Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller

by Leif Kennison

  Still, I just couldn’t do it. “No means no, Nyla...I’ve always admired how persistent you are, and you know I have nothing but respect for your passion and drive...but you’re asking me to stick my neck on the line here.”

  Nyla lowered her eyes and sighed. Shaking her head, she said, “Same ol’ Wayne...never a risk, never a reward.”

  Her words hurt me. I wanted to argue with her, tell her that I was being a responsible adult here. I wanted to tell her that as much as I wanted answers for myself and for everyone else, it just wasn’t worth sticking our necks out for it. I wanted to tell her that it’s just too damn dangerous. If they’re really hiding things and guarding places like this, it must be important enough to them to protect at any cost. And besides….what reward was I going to get if I risked my neck? What would I gain by losing my paycheck and possibly—no, probably—arrested?

  But Nyla was Nyla. She sighed, got up, and left me.

  I trailed after in the hallway leading to the door. “Nyla,” I said softly. “You know I think you’re the bravest soul I’ve ever known for doing what you do. I just...I just don’t see—”

  “That’s always been the problem, you never see.” She said this softly without looking at me.

  Gently, she shut the door behind her.

  A few moments later, Ishrak—one of my roommates—poked his head out of his room. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a month, and his hair was all out of sorts.

  “You bangin’ her?” Ishrak said, nodding at the door.

  I chuckled. “That’s my ex,” I said.

  He gave me a sideways glance.

  “Yo, don’t lie to me man…”

  In question, I raised an eyebrow.

  Ishrak leaned a little closer like he was trying to get a secret out of me.

  “…you still in love with her?” he asked me.

  The truth is…yes, I was. After Nyla broke up with me, I tried to just move on. I went back on the dating apps and tried to grind it out. I must’ve sent out an ungodly number of messages in the first month or two. And then I just couldn’t do it anymore. All the lame attempts to get a girl’s attention with some witty one-liner…the coffee dates, the meetups with no chemistry…it was just too much. There were other attractive girls, but Nyla…she outshined everyone else. I knew I was still in love with her when I was swiping through profiles on the dating app. After I hit six to ten profiles, I lost interest, even if they were good looking girls.

  I told this to Ishrak, and he nodded. With the air of a wise man, he said, “Nah, I get it…girl’s got a nice ass, but what else she got? Big tits ain’t got shit on a good personality. You lookin’ for a wife, that’s whatchoo lookin’ for. But lemme tell you man, tap that ass, that’s how you gonna get her back. Give her a good time, that’s how.”

  Then, a thought flashed in his eyes, and a crooked smile hung on his face.

  “Hey man, you think she got any girlfriends for me?” he asked me.

  He didn’t wait for a reply. He just waltzed back into his room and yelled out to nobody in particular.

  “I pronounce this the house of mojo, may we all get laid!”

  THREE

  for loop

  The next day, when I woke up, I rolled out of bed and threw on a hoodie.

  First thing’s first: get paid.

  I had to log into my work account on Salesplex at 8 a.m. every weekday from a known authorized machine. After I logged in, I went and made a big pot of coffee for me, Ishrak, and Yakov. Then I reheated some leftover pizza and sat down in the living room to eat it. I had discovered that local pizzerias made delicious pies that you could enjoy fresh, but that chain pizza was not only cheaper—it also lasted longer. The flavors of the sauce and the cheese held up to the toaster oven or microwave and it kept fresh enough for nearly a week. Local pizzas were tasteless pieces of floppy cardboard by the next day. For this reason, I had racked up tons of points in my online account for the chain pizzerias.

  Yakov lumbered out of his room and scratched his stomach through his gray undershirt. He was a big Russian fellow who served in the U.S. Army to get his citizenship faster. On most days, he’d be out of the door by now to go to his job as a security officer. It must’ve been his day off.

  “There is coffee, yes?” he asked me from the hallway, rubbing his eyes.

  I nodded, and he went off to the kitchen to pour himself a big mug before he sat down on the easy chair in the corner of the living room opposite from me. We all knew to keep our distance from each other.

  “Yakov, you have the day off?”

  He shook his head grimly. “No, I must work later today.”

  “How are the subways?” I asked him.

  He sneered and muttered something under his breath. “Subway is bad. Sometimes I must wait for train for forty-five minutes.”

  I nodded in sympathy.

  “So now,” he continued, “I leave one hour earlier. I am on train four hours every day.” He gulped down his coffee and asked me how I was.

  “I’m alright, no complaints.”

  “You never have complaints, my friend. If I were you, I could not do your job. This is America, but your company spies on you. I cannot stand spies.” His face twisted in contempt.

  I’d explained to him before that the remote working platform my company used logged every activity I did. Salesplex could log my keystrokes, monitor how many outbound calls I made, how many emails I sent, how long those emails were. Before the virus, I used to have a manager who coached me and took me out to lunch. Now, I have an AI “manager” that gives me “suggestions” on the tiniest things: length and timing of my emails, the words I use in my presentations, and all kinds of other tedious metrics. All because of this push towards digitized remote work.

  I raised my cup of coffee in a salute to Yakov and headed back into my room to get to work. I’d dedicated a tiny little corner to work out of because I didn’t have a different room I could work out of. I needed to make the space different because otherwise I’d feel like I was sleeping and watching TV in the office. That’s why I painted the corner a different color than the rest of the walls in my room. On my desk, I had a sad little plant that was growing okay. I also had a framed print of a photo that I’d taken. It wasn’t a great photo, not like I took it with a professional camera. It was just a screenshot from a video I shot using my EyeGo.

  Before the virus, before we were all locked in our apartments, I used to practice parkour. Parkour was my way of being free. When you’re running and the wind is blowing through your hair, when your face is cutting through the air and you’re stretching your legs out as you leap across a gap…there’s nothing else that gives me that exhilaration.

  I missed doing that quite a lot. By now, after the lockdown—or “shelter-at-home” as they say—I’d gained about ten pounds and I was really out of shape. All those gorgeous models on Instagram make it look like it’s easy to stay in shape, but c’mon. Let’s be honest. They’re getting their bills paid by looking hot. The rest of us? We pay our bills working at a job.

  And work at my job I did. I made my calls and logged all my work, updated the CRM, wrote a report to my manager about how I did during the day. It’s a stupid power move. I know that the platform gave him daily summaries of everything anyway. There wasn’t a good reason that I had to email him myself.

  When the day was done, I logged out. Then I logged into my food delivery accounts. I tried to pick the places that had a discount. Even though the companies promoted how they were helping during the pandemic by waiving delivery fees, they still charged a commission for each order based on your order total. So most of the time, ordering food was a ripoff. That night, I ordered a hero sandwich with fries and a drink. With the service fees, tax, and tip, I could’ve bought another burger. So basically, I was missing out on an extra burger every time I ordered. But what was I gonna do, cook? People didn’t cook any more if they could help it, at least not in New York City. We all lived in tiny little apar
tments, and we had to do social distancing even inside the home. I know most families didn’t, but I lived with roommates, not people I loved and would die for. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I liked them. Ishrak was a funny guy and he taught me a few things about women, and Yakov was a good man down to the bone. But there was no way I’d die for them. Hell, I didn’t think I’d die for anyone at all.

  Anyway, as I chewed on my sandwich, I went on YouTube like I always do and went on a mindless video tour. Sometimes I’d watch this video game historian channel, but lately the recommendations I was getting were veering towards conspiracies. The virus was a military-engineered bioweapon. It was an attempt by the Illuminati to burn society down so we could start fresh. It was a defense mechanism by Mother Earth to cleanse the population of excessive carbon footprint. I’d heard it all, but I watched it anyway. I needed something to occupy my mind while I was chowing down on that chicken cutlet hero with onion rings and gravy. It was real tasty the first few times I had it. But by now, it was just another sandwich.

  Then after dinner, I logged online and played computer games, grinding out my characters on MMORPGs like Mythic Ruin: REBOOT and Aelion Online.

  And that was it.

  That was life for the next few months.

  I mean, I couldn’t leave the house much. And if I did, where the hell was I going to go? The theaters were shut down. Restaurants were closed. Museums and Broadway plays? Gone. Parks? Closed. And I couldn’t make any more money. The entire economy was frozen and on life support. It wasn’t like Immersiant was promoting people—hell, there were rumors of more layoffs. And other companies weren’t hiring new people.

  I tried taking all kinds of online courses, but after a while I realized that there wasn’t any point. Learning how to make films? When was I going to be able to get out into the world to make them? Learning how to code and make web apps? The app stores are flooded. And what the hell was I gonna do with the couple of hundred bucks I’d make from it anyway, if I was lucky enough to make that.

  Life was on pause. Each day was a short tiny loop. I was living each day looking for a brief moment of pleasure, to keep me just happy enough to get to sleep so I could wake up the next day sane.

  But Nyla was out there, doing something with her life. Something meaningful. She was running around with her camera, binoculars, and her pen and pad. Getting in the dirt and finding the truth, no matter how many people she had to confront.

  I remembered the stories she’d told me about her work. All those people pissed at her and screaming at her for taking photos of them. She’d use it as a way to “engage the subject,” as she put it. She’d rattle them and get them to wanna yell at her. This gave her an opening to make them spill the beans, or get them to say something to defend themselves on record. She had a bag full of tricks, it was amazing.

  She was a pretty good photographer too. Getty Images picked up on a fair number of her photos, and she was picking up interest at the New York Times. I saw one of her shots in an article. It was a wide shot of Times Square, showing the streets completely empty except for a single Humvee parked in the middle of the street. The sun was overhead and the sunlight highlighted the slightest glimmer of a soldier’s helmet sticking out the window of the Humvee.

  I was worried about her. Getting in the face of politicians was one thing. But now, she was talking about investigating the military. That meant getting into trouble with people who had guns. People who had the training to kill her.

  FOUR

  Memo

  One morning, I got a text from Nyla while I was on a call with a prospective buyer. The presentation was going well. I was explaining all the features of the RealTwo and going through the script, but then the prospect threw me a curveball.

  “But what about those reports of people dying?” he said.

  “You may be thinking of a competitor’s product,” I said, trying to deflect the question.

  “Just the other day, I read an article about how this technology is being used in the military, and that there are potential dangers of using it.”

  “It’s absolutely safe, I assure you. The technology in the military-grade version is different from the consumer-grade version. They use a lot more demanding processes that put strain on the human body. Our RealTwo has passed all government safety regulations and has FCC approval. We’re also ISO 9001 and ISO 450001 certified, and UL certified too.” I didn’t know exactly just what all of that meant, but the AI call assistant had come up with those suggested responses. I just had to string them together into a cohesive sentence.

  “Okay, I guess…listen, I believe you, but we’re afraid that the news is going to put a damper on sales. We only have so much space on the shelves, and we’re going through tight times. Why don’t you send me some numbers and we’ll hop on another call say, next week?”

  “Mr. Fairfax, I would love to do that for you.”

  I logged off the call and updated the CRM before I checked my phone.

  Wayne I made some major progress and I really need your help right now.

  I didn’t know just what Nyla wanted. I’d already told her that I couldn’t do it.

  A notification bounced on my screen. It was Salesplex.

  Congratulations! You’ve earned a Sales Agent badge today

  The way that Immersiant had set up Salesplex, we had microtransaction bonuses to incentivize sales team for activities. It was a stupid system. I didn’t like it. It was as if every day, I had to reinitiate myself and earn the title of Sales Agent all over again. But still, if I made all my sales calls today, I could afford a couple of extra cheeseburger and fries. Big whoop? No. But I certainly would take whatever I could get.

  So I did what I needed to do. I kept up my outbound activity.

  During that time, I got a few rapid-fire texts from Nyla, but I was in the zone and didn’t feel like checking it. I mean, I already knew she was just begging for help. And if there was one thing that I hated, it was people making the same request from me over and over again. I wasn’t going to reward her for that kind of behavior.

  Finally, at the end of the day, I logged off and ordered my food. While I was waiting, I checked my messages.

  What I read made my stomach collapse into itself.

  Nyla was texting in desperation. She’d texted me photos. They weren’t very clear, but I could make out some figures holding rifles, dressed in drab colors and helmets. And she was telling me to keep the photos safe and to send them to some email address if I didn’t hear back from her by tomorrow morning.

  Her final message read:

  Meet me at brooklyn navy yard building 14.

  That was twenty minutes ago.

  I ran out of my room and banged on Ishrak’s door. “Yo, you there?”

  “Yeah, wuddup dude?”

  “I need your help, you gotta drive me to Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

  “Dude, I may be an Go driver, but I ain’t your personal driver.”

  “Ishrak, you know I wouldn’t ask you unless I really needed to. C’mon man.”

  “Nah man, I’m just chillin’ today. I don’t feel like working.”

  “Please. C’mon, I’ll get you one of those RealTwo’s, pre-release.”

  There was silence.

  “Aiight, you got yourself a deal.”

  Ishrak and I hopped into his car and we drove towards Brooklyn Navy Yard as I filled him in on the broad strokes of what I was doing there.

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about! My man! Going to rescue a lady, that’s some boss swag right there.”

  “Look, I don’t know what she needs, but no joke, she’s probably gonna be the one saving me. She just needs my credentials or something.”

  “You still love her?” asked Ishrak.

  I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t like to admit it, but the truth was that I did. She was a magnificent woman, and I never had the guts to tell her that I wanted to have kids with her. She just seemed too free a spirit to want kids, and I
didn’t want to spoil the relationship.

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” I replied.

  “Then now’s the time to prove yourself to her, man. She’s trusting you with all this. Don’t let her slip by again.”

  We sat in silence for a while, and I just looked out the window at the empty city. Even after all this time in lockdown, it was a novel experience to be out and about without the streets and sidewalks being packed with busy annoyed people and angry honking cars. Without any traffic, the ride felt...right. It felt like that’s how driving was supposed to be. With the big wide roads clear and quiet, I thought of my dad. He would’ve told me that this is how driving in the rest of America felt. He’d always tell me that New York City was a great place to make money, but not such a great place to live. He wanted me to move out of the city and somewhere nice.

  As Ishrak drove down Flushing Avenue, he started encountering a lot of concrete barricades. He kept trying to drive closer, but there it seemed like a perimeter had been set so that no cars could get any closer than six blocks from any of the major buildings.

  “Look, I don’t think we can get in,” Ishrak said. “I’m just gonna have to drop you off here. Good luck, man.”

  I got out of the car and elbow-bumped him.

  After he drove off, I got my bearings and tried to find the building. I couldn’t find it though, so I texted Nyla.