Faking Apocalypse (The Apocalyptic Games Book 1)

by Damien Steinfield

  “How many of these are there?” I ask when I realize I’m almost fetching up my first portion and I want more.

  “There’s plenty.” He guffaws.

  That’s enough to make me hop up into my own feet and have Carter lead the way to that endearing tree that has decided to become the food resource for our lunch break.

  16

  Throughout the peace and indulgence that I’m having on my own tent on the comfort of my blanket, I wouldn’t have determined to disrupt from this moment if it weren’t from a frightening scream that we hear afar. Anyway, not far away from the tent for it not to scare the freaking daylights out of me.

  Colin, who was sleeping next to me is already awake and has made up his mind to get out of the tent and take a look at whatever event that has provided that horrible effect.

  “What is going on?” I ask him.

  He’s frightened enough to not say a single word, though throughout the limited insight the gloom has to offer, I can make out the way he’s shrugging as a significance he’s as incognizant as I am at this.

  I get off my own sheets and run to him. With one hand clutching on the tent edge and the other supporting on his shoulder and try to perceive whether something bizarre is happening around the tent. The darkness doesn’t seem to help at all.

  I put on my shoes, which I had worn off while sleeping and run out. A second later Colin reaches me. And it takes me just a slight moment to realize that Zoey had been sharing the tent with us and she’s nowhere to be found.

  That’s the moment when jitteriness sweeps me entirely.

  “Zoey!” I mumble.

  He looks at me confused, not because of my words, but because of these weird events. Panic-stricken, I pore over the field and try to catch up with whatever is going on around here. I’m just so uptight, I almost misperceive of the coldness outside. It’s freezing out here. But I do not care as long as Zoey might be in danger.

  Soon enough I spot a jerking move behind a stump and soon the silhouette of that move reveals itself and makes me realize that it’s Zoey waddling around the camp zone.

  What is wrong with that girl? First, she makes me spend the night out in the chilliness of the forest and then she makes up her mind to go for a stroll in the middle of the night and release screams that could make one jump out of their own skin.

  Like, who decides to waddle around a forest, one in the morning, like a ghost? (Needless to say, but, Zoey does!)

  And it makes me furious to the point of eruption. I was scared to death about her and here I realize that she’s safe and sound, (and crazy; don’t forget crazy!) in the middle of the night trying to meditate or whatever is it she’s doing.

  Just when I seemed to have made up my mind regarding my surroundings, something strange spots my attention, making my jitteriness increase. Andrew is waddling on him own underneath a colossal tree and seems to have totally lost it. I cannot make out of what is happening around me, but nothing about these circumstances screams normal.

  I’m becoming more flustered with every passing minute.

  That’s when I realize that it doesn’t take distance for strange things to happen.

  “Is it just me or it’s getting hotter and hotter here.” I see Carter rolling over his jacket and then he takes off his sweatshirt, leaving me speechless and shivering. It’s fucking freezing out here and I’m just witnessing my pal’s craziness taking place.

  “What’s up with you, Carter?” I ask, voice more than a whistle. Though I intended it to be criticizing, but for some reason my vocal chords refused to surrender.

  “Look at the water,” he looks mesmerized over the crest, and that’s when I’m one hundred percent sure he’s totally losing it. “It invites you.” He mumbles like a horny man and rolls his jeans away.

  “Where’s your head at?” I ask him, totally befuddled by the series of movements around me.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” he asks me as though I’m the crazy one here, never mind him striping off his cloths amidst the midnight frostiness. “I’m about to skinny-dip.”

  “You’re what?”

  I’ve been so confused with my pal’s behaviors, I have missed Zoey’s meditation for the next couple of minutes. Obviously, there’s only so much a man can take.

  In no time I detect Carter readying up like a front runner and as if it’s the middle of a summerly scorch he hasten his way towards the crest.

  Like, there’s no doubt in my mind now he’s going crazy.

  What’s wrong with him?

  I chase after him, after a moment of wondering, and try to realize what’s going on around here. Why is everybody acting so crazily today? I grab Carter by the wrist and try to stop him. Manage my way to face him and hold him by the shoulders.

  My vocal chords seem to respond to my anger now.

  “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

  “Making the most out of this day.” He guffaws as though he’s been on the strangest drug earth has to offer. “I’d suggest you joined.”

  “Join you where, to jump off the hill?”

  “What hill man? There’s no hills here. Just water.”

  Even though I’m all stressed out with Carter, trying to realize what’s going on with him, I somehow manage to lay my eyes around and look at Avery, who is hugging a tree as though it is a person.

  Oh. My. God.

  They’re really going nuts.

  And all at the same time.

  If it keeps going like this I don’t know how this is going to end. Obviously, I cannot manage to keep safe each and everyone of them. Only Carter is hard enough. Let alone the others.

  Carter takes advantage of my inattention and manages to release himself from my arms and rans towards the crest. My blood pressure is really high right now, heart racing crazily from what looks like upheaval but isn’t, my head is as befuddled as though it’s been bumped against the biggest rock you can find.

  How can I stop him? What can I do at this point? They all seem unmanageable. But I cannot allow anything bad to happen to them. God, I’d feel awful if I did.

  I’m running after Carter, breathing intensively, and try to rescue him for the second time, but not so nicely this time. I put the comportments aside and as soon as I spot his body adjacent me, I gather all my forces and jump forward pressuring up against him and wrapping him up with my arms, and so taking him down to the ground on a not so comforting stop.

  But who cares about comfort when you’re talking about existence on spot?

  Pfew. That was close.

  Somehow I try to regather my equilibrium and energies after this eager jump, totally forgetting that Carter is not the only one that needs to be saved.

  “Hey guys, wanna jump with me to the waters?” Colin waves his hand inwards, inviting all of us to jump off the hill, which he refers to as waters.

  Just as I was trying to have a minute—hmm, second—of recalibration, Colin stirs trouble a couple of yards ahead of us.

  All the posse is now gathered and they seem astonished at the idea. I’ve got a feeling this is going to end bad. Somehow they’re all rumbustious and hallucinatory by what seems to be the largest riddle I’ve come across to so far.

  I see Zoey approaching him slowly, but delightfully. Brianne and Andrew chase after her. For some reason, I think that if I stop Colin first, then I might be able to cease any latent horrendous outcome.

  I leave Carter clung to the ground where we smashed altogether, and hoist myself up, one hand supporting my equilibrium in the ground. I think that if I try to convince him smoothly not to do anything crazy, no result would come whatsoever. He’s not able to apprehend, so no chit-chat might come in handy in this. What I need to do is act as rumbustiously as they are—if not more. You need to strike something by using the same opposite force. So that’s what I do. But I need to calculate my moves carefully first. Just a wrong move might collide us together hundreds and hundreds yards down.

  “Hey, Greyson.
See how smooth the waters are? How can you not want to jump down?” he says.

  I have to play along.

  “Yeah, body. Pretty cool.”

  “You’re gonna jump too?” he smiles.

  I nod.

  “Okay, then. You’re ready?” he asks me, ever so joyously and looks to get ready.

  I don’t know how I’m gonna get alive out of this, or if I’d manage to get him from falling off. What I know is, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing that I was ever so close to him when he decided to smash himself to bits by jumping from the highest pinnacle I might have seem so far.

  I’m full to bursting with emotions; obviously I don’t think I can handle this situation. And I’ve got an ominous feeling things are going to turn upside down at the end. I don’t know whether I’m so captivated with excitement when I see the sky flashing brilliantly, or it’s really happening over there, but what I know is it gets my jumping and trying to catch Colin.

  Through befuddlement, a second later I realize that what had gotten me all fierce and lively had been actually occurring in the real world, and not only in my mind. Massive lightning had been smashing the atmosphere sharply, striking to the ground and making all of us jumping out of our own skins since we were at the edge of our emotions and just a slight impetus could bring us down the crest.

  Oh, wait! I realize this is not just metaphorically speaking. This is actually happening in front of me.

  I find myself crawled at the corner of the crest trying of get hold of my friend, after having made an attacking leap fueled by the lightning. After all, what could you expect when one gets struck by lightning in top of a pinnacle?

  Even though swept by emotions, I try to dust it all for a moment, gather myself and make out of the disaster around me. Synchronously with me, Colin has slumped off when the lightning struck us. But now he seems scared, helpless even, and on his right mind, screaming for facilitation. He’s barely holding himself on the edge of the rock that formed the crest, legs hanging loosely in the air, and the misty atmosphere and wet ground don’t seem to help.

  “Greyson, please, don’t let go of me!” I hear him screaming out and realize that my hands are actually clutched to his wrists and I’m trying to keep him from falling off that horrifyingly tremendous height.

  The ground is soppy and that’s an intricacy that doesn’t let me decently hold myself while holding Colin at the same time. He’s holding tight against a crappy rock and that’s not gonna do to keep him supported for much longer. I try to not release his arms. I know if I keep doing that, I’ll drench myself into the hazardous possibility of falling off with him and turning to smash just with the tiniest wrong move.

  I’m terrified.

  God, what can I do?

  At this helpless, desperate condition, I start doing something that might seem unbefitting when I’m risking falling off any passing second.

  I start to pray.

  Until now, with my lack of recollection, I hadn’t encountered such thing as praying, or given it much of a thought. But it seems like I’m good at it. I’m looking for God and asking him to help me. I don’t want this to be the end, and at some point I know that chances are this is going to be it at least for one of us (if I decide I don’t want to help him anymore and let him fall off the crest).

  But I’m not capable to let him, although knowing that holding him might turn bad for both of us. Mathematically, if I do the calculations, turns out that letting one go off the team is better than two. But it’s just something inexplicable that mathematics (which is only a silly coordination totally created by humans to adjust measuring and calculations of systems and life in itself) cannot comprehend and does not have anything to do with it.

  It’s empathy.

  I’m becoming more tensed and stressed out when I note a latent dispatch, after having tried for this situation to maintain still. I mean, as still as you could expect in a disaster. His hands glide off together from the rock and the only thing keeping him in abeyance is me. If it weren’t for my clutch he’d have been thrown down by now.

  I know this is it. I know that I have to make a decision. It’s either I let go of him and have to live for the rest of my life with the guilt, or I fall with him altogether. As hard as I’d been trying to cling my toes to the muddy ground, it doesn’t seem to help anymore. I feel a scratch coming from my feet. I’m not going to be nestled to the ground for much longer if I don’t come up with my choice right now.

  I mean, how could you expect one to make horrendous choices in the blink of an eye?

  I won’t let go of him. I don’t know if he’d have done the same for me, but I know this is the right thing to do. I will keep trying until my forces fail me.

  “Greyson,” he’s almost whining.

  It’s all a blur to me. I’m just spotting rocks, my arms and figuring the field beneath us. I won’t allow neither of us get down there! I’ll do anything I can to help. Even though at this point it’s not much I think I can do.

  “Just let go!” he’s guffawing and whining. How could he wish to be relinquished when he feels so terrible about it! God! The heck with these people?

  “I. WON’T!” I’m breathing and talking at the same time.

  There, upon the intensity raised in my hands and the heat coming to grow any minute, I feel something that seems to give me hope.

  It’s some electricity (though it might’ve been just the reflection of my stress) that somehow cools just a notch the jitteriness I’m surrounded by.

  It’s Zoey coming to give me a hand (in the literal way) and grabbing with both hands one arm of Colin’s, letting me to grab with mine his other arm.

  Together we try to hoist him up the rock. Scratching sounds and deep interrupted breaths in atmosphere. I’m putting all my forces and energies to bring him up here. I’m so perplexed with this process, I’ve totally forgotten how strangely Zoey is acting sane and on her right mind now.

  Half a minute later, we bring Colin upwards, who’s now all nestled to the ground, as though he’s metaphorically hugging it, even though I know it’s just a process of recalibration.

  “Thank you,” I say to her and try to smile, though the best I could do after this situation is frown. I believe, she’d get it.

  Zoey nods. She’d just as terrified and worn-out by this as I am. I know that if it weren’t for her I’d probably be on the other part of the forest now, underneath the pinnacle, hundreds of yards down. And yet here I am all safe and sound.

  It’s a miracle.

  Zoey seems to be bringing up miracles in my life.

  Soon I realize that’s just a silly thought since I’ve known her only for a couple of weeks and all she’d done till then was just bugging me out.

  I shake off the resolution that might be the outcome of a tiresome event that seems to have drained me off my energies entirely. Like, really, I’m so drained for a minute I’ve totally forgotten about the bizarre behaviors of my crew a segment until this disastrous situation took place.

  17

  These last couple of days have been exhausting and stressful. We’ve been running with short stops all along and nothing relevant has been detected so far. They seem to have lost faith now. As for me, I don’t know what to believe anymore. We’ve been facing all sorts of reliefs and climatic changes, and still nothing that suggested soft living human track was to be found. The only thing that keeps me sane is Zoey. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still her pain in the ass self she enjoys so much to be. Though there’s something about her presence nearby that I cannot explain but gives me so much hope and strength.

  We don’t like to recall the unenjoyable events that took place the night they all went crazy. This is mainly because all we’ve don’t for an awfully long series of hours was trying to get a hint at the strange way they all went cuckoo all of a sudden and then turned back to normal instantly as if someone cast a spell on them.

  The moment Zoey came to give me a hand while Colin was hangin
g desperately from the pinnacle has been the exact fraction that made them all perceive of reality. I know that if that turning point hadn’t showed up at the time, even if I managed to save Colin solely, which seems hardly believable as it is, I’m pretty sure that someone of them would’ve gotten it over with themselves, leaving us at a hopeless state of mind.

  What has confused all of us is that each and everyone of them came to the turning point, but me. I was the only one that was sane all along. It seems to me like an inexplicable turn of events that had us struggling to puzzle out.

  We’ve been discussing over the weird fruit that Andrew showed us and the latent hallucinogenic effect that it might have come with. Though still it doesn’t seem too convincing. I was the one that ate from the fruit just as much as they did, and still I seemed to be immune. It’s either I have a terribly well-set immune system, or there was something even stranger on spot. I was with the last one. Exclamation point. Then again, just making up my mind that my money was with the fact that something inexplicable has captivated all of us, wasn’t much to be pleased of. It just suggested there was another series of researches I had to scramble to so I could find out the truth behind it.

  “This is weird.” Carter explains looking bizarrely at his hand.

  “What is?” I ask and instantly run to him.

  The fact that I approached him ever so fast just pointed how desperate I was to come across something other than earth reliefs and trees, which at this point had seemed to not astonish us anymore.

  “The compass,” he says to help me pore over the direction that has grabbed his attention.

  I look at his hand. The threads inside are quivering crazily and it links me to something recognizable on my head. We’ve been following the quaint map ever since we started this journey and we’ve been running straight forward from the point where we started it and facing with all kinds of natural challenges and coming over them. The compass had been working normally so far.