2061: The Undead
Page 4
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m a programmer. I worked on a similar project before where I had to program a chip reader like this. I know exactly how they work. But there is a problem.”
“What is it?”
“I need a computer, an Esheet at the very least.”
“We can’t go at a store it’s too dangerous. Can’t we find some other way in?”
“Do you see any other way in?”
The building was made of concrete and there were absolutely no other doors, other than the truck entrances, which were also impossible to open.
“But it’s too risky going in the city! We don’t have enough bullets left. Damn it! We’re doomed. What are we going to do?!” Hannah was panicking.
“Calm down, we’ll settle this. Just trust me.”
“But are you even sure you can actually hack it? Even if you successfully find a computer? What if you can’t hack it? This is Amazon after all, the biggest company in the world. Don’t you think they have a foolproof security?”
“You’d be surprised. Hackers successfully hack big websites every week. What I’m going to do is run a program to decrypt the reader. It might take several hours, the more powerful the computer, the faster it will be decrypted. I’ll then be able to add us to the list of employees and the door should unlock for us. If this was the normal world, we couldn’t do this because there is a camera watching the door. But lucky for us nobody is watching that camera.”
“Alright, if you say so …”
“There is a small neighborhood just 5 minutes north of here. I say we try our luck there. We break in houses and try to find an Esheet. Some clothes and food would be nice too.”
“Hmm, are you forgetting about alarms?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten, but I still think this is safer than going in the city, where it’s completely crowded with undead. We should be long gone before the alarm attracts too many of them.”
So they embarked in the car and drove north. There still weren’t any cars on the road and it was just a small neighborhood, relatively far from downtown. Erick stopped the car at the first house he saw.
“This looks like the kind of house that would have an Esheet,” Erick said.
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
“Are you sure it’s not because there is a huge window that looks pretty easy to break?” Hannah said with a smile on her face.
“Absolutely not … maybe,” Erick replied smiling.
“Almost everyone has an Esheet anyways …”
They stepped out of the car and crossed the front lawn towards the house. There were flowers planted, circled with small rocks.
“Grab a rock,” Erick said.
“At three, we each throw a rock, then just grab more and keep throwing them until the window is smashed enough for us to go through.”
“Copy.”
“Oh, and watch out for undead. There are 2 cars parked in their driveway so there is a chance there are several people in there. Once inside, we stay together at all times. Be careful.”
“Got it.”
“1, 2, 3!”
SMAASSHHH!!
They threw about half a dozen rocks on the window until it was almost completely smashed.
Hannah was about to step forward.
“Wait,” Erick said.
She froze and waited.
“OOOAARRGHHHH!”
Two undead jumped out the window and fell face first on the grass.
BANG! BANG!
Erick shot them both as they still lied down.
“Alright let’s go, stay behind me. There could be more of them so be careful.”
WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO
The alarm already went off.
“C’mon let’s hurry!”
Erick was leading as they entered the house through the smashed window. Thankfully, the undead that jumped out the window did a good job of clearing it completely. They slowly entered each room one after another, looking for an Esheet.
“Got it,” Erick said.
Erick found one on the kitchen table. Most families had multiple Esheets, one for each member of the family. An Esheet looked like a paper thin tablet, but with the power of a laptop. It had a projected keyboard included. There were models of different sizes and the one Erick found was a medium size, about 12” by 12”.
Hannah opened the fridge and found some vacuum sealed steaks and orange juice.
“Awesome, I haven’t had anything fresh to eat in a week, put as much as you can in the backpack!” Erick said in enjoyment.
“Can we go check in the bedroom if they have clothes? I’d like to put a shirt on,” Hannah said.
“Oh damn, no we can’t … look.”
As they looked through the window there was already a dozen undead in front of the house.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Erick shot them all one by one through the broken window, and then they ran outside towards the car. Erick grabbed the finger of one of the undead that fell out the window earlier and passed it through the Esheet’s screen.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m turning on the Esheet. Wasn’t sure if it would work as the guy’s finger is pretty messed up, but it seemed to have worked.”
“Good thinking,” Hannah said, impressed by Erick’s forward thinking.
SCREEEECHHH!
He pushed the pedal fully and turned the car around, screeching the tires. As he was driving, he passed the Esheet to Hannah and asked her to add herself as a user. She needed to do it now before the Esheet would turn itself off. She did as instructed and added herself to the list of authorized users.
“Don’t worry, there will be more clothes than you ever dreamed of in the Amazon distribution center. Besides you don’t look so bad like this,” Erick said mockingly.
“Ha ha ha, very funny,” Hannah replied sarcastically.
Erick couldn’t believe he actually said that. Hannah couldn’t believe Erick said that either, but she felt complimented at the same time.
“Well … you don’t look so bad either,” Hannah said.
“Are you kidding? I don’t have a 6 pack, I don’t even have a 2 pack!”
Hannah laughed. “Muscles don’t attract me, it’s what’s in there,” tapping on Erick’s head with her finger.
Erick remained silent. He couldn’t believe what he just heard. Maybe he actually had a chance with this girl or maybe it was just sleep deprivation.
Once they got back to the distribution center, Erick wasted no time and installed the Esheet to decrypt the chip reader.
“It’s a pretty average Esheet so this will take a while, a couple of days, maybe less …”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah … I’m sorry. It could take 10 minutes or 2 days, I don’t know.”
It was already dark and Hannah was very discouraged by the news that they wouldn’t be inside, safe, before another few days.
“Where are going to sleep then?” Hannah said.
“I have an idea. Come with me.”
CHAPTER 11
Erick took Hannah’s hand and brought her behind the warehouse, where the trucks unloaded. There was a recycling container, he climbed on it and helped her to join him. He then climbed on top of one of the truck and helped her up again.
“We’ll be safe here. No undead can climb this high.”
“Good idea. But … I really have to pee.”
“You’re not going out of my sight. I’m serious,” Erick replied.
“C’mon, I’m not going to pee and shit in front of you for the rest of my life!”
“For now, just go at the extremity of the truck and try to piss off the truck on the ground. Once we’re inside you can do all your needs in the bathroom on your own,” Erick replied smiling mockingly.
She gave him a long stare and complied.
“Wait. Piss in my Life Saver bottle. I don’t know ho
w long we’ll be here for and the nearest river is pretty far.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t aim like you. How do you expect me to piss in that tiny hole?”
“Alright then, I guess I’ll be the only one pissing in it.”
“Gross, I’m not drinking your piss.”
“Why? What’s the matter? The filter removes all bacteria and salt. Any water you drink contained piss at some point. Whether it’s filtered at the water treatment facility or in this bottle it’s the same thing.”
“I know … but,” she sighed. “Give me the bottle.”
Hannah took a deep breath, grabbed the Life Saver and marched to the end of the truck. She pulled down her shorts and underwear, squatted and pressed the bottle to her skin. Erick stared for an instant, shocked that she was actually pissing in front of him, but started to feel uncomfortable and quickly turned away.
When Hannah finished, she walked back to Erick and tossed him the bottle.
“Here you go.”
“Did you just put your …”
“What? The filter removes everything. Right?” Hannah said smiling innocently.
CHAPTER 12
They lay down on top of the truck, which was rock hard, and tried to sleep for the night. Even though they were relatively safe and extremely tired, it was nearly impossible to sleep.
“I think the car would be more comfortable,” Hannah said.
“I know, but it’s just not safe enough to sleep down there while any undead could surprise us at any time of night. I know the windows are probably solid enough, but just the thought of waking up with an undead outside the window scares me to death.”
“But we could take turns watching.”
“It’s not worth it, let’s just stay here for the night and hopefully by tomorrow the chip reader will be decrypted.”
“You’re the boss …”
Hours passed as they tried to sleep. It was getting pretty cold in the middle of the night, neither of them had a shirt on. Hannah approached Erick and snuggled against his back on the side, spooning him.
“I’m cold. Is it alright?”
“Of course,” Erick replied.
Erick was cold as well and appreciated the warmth of her body and the feeling of her breast touching his back.
At around 3:00 a.m. they both finally fell asleep, being completely exhausted, and a bit warmer from snuggling.
When the sun rose a couple of hours later, Hannah woke up. The sun never felt so great. Erick still seemed completely asleep. She climbed down the truck to look at the Esheet, to see if it was successfully decrypted. She passed her finger on the screen to unlock it and looked at the status. There was a lot of numbers everywhere and she couldn’t really understand much of it. However upon looking closer, on the top right corner, in relatively small characters was written SUCCESS. She ran back to the truck and shouted up to the roof.
“Erick! Erick! I think the door is decrypted!”
Erick woke up right away and climbed down the truck.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“I think so, the screen says success.”
They both ran back to the Esheet and Erick looked at it.
“You’re right! Ok I just need to add us to the employees’ directory. This shouldn’t take that long.”
So he typed relentlessly for 3 minutes straight, hacking in the chip reader to add their chips to the system.
“That’s it, the door should unlock for us.”
They both nervously walked at the door.
“On three, you open the door,” Erick said as he aimed with his gun.
“1, 2, 3!”
The door successfully opened. There was a small hallway on the other side, with another door a foot ahead. They walked in and the door behind them closed on its own. They continued to the other door. Hannah prepared to open it, Erick looked at her, nodding as a sign to open the door. She opened it and walked in.
It was absolutely incredible. They were both stunned at what they saw. The warehouse was huge, hundreds and hundreds of never ending rows of merchandise pallets going as high as a 10 storey building. There were also five gigantic 3D printers that could print an incredible array of things. There were big robots everywhere, but they weren’t moving. Probably because production was stalled since no new orders were coming in.
“Look! Mattresses, canned fish, corn chips!” Hannah said excited.
“Yeah, and we’ll be able to print guns and ammunition with the printers. They’re illegal, but I’ll be able to program them.”
They had found their safe haven. They would be able to eat canned and vacuum sealed food, drink water from the bathroom and print whatever else they needed to make this place their home.
They would finally be safe there, but for how long …
Eager for the second book? Book 2 of 2061: The Undead will be released in 2014. Subscribe to the author’s newsletter to be notified as soon as it’s out. You will also receive a teaser and get the chance to win a signed copy of the second book before it’s officially released!
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12