Utopia Project: Everyone Must Die

by Billy Dering

“Locked. We already tried,” Maria said as he jiggled the doorknob.

  He turned and noticed that she was tending to a wood stove in the back corner of the shack.

  “You must be freezing. Come warm up,” she offered.

  The floorboards creaked with every step as Kid walked over and rubbed his hands in front of the stove.

  Lying on a plaid couch, Brian was still blindfolded. Kid stepped over and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Eyes still burning?”

  “Not really, but I can’t see anything.”

  “Here, drink some water.” He placed a bottle in Brian’s hand.

  “You guys alright?” he asked the Norris brothers and Chatty Cathy, who were sitting on the floor.

  “Yeah,” they all mumbled.

  Maria stabbed at the smoldering embers with a bronze-topped poker. “Fire’s dying.”

  “We’ll get some more wood,” Kid offered.

  “Why would you do that? Now that we found you, let’s put some gas in the truck and get Brian to a hospital,” Heidi suggested as she sat atop a barstool. “We can’t even call an ambulance because nobody has a cell phone signal.”

  Kid swallowed hard. Nobody having a cell phone signal was telling, but seeing the grotesque pile of flesh and bones inside the Quick-Fix, after they were blinded by some red light from the sky that extended to at least Vermont, was already more than enough cause for suspicion. Of course, Heidi did not know about the dead body inside the convenience store.

  “Heidi, I don’t know what, but something really strange happened last night. I’m afraid it is bad out there.”

  “With the military guarding the bridge, we should have known there was some credible threat,” Jess noted.

  “Let me and Jess get gas and take a quick ride to see if everything is alright first. You guys just look after Brian.”

  “She’s right, Kid. We should get him to the hospital. On top of it all, we’re starving to death,” Maria added. “And you know I have to watch my blood sugar.”

  “It’s not much but here.” Kid threw the bag with assorted snacks and drinks from the Quick-Fix over to her.

  “I’ll be fine,” Brian said. “I’m not in pain and the red I see when I open my eyes, it’s fading a little. Let them go.”

  Heidi sighed, “You guys will be quick?”

  Kid knew that an inspection of the local area would not be beneficial to her since her mother lived in Long Island. “Yeah, we won’t be long. We’ll throw some more wood on the fire and go. If cell service is restored we’ll call.”

  Relenting, but clearly not happy about it, Heidi took Brian’s truck keys from the counter and flung them over to Kid.

  “Hey Jess, do you remember how to siphon gas?” he asked.

  “I’m on it.” He grabbed the keys from Kid’s hand and walked out the door. “I’ll have her filled up by the time you get more wood in the stove.”

  Kid took the time to break up a wood chair and feed the fire.

  He kissed Sara on the cheek. “Hold down the fort and keep everyone…” Kid moved his eyes over to Heidi, “calm.”

  As he walked out the door of the shack, Jess was coming across the street with a gas can in his hand. “Not fueled up yet?”

  “Hey, cut me some slack. There aren’t many cars over here to steal gas from in the winter.”

  December 26, 2044

  Monday, 11:00 PM

  New Jersey coast

  The moment of the event

  Edith Dalton hated driving in three particular situations: when it was dark outside, when the weather was wintry, and when a bridge was involved. Tonight, she was confronted with the convergence of all three.

  And the capper came when she approached the bridge and found it blocked. In all of her 65 years, she had never seen the military guarding the Tunney Bridge. Not being the person they were looking for, and not revealing why they were there, she was waved on. She mumbled a prayer with the ominous span dead ahead.

  With her rosary beads woven through her fingers, she strangled the steering wheel and motored over the icy bridge at half the speed limit. Her husband Hal usually drove over the bridge while she closed her eyes in the passenger’s seat. Had she known her fears would continue to grow as she aged, she never would have chosen a house on a barrier island. The anxiety as she motored up the bridge was overwhelming, but she had to overcome it. Hal, the love of her life for the last 40 years, had just been taken to the hospital in an ambulance because he was having chest pains. If she could not simmer herself down, she might be admitted with him.

  Edith had sent Hal’s ambulance ahead since she would not leave her Ortley Beach house dressed in a nightgown. She had changed quickly, so she was only 15 minutes behind, but she would not be gaining ground at the speed she was traveling. “Oh Hal,” she said, admonishing him for overexerting his already weakened heart as she crossed the arch of the bridge. Seeing the end of the span in the distance, she felt a glimmer of hope that she might make it.

  Suddenly the snowy road exposed by her headlights appeared to turn red. The breath was sucked out of her lungs as the sky exploded. Further tightening her death grip on the steering wheel and her rosary beads, she slammed the brakes and started a power-slide. For that split second, she froze with the fear that her silver sedan would careen off the bridge. Edith thought her heart was going to explode.

  And then it did.

  Hal Dalton sat up on his gurney in the emergency room as a deep hum rattled the walls. He reacted by saying, “Edith?” He saw three nurses collapse hard to the floor as he leaned his head over the side to vomit on the floor. The last thing he saw was his tongue fall out of his mouth as his head approached the ground, yet his lower body remained on the gurney.

  In the backyard of a lagoon house in Forked River, an Alaskan Husky awoke. Leaving behind the bunched up blanket he used as a bed, he stepped out of his doghouse. He sniffed the cold air and looked up. His bright blue eyes were met by blinding red and he turned away. The canine yelped once, and tried to again, but his windpipe seemed to have collapsed. As he dropped, his last sight was of his hindquarter spreading across the ground in a hairy mound.

  December 27, 2044

  Tuesday, 9:00 AM

  New Jersey coast

  The morning after the event

  Kid and Jess drove away from the beach and nothing seemed unusual, until they reached the Tunney Bridge heading over to the mainland. They squeezed past a barricade that had been placed between two olive green Hummers, blocking all but one lane. No military personnel were anywhere to be found.

  “I still don’t know why the military was guarding the bridge,” Jess said as he drove between the Hummers.

  They crossed the arch of the bridge and Jess stood on the brakes as they encountered a silver sedan stopped sideways in the middle of the road. There were only three other cars in sight, but they had all come to rest in awkward positions.

  “The road is still not plowed, at this hour?” Kid asked with ever-growing apprehension. The street way up ahead was covered with fresh snow. From their vantage point at the top of the bridge, it appeared that the snow accumulation increased noticeably going west.

  Jess pulled close enough to see that the silver sedan was occupied, but the driver was a mound of flesh and bones, just like the convenience store clerk. The melted remains were spread across the front seat of the car. Several bones from the driver’s severed hand were still affixed to the steering wheel, as if clinging for dear life. Something was dangling from the bony fingers.

  “Are those… rosary beads?” Kid was horrified, but couldn’t break his stare.

  Hitting the gas and speeding away, Jess weaved in and out of the other stopped cars.

  Kid turned on the truck radio and heard nothing but static all across the dial. As if painfully crying out, the speakers hissed as he continued to change stations. “This is not a good sign.” He tried all of the New York and Philadelphia stations. “Nothing on the air in the whole tri-state area
.”

  They drove west on Route 37 through the town of Toms River and came upon their local hospital. “Wait!” Kid pointed. “Turn there.”

  Jess cut the wheel and the truck slid through the intersection. He pulled under the covered Emergency Room entrance, which abutted a multi-story parking garage.

  “If you can’t find help at a hospital, where can you find it?” Kid reasoned as he got out.

  Running to the door, Kid had to dodge the carcasses of many dead pigeons on the ground. He remembered seeing them roosting in the rafters of the parking garage every time he had been there before.

  Although it was usually the busiest part of the hospital, the Emergency Room was still and quiet. Just inside the door, human puddles were visible in the dim emergency lighting. Formerly white nurse uniforms were discernible in three mounds of human remains. A gurney held half of the remains of a patient, as the other half had oozed down onto the floor.

  “Help! Anyone here?” Jess yelled, desperately. “Help!”

  Silence.

  “This is bad. Worse than bad. Come on.” Kid turned and ran back to the truck on legs that felt like rubber bands. “I guess we should go by your house first?” he suggested as they climbed in.

  “Why mine?” Jess snapped. “Most of you live in the same town as I do,” he said, referring to their hometown ten miles to the south.

  “We’ll go by all of our houses, but yours is the closest. I don’t care what order we hit them.”

  Jess exhaled. “We can go by my house first. I’m just sick thinking about it.”

  Pulling up the street where he lived in the town of Forked River, Jess could no longer hide his nervousness. In front of his house, the truck came to a sliding halt. “Let me go in,” Kid insisted.

  After putting his head against the steering wheel for a moment, Jess conceded. “Go in through the back door.”

  Kid walked to the back of the house and opened the gate. He was waiting for Jess’s Alaskan Husky to come running and snarl at him, as he always did. This time, he was met with silence. He stepped into the backyard and winced as he spotted the hairy remains of Jess’s dog in front of his doghouse. As a formality, he opened the back door of the house and was again assaulted by the same foul smell of death. He couldn’t shut the door and get out of there fast enough. Slowing his pace as he walked up to the truck, Kid tried to regain his poise as he opened the door.

  Jess was looking straight ahead at the road.

  Clearing his throat, Kid climbed in and said quietly, “Sorry, Jess, but I think we’re going to find the same at all of our houses. Let’s go.”

  Jess put the pedal to the floor and sped up the street. He stared straight ahead and his face twitched as he fought back tears. The truck slid and fishtailed in the snow going around the corner. Driving past Brian’s house, Cathy’s and then the Norris’s, Kid and Jess never even got out of the truck. There were no signs of life anywhere. The same was true when driving up the street to Maria’s house.

  After passing Maria’s small Cape Cod, Jess said, “Hold on a minute.” He put the truck in reverse and stopped in front of her driveway.

  “What are you doing?” Kid asked.

  “I am going to bust into her house.” He grabbed a crowbar. “I just have to hold my nose and get her two diabetes medications from the kitchen counter where she always leaves them. The first time she feels faint, she will thank me for thinking of it.”

  A few minutes later, Jess returned with the medications in his hand, and a grimace on his face.

  “Are you alright, Jess?”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t see anything or even breathe out my nose, but I felt it everywhere.”

  “Felt what?”

  “Death.”

  They stopped in front of Kid’s house and both stared straight ahead in silence. For several minutes they waited. Kid knew his mom would’ve opened the door by now, and asked them what they were doing parked outside. This time, his front door stayed eerily still. He knew he was delaying the inevitable, but he reflected as he looked around at the houses of the old neighborhood kids. In his pre-teen days he was pushed around and excluded from most neighborhood sports and activities because he was a few years younger than most of the kids on the block. Finally, as he hit his teenage years, he started fighting back, both verbally and physically when he had to. Although he didn’t always win the fight, the other kids came to respect him. From that time forward, he vowed to confront his fears head on, and never let them keep him down. But he had never felt the degree of fear he felt right now. He forced himself to open the truck door. “I’ll be back.”

  Jess grabbed his arm. “Wait, are you sure you want to do this?”

  “No, I don’t want to, but I am going to.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I got it Jess.”

  Walking up to his front door, Kid heard something crunch under his foot. He used his shoe to brush away the layer of snow, and stared down at the carcass of a small black bird. Taking another step, he heard the same sound. Shuffling his feet as he moved forward, he kicked aside what seemed to be an entire flock of dead birds.

  Reaching his front door, he slid his key in the lock and turned the knob. He stepped inside the foyer and forced himself to inhale through his nose. He dropped to his knees as bile rose in his throat. The smell was overwhelming. Struggling to his feet, he closed the front door, jogged to the truck and got back in. Kid knew his expression told Jess all he needed to know.

  “Same?” Jess mumbled, seeming unsure of what to say.

  “Same,” he echoed somberly.

  “What the hell is going on around here?” Jess started up the road. “Where else can we go?”

  “Sara’s. I know it is a haul, but maybe things are different a little further west.” He tried to sound optimistic, but faltered.

  Chapter 5

  December 26, 2044

  Monday, 11:00 PM

  Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst

  (Fort Dix Army Base), New Jersey

  The moment of the event

  In a guard booth at the gate of the Fort Dix Army Base, Tom Murphy sat in a raised chair, rubbing his beer belly. As usual, after being starved for so long he had eaten too much for dinner during his 10:00 p.m. break. His wife was going to be angry with him. With the new diet he was supposed to be following, his belly should have been flattening, not expanding.

  But even bloated, he was excited and couldn’t wait for tomorrow night. He was taking his grandson, Nicky, to see the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game. After being estranged for three years, Tom and his daughter had finally made amends. He missed his child, but more than that, he missed his only grandson. He had no choice but to forgive his daughter because he would never see, let alone be part of, Nicky’s milestones and life events—one of them being his first professional hockey game. Tom was thrilled to be the one who was going to make it happen.

  Without warning, the sky turned a blinding red. He felt violently ill and fell to the floor as he tried to escape the small booth. Despite his torn rotator cuff, he raised his hand to grab the doorknob and mumbled, “Sorry Nicky.” He fell on his back and a few seconds later, his protruding stomach deflated like a popped beach ball as his flesh spread across the floor.

  December 27, 2044

  Tuesday, 10:30 AM

  Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst

  (Fort Dix Army Base), New Jersey

  The day after the event

  “This isn’t a quick ride anymore,” Jess noted as they drove 40 miles per hour west on the unplowed Route 530.

  “No, but with the news we have to bring, are you in a rush to get back?” Kid settled back into his seat.

  The truck bounced up and down violently and Jess slammed the brakes. The vehicle slid sideways in the snow as he fought to keep it on the road. After fishtailing a couple of times, he coasted to a stop and turned to Kid. “Now what did we hit?”

  “I’m afraid to
look,” Kid said as he opened the door.

  Walking in the snow, which had been shredded by the swerving vehicle, the guys both stopped dead in their tracks upon seeing the carnage. It appeared that a whole family of deer had been crossing the road when the destruction came. Through the few inches of snow, Kid counted four separate ribcages of varying sizes. A smaller one had been partially crushed when it was run over by the vehicle. Over the next few minutes, the guys went through the disgusting and painstaking exercise of dragging the dead carcasses off of the road.

  “That is just nasty,” Kid noted while washing his hands with virgin snow.

  “I know, but at least we won’t have to worry about hitting them on the way back,” Jess responded.

  They jumped back in the truck and 20 minutes later they reached one of Fort Dix’s guard posts. It appeared deserted.

  “Possible problem. What if there isn’t any power?” Kid said as he spotted the heavy security gates, which were eight-foot high with razor mesh and rolls of electrified razor wire on top. A guard booth straddled both sides of the fence marking the entryway.

  “It’s a military base. If anyone would have backup power in case of an emergency, it would be them. Look!” Jess pointed. “The guard house light is on.”

  Kid jumped out of the truck and used a crowbar to pry open the door to the booth. As it popped open, a human puddle started oozing out. Repulsed, he coached himself to only breathe in and out of his mouth so the smell would not register. He stepped over the carnage and examined the rest of the booth. Below the window was a control board. He simultaneously hit a button on top while pressing another one hidden underneath the counter top. The security gates opened.

  “How did you know to do that?” Jess asked as Kid jumped back in.

  “Hit two buttons simultaneously? I came through here all the time with Sara, and the guard’s face would always cringe as he reached for the button under the counter while hitting the button right in front of him. He must’ve had a bad shoulder or something.”

  At General Hyland’s living quarters, a quaint boxy ranch, Kid stepped out of the vehicle.