by D. S. Murphy
I crossed back through the high school, wielding my makeshift machete in front of me. Some of the windows were broken, and vines crept into the hallways, in some cases even curling around the lockers. I heard birds chirping. It sounded like they were inside the building. A pipe had broken in the ceiling, and I walked past a small sprinkle of rusty brown water. Suddenly I was really thirsty.
I found the Coke machine in the cafeteria. It had been turned on its side and busted open. Didn’t seem to be anything left inside. Scavengers had picked through this place clean... but they didn’t know it like I did. Suddenly I felt stupid for being so unprepared. We should have left supplies for me, hidden somewhere.
In the hall near Brett’s locker was another skeleton with a pink backpack. My gut clenched as I got closer. It was small, probably a freshman. The bag had been ripped open and her books were strewn across the floor. I picked up one that looked like a diary and and flipped it to the last entry.
Mom and Dad are both sick now. Mom got it first. She felt tired, a headache. Weak. Went to bed early. This morning, she didn’t get up. Dad said she was fine, but he looked worried. He told me to stay out of the room, just in case she was sick. The news say it’s probably a virus, an epidemic, but then there was this scientist guy who said it wasn’t; he said that bodies of the deceased were examined and found nothing unusual, at least nothing organic. Not a virus or bacteria. Not spreadable. It was something else, he said. Something in the environment causing ‘rapid genetic mutations.’
Mom looks horrible. Sunken, dark eyes. Her hair is falling out. Her fingers are stretched and thin. Dad wanted to take her to the hospital, but on the news they said the hospitals were full, and that nobody knew what it was, so it was better to just keep the sick isolated at home for now. Rest and plenty of water, they said.
This morning when I went to check on her, she didn’t recognize me. She grabbed me, snarled at me. I screamed and pulled away. Dad tried to restrain her, but she threw him across the room. I couldn’t believe how strong she was. I ran out the front door and slammed it behind me. I didn’t know where to go. I thought maybe I’d be safe at school. They told us school was closed too; we got the announcement, just like it was a snow day. Normally we’d be happy. Henry’s excited he gets to stay home and play PS4. On my way to school I saw a few more... infected. But if it’s not a virus, they aren’t infected. So what are they?
What were they, indeed. Genetic mutations? How is that even possible? And why an outbreak, and why all at once? It didn’t make any sense.
The front doors of the school were locked, and secured with big, heavy chains, but the large panel windows next to it had been smashed open. I suddenly realized that the school wasn’t actually a very safe place to be. It could have been a haven for those monsters, for all we knew.
I felt goosebumps on my arms, and shivered. I decided to get my business done quickly and then lock myself in the smallest room I could find. I found Brett’s locker and pulled out the paper with the combination. The locker opened on the first try. There was a newspaper inside.
A thought hit me in the gut when I reached for it. If Brett knew I was going to be here in the future, wouldn’t he have come to meet me? Or Crys, or Cody? Were all my friends dead? That thought was followed by something even more horrifying. If I’ve already done all this, then why wasn’t my future self here to greet me? I knew I would be here. Where was I?
The mysteries of time travel almost sent me into a panic attack. I wanted to go home. Now. The extent of my knowledge was the Back to the Future movies. Maybe it wasn’t that simple. I’d have to ask Eric when I got back.
As I picked up the newspaper, my fingers brushed against something cold and metal. Underneath the newspaper was a gleaming black pistol. I didn’t know what kind. I’m not one of those girls who knows the make and model of every kind of gun ever made. This was the first gun I’d ever seen in real life.
Where did Brett get a gun?
It was heavier than it looked. It was small, compact. There was an extra clip in the locker too, full of bullets. It was probably better than my makeshift weapon. Very carefully, keeping the nozzle of the gun pointed away from me, I figured out how to open the bottom of the handle and pull out the clip. It was full. I put it back in and felt it click as it snapped into place. Then I found the safety button. I practiced flipping it on and off. I didn’t want to get killed over having the safety on—but I didn’t want to blow my face off either. I left the safety on for now and put it in the back of my jeans, like they did in the movies. Then I headed to the cafeteria and folded the newspaper out on one of the large round tables. The front page headline was circled in thick red marker.
BOMB EXPLODES DURING MACY’S PARADE. 23 DEAD, HUNDREDS INJURED.
I sat down, my knees suddenly weak. I skimmed the article quickly. It was some kind of terrorist attack. When I finished reading the article, I saw something else, something that froze my blood to the core. In the margin of the newspaper was a very small note. Easy to miss at first. In my handwriting.
Don’t trust Brett.
8
I needed more answers. Even if the news about the bombing was true, there was nothing I could do about it right now. And even though it twisted my stomach, a bomb in New York couldn’t have caused all of this. I was in Missouri, after all. Something else had happened. Something much worse. And it was going to happen soon.
I’d been here less than an hour, which meant I probably had several more. I could search through the whole school, open all the cupboards and drawers, but from the looks of it, nobody at the school had any idea what was happening. I needed answers from someone who’d been there and lived through it. I had to find the survivors. I knew they were around, I’d met one. He would know more about this world, or at least what year it was.
Inside the newspaper I found the list of the Thanksgiving Day scores, also circled in red. I memorized three of them, and also wrote them down on another piece of paper. Then I tore out the newspaper articles and stuffed them in my pocket as well. I knew I probably couldn’t take them back with me, but it was worth a shot.
Swallowing my fear, I climbed outside the broken window at the front of the school. The air outside was fresh, clean almost. It smelled like pine needles, dirt and rust. It was late afternoon now. I didn’t want to think about what would happen when it got dark, but I wouldn’t be around for that. Brett’s house was a few miles away from school. The boy couldn’t live that far away. I needed to get a better look around. The roof.
Crys showed me how to climb up last year. Standing on the brick wall behind the dumpsters, I grabbed onto the lower section of the roof and pulled myself up, then I climbed the different sections until I was up on the top of the school. It wasn’t that high, maybe fifty feet off the ground. But I could see further. I scanned the horizon. From this view, it looked so normal. In all the post-apocalyptic movies I’d seen, the future was totally ruined; the streets cracked, the buildings toppled. This was different. It was like, everything was still the same, but there were no humans around to fix things. The biggest difference was all the green. Trees and bushes sprawled out into the roads, wrapped around houses, swallowed playgrounds. But it wasn’t scary. If anything, it was beautiful. Peaceful. I took a deep breath. The sun warmed my skin. I almost felt happy.
That’s when I saw the smoke. Not a plume of thick, black chimney smoke. Just grayish white, ghostly stream rising up beyond the trees. It looked like it was just a few blocks away. I could be there in five minutes. I ran to the edge of the building and turned to lower myself back down. That’s when I saw them. Lying in the sun like a pair of dogs. Tough, leathery skin. Big eyes. One of them turned and looked at me lazily.
I backed away slowly, my heart pounding out of my chest. If I could get back in the school, I could find a place to hide. Or a door to lock. I was too exposed up here. Slowly I reached around and pulled out the gun. It glinted in the sunlight.
The mod snarled and jumped h
is feet.
He knows what this is.
I turned and jumped off the roof, onto the dumpsters. I hit harder than I meant to, then fell and rolled off the side. I crashed landed on the pavement and the gun slid away from me. I gasped for breath, holding my side. It felt like I’d cracked a rib. Then I heard a thump, and the mod was standing on the dumpster looking down at me. He snarled. I scrambled to the gun as the mod jumped down behind me. When he was just a few paces away from me, reaching out towards me with his razor sharp claws, I grabbed the gun, flipped off the safety and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked my hand back into my face. It felt like a punch in the mouth.
The bullet hit him in the stomach, and he looked surprised. But then he screamed, and slashed towards me. I noticed a pink tinge to my vision as I put another in his chest. He seemed to be falling in slow motion, so I took aim again, concentrating this time, and squeezed the trigger. It was just like the arcade games Crys and I used to play. But instead of points, I was rewarded with a small hole, the size of a dime, that appeared in the center of his forehead. He collapsed next to me, oozing black blood onto my clothes. I looked into its eyes as it died. It was wearing such a human expression of pain, it tore my heart out. I couldn’t help whispering, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t even see the second one coming. I looked up just as he jumped for me, pouncing like a cat. I heard a gunshot, then the beast hit me in the shoulder before sailing over me and collapsing in a pile. I lay still for a few moments, my shoulder throbbing.
“Nice shot,” a rough voice said.
I stumbled to my feet and raised my pistol at the approaching figure.
“You won’t be needing that gun anymore. Set it down, slide it over here.”
He was older, maybe forty. Stubble. Dark hair, turning gray. Brown eyes. Big brimmed hat, and a rifle with a large scope on it. He was wearing what looked like a military outfit of some kind. Did that mean there was some sort of government?
I looked at the gun in my hand, then back at him.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
“Put down the gun and put your hands over your head. Now!” Another voice yelled from my left side. This one had a large automatic rifle pointed at me. Another man came out of the woods with rifle raised. I might be fast enough to catch a volleyball, but probably not a bullet.
I wasn’t here to get in a gunfight. Besides, these could be good guys. At least they’re human. I set the gun down and raised my hands over my head.
“There now, see? We can all get along,” the leader said casually.
The guy on my right picked up my gun and searched me.
“She’s clean,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.” He wiped his hands off where he’d touched my left side, which was still covered in wet, foul-smelling blood from the modified.
“Who are you?” I asked the leader.
“You can call me Tom, and this is Curt and Bruce. What in the hell were you thinking, shooting off a gun like that? Every modified in five miles must have heard you.”
“I... he surprised me. Jumped on me. I had to shoot him.”
“Shoot it, you mean,” his face turned dark. “I know they look human. Hell they may have even been once. But they are animals, and they’ll split you wide open if you hesitate for a second.” He drew a hunting knife and pantomimed cutting me with it.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Anyway, we need to get far away from here, quickly. We made camp a couple miles away, we’ll head there first, unless you have any objections.”
I shrugged. All I had to do was survive for the next few hours. If these guys wanted to kill me, they’d have done it already. Besides, I needed answers.
We walked in silence for a few minutes. Tom gestured for me to shut up every time I tried to ask a question, and his men were on high alert, nervously scanning their surroundings. After we got further away from the school and nothing else attacked us, they relaxed.
“You’re mighty handy with that pistol,” Tom said. “But you look all shook up. Suppose even if you’re an old hat, a close call like that one has got to freak you out. Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“I didn’t, really. You guys are... soldiers, right? Military?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Haven’t heard that term in a while. Curt, you were military, weren’t you?”
“A long time ago,” said one of the other men, with dark skin. “I was in Iraq. Then Afghanistan, Iran, even North Korea. That was before D-day.”
“D-day?”
“De-evolution day,” Tom said. “Doomsday. End of the world. Shit, how do you not know this stuff? That’s what we started calling it. That’s what everybody calls it.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just... before I was born I think.”
Curt sized me up. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Yeah, it was almost twenty years ago,” Curt said. “2017. May 14th. When the world went to shit. They deployed me and a bunch of my men here. That was in the early madness of it all. We weren’t allowed to shoot the mods then, they were still considered humans. We were supposed to use tranquilizers to bring them down, then cuff them. That was a massacre, it would take two or three darts to bring them down.”
If it’s twenty years in the future, that would make it 2037. Was that right? I wish I could just ask what year it was but then I’d have to explain who I really was and how I got there. I wasn’t sure what they’d think about a time-travelling teenage girl from the past.
“More and more were turning,” Curt continued. “And nobody knew why or how or anything. There were some announcements. My men got freaked out. Most of them deserted—tried to get home to see their families. God damnit, that was the worst of it. Going back home and finding a wife, a kid who’d turned. What did you do, shoot it? Or let it kill you?”
I felt sick to my stomach.
“Anyway, the flights were all shut down, people could only drive, but driving seemed to attract the mods. So we holed up, hid out. Waited. Survived.”
“But, where did they come from? What started it all?”
“Nobody knows for sure,” Tom said. “I heard it was a terrorist attack. TV stations were talking Russia, North Korea, Japan—but they didn’t know either.”
“I heard it was the 1%, worried about overpopulation,” Curt said.
“I heard it was us,” Bruce said. “We did it to ourselves, or our scientists did anyway. Genetic testing, messing around with things nobody should mess around with. That’s what my preacher said. A bunch of us holed up together in a church. Until they found us.”
The survivors didn’t know what really happened, even after twenty years? How was I supposed to find out the truth? We entered their camp, which was just a couple tents and a campfire pit.
I looked around as they started to pack up. That’s when I saw it—something pinned to a tree. A small photograph, it looked like a school picture. Of a girl with straight blond hair and round eyes. I walked up to it and touched it with my fingertips. It was definitely me. I thought I’d gotten a grip on the strangeness of the situation, but this threw me. If I was twenty years in the future, why was my picture just here, randomly? It seemed like an anomaly—something so strange it called everything into question.
“This is a picture of me,” I said, still dazed.
“Wish you hadn’t seen that,” Tom said. “I should’ve taken it down earlier. Truth is, we didn’t exactly meet by accident. We were there to protect you. To bring you in safely.”
“I think I’ll be fine on my own.”
“I’m afraid I insist.”
He nodded to Curt, who tied my hands together in front of me with a piece of rope.
“Sorry about this, but we can’t risk you running off. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where? Where are we going? Who do you work for?”
“Zamonta. Everybody works for Zamonta.”
9
The ropes were starting to dig into my
wrists. Twice I stumbled and hit my knees hard on the ground. Why hadn’t I tripped back yet? I didn’t want to disappear like this, with so many witnesses. I didn’t want to announce myself and what I was. I decided, if I started to see pink, I’d run. I pictured the look on their faces if they saw the ropes around my wrists fall to the ground.
After walking for almost an hour, I caught a glimpse of our destination through the trees ahead. Zamonta’s HQ was a massive rectangular building, and there was something in front I don’t remember seeing before. It looked like a giant glass pyramid standing out from jungle. The metal and glass gleamed in the light.
“Hold up guys,” Tom said, “we should think about this.”
“Think about what?” Curt said.
“Bargaining power. Usually we bring a girl in, we get ten credits. But this girl, she must be special. They must really want her, or they wouldn’t have given us her photo. Right? I say we ask for a hundred credits. But once we go in, they have all the power. They could take her and pay us the same rate and tell us to get lost.”
“So?”
“So let’s leave her out here, someone goes in to negotiate first.”
“It’s almost dark. We should just go in and get paid,” Curt said.
“Wimp,” Bruce said. “I’ll stay. You two go in and get a good deal. Then give me a signal and I’ll bring the girl in.”
Tom looked like he was going to argue, but then nodded. “Curt and I will go in, I’ll send Curt back out to get her as soon as we’ve agreed on the terms.”
Curt and Tom approached the main gates; there was a large fence all around the perimeter of the building, with coils of barbed wire on the top. It looked like a prison. The front gate had cameras. They must have electricity. I could see now that the pyramid was outside the gate. Tom waved to the camera, and a sliding panel opened in the pyramid. He stepped inside, put his weapons in a receptacle, and went through what looked like the full body scanners they used at the airport. Then another panel opened in the floor and he walked down inside.