by JM Guillen
“Tainted” was the most common word, although “aberration” had a strong following as well. Whatever you call them, they are walking blights upon our world, and their very presence has debilitating effects upon the sanity of others. Somewhere around the second day, a website popped up that allowed users to post reports of their strange experiences. NewWorld.com was an instant sensation and frequently crashed under heavy traffic. It was also difficult because so many of the reports came in different languages, but eventually people started translating them.
The reports were terrifying.
The Tainted had the ability to be literally dismembered, yet they didn’t seem to feel pain. Stories from Hong Kong told of the creatures digging corpses from the earth and using bizarre rituals to re-animate them. Many of my fellow researchers believed that was an exaggeration, something based upon the large number of creatures in the region.
But then similar, separate stories arose in Australia, Iraq, and Newfoundland. Almost identical reports of animated corpses came in from three different continents, and soon, these accounts became impossible to deny.
The Tainted were twisted parodies, remnants of humanity left after the English Baseline. Yet even when killed, they did not die. Their corpses stood, animated by some process we do not understand.
The dead walked the world. Just that fact gave the ultra-religious fits, and small cults sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. “Romeros,” some people called them. I thought the name apt. The stories seemed far more “Night of the Living Dead” than the usual viral fare on the internet.
In Colorado, one young woman posted a report of ritualistic behavior by the Tainted, complete with pictures of the Tainted gathered around one of the locations where the vegetation had simply died away. The photos seemed to show unfamiliar shapes in the landscape, almost as if the vegetation had died in the form of some unknown writing. When the young woman was asked to post more pictures, she said that she would.
She was never heard from again.
In New York City, the Tainted roamed Central Park, hunting and capturing humans. At first posters speculated that they were possibly cannibalistic, but then photos began to come to light of vast dead fields, where corpses lay in complex patterns.
Some wondered if those were works of art composed of blood and bodies.
Of course, NewWorld.com wasn’t the only place on the Internet where research was being done. A set of videos came to light from an unknown location, showing a series of tests performed on the Tainted who had been in prison during the Wormwood Event.
The videos were horrific.
I sat thumbing through them all in one night, horrified at the experiments that had been done. More than one careless researcher was ripped apart on tape by the monstrosities, and one was actually eaten with nothing edited out.
Yet some results were classified.
Toward the end of the files, a man identified himself as Designate Johansson. He was a plain-seeming man with an oddness about him that was hard to pinpoint. Designate Johansson claimed that the Tainted possessed “some effect, or set of effects, that amounts to the laws of entropy being exaggerated or somehow enhanced.” He claimed that the Tainted could not be held in their prison cells for long, as the “physical structures around them seemed to weaken and decay.”
The text at the end of that file was blurry and difficult to make out, but internet snoops had cleaned it up as best they could. Screenshots seemed to indicate that the video had been recorded at “Facility 17.” It also held what looked to be a timestamp down toward the bottom, which, when clarified read: Rationality 32.4.
Neither of these things were any help at all.
Other research came out of Russia. A Dr. Solokov found that whenever a psychologically stable person had long exposure to the Tainted, their mental processes also seemed to decay. The videographers were loyal to the project, obviously at their own detriment as video showed researchers slowly going mad due to exposure.
So we know a good deal, but we understand very little. Regardless of their true nature, one horrifying fact remains: when the Wormwood Event was over and humanity was drunkenly crawling out of our living nightmares, these things were waiting for us. We died by the billions.
I’ve heard that less than five million humans are left alive worldwide, but I have no way to know.
In the days after the Event, those of us who survived attempted to band together. We still had technology after all! The internet and phones saved us for a time. We set up web groups for survival.
I’m ashamed to say that sometimes it felt like a relief. No more jobs, no more school. For the first few weeks, it was like summer vacation, only you could watch the world end on television.
Until you couldn’t.
I have no good theories on what happened with our technology. Cell phones seemed most vulnerable, cell phones and computers. It was interesting to watch. The newest and most delicate igadgets and gizmos just seemed to slowly die, while technology that was a few years older hung on.
The phones and computers we have now are only the older models, and it seems likely they will not last much longer. Newer cars are vulnerable too; the more they require delicate electronics, the quicker they seem to go.
We might have three months of technology left.
Of course the National Guard arrived in many places and cleared the Tainted out with heavy assault weapons. Those fights seemed to go well at first, but there were always more of the monstrosities. More undying monsters with reality bending shadows. More fearless corpses that never stopped coming.
More Aberrations.
If they shatter your mind, you become one of them. If you die, your corpse might just stand up within their ranks. If your equipment dies as you fight them…
All too soon, we were losing contact with our fellow survivors. The internet was shaky enough by itself, but one day, someone just wouldn’t be there anymore. You would send an email… no one would respond.
Within one week, most of the country was on electricity rationing and martial law. The government ordered phone companies to make their bandwidth available for any devices that could access it. Even with these preparations, one fact became starkly apparent:
There weren’t enough of us left to marshal an effective resistance.
The government called everyone to arms that they could, but after huge losses in Atlanta, few came. Morale was destroyed, and no one wanted to sign on to become a monster.
The government claimed that the nuclear explosions within the United States were more power plants going off. They also claimed that they never intended to abandon entire cities, based upon untainted population statistics.
No one believed that, of course. We, the People, were on our own.
Las Vegas declared itself a free city state, and the government did nothing. Thousands fled to “New Appalachia,” only to find that the rumors of hope and a cure weren’t true.
We have no support. We cannot trust that the National Guard even has central command anymore. Gangs and “free territories” rule various areas that the Tainted themselves haven’t yet overtaken.
Within the course of eight months, the world as we knew it was gone.
4
At first, I kept to my old habits. The Internet had been my life for so long that I leaned on it to learn everything I needed to know. As time went on however, my routine began to fail me, and I began rapidly copying and printing things off the Internet, hoping to keep some kind of record.
I needed a crutch, needed anything safe and sane and whole.
From the moment I left my dorm room, the entire world was chaos and madness. Before I had made it out of the building, I ran into Elsie, someone who, while not exactly a friend, was at least a familiar face. Together we made our way through a campus that had erupted with violence and insanity.
It would be a week before we finally found our safe place, an abandoned three-story apartment building. Together, we filled the stairway with
old, broken furniture, packing it so densely that we figured even the Tainted couldn’t chew through. When we had to leave the building for supply runs, we were able to use the fire escape.
Things worked well for a while. I kept my phone plugged in and scoured the Internet for information to convert to hardcopy through a former resident’s abandoned printer. I had exceeded my data limit twice over, but I had an idea that the phone company wasn’t going to be sending any bills.
But eventually, the Internet… waned. The connection became harder and harder to find, and sometimes the HTML simply wouldn’t resolve, as if the websites themselves were degrading. Soon enough, it was difficult to log on at all, as if the world beyond our apartment building simply vanished.
That was when, without any fanfare or lights from heaven, I decided that maybe I should open the thick packet of papers.
Michele had been right. It was as thick as a phone book. It was covered in stamps and had obviously been through several Mexican post offices. The thing had looked ratty when it arrived, but after spending so much time in my satchel it looked even worse, and the envelope was ripping around the edges.
I can’t exactly say why I didn’t open it earlier. In the back of my mind, it felt as if it were something very important, like a tie to the old world. It felt as if the moment I opened it, I would be giving up any opportunity of being the young woman I was before.
To be honest, I put it off as long as possible.
The papers were thin and smelled old. I couldn’t make out much of it, but there was art— art everywhere. Pictures like, well, like nothing else I could imagine.
The very first line caught my attention in an unusual, nonsensical kind of way.
Nothing is what I thought you are.
~D
It seemed to be a diary of sorts, but it was also filled with mathematical formulae and complex astrological diagrams. Some of the drawings were impossible to make out, directions for some complex equation that had no immediate answer.
It was written by an unnamed person whom I was certain was quite insane.
Pages and pages of numbers and variables applied numerical constants to historical events. The longer I peered at the numbers, the more they seemed to make a strange kind of sense. I would meander into sideways daydreams, where World War II was little more than a component in some great sacrificial ritual, a reagent of death, fear, and hydrogen’s fire.
This was just the beginning.
Enclosed were theories that Cortez acted less a colonist and more as an orchestrator of the ritualistic sacrifice of a nation. It was, of course, a sacrifice that had to happen, a sacrifice that kept an unnamed darkness at bay. The author applied numerical constants to every genocide and act of despair that had ever stricken mankind, and each correlated to a dizzying amount of bent astrological data. The terrifying thing was how the data all tied neatly together…
How it all made sense.
Everything led back to a singular, vast Equation.
The Equation was not what drew my attention first, however. Toward the beginning of the work, there was a formula of numeric constants and symbols, both of which seemed to be assigned to a long array of names. Even when I was not reading the work, my head was dizzy with the names. The names approximate to things like SiRd the INcoNsolable, BadsAi the BLaspHeMEr, MonKieL the DriNkeR of PaiN, COfn of the ElDRitcH ScreAmS, SAphCale the WhiSPereR… There were eighty-one of them, each of them more symbols than names, symbols that haunted my dreams.
Who sent me the papers? Why?
Slowly, I began to sleep less and less, staying up to study the papers by wine and candlelight. I tried to show Elsie what I had found and tried to explain to her the bent truths that I was discovering, but she literally didn’t seem to care.
That didn’t matter, I realized.
The papers were left for me.
5
Eventually, Elsie went on a run by herself, against all my advice. We had made some rules about going out, but apparently she got tired of waiting for me one day.
“You were busy. Studying your…” she trailed off, not knowing what to say.
“The Work. I was reading my papers, and you decided to go out while I was distracted.”
“Like I can help that!” She gave me a furious look. “You’re distracted by it for ten hours a day sometimes!”
“It’s important,” I nearly spat the words, allowing more anger to seep out than I meant to show.
“Well, I won’t have to go out alone anymore.” She went to the window and looked down. “I brought home a friend.”
That friend was Mark.
She had tried to make her way back to the hydroponics unit at the college. She had the idea that there might still be fresh vegetables there, and since we hadn’t seen any of the Tainted in days and it was broad daylight, she decided it seemed like a safe run.
It was not.
Fortunately, handsome, steely-eyed Mark was there with his handgun to save the day. Apparently, he had gunned down three of the creatures that were chasing her, and the other two had lost interest. He didn’t have a place to stay, and so she had invited him to stay with us.
Without even consulting me.
Mark thought that, just because he had over a thousand bullets, taking pot-shots at the walking corpses was cool. We argued about it one day, after he tried to break his “record” of fifteen down in a minute.
The thing was they couldn’t get to us. We weren’t in immediate danger. He was just bored and wasting ammo out the window.
That about sums up what you need to know about Mark.
There were a few other survivors on the block, but we stayed aloof. Things seemed safe, for the moment at least. We had canned food, bottled water, and fourteen bottles of cheap wine.
I needed time, time to study the Work some more. Elsie teased me about it, but Mark just called it my “odd little affectation.”
They didn’t understand.
Sometimes, late at night, I remembered the Event. It was stunning, a cacophony of blood, terror… and freedom.
That was the horrifying part. The more I studied the Work, the more I remembered that night. I remembered a vast, wild freedom. An ecstasy. And the more I remembered that feeling, the more important the Work became.
As I sifted through my memories of the world before, I realized that the signs were everywhere. The sacrifices were being made in front of our eyes. The dates of great battles and terrorist actions seemed to form twisting patterns. Even the “Mexican drug war” took on an even more sinister connotation.
Even things that did not involve human deaths.
Remember that massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? How much life did that oil spill destroy? I remember hearing about people taking pictures of the disaster, people who were then taken away. We assumed it was that huge company screwing us all while hiding from the press. We assumed it was about money.
But the Equation brought me a different answer. It told the story of a numeric constant that was required on the date of April 20, 2010—the date of that horrid disaster. It described the sacred algorithm for a sacrifice of thousands of lives in order to “keep shut the thirty-sixth gate, the gate of StritHM the BLiGht, so that his dark eyes shall never turn upon us.”
Strangely, I was thankful. I remember how angry I had been when the disaster happened, but then I realized the truth.
It could have been human lives.
In the Work a map of the Gulf showed some of the formula scrawled all across Mexico. When I look at them, the shapes seem to writhe, to sing. I spent an entire night looking at them, fascinated at the way they told the secrets of my life.
I lost time. I awoke on the roof of the apartment building, naked, looking into the sky. It was raining, and I could almost see the words that the rain wrote against the gray clouds.
The names, those eighty-one ineffable names, sang quietly behind my heart, every waking and sleeping moment. LedAUs the HArbingEr oF NIght… NOKlor
WhICh Walks at MIdnIgHt… ViLNt the BlaSPhemEr of NAmes… HoD tHe VoMiteR of FilTh … CHOcsh the SERpeNt-BOrn… BriClpol Who CrIEs the WorlD’s AgONy… ElIREis tHe HUNnTEr of MEn…
They were names and at the same time, eternal, prime numbers. They were shapes, written in the blood of more civilizations than just humanity. I almost knew the shapes, almost felt their secret history. I saw them in clouds, in the patterns behind my eyes.
I wrote them from habit, without even looking. I would trace them with my fingers when bored. When I did, I felt strange memories slithering through my mind, great wet things rolling over in their sleep.
I knew the symbols mattered. I knew it was part of the Equation. I simply couldn’t make it fit in my mind.
My studies filled my days and nights. I became obsessed, addicted to spending hour upon hour tracing my fingers across symbols that defied logic.
I lost track of things happening in the “real” world.
I don’t know when Elsie and Mark started sleeping together.
6
The day everything changed started out just like any other.
We had decided to go out for supplies. We had to. Mark had his gun and said we would be safe. We couldn’t use the stairs, of course, they were still filled with old, broken furniture.
The Tainted can’t figure out how to get to us. For a while a couple of them hung around our building. Even when we couldn’t see them, we knew they were around. It’s something they do, as if the world bends when they are near. Small shifts in perception, like being high. Time seems to melt away. Everything changes when they are close.
One night, Elsie woke up crying, practically delirious. Immediately, Mark got up with his gun and found two of the Tainted in the stairwell below. As soon as he killed them, Elsie went back to sleep.
She did not remember any of that the following day.
We still don’t know how the Tainted causes these small derangements. It’s as if their existence rebels against physics, against sanity.
