[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Terence Glasgow]
[Level: 1]
Terry was scared. He was really, really scared.
It may sound pathetic, but he could not for the life of him remember a point in time when he had not been filled with some form of anxiety or another. The feeling that there was some looming figure hanging over his shoulder, waiting in delight for him to fuck up. The fear of that started from preschool and followed him all the way up to now.
A side effect of this fear was also the spite that came with it.
They were not going to let it dictate what he did. He was going to make it and survive and do all the things people didn’t expect him to do. That’s why he took extra college classes early. Why he took up a night shift job when it really wasn’t legal. He did stupid and impulsive things all the time, it was true, but it was only to prove the nagging voice in his head that it was wrong and he could do this.
Except not now. Now, he truly thinks the voice has won.
Because the world isn’t about getting an education or a paycheck or a stupid hour-long commute anymore. There were bigger and scarier things to be focused on.
At first, isolation wasn’t so bad. The infected couldn’t come in, and there was plenty of food. Time away from other people meant that he could really look inwards and discover who he was.
And it turns out they were a demiguy. Nothing like a high intensity situation to crush that egg.
But then it started getting real. People banged on the windows, begging him to let them inside. He hid until the infection overtook them too, and then barricaded the windows with all the shelves he could find.
Food became a very pressing concern. He found himself obsessively checking on the food supplies. Memorizing how much he had left, how much he needed to use, how much was going to rot if he wasn’t careful.
How much would have to be discarded because there simply wasn’t enough energy being generated from the solar panels to run all the freezers at max capacity. The numbers were all crammed in his head and he found himself running through them over and over again even when he wasn’t focusing on that debacle.
That was why they had started doing research into fungi in the first place. To get their mind off the pressing concern of expiration dates and food shortage. And once he found the curious species crawling up his walls that he had tentatively named Mycelium potentia, it had simply gotten a bit more interesting for him. He wasn’t expecting anything to come of it.
Then Derek started showing signs of some form of higher brain activity that scientists had declared to be impossible for rotters, and it all changed. This was serious. And it might change the world.
What did he do with that information? He hunkered down in his former place of employment and pretended that it wasn’t happening. Played around with Derek, tried to get him to respond to commands, which he did, mostly, as long as they were simple and clearly spoken.
Terry was having trouble speaking clearly these days. He’d go weeks without speaking a word, to the point where he would sometimes mutter an expletive or make an observation and scare themself half to death. There were a lot of books and videos on sign language in the store, and they found himself assimilating to it better than just regular talking, because he’d always been a visualizer. That didn’t help the slow decline of their vocal chords.
There were other amusements too. They sorted the non-food supplies. Over and over and over again. Management hadn’t trusted him with shelving before the world ended, so he had his fun with it now. And there was hair dye. He’d tried on the temporary stuff just for the hell of it, but had gotten their heart set on this nice long-lasting teal color. Simply waiting for it to fade out before he moved on to something else.
In his self-imposed isolation, they’d found himself gaining a newfound appreciation for bright colors and soft textures. Things he always wanted to grab onto and feel because there was nothing else to sustain him. Couldn’t run around too much and risk burning off calories or needed to wash clothes, ran out of power to play the same video game three times in a row, all the books were the most boring things imaginable. And even those they had read cover to cover.
By the time he’d reached the nine hundred and thirty-second day (yes he had kept track by etching the days onto the wall like a prisoner on death’s row) he was feeling the effects of isolation wearing away at their brain. Humans were social creatures. They needed people around them, just in physical presence to stop their minds from completely deteriorating. And he had not seen people for a very long time. He also may not be sleeping as regularly as he had thought. All of these things can lead to visual hallucinations, making it look like a panel that was clearly meant to be on the screen of the laptop was hovering in the air in front of him.
[You Have Been Upgraded to Player!]
A game? He blinked a few times, trying to force his eyes to see the panel where it was clearly meant to be. Inside the computer screen, behind solid glass.
It remained in the air.
Terry didn’t want to reach forward and grab it, just in case his hallucinations had progressed much further than he had thought without his notice. Maybe the blue light from the screen was exacerbating it? He hadn’t faced blue light in a long while and there was something harmful about it, wasn’t there?
He closed the laptop and went to sleep, breathing a sigh of relief as the panel winked out some time later. It was just a flash. An imprint. Burnt into his eyes from the too-bright screen. He needed to take a nap, and it would all become better.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Sleep came easy and stressless, a comforting haven when every part of this new reality made him want to curl up and die. Hours they spent curled up in the sheets, roused only by a loud crashing sound coming from Derek’s room.
Terror gripped him when they first assumed that Derek had broken out of his cell, but then when the crash was followed by numerous softer thumps and screaming, he caught onto the fact that this wasn’t Derek. It was another human being, gotten in through the little opening made for the zombie to go out on his little fetching tests. Just like the one that had resulted in the finding of the laptop early that day.
The boy was… surprisingly cute. He had big, wide eyes and a sharp face and bright red bangles that clanked when he moved and Terry was immediately entranced by them. Maybe it was for the best that words no longer came easy, because he would have said something really stupid if that had been the case.
That minor consolation was instantly dashed as the boy revealed that he could read sign language. Or rather, some sort of magic translator could read it for him. In the same way that whatever language Asadullah was speaking was being turned into English for Terry.
Magic was real now. That was… more shocking than it should have been.
From there, it just kept building up and up. Other dimensions, a Game, more Apocalypses, stats and power levels and cards and a hundred other things that he couldn’t wrap his mind around.
What they did understand was that he was integral to stopping the end of the world. In ZombieWorld. And also some people called the Apocalypse Harbingers wanted him dead and he needed to pack his stuff and leave the one stable place he had had in his entire life.
No way was he letting these- these interlopers take everything good that he had scrounged up away from him. Sure, he had lucked into it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve it. After all the bullshit life had served in front of him, he had thought he was at least going to be allowed to die a relatively comfortable and painless death.
But he didn’t deserve that either, it turns out.
So, he was sulking in the back storage rooms, far away from all the activity outside from the invaders.
The door creaked open, and he froze up as the shadow of the person entering spread through the light spilling in from the door. He couldn’t recognize these new people by outline alone, but those pointy nubs were very distinctive. Could only be Asadullah.
And if it was Asadullah, he was probably here to insert himself in their business and convince them that nothing was wrong with the way things were playing out. But, he didn’t seem to be focusing on him at all, which didn’t make sense. Why would he be retreating to such a quiet place when he had all his friends outside?
Terry holed himself up behind the rack of shelves, watching in curiosity as Asadullah laid out one of the smaller carpets from the carpeting pile on the floor and stood over it.
Bow at the waist. Stand up. Down to the knees. Bow to the floor. A couple repetitions of those actions, with a couple pauses thrown into the mix, until finally he looked to the right, then the left, and stood hurriedly up. Must have seen Terry by now. Or smelled him or something with his ultra keen cat senses.
“Hey.” He whispered, “What was that?”
Asadullah flinched backwards, startled into a full-chested hiss as he turned around to look in his direction.
“MOTHER OF FUC- oh hey, Terry.” He waved, a bashful look taking over him, “Sorry. You snuck up on me.”
“Thought that was impossible.” They replied, tracing spirals into the dirt on the shelf he was sitting behind, “Didn’t realize…”
“I just let my guard down a little when I’m praying.” Asadullah explained, as if that was the easiest thing in the world, “No worries, bro.”
“Does it help?” Terry asked. It was hard to judge from the angle and the low lighting, but he seemed to be doing better. More loose and relaxed and less frantic.
“You realize this is a very weird conversation to be having on the other side of a wall of shelves in near total darkness?”
Terry fidgeted, highly aware of how odd this whole situation was coming across, “You don’t have to answer.” He replied, “I just- I just figured…”
“No, no, hey, let me finish.” Asadullah interrupted, and Terry was certain he would have whacked Terry with his tail if they were sitting across from one another, “It does help me. Not really for everyone, I suppose? But I’ve been missing a lot of prayers because of the whole ‘of the worlds’ thing and the lack of azaans and I just… this was a return to form for me. So, yeah, it makes me feel better.”
“That’s nice.” Terry hummed, trying to imagine it. He never really was a religious person, even when he’d gone through the throes of self-discovery in the first stretch of his isolationism. He tried to imagine it, but nothing was really coming from it. No hint of the overwhelming support and calm that Asadullah seemed to be feeling from the action.
“I don’t get it.” He admitted.
“Told you it’s not for everyone.” Asadullah laughed, the light of his words glinting off his eyes and teeth and bangles, “But… sometimes when I want to be alone, I don’t want to be completely alone, you know? Helps me sort out my thoughts.”
“And what if the world around you is utterly fucked?” He couldn’t help but point out, “How can you just keep… believing when they’ve done nothing to stop it?”
“Because the world isn’t over yet.” Asadullah replied plainly, “We’re here. I was chosen from the random masses to help them, and I don’t believe it was an accident.”
“…Touché.” They relented. If that’s what it took to keep him getting out of bed every morning, then whatever. It was scary to believe in something like that, when for so long he’d only had his own hands, holding onto whatever scraps of life he could find.
“I’m not doing a good job of explaining this, am I?” Asadullah laughed, tinged with self-consciousness.
“Not exactly.” Terry replied, feeling his heart speed up as he posed a different question, “Is it, like, an issue to you, if I’m not… religious? Like, what we’ve got going on won’t fade?”
“Why would it? All of the people I hang out with aren’t religious, so it’s not like you’re an outlier.”
Terry fought down a frustrated groan. Right, of course, they weren’t an outlier to Asadullah’s group of friends. Obviously.
“Okay, very vague theological explanation aside, are you feeling okay?” Asadullah was the first to address the elephant in the room, “Are you ready to… you know…”
Leave the place he had spent more time in than he had ever done in any other place?
“No.” He replied, sharp and bordering on hysterical, “No, I am not ready.”
“You don’t have much of a choice.” Asadullah warned him, “There isn’t any time.”
“That’s just what they think.” He argued, hollow even to his own ears, “They don’t know for sure.”
Asadullah growled, animalistic and impatient, “You can’t play with the odds like that.” His anger quickly deflated though, replaced with something softer, “I just… I just worry.”
“Thanks. But if that’s how you’re going to show it, then I don’t want your worry.” The words were forcefully squeezed out from his throat, which was quickly closing up. He didn’t deal well with confrontation.
“No, no, let me work with you.” He promised, “I know just what to do.”
“What?” Terry asked, poking his head out from under the shelves.
“You said you need more time with this place, right?” Asadullah replied, smiling as he reached forward to grab Terry by the hand, “Then I’ll make you more time. Just hold still.”
“Wait- what?” They spluttered, even as the catboy darted away, pulling Terry along with him in his whirlwind excitement.
[Player Log End!]