After a minute Jonathan whispered to himself, “Must have walked into the house. Maybe this will attract some attention.” He reached his right hand into his pocket and pulled out the round he brought with him. Pulling the bolt back on the rifle felt smoother than he’d expected. The round fit snugly into the chamber, and Jonathan slid the bolt back up, locking the round in place.
Pressing his shoulder tight against the stock, he realized that this wasn’t like the H&R Sportster he was used to. Although he remembered the gun store owner talking to his father about the design of the rifle reducing the recoil to be more manageable, he was still growing more nervous the longer he spent holding it.
Taking one last look around before firing the rifle never crossed his mind. Surely no one would be able to tell where exactly the shot came from. He closed his left eye and looked through the scope. The first thing that his aim landed on was a blue plastic trash bin that somehow managed to stay standing through the chaos. He estimated that it was at least two hundred yards away, and with no wind he figured it would make the perfect target for his first shot.
Jonathan aimed for the top of the bin to allow for any drop the bullet would have and inhaled. Roughly halfway through exhaling he stopped, steadied his aim, and gently squeezed the trigger. In a fraction of a second the round came to life and tore through the air at over three thousand feet-per-second. The sound that accompanied was like a bomb going off next to Jonathan’s face. It was enough to stun him, and it took a moment for the pain shooting through his body to register in his brain.
Dropping the gun on its stock, he slid back down to the edge of the roof. The pain was so intense he was sure he’d either die or throw up again. Jonathan looked up into the sky and closed his eyes. The whole world spun.
His body was doing its job well, he figured, as the pain subsided over the next several minutes. Most of the pain must’ve been dissipated by the rush of adrenaline, yet he wasn’t able to move his right arm more than a few inches. Pulling his arm from his shirt sleeve, he saw that his shoulder was a slight tint of purple.
Returning to the top of the roof where the bipod dug into the shingles, he couldn’t help but wonder what that recoil would’ve done to his body if it hadn’t been absorbed by the roof. Pain still resided in his shoulder, but after going through his range of motion, he was sure it wasn’t broken.
Then he was consumed by excitement, and this second surge of adrenaline may have helped with the pain as well. Grabbing for the large rifle, he picked it up and looked through the scope toward the trash bin. It took him a moment to find it, but once he did, he couldn’t help but smile. His training with other rifles transferred pretty well, he thought, as he checked out the bin. It had been knocked over and most of the side facing him was gone.
His excitement dissipated as Jonathan spotted the movement to the left of the trash bin. Across the street the man appeared, looked around, and started walking toward the shattered blue plastic. Three more people came out from between the houses just down from the first man and walked toward the trash bin. Jonathan guessed these people were scavengers that stayed behind when the others left. They must be gathering what little food they can find.
Before he knew it, the street was crawling with people. They all looked dirty, sick, and tired. He began to question whether anyone he knew was out there. It would be dangerous trying to alert any specific person of his presence though, so he figured it would be better to stay put. Jonathan continued to watch these people as they looked around. Just minutes later, he noticed that more and more people were flooding onto the streets. Half the town’s people may very well still be here.
Jonathan was so interested in what the people down the street were doing that he hadn’t noticed the movement just outside his gate. The moans startled him, but it was the banging on the front gate that shot terror through his body like the round he just sent ripping through town. Lifting himself off the roof, he peeked over at the gate. Three men and two women inspected the structure in front of them, unsure of how to open it or make their way past it.
The sounds of trash bins on pavement followed by the spilling of trash and glass bottles alerted Jonathan to the arrival of a few others as they shambled down the sidewalk toward the gate. None of these people seemed to notice him, yet they must have known the explosive sound of the rifle came from this home. Using the scope to take a closer look, he thought that most of these people must have been diseased. Some of them missed limbs while one man was missing the entire lower half of his body.
This isn’t right; certainly, that man can’t be alive.
The man dragged himself across the pavement as his intestines trailed behind him like muddied rope. There was no blood trail left behind as he crawled along, leaving Jonathan to assume the man had bled out a while ago. It wasn’t possible for him to be alive, and it also wasn’t possible for him to be dead. Not while he crawled around. The crowd grew larger, and Jonathan began to panic. Zooming in from face to face with the rifle scope he could swear that these people were all dead.
Jonathan was frozen in place. There was no telling how long he’d gone without blinking, without a single thought passing through his head. When he finally returned to his situation, his eyes were dry and sore. He pulled himself back up to the scope again to double check what he thought he’d seen.
A young woman clawed at the gate. She wore a dirty yellow tank top, torn blue jeans, and one shoe while the other foot was completely bare. It looked as though she had chunks of flesh missing from her arms. Muscle and bone were visible where the flesh had been. Her mouth hung open, and through the scope Jonathan could see her blackened tongue. Pieces of skin hung from her body like loose band-aids.
Beside her was a heavy-set man. His gray skin hung loosely off his face. His blood-stained business suit had torn pieces of flesh stuck to the front. He held the remains of an arm in his left hand. Judging by his loose skin and baggy clothes he was heavier than that before. The arm he carried broke even more as he beat it against the gate.
This was really happening, Jonathan knew. He took some time to double check the wall around the yard to make sure there were no weaknesses. Checking the gate one last time, he was relieved to see that the people, living or dead, were moving on. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and made his way back down the ladder and went in the house.
As he walked through the rooms, he couldn’t help but look at the photos on the walls and in frames along shelves. Not only was his family in these photos, but many of their friends as well. He had no way of knowing if any of these people were still alive, or if they had died a horrible death at the hands of the attackers outside.
Placing the Steyr back in the safe, Jonathan once again began to cry. The tears came slow. “These are the last tears you will ever shed,” Jonathan promised himself. He walked to his parent’s bed and lay on top of the soft blankets.
His sobs didn’t come naturally, however. He wanted so bad to cry for all the lives lost, but he couldn’t shake the thought that they now had it easy. How was he going to survive? Would his whole life be lived inside this house? At this point he knew he was crying more for himself than he was for the dead.
He rolled over and faced the other side of the room. Sitting next to the bed was his father’s nightstand. Everything his father said about “going against nature” and “trying to make the world a better place” came rushing through his head like a stampede. There was something to this.
He slid his father’s nightstand drawer open hoping to find a journal or notes. Nothing. Jonathan jammed his hand under the mattress and felt around. Nothing there either. He stood up and walked back to the closet. Here he searched through every drawer, shelf, and pocket. Despair washed over him as he realized his defeat. There was no journal here.
Jonathan returned to the safe and began to arm himself. He had no intentions of going out there, but he knew he would soon. Curiosity was a strength that drove the pursuit of knowledge. Even if it killed him,
he was going to learn what was going on. He grabbed several pistols, a shotgun, the Steyr, and at least a thousand rounds of ammo. Vests, belts, and holsters would make carrying this small arsenal fairly simple.
Walking out of his parent’s bedroom he walked right past his father’s briefcase. He hadn’t even noticed it sitting right inside the door. Lifting it off the floor by the leather handle, he was surprised at how heavy it was.
A smile spread across his face, and he found himself laughing heartily. The gold plate on the front had the initials B.S. engraved into it. His mother bought the briefcase for his father as a birthday gift 4 years ago. Although his father was a brilliant man, he had somewhat of a crude sense of humor.
“The B.S. is for Bull Shit. Not Brian Sawyer,” his father would say with a big smile and a laugh. “Because that’s what I do. I bullshit my way through work. No real clue what I’m doing.”
The laughter wouldn’t stop. Jonathan thought he was losing his mind, but it felt fantastic. It wasn’t even that funny, not before, nor now. He didn’t want it to ever stop though. Tears rolled down his cheeks once again, and his side began to hurt.
“Bull Shit,” he said aloud as he was finally able to breathe again. He sat the briefcase on the bed and tried to open it. The combination was six digits, which leaves over five-hundred-thousand possible combinations.
Trying some of the more obvious combination choices, such as birth dates, didn’t yield any success, so Jonathan made the decision to pry it open. After all, it was only a briefcase. Using a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers he grabbed from the toolbox in the garage, Jonathan was able to break the lock. Inside sat several documents, a voice recorder, and his father’s green leather-bound journal. He watched his father on many afternoons listening to his day’s work on the recorder and taking notes in the journal.
Nothing else mattered at the moment, so he tossed the briefcase aside and left the room with the recorder and journal. Jonathan settled into their big leather couch and opened the journal. Most of the pages were filled with chemical formulas written in scribbles with a few notes on the side. Further into the journal was a log written by his father about the work that he’d been doing.
“After my promotion last week, I’ve seen some things that I’m not sure about,” Brian had written in an entry dated over three years earlier. “My new security clearance has me working on the fifth floor. A floor that none of the employees are allowed to acknowledge the existence of. The design of the building is a simple optical illusion designed to trick outsiders into viewing it as only four stories,” he crossed this last part out, probably with the intention of removing it later.
“The work that takes place up here is top secret, and most of it is contracted work for our government. What we’re working on now could change the world entirely. Our perception of life could be shattered, and death could become meaningless. After looking through the reports regarding what we’re trying to accomplish with our research, I’ve decided that the repercussions of what we’re doing will be disastrous. I’ve also decided to prepare my family for what this could possibly lead to.”
The rest of the writing remained vague. Many other sentences had been crossed out also, but this explained why they spent so much time learning how to survive through any situation. His father had predicted a horrible outcome to what they’d been working on. Unless he could piece together these scribbles, he didn’t think there would be much left in the journal that could help him.
Listening to the recorder proved unproductive, yet it was soothing to listen to his father’s voice. It had taken almost two days to listen to every file on the recorder. Nothing stood out to him as odd or out of place. Walking back through the house, he stepped through his parent’s bedroom door and walked up to the bed where the briefcase lay. He opened it up and quickly glanced through some of the documents that were stored inside.
Thanks to his studies, most of this stuff made sense to him, and none of it seemed to be anything other than basic medical research. Then he noticed that there was a pocket along the lining of the briefcase. Nestled safely inside was his father’s laptop.
Sliding the computer out of the pocket, Jonathan opened it and pressed the power button to boot it up. Laying on the keyboard was a missing child flyer. A nine-year-old boy, Samuel Kinsler, appeared to have been kidnapped. Written on the bottom of the page in his father’s handwriting was a quote.
“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” – Martin Kruskal
“Martin Kruskal did not say that. Charles Darwin did,” Jonathan said with confusion. This was one of his father’s favorite quotes. There was no way he would make that mistake. His confusion was put on hold as the computer screen came on with a prompt that instructed him to press ctrl-alt-delete to login. He pressed the button combination and watched as the login screen came up asking for his password.
Once again Jonathan found himself typing in the obvious passwords to no avail. He didn’t know enough about hacking to work his way in, and he could spend years trying with brute force. Pacing back and forth across the bamboo flooring he was suddenly bothered once again by the misquote he found earlier.
His father was too smart to let that slip by. He went back to the laptop and typed in the name from the quote to no avail. He stared at the sticky note and felt that the name was familiar somehow. His father had told him before about this man discovering an anomaly in text. He exerted every ounce of brain power he could to focus on what he knew about Kruskal. And then it came to him.
The Kruskal Count is a strange property where written text is taken, one of the first ten words is picked, and the following words are counted by how many letters were in the word picked. From there the letters in the word that is landed on would be counted, and the process repeats until a word is landed on that won’t allow for anymore counting without going over the word count. No matter what word is used to start, the same word will always be the end.
He felt thankful for all the ridiculous math assignments his father made him work on. Jonathan decided to start with the first word in the quote. Counting 2 words from “in” he landed on “struggle”. Eight more words put him at “the”. Three more words to “their”, “in”, and finally “themselves”. He couldn’t go any further, so he decided that this would have to be the password. Hitting enter after typing it in he found relief when the screen flashed and brought up the desktop.
There were only a few programs and folders on the desktop. Solitaire was pinned to the taskbar along the bottom leaving Jonathan to believe his father played it quite a bit and wanted quick access to it. He was able to locate a series of journal entries that Jonathan found to be more shocking as he read on. Emotions rushed through his body as he continued to read and piece together the story of what had happened. Filled with rage and disbelief, Jonathan continued to read about the events that led up to the attack.
The warm sun sank into the earth miles away. The dead roamed the streets without meaning or purpose. Although death was a release from the horrors of what had happened, pain still lingered on their faces, and sorrow settled into their gray eyes. Perhaps there was still a trace of the people that once inhabited the bodies of these monsters. Perhaps their last moments alive were just so cruel that their bodies will carry that forever.
The man watching these monsters had remained alert for several days. The gunshot sounded like it came from the hills across town. A single shot that sounded like an explosion rocked the town, perhaps a signal to any survivors. This man wasn’t sure what it was, but he wasn’t going to let a chance of escaping this hell slip by again.
Chapter 3
Piecing the story together from the journals saved on his father’s computer, Jonathan found what he discovered to be disturbing. After digging further into the computer’s files, he found a series of security footage that his father downloaded before leaving from work t
he day of the attack. Combining the journals and security footage, Jonathan had his explanation:
“Just the other day, Greg came in rather hurriedly,” Brian writes in the journal, and this was confirmed in the security footage. “He was pushing a cart with a blanket draped over it. Greg would not speak to any of us that day, so the rest of us went about the work we were doing. This was odd behavior for Greg, as the head of research for our floor, he was always right there with us as we worked.
“This lasted for the 2 days following. Finally, I found myself in his office staring into the face of this disheveled man. Greg looked as though he hadn’t eaten or even slept in days. I was worried for the welfare of my friend and wanted nothing more than to help him through this tough time.”
“You’re my most trusted colleague, Brian,” Greg stated. Standing just under five-and-a-half feet tall, Greg looked up at the much taller Brian with the look of a man who was about to succumb to defeat. Greg was thin with light brown hair, thin eyebrows, and a soft friendly voice. It was obvious he hadn’t shaved in days. He was the type of person to be consumed by his work, spending days at a time in the lab with little sleep. “I’ve done something terrible, and I need help fixing it.” The man looked on the verge of dropping to his knees and pleading.
“You know I’ll gladly help you in any way possible. Just let me know what you need.”
Greg sat quietly for a moment before nodding his head. “Follow me. This is top secret, Brian. Can you promise not to say a word to anyone?”
“Of course, I’m honored to have your trust, Greg. Either way I cannot speak of anything that goes on here with anyone else, NDAs everywhere, ya know,” Brian responded wittily. This must be serious, Brian thought. Greg’s smile didn’t sit right.
Decay | Book 1 | Civilization Page 3
