any food we can help our hunger with, though we can’t eat whatever wild chewable things we might find in the forest. Although I’m so hungry I can’t really help myself and grab the fruit off his hands.

  “Has anyone taken a bite at it until now?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Avery did.” He smiles. “And I after her.”

  That’s enough for me to peel off the skin and take a taste at the green fruit in my hand. It’s sweet and a little bit sour at the same time. I cannot recall such fruit from the past though the fact that my stomach is not hurting anymore is enough form me to drench myself into it.