Utopia Project: Everyone Must Die

by Billy Dering

  Grabbing Kid’s arm, Jess ran out from under the pier. Reaching the boardwalk, they sprinted across the street and up the block. Kid turned to see two drenched soldiers running after them with blazing, and nearly superhuman, speed. A third soldier followed behind, struggling to keep up as he cradled his arm.

  “Where are we going?” Kid panted as they ran.

  “Supermarket,” Jess responded.

  As they went to turn the corner of the next block, Kid glanced over his shoulder to see all three soldiers still a block behind, but gaining ground. “Damn they’re fast. Hurry!” he panted as he pushed himself to his limits trying to keep up with Jess. A couple of bright bolts zipped right past him as he turned the corner.

  After they ran for two more blocks, they came upon the supermarket. While ducking in through the busted out section of the glass door, the soldiers unleashed a volley of weapon-fire. Bolts hit the top half of the door and adjacent glass windows.

  Inside the store, Jess turned up the Non-Food Aisle. “Look for anything that could serve as a weapon!”

  Each picked up a heavy wooden rolling pin. “We need to get out of sight,” Kid said as he cleared an opening and climbed onto the top shelf of the aisle before lining up a row of furniture polish cans in front of his body. With the sound of faraway footsteps, he knew the soldiers were now inside the store. Jess climbed onto the top shelf across the aisle. Although moving slow as he lay behind rolls of paper towels, the shelves creaked in protest. Any hope that the soldiers might miss it were trampled by the sound of an approaching stampede.

  Kid’s chest started pounding so hard that he could actually hear his own heartbeat as the first one came around the corner. The enemy was in striking distance of Jess on the other side of the aisle, so as a decoy, Kid made a sound. “Psst!”

  The soldier stopped and turned with his weapon raised. Jess sat up and swung the rolling pin like a baseball bat. He connected with the back of the soldier’s head, knocking him unconscious. With a weapon now on the floor, Jess swung his legs over the edge of the shelf to jump down when a second one came around the corner. The soldier snapped around toward him.

  Even quicker, Kid lunged. The rolling pin didn’t hit square and skimmed off of the soldier’s head, but the force was enough to make him crumble to the ground. Kid had almost fallen off the shelf, but even more disconcerting to him, the rolling pin had slipped out of his hand. He adjusted the row of furniture polish cans in front of his body and looked around for any object he could use as a weapon.

  Across the aisle, on the shelf below Jess, he saw a product that caught his attention. “Psst,” he whispered. Jess sat up, so Kid pointed and waved his hand. Moving some paper towel packages out of his way, Jess leaned down and grabbed a long-nosed candle lighter. As he sat back up straight, the top shelf again creaked.

  They heard quickening footsteps coming their way.

  With a flick of his wrist, Jess whipped the candle lighter over and moved paper towel eight-packs back in front of his body. Kid caught the perfect throw and opened the package as he laid down. Pushing a slide button all the way up, he hoped he was maximizing the butane output and not minimizing it. He waited breathlessly as the footsteps became louder, and then stopped.

  Through the gap between the cans, he could see the back of the last soldier’s head. The enemy was staring down at his comrades on the floor and was slowly backing up, but Kid no longer had anything to hit him with. Grabbing one of the furniture polish cans, he put it between his thighs and quietly removed the cap. He returned the cap-less can to the shelf while keeping his finger on the nozzle. His other hand held the lighter, the tip of which he snaked through until it hovered in front of the can. The back of the soldier’s head was coming ever closer.

  Come on, first try, he pleaded, knowing he may not get a second chance. He hit the igniter button.

  “Click.”

  Nothing.

  Upon hearing a noise only inches from his head, the soldier swung around and raised his weapon.

  Kid could see eternal darkness down the weapon’s barrel, and felt himself being sucked in.

  After sitting restlessly on the ship for nearly an hour, Sara’s ears began to discern something peculiar within the low-level white noise. Is that a voice? Glancing around her room, she noticed two tiny speakers mounted on the walls. Switching chairs to get closer, she strained to listen. She was putting her ear closer to the speaker when three uniformed people walked in.

  She had spent her time trying to convince herself that if they had wanted to harm her, they would’ve already. The cold look on these three faces gave her little reassurance. She sat up straight as every muscle in her body tightened.

  The first was a Caucasian man and he had a neatly embroidered ‘Elder-12’ on his uniform. The second, Elder-76 appeared to be an Indian woman, with dark skin and long white hair. The third, Elder-1, was also a Caucasian and was the old man who captured them on the beach and shot their friend. She right away despised him for his actions and sensed that he was evil to the core. Brian wasn’t a threat to this guy. Brian wasn’t a threat to anybody.

  Elder-12 and Elder-76 sat, but Elder-1 continued standing and spoke. “So long as we have your full cooperation, and believe you have the right…potential, you will not be harmed.”

  Sara gazed at his hardened face, hoping to find a trace of compassion. She found none. His eyes were as black as polished obsidian, and his hair gray and thinning. He had a squared off chin and drawn in cheeks. His voice was monotone and not a word out of his mouth carried even the slightest emotion. She knew he was American, and recognized him, but could not place his name.

  “Anything less, and you will be eliminated, killed, without hesitation,” he warned. “We are Elder-1, the leader of the group on these ships- the Utopia Project. We are here to make a preliminary evaluation of your future potential, as we have just done with your comrades. With the last one, we could see right off that she did not have any, so she was eliminated on the spot.”

  Sara inhaled sharply, and felt queasy. One of the other girls is dead?

  He continued, “Everyone from the old world was supposed to die so our new world would be pure upon its rebirth. And last night, with a well-planned neutron beam attack…”

  It was a neutron beam attack! But which girl did they kill?

  “…we accomplished just that…almost. 99.9% of the human population was eliminated, but it seems that due to an unlikely weapon system malfunction, this beach area was left unscathed.”

  Such a malfunction struck Sara as odd. Her father had said that the system was so foolproof that it was ‘impossible’ to survive a neutron beam attack. Then the words sunk in. Everyone from the old word was supposed to die…we accomplished just that? 99.9%? She could not wrap her mind around it. “Everyone died?” she muttered.

  “You are only to speak if we ask you a question!” he snapped. Turning to his comrades, he said, “Do we have another one who lacks the right potential?”

  Sara jumped. “I am sorry, Sir. My apologies.”

  Elder-1 stared at her for a moment, the longest moment of her life. Oh God, I am going to be killed right now.

  To her relief, he opened his mouth rather than reaching for his weapon. But his words were disconcerting enough.

  “Here, there is no I,” he said as he pointed his finger at the corner of his pupil. “You will refer to yourself as, ‘we’, one of the collective. Consider this your first and only warning.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. She was still alive, but for how long?

  “Anyway, there should not be any human survivors, anywhere, yet as we can see…” he held his hands up and paused, “…some humans did survive.”

  But the rest of the world is dead? She had to be misunderstanding his words.

  “You four, now three, females were not eliminated because our production of offspring is currently behind schedule and has been quite… disappointing,” he paused and glared disapprovingly at Elder-12.
His fellow elder turned his head.

  Production of offspring? He referred to children as if they were commodities. And as a female, was Sara being kept alive just to have children?

  “So you can be useful, but will have to be conditioned.” Elder-1 stopped and turned to Sara. “Do you know how many others survived besides you and your comrades on the beach?”

  Unable to subdue her rising panic, she turned her eyes down. As hard as she tried, she could not stop thinking about Kid and Jess. She chose her words carefully and avoided referring to herself in the first person. “Well, Sir…we cannot tell, since we do not know how large the beach area in question is.” Her voice had a slight tremble and her answer did not sound convincing.

  “We left four of our members to search every nook and cranny of the affected area. They have been ordered to find survivors, and then hunt them down step for step and kill them. They have incredible physical strength and endurance, highly advanced weaponry and they never give up until they have carried out their orders. You can be assured, if there are survivors we will find them and kill them.” He turned. “We will ask just one more time. How many other survivors were there?”

  A shudder went down her spine, but she realized he was trying rattle her, and frighten her into revealing if she knew anything. She also suspected that he already knew the answer, and was testing her. Swallowing hard, Sara summoned her resolve and tried to remain calm. “Sir, we know there were other survivors, we just do not know how many.” She was not lying.

  He continued to stare at her for several seconds. She felt like he was studying her every move, and he gave no indication of whether or not he believed her. He finally said, “Let’s hope the members we left on shore are able to find and eliminate them all.”

  The walkie-talkie on his belt chirped, so Elder-1 picked it up. “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, Elder-28 here. We are requesting permission to keep the medical suite open until 6:00 p.m. this evening. We still have a long line of elders to be seen and it will take several hours,” came through the speaker of the handheld device.

  “We will be right there,” he radioed back.

  Elder-1 turned toward his comrades in the room. “Elder-76, please continue the evaluation. We shall return soon. If there is any lack of cooperation, we want to know right away.” At that, he put his hand in front of a scanning pad, the door opened and he walked out.

  Chapter 8

  December 27, 2044

  New Jersey coast

  Tuesday, Late Afternoon

  The day after the event

  Kid punched the lighter again, desperate for a flame.

  “Click.” Ignition! He pressed down on the can’s spray nozzle. A stream of flame hit the soldier and he dropped his weapon while reaching for his scorched face.

  Jess sat up and cocked his arm back, ready to swing.

  The soldier suddenly thrust his hands out and darted forward. Still holding out the lighter, Kid couldn’t move his hand away in time. The soldier clamped on his wrist and ripped him off the shelf. Like a rag doll, he was tossed in the air across the aisle, crashing hard onto the second shelf from the bottom. As he cascaded to the floor, an avalanche of laundry detergent bottles followed. He was stunned not only by the fall, but by the soldier’s strength and disregard for his own injuries.

  Having been blinded by the flame-thrower, the soldier turned around and reached out with his hands to grab his prey. He stepped across the aisle and lunged, but Jess was already swinging. The rolling pin caught the soldier in the temple and he collapsed to the ground, with the bangs of his hair still smoldering.

  Seeing the soldier was down and out cold, Kid stayed where he was and tried to catch his breath.

  “Are you hurt?” Jess asked as he climbed down from the top shelf.

  “I’m alright. I just need a minute.” Kid rubbed his pained elbow and coached himself to breathe easy.

  “That guy only had one hand, and look at how far he threw you!”

  “Is this what the seniors do to each other on double-coupon day?” Kid always resorted to humor when he was tense.

  Jess helped him up. “Pretty much. Maybe even worse.”

  “My heart is still racing,” he said while shaking his head and trying to get rid of the vision of the gun barrel pointed at his face. Like a black hole, the dark inside of the weapon barrel was still exercising a gravitational pull on his heart.

  Kid regarded the bodies on the ground, and made a face when the smell of burnt hair permeated his nostrils. “What do we do with them now?”

  “I wonder if they have a crusher in the back of this store, like mine has.”

  With Jess being the night crew chief at a local supermarket, Kid had stopped in many times, and knew exactly which piece of equipment his friend was referring to. In the back of the store was a large, steel box, and they would often be trying to talk over the loud mechanical hum as a hydraulic plate compressed cardboard into tight square bundles.

  “You want to crush them?” Kid asked, taken aback.

  “No, trap them, until we figure out what to do with them,” Jess clarified. “We’ll bring the crusher head down and stop it.”

  “Don’t we need electricity to turn it on?”

  “They have backup generators right in the back of the store,” Jess replied. “And if it is like my store, they are tested a couple times a month so they should be ready to roll.”

  Over the next couple of minutes, all three soldiers were put in shopping carts and pushed to the back of the supermarket.

  “Be right back.” Jess went to another area in the back of the store, and turned on the emergency power.

  Kid took all of the soldier’s weapons and walkie-talkies.

  After Jess came back, they threw the three soldiers into the crusher, which was half full with cardboard already. One of the soldiers was coming to and watched as Jess pushed the Down button on the front of the crusher. The powerful mechanical head descended until it was within a couple inches of the top of the steel box, and then Jess stopped it. “Nobody’s getting through that gap,” he stated confidently.

  Trying to fire one of the coal-black, lightweight guns, Kid aimed it toward the ceiling and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, so he handed the weapon over. “Maybe you can figure it out.” He knew that if anyone could figure it out, it would be Jess, who was an avid hunter and had numerous firearms.

  His friend took the weapon, examined it, and also tried to fire it. They glanced over upon hearing a sound. The soldier that had come to was now grunting, and was reaching his hand through the couple-inch gap between the crusher head and the top of the steel box. “Don’t worry, he can’t reach the Up button,” Jess said as he tossed aside the weapon. “Smart-gun. It won’t fire unless it reads a specific individual’s fingerprint.”

  “Which means it is useless to us. What a shame. I don’t know what it emits, but it seemed powerful.” Kid was overcome by a sinking feeling. “Brian,” he uttered.

  They turned to leave the store.

  “Where exactly did…” Jess started to ask.

  Suddenly, the crusher turned on. Kid realized that after making sure the Up button was out of reach they had not concerned themselves with the proximity of the Down button. They both turned and stood frozen as the crusher head came down and began compacting its contents. For the next few seconds, Kid cringed as the most horrific sounds came from the steel box. The soldiers screamed in agony as bones snapped sharply and body cavities burst, sounding like balloons popping under water. Kid tried to cover his ears and run, but it was too late. His brain had already recorded the sounds. The flat-bottomed head finished compacting and paused. The screaming of the soldiers was silenced, replaced by a mechanical hum as the crusher head began its slow ascent.

  Running to the crusher, Jess hit the Stop button. “That’s a sight we don’t need to see.”

  “Those were the most disturbing sounds I’ve ever heard.” The crack of bone kept replaying in Kid’s head.<
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  Jess shuddered and put his hands over his ears.

  “They sealed their own fate.” Kid walked toward the front door of the supermarket.

  Making their way back to the beach to find Brian, they ran behind buildings so that they couldn’t be spotted from the ships. They crouched and ran across the street, over the boardwalk, and dropped onto the sandy beach. Dusk had fallen and provided them cover, so they crawled until they found Brian’s body closer to the waterline. His body was rigid and still frozen in the same position as the second he was shot. Kid knew it was a formality, but Jess checked for a pulse and said, “We need to give him some kind of burial.”

  “I don’t know if we should move his body.”

  “We can’t just leave him here.” Jess sounded disgusted. “He has been our buddy for how many years?”

  “I don’t want to, but if we move him, the soldiers on those ships will know we are here when they come back and his body is gone!” Kid was frustrated by the circumstances. The truth was that he was having a hard time burying such a close friend. It was making him queasy.

  “Yeah, but look!” Jess pointed at the severely eroded beach, “They’ll think he was taken out to sea with the high-tide.”

  Kid could not refute that logic. “And in truth, that could happen. Alright. Let’s dig a hole in the sand up by the boardwalk.”

  “Wait, what about the Norris brothers?” Jess asked.

  “We can bury them later. Their bodies are on the pier so we don’t have to worry about them being washed out to sea. Come on.”

  They pushed sand into a pile, and hiding behind it, they used some driftwood to dig a shallow grave. Crawling back to Brian’s body, Kid grabbed him under the arms while Jess secured his feet and they dragged the body toward the boardwalk. Brian’s six-foot frame was stiff and unbending, which sent chills up Kid’s spine. Carefully, they put his body down in the hole. After lying on their stomachs in silence for a few moments, they covered Brian with sand.