Darrel's Story:
The plague took everything from me. I might have been just an average man, trying to earn an honest living, but it took my parents, my wife, and my kids. After losing them I too came down with the plague. A well meaning neighbor called an ambulance and I was hauled off to the hospital. I didn’t care, though. I had lost everyone I loved and the only way I would see them again was in heaven, so I didn’t fear death.
Then I woke up on a stretcher in the hallway of hospital, just outside the emergency room. Some paramedic was somehow going around touching people and they were getting better. Some of the other patients were calling it a miracle, but I doubted that. Why would God spare my life but not the lives of my wife or kids? Most likely he was secretly testing a drug on us.
When I was discharged I spent a few days grieving before going out. I quickly found out that, while the plague killed around ninety percent of people that got it, it made those that survived it immune to all other disease and gave them perfect health. Great, not only did I somehow survive when they died, but now I would enjoy perfect health while they died suffering. It even cured my diabetes.
After a few days I tried to return to work to get my mind off of losing them and everything else that happened. The garage was closed, however. Apparently the owner had died as well, so it was shut down until his surviving son figured out what to do with it. With nothing left to do, I went back to town. I buried myself in booze, burning through what little money was left in my bank account until one day the power cut out. I checked the breaker, but it hadn’t tripped. A few hours later the power came back on, but the TV was burned out, as was my TV and cellphone.
I cursed. I didn’t have a job any more so there was no way I could replace one of them right now, much less all three. I left and went to a friend’s place to try and see what happened. Apparently most electronic devices that were on at that moment had burned out, including the computers in cars. Everyone was walking or riding bikes.
A few days later, all of the food in the house had run out. I would walk down to the store and buy some, but with the electronics all burned out people were only accepting cash, and all the prices were inflated. I never carried cash, so I couldn’t buy anything.
One of my neighbors had mentioned that the Catholic Church down the street was running a soup kitchen. They still, somehow, had power and water. God and I weren’t exactly on the best of terms at the moment, with him taking my wife and kids, not to mention billions of other people’s families, but maybe his servant was trying to make it up to us.
I started going down there every day, twice a day. With no cash it was the only way for me to get food. Then one day my friend told me about salvaging. Apparently, with all of the people dying, as long as no one pressed a claim to something, the cops wouldn’t arrest you for stealing it. I joined him and some of his other friends in riding around finding what other people wanted, or what we knew they would pay for. Mostly it was food, but the Father at the kitchen did ask for an industrial dough mixer one day, and others asked for other specific things, so we earned enough that we could eat and even enjoy things a bit without having to go to the kitchen.
One day, I stopped by too see if anyone wanted to request that we salvage anything special. There on the giant projectors they set up for movie night I saw the father and some other guy talking about some sort of “system”. It sounded like madness, and I could barely understand it. I was never into sci-fi, which is what it sounded like to me, but somehow it explained so much, especially when someone else that was eating there explained it to me.
A week later my buddies and I stood in line to get this “System” unlocked in us. Then I saw that the guy that was doing the “unlocking” was the same paramedic that had stopped the plague from killing me.
“So you used this System to save my life?” I asked him.
“I assume you were one of the people that were brought to the ER? Yeah, that would be me.”
I sighed. “Not sure if I should thank you or punch you. I guess I’ll settle on paying you.” I handed him the ten dollars and he used some sort of power on me. A few days later someone in my head started talking to me. I figured it was like that robot voice that helped that super hero in power armor in that popular movie. My son loved that movie franchise, so I had seen the movie at least four times. Though I wouldn’t be getting power armor. It asked how I wanted to interact with the System, and in honor of my son I chose to be a Super Hero.
The message at the kitchen had mentioned a settlement outside of town that the weird guy in the video was running. A thousand people had already been accepted by them, and more were going down there to join up every day. We figured it would be a great place to sell our stuff to to earn some cash, so we started salvaging anything that we thought might be worth something from the buildings in the area. The distribution center beside the kitchen had this weird alien device that paid a decent amount for electronic devices, as it would strip them for their materials, so we started stripping electronics from everything and selling them to an identical “Market Terminal” in the settlement.
Things went well for us over the next few weeks. There was a gas station right beside the settlement where we could refill the truck, and plenty to salvage in the area. Over time the place expanded and fixed up the old shopping center, even bringing in more alien devices to set up businesses, but we had no reason to join.
Then one day they expanded into some office buildings across the road. I realized that meant that they had expanded into some of the other buildings over there as well. We drove by the office building to try and see how they were doing, and saw that they had upgraded the place to have bedrooms in some of the offices, and were building more rooms in the middle of the floor where the cubicles used to be. They let us look around the construction site, and the rooms were pretty nice. Kind of like dorm rooms.
With us working in the area, and proper housing now being a thing, some of the team were considering moving into the settlement. The settlement didn’t have enough housing yet, though, so they would wait until we could at least be guaranteed a dorm room. I wasn’t sure about leaving though. Abandoning the house where I had lived with my family only a month or two after they died seemed like a betrayal.
One day our work took us to one the parking garages near the settlement. I checked to make sure it was out of their territory, just to make sure. The assistant AI in my head showed me their border, which sat about twenty meters from the edge of the parking garage. It was close, but they couldn’t exactly claim to have a claim to something that wasn’t in their territory, now could they?
We started stripping some of the electric cars when we heard someone talking. Jeffery continued to try and drop the battery pack out the bottom of the car, as Lithium had a good resell value to the Market, and I went to see what the noise was.
A tow truck full of people from the settlement pulled up and four people jumped out. “Hey, what are you doing?” they asked Jeffery.
“Dropping the batteries out.” he responded. “You’re free to grab any more of the vehicles in the area.”
“We don’t want another vehicle. We want this one. We already claimed it. Didn’t you see the sign?”
“What sign?” Jeffery asked.
The man went over to the windshield, but the sign was no longer there. He checked inside the vehicle, but it wasn’t inside the car either. The four checked around the area and a minute later found it on the ground underneath a truck thirty feet away. “There it is.” the man said, picking it up and showing it to us. “I put it on the window last night. Just because you pulled it off doesn’t mean you can steal our claim.”
“We didn’t pull anything off.” I said. “There wasn’t a sign on it when we got here. It was pretty windy last night. Maybe the sign got blown off? You did leave it under a wiper blade, after all.”
“Bullshit.” the man responded. “You pulled it off to steal our claim.”
“I didn’t steal anything.” said Jeffery. “Now fuck off and find another car.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Why you little...” the man came at Jeffery, who was half under a car and therefore couldn’t defend himself, so I had to act quickly. I pulled out the knife I had strapped to my side, as I hadn’t bought a gun yet, and stabbed him.
The man screamed and stepped backwards, and his friends pulled out their guns. “Hey, that was self defense.” I said, “He was going to attack my friend. He’ll heal fast enough. Now move along.” I motioned with my knife to try and get them to go and stepped forward. That’s when I heard a gunshot. A second later I felt a pain in my stomach and felt my clothes getting wet. Looks like I was going to get to meet my wife after all. I fell face first and just laid there as the cold of the concrete and blood loss overcame me.
I woke up with several construction workers looking at me. I had been propped against the side of the car Jeffery was working on. “Hey, man, you ok?” I looked down and the bleeding had stopped. I felt something hard near the surface of my skin and when I pushed on the area a bullet fell out.
“Yeah, looks like. Glad I took that toughness power.” Every superhero seemed to have one, so if I wanted to be someone my son would have liked reading about, I needed it too.
“Yeah, the bullet only went in a few centimeters. Nicked a vein, though, so you lost a lot of blood.” I noticed that my clothes were covered in blood.
I laid there for another thirty minutes, trying to regain my strength, when another man from the construction sight showed up. He came over and looked at me. “Hi, My name is Simon. I’m the newly appointed town sheriff for Anarchist’s Redoubt. Can you tell me what happened here?”
Marcus’s Story:
I got off the bus at the military base where I would be staying for the next two days. One weekend a month, one week a year. That was the life of the National Guard. I’d probably be doing some sort of supplementary training. Maybe testing to make sure I wasn’t getting rusty.
I headed towards the barracks and put my stuff in my locker, then headed to my assigned CO. Sure enough, he had me start with a physical assessment. By the end of the tests I was exhausted. That shouldn’t have taken so much out of me. “Something wrong soldier?” he asked.
“Not sure, sir. That took way more out of me than I thought.” I gasped for air with each breath. “I know I’m not out of shape that much.”
The doctor came over. “He did have an elevated temperature when he showed up, but only point two degrees. Let me check something.” He hooked me up to some sort of device. “Heart rate one thirty. Temperature 99.7. Something is going on with him, I just don’t know what.”
“In that case, I’ll let you keep him for further testing.” the man said, and with a nod to the doctor left.
The doctor woman ordered me over to a bed where I laid down. She hooked me up to an IV drip and had me lay there as she ran more tests. Slowly, over the course of an hour, my heart rate went down to ninety BPM, but the temperature kept climbing. I also started getting a headache while simultaneously being tired. Strange, usually headaches kept me from sleeping. I tried to stay awake, but within thirty minutes I could no longer keep my eyes open.
My dreams were all of impossible things. I saw sounds and felt colors, among other things that I can’t even describe. Synesthesia, I think it’s called. When I woke, the doctor was no where to be seen. I called out and a person in a hazmat suit came over. “You’re awake?” she asked. “But you flatlined half an hour ago. We just hadn’t gotten around to moving you out of here yet.” They were surprised, but it didn’t seem that losing a patient was the cause. I guess people miraculously coming back was more disturbing. “You aren’t a zombie are you? Quickly, say the alphabet backwards.”
“The Alphabet backwards?” I asked, still a bit confused.
“Ok, wise guy. Not what I meant, but you did prove you are alive and at least half thinking.” She called to another doctor and he also came over in a hazmat suit.
“Unbelievable.” the doctor said. “You realize you were dead? We couldn’t even resuscitate you, but somehow you’re back.” Now, that was the reaction I was expecting to that news.
“So, doctor. Doctors. Can I get up?”
“If you’re feeling strong enough.” the woman said. “We always need more beds.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” The worst situation then came to mind. “Were we attacked?”
“No, not an attack. Though I suppose this might be a biological weapon. No, you and everyone else in the base have come down with some sort of disease with a ninety percent casualty rate. I came from outside, and have been wearing this suit or in clean rooms for the last three days just to make sure I don’t catch whatever it is.”
“Ninety percent? But that means...”
“That the vast majority of you have died? Yeah. The only good thing to come of this seems to be that anyone who survives the disease is immune to every other disease and in amazing health. I can’t say who due to HIPPA, but let’s just say that one of the base personnel had cancer, and when they survived the outbreak their cancer was gone.”
“I’m immune to disease?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah, an unfortunately, that means that they are sending you out on assignment. This outbreak isn’t just happening on this base. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s happening all across the world. Everyone on this base that survived the plague is being sent into the city to help with disaster relief. We’ll be sending what supplies we can with your group. You’ll mostly be helping with corpse disposal. While you might be immune to the diseases a city worth of corpses can spread, many of the survivor’s aren’t.”
“So I take it this is no longer a ‘one weekend a month’ thing?”
“The president declared a state of emergency before he was air lifted to a private hospital with the plague. Do you really have to ask?”
“I guess not.” I went to my room and grabbed my stuff, then joined the next convoy headed into the city.
I was sent to one of the city parks where someone had used excavators to dig a massive pit which was being filled with bodies. Every few minutes, someone would spray the bodies down with diesel fuel from a pump. Seemed like overkill to burn them, but I guess it would make space for more. Just as I got to the CO in charge of the sight I saw an arm force its way out from under some of the other bodies. Soon more than a half dozen bodies were trying to claw their way out of the corpse pile. One of the men on the side of the pit didn’t seem phased by that, and simply pulled out his side arm and fired two rounds into each of them, usually hitting the head. Several other people joined in and the pit became a shooting gallery. When the dead collapsed, he lit a match and threw it into the pit. Black smoke rose from the pit and I heard screams coming from the flames. Apparently even getting shot in the head wasn’t enough to stop them.
“Sorry about that.” said the officer, loading a new magazine into his pistol and reholstering it. “That happens from time to time. Hence, why we burn them.”
I tried to say something, but found that I couldn’t. I tried to speak again and managed to force something out. “Zombies?”
“Yep. Wasn’t expecting that, were you?”
“Well, I...The doctor asked me if I was one when I woke up, since I flatlined, but I thought it was a joke.”
The man shrugged. “Unfortunately not.” He motioned to a truck that was backing in. “So, care to help unload?”
I stayed there for several weeks, every day getting up, unloading corpses, and burning them. Occasionally I would shoot a zombie as it tried to escape the pit. Then one day all of the power cut out. We had a generator on sight, so after hooking it up we turned it on. Most of the lights worked, but the TV we were using to run a constant news screen was fried, and only a few of the radios worked, though there was nothing on any channel. Even the emergency channel was dead.
“What do you think, sir? EMP?”
“Maybe. Don’t know. But I do know we still have bodies to burn.”
I nodded and got back to work. Thankfully the electric pump on the diesel tank still worked.
A week later we were no longer getting bodies, so we loaded up in the trucks to head back. Unfortunately, the on site technician had only managed to get one old deuce and a half working, since it didn’t have a computer, so we piled into the back and returned to base.
When we arrived, however, we found the place almost deserted. We found the highest ranking officer there, and they sent us home. Most methods of communication were gone, but the few they did have said that the emergency was over, and humanity had lost.
I didn’t have anything to do. I hitched a ride back to the city, but when I got home I found that few of the people I knew were still alive. My landlord, my roommate, the pothead down the road, all gone. I even went to visit a few old girlfriends, but they were all gone as well.
With nothing left to do, I started wondering through the various empty houses, gathering everything I thought might be useful. It was well known that what few police were left wouldn’t bother you as long as you didn’t hurt anyone or steal something someone still had claim to. So I got all of the food and drinks that my neighbors had and brought it back to my place. I even rescued a few special plants from the basement of my pothead neighbor. If the cops weren’t going to prosecute drug crimes any more, I was going to trade it for things I needed.
I survived for over a month that way. Then one day, as I passed a Catholic Church on my way to an old girlfriend’s place where I knew some good booze was kept, I saw that they were running a soup kitchen. Not only that, but they had power, and two projectors showing movies. I didn’t need the food, as I had plenty, but it had been so long since I had seen a TV show or movie that I went inside. They were showing an old western and, while it wasn’t my favorite type of show, it was something fun to do.
I kept going, even swinging by at nights any time they had a movie night and I thought I might like the movie. While I never ate anything, when they started collecting donations I started throwing cash or jewelry I had ‘found’ in the basket. Apparently, as someone told me one movie night, there was a terminal in the building next door that would buy things from us and pay us in some sort of special currency. While the currency couldn’t be converted back into dollars, it could be used to buy things from the terminal if you had enough, though most people were just pooling their money for things like bulk survival supplies.
I started selling things to the terminal as well. I didn’t think the seventeen ‘zerka’ I had accumulated would ever do anything, but it was something to do to pass the time, like trying to beat another person’s high score at the arcade.
Then one day the movie we were watching had a commercial break. The Father that ran this place and some other guy that I had seen volunteering in the kitchen were telling us about some sort of System and nanites associated with it. It sounded crazy, but I doubted the Father would lie to us. He just wasn’t the type. So when the man asked for volunteers to go to his settlement, I joined up. If there was some sort of alien system giving people super powers, I wanted to learn as much about it as I could.
I joined a construction team that was putting in a septic system almost immediately, but when a cold snap came through and covered everything in snow, I was able to switch back to my true calling, pulling salvage from nearby buildings. I also joined this System the mayor was talking about as soon as he offered. And that was what I did for several weeks. Then one day we pushed the border out and the mayor started clearing all of the salvage so that the construction crews could have a place to work.
I took my crew to the edge of the settlement’s area, just outside of it where the mayor couldn’t just grab everything and found a car park that was just outside the field. This was good. The mayor had scrapped a lot of cars a week ago after some aliens that looked more like elves came for a visit, so I knew they were worth close to a thousand zerka each, especially the electric ones.
We took a stack of copy paper we got from the mayor’s office salvage and some markers and made a “claimed by salvage crew 2” fliers. We then went around to every electric and hybrid car in the park, placing them under the windshield wipers.
One of the guys on the team knew where an old tow truck was, so we went over and fixed it up. It took us two days to find the right parts at the car parts places nearby, but eventually we got it cranked and started hauling in all of the vehicles.
After a few days, though, we sat out and grabbed one of them, and hauled it back. When we returned, however, there was someone under one of our claims trying to take the battery.
We argued for a bit about whether it was our claim or not, and when I found our flier on the ground nearby, under a truck, I knew what had happened. They decided to steal our claim, and had pulled the flier off of the window to prove it. One of them tried to come up with some excuse about how the wind blew it off the window, and when I called bullshit and tried to pull his buddy out from under our car, he stabbed me.
He tried going for my buddies as well, but they had guns and one of them was forced to shoot him. Some of the construction crew guys came over to break up the fight, and they administered first aid to the two of us. Then, an hour later, some guy from one of the construction crews came by, claiming to be the sheriff and asking what happened.