Sinners- The Dawn Of Kalki

by Naveen Durgaraju

  His death drowned silently in the sea of countless deaths around him as he lay choking and screaming in the middle of all the prisoners, whom he had hated all his life.

  Day 15 – Day 90

  “Do not panic,” the Prime Minister's trembling voice blazed from the television sets all over the country.

  Not many were ready to take this advice though. The phenomenon had spread all over the world like wildfire. After prisoners, soon it was the turn of gangsters and rulers of organized crime. Eighty percent of world's most wanted criminals were now dead and gone, carrying their sins and crimes with them.

  Politicians and some high-profile movie stars started dropping too. Governments started panicking everywhere. Scientists tried constantly, since the first attack, to find the cause and to explain the madness. There were all kinds of theories. From aliens to bio war and new viruses to time travel. Eventually, they did find the actual cause. But it was not something anyone was prepared for.

  The cause was found to be some form of a crude psychic wave which scrambled the human brain activity. This mysterious psychic death–wave was found to be emanating from Sambhal city of Uttar Pradesh in India, which had since been termed “Area Zero”.

  More than the wave, it was the source of this wave that baffled everyone. The source was declared as a small boy, aged twelve, in Sambhal who always appeared to be asleep although in a seated position in yogic stance. Efforts to wake him up or bring him back into consciousness failed. His parents informed the press that he was a normal kid up until a month ago, but they woke up one morning to find him in this stance and he hadn't moved ever since.

  Closely following this discovery, sensitives and psychics all over the world simultaneously started having strange visions. Visions of a white horse. More people died each day and more people claimed to have had visions of a white horse.

  Any attempt to stop the boy proved futile. Anyone who approached “Area zero” with an intention to harm the boy immediately dropped dead. Most of the prisons all over the world were now almost empty. Convicts died in huge numbers. Some miraculously survived for unknown reasons.

  The West dubbed the boy ‘Punisher’, for his immediate targets seemed to be sinners of the highest order. But the down south of Asia, they had a different name for him.

  They called him 'Kalki'.

  According to Hindu cosmology, there were four yugas which were cyclic like the seasons.

  1) Satya Yuga or Golden Age where all righteous principles of Dharma are followed.

  2) Treta Yuga or Silver Age.

  3) Dwapara Yuga or Bronze Age.

  4) Kali Yuga or Iron Age where sin and Adharma prevail over Dharma.

  It is said when evil and sin reached their pinnacle in Kali Yuga, Vishnu would return in his final 10th Avatar or reincarnation –Kalki, on a white horse and destroy all sinners and sin and usher this world into a new Satya Yuga again.

  The West also soon started calling him the ‘First Horseman of Apocalypse’ or the ‘White Horseman of Apocalypse’.

  Suddenly, everyone wanted to cleanse their sins. Thousands died in stampedes at temples all over India. India suddenly became the most visited place for its temples and also the most feared place because of its proximity to Area Zero.

  Priests and holy men emerged as rulers of this crumbling world. Soon, once the seemingly obvious sinners seemed to have been killed, common ordinary citizens started dying in huge numbers. Priests were not spared either.

  Soon, it dawned on everyone that everybody was a sinner, in thoughts or actions. Everyone was eventually going to be killed, sooner or later. What do you do when your God was trying to kill you? Whom do you pray to? Thousands committed suicide, societies started to fall apart, families got together all over the world and a particularly fundamentalist faction of priests calling themselves 'The Sinless' rose as leaders. This growing cult that worshipped Kalki started rioting across the country under the leadership of a high priest who was known only as the 'Purohit’.

  The madness didn’t end there. Soon, people started reporting that pregnant women all over the world had suddenly started disappearing; vanishing right in front of others’ eyes.

  There was a theory going around that they were being teleported to Area Zero. Maybe new born babies would be used to populate the new golden age–Satya Yuga as un–born babies were the only people who hadn’t sinned yet. Just a theory.

  The world’s population started dwindling at an unbelievable pace. The survivors wandered the cities like savages, trying to find other survivors and soon civilizations started to go extinct and world nations started becoming desperate.

  Little did anyone know that that unfortunate desperation and fear would herald a new era of destruction soon.

  Day 108

  The sky cried tears of filth. Countless people looked up as black rain poured onto their faces, burning their skin a little as the dark liquid crawled along their faces.

  Many accounts would later emerge and conflicting opinions would quarrel among themselves as to who had struck us first. The western superpower or our closer neighbour, but the fact remains that two nuclear bombs had exploded over the Indian sub–continent in a single day.

  No one could blame them too much. They were panicking and they aimed for Area Zero. They threw the best weapons they had at the worst danger they had ever perceived.

  But sometimes the best is just not enough.

  It was as if there was an invisible all–permeating dome around Area Zero. The bombs exploded far too high and far too distant for them to have the intended impact. The rest of the world watched as their best weapons were deflected with childish laziness. Area Zero stood unharmed but the rest of the country was not so lucky. Neither were our neighbours. The electromagnetic pulse from the blasts wiped out major communication systems and electronic devices. Society stumbled back into the stone ages.

  And then there was the radiation and fallout.

  No one had anticipated the monsters that the radiation would spawn around Area Zero and that horrible crisis would not be upon us for quite some time but the dark rains were immediate. The scorched skies drenched the scarred and burnt population with a thick black rain every day for almost two weeks. The nuclear dust didn’t settle down for another week after that and the dark rains visited occasionally as a reminder of the horror of that day.

  Kuldeep sat huddled in a corner, trying to stay away from the black rain. The touch of water drove pangs of panic through his heart. He had been there that day when the sky had lit up. He had been inside his house when it had happened. And when they were still trying to figure out what had happened, the sky had lit up again. And within a day he had known something had changed. Something inside him. He hadn’t known that it was radiation poisoning on that day. He doesn’t know even now. All he had known was that he had felt an overwhelming sense of nausea and fatigue the next day of the blasts. He hadn’t been able to eat, keep his food down, had had a burning fever and horrible fever dreams. His eyes had been bloodshot and his hair had started falling in patches.

  He had vomited blood and collapsed into unconscious oblivion on the third day. When he had woken up, he was different. He had burnt with a strange hunger. A hunger that wouldn’t go away. He had tried eating everything and anything but no, the hunger wouldn’t die down.

  He had found himself longing for something else. A new sense of intense craving whenever a human had passed him. An impulse to grab them and dig his teeth into them.

  He’d thought he was going crazy. He had roamed the streets in a fever induced blur. His face had grown pale as his eyes had grown more and more bloodshot. Now, as he lay in a corner, beneath a building, cowering in the shade, he sensed a man approach him. He could smell that fresh blood…that soft meat covered in raw skin…approaching him. And though his capability of coherent thought had long become feeble, he still knew what would happen if the man came close. He tried to shout “No, you idiot. Get away!” but all that left his foami
ng mouth were illegible moans.

  The man, a middle–aged shop keeper, approached a cowering, shivering Kuldeep, trying to help him. The man knew that the Sinless were picking off homeless people and executing them in public, claiming them to be sinners. The kid looked young and weak. The shopkeeper didn’t want to see him hanging by a pole in some sort of a bizarre execution ritual the next day. He had seen enough death recently. Kuldeep turned away as the shopkeeper approached him.

  “Are you okay, son?” The man asked, bending over and placing a hand on his shoulder.

  Kuldeep’s senses were on overdrive. The hunger was just too much. The smell of the man was driving him nuts. He scratched the ground and dug his nails into the floor.

  The man shook him by the shoulder.

  Kuldeep’s last shred of human thought ebbed away. He knew the hunger could no longer be reined in. He let go.

  The last thing the middle–aged shopkeeper saw were two bloodshot eyes and a gaping mouth reaching out for his neck with a feral fury.

  Day 150 – EA 9

  The burning began.

  Fire seemed to consume everything. Once everyone seemed to die, the restructuring of the world began. Entire cities started burning up instantaneously. The survivors in India had no idea if this was happening all over the world. Communication systems went down. So, did all other systems. The world was one big funeral pyre.

  In areas of close proximity to Area Zero, the radiation fallout from the nuclear attack had spawned cannibalistic, bloodthirsty mutants with horrible deformities who started preying on the already diminishing populations. These abominations, now called 'Crawlers' seemed to grow stronger and bigger with each day, seemingly feeding off the radiation in the atmosphere along with human flesh. The Sinless did not think radiation fallout created these monsters. They believed them to be kinkars – the Messengers of Yama, the God of death, sent upon this Earth to bring total extinction of humanity, sometimes against Kalki's will, to spare some of the worthy and the pious. There were also theories that they were victims of a secret virus that the government had spread to test human adaptability to radiation.

  It was soon that the Beam first appeared. A dazzling column of bright blue light that erupted from Area Zero and shot to the skies through the clouds. Many believed the Beam is the physical manifestation of the kid’s psychic energy. It constantly rippled through the skies relentlessly, day and night, standing as a pointer to Area Zero forever.

  The survivors were scattered across this barren world with no idea why they had survived while others hadn’t. These survivors were no saints. It has been around 9 years now since the restructuring began. Entire blocks burned down in a night, leaving nothing but ruins and ash. These fiery outbreaks would soon be called 'Purges'.

  The old world and its ways of seeing time had lost its relevance. A new calendar had emerged which chronicled this world, beginning from the day on which everyone roughly agreed that the first purge had happened. The new age was called 'End Age' and the day the purge had happened was now 0 EA –End Age Zero.

  This young calendar now marks 9 EA, 9 years of death and destruction and the survivors were slowly emerging from the ashes to come together and shape this End Age, populating it with their vices and their natural inclination for factions. Why were they being kept alive? What was their purpose? No one knew. Was there any way to stop this? Were there any more survivors? Where were the mothers? Answers could only be found at one place and the survivors traversed this world filled with death and unimaginable horrors, getting closer to that dreadful land of liberation.

  Area Zero.

  FORGIVEN

  Forgiven, Forever

  We do not bleed…for we are not men

  We do not weep…for we are not troubled

  We do not bow...for we are not bound

  We are the living and we are the judged

  But we do not die...for we are the forgiven

  Forgiven, Forever

  The end was finally here.

  Every end has a beginning. Some ends have violent beginnings, where the beginning of the end and the finale of the end marry each other immediately and fiercely without much pre–nuptial courtship. And then there are the other ends. The ends which begin slowly. Silently. Endings which creep up on reality, behind its back.

  But no matter the beginning, there was something every end had in common – Death.

  And Pradeep Guha had seen enough of that recently. Pradeep –the one who would be later known as the Commander, the War Bringer, the Other, the One Who Was Taken, the One Who Was Two, the Scar– walked alone on the streets under the harsh sun, his head bent low.

  The bright red scarf around his neck blew in the winds that raged hot like the breath of an aging dragon. Pradeep couldn't afford to cover himself up from the winds as the scorching sun would then get to him. Lifeless leaves crunched under his torn, brown leather boots as the leaves tried crossing the street on the wings of the warm winds. His thick beard rubbed coarsely on his sweat soaked neck. Pradeep was not used to that – a full grown beard.

  But then, he was not used to being a lone survivor of an apocalypse either

  His backpack was almost empty now. The food he had carried was long gone. Not that he missed it. Canned food had never been his delicacy. He knew the water was almost gone too. And along with the food and the water, something else was going away quickly–his hope of survival. The thirst was overwhelming now. He laid the backpack down, sat on his aching knees and took his water bottle out. His dirty fingerprints and sweat stains decorated the plastic bottle. He looked inside it, trying to find a drop of water and a glimmer of hope. He could see neither.

  He turned the bottle upside down and held it above his head and shook it violently to catch the last traces of the liquid if there were any. The sun shone into his eyes as he looked up. He used his other hand as an ineffective shield against the sunlight as he waited for at least a final drop to fall into his mouth. There was no final drop.

  His head was dizzy now. He knew the human body could survive up to a week without food but without water? Not much of a chance. Two days if you were lucky. He had run out of his quota of days yesterday. If he didn't find any water today, he wouldn’t be a survivor of the apocalypse anymore. He would be a victim of it. He slumped onto the street now, as his muscles gave up. His eyes burned and his breath turned shallow. He lay there unable to move, looking into the bright skies knowing that he was dying on an empty street under the harsh sun, alone in an abandoned world.

  His vision was now blurry and inconsistent. Then, he heard it. A distant rumble, which grew louder with each instant. Someone or something was coming. In a moment, he saw what it was. It looked like a group of bikers. He wondered if he was hallucinating. A death vision maybe? His mind’s last feeble attempt to not feel crushingly alone and lost? Other people? On motorcycles? It had been more than three months since he had seen another human. And he knew fuel was almost impossible to find these days.

  His thoughts were slower than the bikes. In a moment, they were already parked five feet from his face. The road felt hot across his cheek. All he could see were blurry shapes of big men sitting on the bikes. One of them got down and walked towards him. Pradeep could see the blurry, big blob come closer and kneel beside him. He could now make out that the man had an impressive moustache and beard. It looked like he had smiled and then offered his hand.

  He said in a deep voice, two words which Pradeep would go on to repeat many times over in his lifetime.

  “Forgiven, Forever.”

  Pradeep tried to raise his hand and reach out to the man's hand. But it wasn’t his hand anymore. Not the way it used to be. Now, it felt heavier than ever and as if it was a foreign object that responded to his commands, albeit rather sluggishly. He could see as if in a dream –his shaky, blurry hand reaching out to the big hairy hand of the man. Then, his dreamy vision turned to darkness as he passed out.

  The General came home to the caves.

/>   He dismounted from his motorcycle – a junked up Thunderbird – and walked into the welcoming dark of Belum caves, followed by his four commanders. He descended the derelict stairway built in the old age, down into the open pit that led to the caves that looked like a gaping mouth ready to devour them. The commanders carried the unconscious body of a young man in their arms.

  Their eyes adjusted to the darkness in the caves and then to the dim light of fire again as they reached the vast central rocky chamber of the caves. The light system in the caves was no longer of any use, with all the electricity in the world long gone. In the centre of the chamber, a massive fire was lit, feeding on dry sticks and wood. Around the fire sat a bunch of men, women and children no younger than 10 years old.

  They all looked up as they saw the tall, bulky frame of the moustached man they all called respectfully ‘The General’ entered the chamber. He was the man who had saved all of them from death and starvation and provided them shelter and life in the caves. But more than shelter, he offered them a new identity. A new community. A place where they would no longer feel alone. Sometimes, that's all a person needs – to be told that they are not alone. They all called themselves ‘The Forgiven’ now. The General told them that they all had been forgiven by Kalki and hence were not killed yet. They saw the body of an unconscious young man wearing a red scarf carried by the commanders and they all knew that the General had brought home another brother that day. He had saved yet another poor soul who might have perished in the cruel outside world.

  The Forgiven watched as the commanders laid the body down by the fireside. The young man's face looked innocent and peaceful in the firelight. A young face that was roughed up by the winds and darkness of the End Age. Mishra, a man in his fifties with shocking grey hair, stood up from among the Forgiven and walked up to the body. Mishra was a doctor during the pre–purge days. He checked for a pulse, then looked briefly at the General and nodded. The young soul would live. The Forgiven would now nurse him back to health, but before that they would say their prayer to make him one of their own. A brother of the Forgiven.