Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller

by Leif Kennison

  I felt like an idiot.

  I forgot to run the command as a super user.

  I added sudo to the command, logged in as tgarro, then put my visor back on.

  And then I pressed the enter key.

  SEVEN

  error code 6675636b6564

  An intense, painful tingling vibration invaded my entire body.

  It was like the feeling you get when the dentist drills into your teeth, only that it was more intense and I felt it in every part of my body—the tips of my fingers and toes, deep inside my thigh muscles, up and down my spine, everywhere. Every nerve from the root to the tip felt like it was vibrating a thousand times a second. My jaw was clenched, and my entire body tensed up. My fingers tightened into a balled-up fist, and my toes curled like I was suffering from those killer muscle cramps. Then, that cramping feeling tightened my entire body. My abdomen muscles clamped up and it became really hard to breathe. I could feel sweat pouring out of my entire body like I had a fever. A high-pitched whine reverberated through my skull.

  Then…

  Nothing.

  I was terrified. I could see nothing. I could hear nothing. And I couldn’t feel my body.

  I thought I was dead.

  That feeling of being in limbo was suffocating, and I tried to gasp for air and felt nothing. I felt pure fear.

  Then, suddenly, the world appeared before me.

  It was dizzying. From nothing, crumbling skyscrapers sprouted like lightning bolts towards the gray mid-day sky. Tiles of cracked sidewalks slid towards the horizon, and the worn-down asphalt of a four-lane street spread in all four directions like still, frozen water flowing from a river. A few broken-down cars appeared on the streets in a stuttered way, progressively from a simple shape to a fully-detailed car.

  I was sitting on my ass in the middle of an intersection. I looked around and it felt like Midtown Manhattan. Office buildings made of glass and steel leaned over me, their windows stained with grime. They intruded on my view of the sky and reflected little of the dim sunlight from the overcast sky.

  I stood up and started walking in a random direction. Restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, and dry cleaners lined the ground floor of the street. Most of them had their windows shuttered with rusty metal gates, and they had hand-written signs in the door. The streets were littered with a messy confetti comprised of plastic bags, broken glass, empty plastic water bottles by the curb, flattened paper coffee cups stained in brown, paper strewn everywhere. The trash cans on the street corners were empty and rusted. And there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  The entire city was abandoned and decaying.

  I wondered what I was experiencing. Was I in a simulation? Or did I just engage in time travel? Was this what New York City was going to be like in who knows how long?

  I was feeling really thirsty and hungry, so I thought I’d try to find a store with an open door. I walked door to door, trying to get into stores. I did this for blocks and blocks.

  No such luck.

  I figured that I had no choice but to break a window, so I walked around looking for something big and heavy. I finally found a big chunk of a broken brick. It looked like it’d dropped from above.

  There was a coffee shop just a few doors down from the brick, past an art framing store. I went over there and saw that the windows were shuttered, and the glass door was locked. I hurled the brick through the door, and the glass shattered loudly. As I crouched through the door frame, I moved carefully to avoid the broken shards of glass that were sticking out.

  I got inside the coffee shop. It was dark inside. I was expecting to smell freshly ground coffee beans, but sadly I didn’t smell anything at all. I looked over at the open refrigerated shelf and was disappointed to see that it was empty. I guess everything’s in the back.

  I made my way towards the back of the building and got into the kitchen. When I opened the fridge, a big smile spread across my face. There were some packaged croissants and jugs of whole milk.

  I tore open a croissant. My mouth was salivating in anticipation of the flaky, buttery pastry. And then, I took a big bite.

  As I chewed, I started frowning. I didn’t taste anything. And there was this strange sensation of...nothingness. There was just this vague feeling of something soft in my mouth. It was as if my mouth and tongue were anesthetized. I breathed in deep through my nose, trying to get some sense of taste. But there was nothing.

  I was frustrated, and a little worried. So I opened a jug of milk and chugged down a few gulps.

  Same thing. It tasted like nothing at all. All I felt was the sensation of something cold and wet going down my throat.

  Panicked, I rummaged for more food in the kitchen, trying all kinds of things. I tore into different pastries and ingredients. Cocoa powder was nothing but tasteless powder that dried up my mouth. Butter was cold and slightly slippery but it was missing that creamy fatty sensation on the tongue. Cookies were just slightly hard pieces of something that didn’t crumble or crunch. Vanilla extract no longer had that sweet fragrance or sharp alcoholic taste. It tasted like nothing at all. I tried hard to remember the smell of vanilla extract as I took a few sips, but there was nothing.

  My head was spinning. I didn’t know why this was happening. I got worried that I had caught the virus. One of the symptoms was that it made you lose your sense of smell and taste. For some people, it was permanent. The thought frightened me. What would life be without the delicious taste of pepperoni pizza? Or the bold flavor of dark roast coffee? And what about that buckwheat honey I’d just recently discovered?

  Frustrated and scared, I threw a bottle of Snapple at the wall and stormed out of the coffee shop.

  I ended up wandering around the city. I meandered from what looked like Lexington Avenue in Midtown East all the way to what was supposed to be Hell’s Kitchen on the west side. I say ’looked like’ because it was a rather uncannily creepy experience. Once I strayed far enough from where I had spawned, strange things happened in front of my eyes. Every time I turned a corner, there seemed to be objects popping in and fading into existence. The names of streets on the green street signs had blurry white letters on them, but they didn’t appear until I walked close enough to see them. And even then, the letters didn’t appear to my eyes unless I really focused on them. What was even stranger was that the street names didn’t make any sense. In Midtown Manhattan, there isn’t a Nostrand Avenue. But that’s the avenue I was thinking of as I approached a street corner, and that’s what appeared on the street sign. It felt like I was lucid dreaming.

  I went up the street and, off in the distance, I saw something.

  In the middle of a street where there were a lot of abandoned cars, there were a group of figures congregated together in front of another one.

  It was the first time I’d seen anyone else. And naturally, I wanted to get a closer look, so I kept walking towards them. When I got closer, I could see that they were wearing digital camouflage uniforms.

  Soldiers.

  I immediately became cautious. Instead of walking in the middle of the street, I pressed up against the wall and, in the shade, continued walking towards them quietly and slowly.

  When I got closer, I could make out more details. There were nine soldiers grouped together, watching another soldier who looked like he was explaining something. The nine soldiers were wearing black vests that had big white letters on the front and back, and they had black holsters strapped to their leg that held a handgun. Each of them had a rifle and from what I could see, two of them had a grenade launcher attached under their rifle. The soldier standing on his own wasn’t wearing a black vest.

  I didn’t know what they were doing there, but it was worth investigating. I still needed every bit of information I could get to try to figure out where they took Nyla.

  I needed to get within earshot of them, but there wasn’t much of a way for me to hide nearby. Trying to find a solution, I looked around, left to right, looking for ways to get clos
e. Then, a fire escape caught my eye. I couldn’t hide anywhere on the ground level, but maybe I could find a way to get onto the second floor of a nearby building.

  Maintaining a low profile, I went up the sidewalk, looking for ways into the back alley or any open doors. The first door that I tried was locked, but the second one opened.

  I went inside. It was a sandwich shop. There were a few wrapped heroes sitting in the refrigerated case. I thought it’d be good to stock up, but sadly I didn’t have a bag with me. Disappointed, I made my way to the back.

  There wasn’t a stairwell that led upstairs, so I went out the back entrance and looked for a door that might lead upstairs. Nothing like that back there either. I’d never had to sneak around, it only occurred to me then: why would the restaurant have direct access to the second floor?

  I was wasting time and I was getting antsy.

  I went back out the front and, quietly, slinked up to the doorway right next to the front entrance of the sandwich shop. Looking inside, I saw mailboxes. That’s gotta be the apartments upstairs, I thought.

  When I pushed the door, it gave way. I got excited. Progress.

  Inside the vestibule, I tried the second door.

  It was locked.

  Shit, what the hell am I gonna do? I gotta get upstairs.

  I went back to the alley behind the building and looked up. There was a fire escape.

  I got the idea to climb up it. The only problem was that the ladder was way up there. It crossed my mind to drag the lidded dumpster under the fire escape, but it would make too much noise.

  But then I remembered a few parkour moves from when I still ran. After sizing up the space, I thought that if I could do a vertical wall climb, I could get up on a window ledge on the second floor. Then I could step up onto it and jump off onto the ladder.

  Then I scoffed at myself. Yeah, maybe when I was still fit. It had been so long since I’d practiced parkour. And especially because of the lockdown, I’d fallen way out of shape.

  Fuck it. I gotta try. I don’t have time. Whatever happens, I’ll handle it.

  I visualized myself running towards the wall. Then, at just the right distance from the wall, I’d leap forward, make contact with the wall with my foot, kick up higher, and grab the ledge.

  One. I breathed in. Then out.

  Two.

  Three.

  I ran.

  One step, two and three and four and leap.

  I slammed right into the wall.

  It was embarrassing.

  I tried a few more times, and each time I made a mistake. My foot slipped. Or I was at the wrong distance from the wall.

  But then, after a few more tries, I finally got up onto the window ledge.

  Teetering, I nearly lost my balance and crashed down onto the floor.

  Operating on pure instinct, my body turned away from the window and I had no choice but to leap. My arms shot above my head.

  In my palms, I felt something hard and rough.

  It was the rung of the ladder.

  I grabbed tight.

  Struggling, I kicked my legs and tried to pull myself up. I hadn’t done any pull-ups in forever. Why didn’t I work out more…

  I couldn’t get up there. I was out of breath, so I relaxed my arms. Then, I tried again.

  Huffing and puffing, I tried as hard as I could to pull myself up. I swear, my face must’ve been as red as a cherry. My head was pounding, and my arms were trembling.

  I felt myself getting just a touch higher than the first try. So, hanging on with one arm, I shot my other arm up and stretched as tall as I could. The feeling of rough, rusted metal under my fingertips signaled to me that I needed to grab on. And I did.

  After a hell of an effort, I managed to pull myself up onto the fire escape. From there, I opened up a window that led into a hallway on the third floor. I went to the front of the building so I could see the soldiers.

  When I looked outside down at the street, there was a soldier who was standing on his own, addressing the other soldiers. He was a stout man.

  “...a report,” the soldier announced loudly, throwing his voice with his gut. “A tiger was infected with the virus. It died and its body was stored in a morgue with other humans that had also died from the virus. Then, 36 hours later, the tiger came back to life and attacked the morgue.”

  The band of soldiers looked at each with concern creased in their eyebrows.

  The stout soldier continued. “Considering that the virus has evidence of human to mammal transmission and vice versa, the CDC is warning that the secondary virus seen in the tiger will have the same effect on humans. Reports indicate that it has increased aggression. The vessels in its eyes are broken down, giving it a red appearance. We have reason to believe that our simulations have a high probability of occurring. Fox One out.”

  The stout soldier flickered, then disappeared.

  Must’ve been a transmission.

  The soldiers focused their attention on a single person. It was a woman.

  “Sarge, what do we do?” one soldier asked the woman. “They didn’t give us any updates about our situation.”

  The woman looked fit and strong. She had a lean, sharp face with dark fiery eyes. Her uniform sleeves were rolled up, and her bared forearms were lean with sinew. She was the only one not wearing a helmet or a face covering. On her hands, she wore dull green tactical gloves, and a rugged looking electronic device was strapped onto her left forearm.

  “Let me see if there’s any new transmissions from the platoon sergeant,” she said.

  The sergeant flipped open the device on her arm and tapped it a few times. A voice came out of the loudspeaker, loud and clear.

  “Sergeant Elgin, we know that your squad is stuck in the exercise.”

  The woman must be Elgin, I thought.

  The transmission continued on Elgin’s loudspeaker. “We are investigating the issue. We expect to send technicians to check it out. Be aware that they may be contractors. We do not have an ETA. Continue your training exercises and engage the avatars until further notice. White Seven out.”

  The soldiers looked disappointed. One of them said, “Same transmission from before.”

  Elgin hooked her hands onto the top of her vest and widened her stance before talking.

  “Squad, we’re just going to have hang tough,” she said. “Command is doing everything they can. In the meantime, we still have our mission. We need to figure out how to fight the burners.”

  What were burners? I thought.

  A soldier shook his head, annoyed. “This is bullshit, Sarge. Figuring out that stuff should be someone else’s job. Give it to the eggheads up in ARL.”

  Elgin’s jaw firmed up, and I could see she had a temper. But in a measured voice, she said, “Brice, I know you’re frustrated, but this is the job that we were given. Remember that we’re going to be the ones fighting whatever’s coming our way.”

  Brice shook his head. Quietly, he said, “We don’t even know if burners are what we’re gonna be fighting. How do we know it’s not gonna be some other thing? Something that flies or crawls, something that’s not even human?”

  “You heard the report,” Elgin said. “They have reason to believe that these simulations are valid and on track with the prediction from BPMs. We’re not just preparing for our own survival with these exercises. What we do now in these training simulations is going to keep you safe on the battlefield in the future.”

  She directed her gaze at each of the soldiers as she continued speaking.

  “And it’s going to keep Kingston safe. And Mahrus. And Medina. And the rest of you. These exercises are giving us valuable data and experience that’s going to help develop the tactics we need to survive the attacks.”

  The squad took a moment to reflect on what Sergeant Elgin said. What she said seemed to hit home. When she saw that the squad was ready to continue, she gave instructions to her team.

  “Squad,” she said, “watch out for bu
rners, take what you need, and regroup here in fifteen minutes. Stay in radio contact.”

  The other eight soldiers drifted into two groups as Elgin continued preparing them.

  She took out something small and gray. It was the shape of a disc and fit in the palm of her hand. She tossed it into the air, and it started hovering in the air. It looked like a drone.

  One of the soldiers said, “Can’t wait ‘til they issue Flies to every team leader.”

  Elgin monitored the drone on her wrist console. After a while, she gave instructions to her team.

  “Fireteam Bravo, sweep this structure,” she directed, pointing at a three-story building with a dry cleaner on the street level and apartments on the upper two stories.

  Next, she pointed at an adjacent building. “Fireteam Alpha, you take that one.”

  As the soldiers spread out towards the buildings, I sat there behind a car and tried to make sense of everything.

  It was all pretty confusing to me. I didn’t know what exactly was going on. What were burners? What attacks were going to happen? And a tiger coming back to life? What was that about?

  I didn’t know how to get the answers to those questions. And I decided that I didn’t need to know. What I did need to know was who these people were. And I couldn’t exactly go up to them and ask them—I had no clue what would happen to me if I revealed myself. That meant getting access to the console to try and dig up some information. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to access the console.

  Then, I had an idea.

  I knew the gesture for the RealTwo console. And I figured that if that technology came from STESIS, they might use the same or similar gesture.

  I put three fingers on my palm and pressed three times.

  Nothing.

  I tried a bunch of combinations: two fingers, four fingers, right palm, four times, five times.

  Still nothing.

  I tried again, this time simulating what Elgin had done with her forearm. I put my hand on my left forearm and, making a hinge with the flat edge of my right hand,