by Billy Miner
Knockout.
All three of them.
The guns were lying next to them on the floor, but none of them had the strength to reach for them, since their level of consciousness was that of a skeleton.
Before his applause, the hero leapt out of the door and disappeared out of sight.
Chapter 2: The Truth about Fame
Anyone who knows about Rasheed’s superpower to predict the near future must be in shock when they hear that he walks away from the honor he could have received by an impressed crowd. But experience has taught this young hero the harshness of reality and the impulsive judgments of human beings.
He has decided to keep himself away from the honor of the masses, since he realizes how fleeting and volatile it is.
Rasheed comes home and laments the impulsive tendency of these simple creatures to condemn and rebuke. He reflects on a previous occurrence that ruined him financially. Whether or not his rightful money is in his pockets, he does not care. He just wished it would have been otherwise. Why do people always trying to get something for nothing?
This is what happened:
Someone discovered at some point that Rasheed could predict the future, at least in a limited way. He found out by the little things, like when Rasheed played cards, caught a bottle falling on the ground, or avoided a dangerous driver when he was crossing the road. This malicious person did not care about making someone suffer. He simply wanted money… as much as possible.
His name was Michael. He devised a little scheme and tricked Rasheed into losing a lawsuit. The filthy thief… sad that people get away with those dishonest types of plans.
There they were, sitting in a court room, exchanging spiteful glares at each other. The room was mostly brown, decorated with simple patterns on the ceiling. Crowds of people were curious to see the outcome of this supernatural phenomenon Rasheed was accused of being able to trigger. There were at least 50 people in the court room, as well as a few in the hallways who were awaiting the end results. The judge possessed a huge hammer and pounded the pulpit as he pleased, happy to be in charge and being able to exercise his profession.
Rasheed’s lawyer was as incompetent as a young child, but Rasheed didn’t have a lot, so trying to find a better one was out of the question.
“What do you have to say in your defense?” the judge asked Rasheed.
“Your honor, I never intended to crack the system or to get money in a dishonest way,” Rasheed said.
“But you know how and that’s not fair!” Michael’s lawyer blurted out as he got up.
“Mr. Rasheed,” the judge continued, “Do you deny the power of foreseeing the nearby future?”
“I don’t,” Rasheed boldly declared.
“Then don’t you think,” the judge continued, “that it’s potentially dangerous for you to enter the lottery, no matter how low the price of the tickets? If anyone else had this power, they could exert the same to easily win all the money for themselves.”
“But I didn’t,” Rasheed defended.
“He’s lying, your honor,” Michael said.
“Order!” the judge shouted. “When I want your witness, I will allow you to come to the stand.”
“I apologize, your honor,” Michael said.
“Mr. Michael’s lawyer, your client has made a terrible accusation. Are you able to back this claim up?”
“Yes, your honor. Exhibit A here shows that Rasheed has bought a lottery ticket, fully aware of which numbers would make him win.”
Putting the lottery ticket on the table, he smirked and sat back in his chair.
“You know I bought that ticket for you!” Rasheed shouts. “How dare you use this against me, you backstabbing weasel?!”
“Order, order,” the judge demands.
The whole thing blew up. There was chaos in the courtroom. People were angry, guards were called in to calm down the situation. And to make a long story short, the end result was that while Michael got a truckload of money for winning the case, Rasheed had to pay a large fee and was forbidden to ever participate in the lottery, and mixed feelings were present among the populace.
Rasheed hasn’t done much after that to use his predicting power. He has kept a low profile. He doesn’t trust the common citizen as much as he used to. Just like any celebrity or someone in the spotlight, there is always danger lurking beneath the surface caused by those who abuses the system and the evil opportunities laid out for them by life.
Chapter 3: Everyday Life
Rasheed wakes up. He finds himself panting because of a nightmare he doesn’t remember. All he knows, is that it has left him anxious and sweaty, even minutes after his awakening. It must have been awful dreaming about this.
He sits up for a minute or two, then gets up and grabs a cup of chocolate milk. Back to reality.
He sits up for a minute or two, then gets up and grabs a cup of chocolate milk. Back to reality. He stares at the pigeons outside. One of them is stupid enough to fly into the glass window.
BANG!
The fat bird slides down after slightly cracking the glass. Silly pigeon. Why would you fly against the window like that? Didn’t he see it? Oh well…
Rasheed lives in an apartment, not too far away from his parents, who live about six blocks away from him. Rasheed’s apartment is small and simple, but he loves it.
He loves his own space, with the freedom to do whatever he wants. Every other day though, he visits his parents to see if they are doing all right.
This day is no different than any other day, or so it appears to be at first. Rasheed’s superpower is limited to the nearby future, but seldom stretches into the foreknowledge of things to come hours or days ahead of him. He doesn’t mind. All he wants is be happy, and if anything comes his way, he will stand ready to help out.
Eventually, this day is different than the other days. He senses it. He just doesn’t know what is wrong, or what is going to be wrong. Either way, he makes himself hurry to his parents place this time, because his hunch is stronger than ever before.
“Knock knock!” he says as he opens the door.
Empty.
The house is empty.
Odd. Where could they be? They said they were expecting him. Rasheed is not liking this. Something’s not right here.
“Mom! Dad!” he yells, hoping for an answer.
“Are you here? Remember I was going to come over today?”
No answer.
He walks through the living room. Everything is in its place. Nothing has been moved. The neat little room is tidy as ever. He opens the door to the bedroom.
What a difference! What a mess!
Things are turned upside down in the bedroom. The sheets are off the beds, the dresser has fallen on the floor, and even the mirror has broken into a thousand pieces. This is not like them. Something happened here.
Chapter 4: A Need for Speed
Rasheed fears for his parents’ lives. The arduous task ahead of him has now become some kind of detective assignment to solve the puzzle and figure out what happened to them.
Before calling the police, Rasheed tries to find tracks, anything the kidnappers left behind. Through the piles of clothes, the broken furniture, and the ripped matrass, he searches and searches until…
“Hey, what’s that?” he asks out loud to no one in particular.
It’s chiseled sandstone.
Rasheed bends over and rubs the stuff between his fingers.
“I know where this is coming from,” he says. “There is only one place outside the city where you can find chiseled sandstone: the Miners’ Rocks. Perhaps these small grains of sand were in the villain’s pocket when he took my parents.”
He prowls into some other objects but couldn’t find anything specific.
“To the Miners’ Rocks it is,” he says
Rasheed heads back to his apartment. He runs through the busy city streets, crosses the crosswalk without waiting for it to become green, and maneuvers his way thro
ugh the crowds. When he enters his place, he puts on his mask and his superhero outfit.
He looks at his old second-hand bicycle. It’s a superannuated piece of junk that he just uses to save himself some gas. But this scenario required more extreme measures. Forget the bicycle. There is something better in the garage.
“How’s it going buddy?” he says to another vehicle standing in the corner. Lifting the sheet which is covering it, he thinks about the last time he used this amazing speed devil.
“Time for a ride,” he says in a low voice as he hops on his precious, glimmering motorcycle. “This is going to be awesome.”
The motorcycle is crimson red. Its shiny surface portrays flames and tiny patterns invisible to the naked eye, unless a person comes closer and shows some appreciative respect to it. Its engine is powerful and makes its rider go superfast. Rasheed loves this thing. It feels like a dream riding it. It’s just more expensive and fragile, which is why he only uses it to get out of the city.
“Ready to go, bikey?” he says as if talking to an actual person.
He sits down, kicks the engine on, and gets ready to speed out the garage door.
VROOOOOOOM!
He races through the city and feels alive. Only a couple hours until he gets to the Miners’ Rocks. This is going to be…
Rasheed was going to say “fun,” but he gets held up by traffic. Great another red light. And another, and another. It just happens to be rush hour and Rasheed is stuck in a traffic jam with his motorcycle, feeling that the potential of this rapid monster of a vehicle gets untapped.
“What a waste,” he says. “It’s like I could get there faster on foot. If only I had known about this earlier, I could have avoided the rush hour. Now everybody is just going to work at the same time. Ughh…”
The long, hard struggle to get out of the city is taking a lot longer now. After about five hours of sighing and complaining, the rush is finally over.
“Woohoo!” Rasheed cheers as he takes off and hits a steady average speed of circa 80 miles per hour on the freeway leading out of his hometown, heading for the rocky mountain range. What he will find there, will shock him, to say the least.
Chapter 5: Impending Doom
This is it, the Miners’ Rocks. His parents must be over here somewhere. It seems so simple, and yet it is not. Why? Because there are miles and miles of mountains here, all containing the chiseled sandstone he found in his parents’ bedroom.
His patience has limits, but his sense of futuristic events helps him find a distinct location on intuition. Rasheed searches and searches, and then senses something happening in one of the mountain caves near him. After about an hour of looking around, he finds the deserted cave.
Rasheed pulls over, puts his motorcycle against a rock, and sneaks into the cave. He has to be prepared for anything, he thinks.
“No, I need a different one! Hand me the spruce leaves and the allium!” he hears a voice yell.
“Okay, boss,” a seemingly less intelligent voice answers.
As Rasheed approaches the light emanating from the hollow opening in the cave, he observes five men, each of them armed to the teeth. He can only guess how much the arms and pistols cost that they are holding and keeping in their pockets and holsters.
One of the men looks like he is in charge, giving him the impression of a lab rat, with a white coat and a pair of glasses.
“I need rare fern, magenta wool, poppies, and some of that chiseled sandstone from the rocks. That will be the correct mixture, trust me,” the man in the white coat says.
“Hey Karl, where do you want this stuff?”
“In the corner,” the professor says.
These combinations sound dangerous, and they are, seeing that this mean man is adding them into a tube next to an immense rocket.
Rasheed looks around. He analyzes the situation. The rocket (what is that for?), the professor or whatever he calls himself, and the four armed men. Then there is the… hey… those are his parents!
On the right side of the cave, his parents are bound and gagged. They can’t see Rasheed, but Rasheed can see them. Nobody has seen him so far actually, a convenient advantage he is more than willing to use.
“Ha-ha-hah!” the guy with the glasses exclaims. “This is it. Let’s test it on our guinea pigs.”
He walks over to Rasheed’s parents and dumps the stuff into their mouths.
“Nooooo!” Rasheed yells, but it is too late. Why he didn’t see this coming, he doesn’t know. His powers left him alone. He couldn’t predict it. And now this villain poured some who-knows-what into his parents’ mouths.
“Who goes there?” one of the thugs asks after hearing Rasheed’s cry.
“Don’t bother,” professor Karl says. “These two will be ready within seconds.”
Rasheed keeps hiding. But as he looks above the rim of the rock he is hiding behind, he sees his two parents turn into something… well, something different. Their eyes turn red, their mouths start foaming, and their sense of reality seems to disappear as they transform into some monstrous kind of zombies. Needless to say, this new poison they’ve taken in has a trigger effect on their aggressiveness.
“Stand back. Let’s see what they will do,” the professor says. “Hey, little hero! If you’re still there, just come out wherever you are! We won’t shoot you!”
For some reason, Rasheed trusts his words and leaves his hiding place.
“What did you do to them?” he asks in anger.
“You’ll find out soon enough, as all of us will,” Karl says laughingly.
Rasheed’s parents break their bonds and roar loudly.
“Aaaarrgghh!”
After this expression, they storm at Rasheed and jump at him, pulling him to the ground and standing ready to put their teeth into him.
“M-mom. Dad. It’s me!” Rasheed says. “Snap out of it. Please!”
But it is to no avail. They have been transformed. They don’t have any memory, empathy, or feelings whatsoever; just a blood thirst and a craving for human flesh.
Rasheed dodges their attacks and punches one of the thugs in his face before grabbing his firearm.
“St-stand back,” he stammers. “I don’t want to kill you.”
His parents aren’t listening. They are only driven by their urge to kill. Ignoring Rasheed’s remarks completely, they begin another attack and run at their son.
BAM! BAM!
What just happened…?
It is as if time stands still for a moment. Adrenaline is flowing through Rasheed’s blood. His heart pumps faster than an ADD boy on the drums. He holds his breath. Fumes ascend from his hot rifle.
He just killed his parents.
A sense of loss and sadness rushes through his very soul. He still can’t believe what happened.
“Hahahah!” the evil professor laughs. “It works. Ready to load, boys!”
Without any regard for Rasheed and his dead father and mother, the man in the white coat puts a mixture in the rocket, ready to launch the thing. The professor pushes the button and launches the rocket.
“There it goes! Hahahahahah!”
Chapter 6: Panic
“What did you do?!” Rasheed cries out. “You’ve turned my parents into monsters! I had no choice but to shoot them!”
“Not just your parents, young man,” the evil professor says, “But the whole city! Hahah!”
“What do you mean?” Rasheed asks.
“I created a substance that will turn everyone into zombielike creatures like your parents. I hacked the materials out of these rocks with my stone pickaxe, and they proved to be quite useful. People in the city will hate each other, they will kill each other, and nobody will know how it all started.”
“B-but why? Why on earth would you do that?”
“Oh, I have my reasons,” the evil professor explains. “I started out like you. I thought I would help the world by being yourself, but all my experiments got rejected. I had chemistry classes,
but they weren’t open to my suggestions. Eventually I lost my family, my money. And it’s all thanks to those ignoramuses. They took my life away, and now, I am taking theirs. Well, not really, I’m just the one who shows them a little push. And then when panic strikes, when they’re ready to beg for a solution, I will sell them the antidote… for billions! And they’ll buy it no matter what, because I will have a powerful monopoly. It’s genius!”
“You monster!” Rasheed yells.
“Call me what you want, young man, but you’re already too late. There’s nothing you can do to stop it now. The rocket has been launched. I wouldn’t recommend going into town. It might be a little chaotic there.”
“Oh yeah? We’ll just see about that!” Rasheed says as he runs out of the cave.
He hops on his motorcycle and starts the engine. Determined to catch up and follow the rocket into town, he hits the gas and figuratively flies through the air, surpassing the speed limit on the freeway to get to his destination in time.
He doesn’t care about the thugs. He has to let go of his parents for a little while until he has the time to reflect on their deaths. All he has to focus on now, is getting back to the city to prevent the disaster from spreading.
The professor was right, however. He is too late. Hordes of zombies are already roaming the streets. They attack humans, each other, and anything they can get their claws and teeth on. Rasheed dodges a few corpses on the street by jumping his motorcycles over ledges and crisscrossing the vehicle towards the downtown area. What he sees there, is one of his biggest nightmares.
Chapter 7: Fight!
The downtown area is crazy! As Rasheed approaches the burning buildings and fuming piles of debris and corpses, he is confronted by hordes of zombies… hundreds of zombies. He didn’t know the gasses from the rocket would have such an immediate effect. Is there anyone left to save, or has the whole city been doomed to destruction?