Close Encounters

Chapter 1: Close Encounters

A/N: This story might not be suited for the faint hearted. I hope some of you still enjoy it even though I haven't posted all of it.

2074: It’s the ninth month of the year.

Everything is ruins and rocky mountains. I haven’t heard a bird - I don’t know; but I can just imagine seeing one flying over my head, flying against the green, gloppy sky. Rocks crack under my feet, that might once have been something beautiful and meaningful; but there is nothing to really see in this featureless place, and whatever monuments that are left are now black and withering away. I hold my gun tighter than usual. The oaken grip, cold in my hand, is a comfort.

 

Just about the only comfort I have left.

 

I carefully begin crawling toward the hill top. I presume the other side won’t show me anything different from what I always see. I’ll just have to crawl a little bit more and my assumption will soon be proved right or wrong. I peer over the hilltop and with my eyes I behold the ruined city named or more known as the Underslums. The city looks like something out of a horror film, dark and dirty with old rusty abandoned cars.

 

I get a strange feeling in my gut that sent a shiver down my spine; I can’t decide what to think of this place. It doesn’t look safe, but then again I have barely any food or water left so I don’t have much of a choice. I have to go down there. I’ll have to try my best not to be seen.

 

I begin sliding down the hill, trying to keep calm by focusing my breathing to be slow and composed. I’m sweating already, it’s pouring down my forehead and I can feel the drips running past my cheek. When I finally reach the bottom of the hill I desperately search for a place to hide. After a quick scope around I spot a rusty old school bus " that will do. I sit down by the worn out front tire and fumble in my backpack for a bottle of water. While I’m sipping on the last droplets, I peek out from the edge of the bus. The place is as silent as a graveyard, nothing but the wind howling past. I see a run-down gas station located not too far away. It looks plundered, every window is broken and there’s a big hole in the front wall, almost as if a wrecking ball had come crashing through.

 

I grab my gun, holding the comforting oaken handle. The gas station is my only good chance something for my primary needs. I’m aware of the many threats around so I cautiously begin moving away from the bus. If I hear the slightest suspicious sound I’ll be gone, who knows what kind of people there might be living here.

 

I stride forward in a rapid speed until I reach a car that I use as cover. I hear a humming sound " it sounds like flies buzzing. I look over to my left and gaze upon a corpse, not a human corpse but a dog lying right beside in a pool of its own old clotted blood. Its skin crawls with ravenous decomposers that are gradually turning its rancid flesh into dirt. I feel how the stinging sweet odor of death enters up my nostrils, nothing I haven’t felt before. I get up from my crouching position and pace forward the last few meters.

 

I approach one of the pumps and grab a hold of the hose. They’re all dry empty, the last drops stolen by previous by passers. I turn around and gaze at the store entrance; the door is missing and has been thrown aside. I gather courage before entering the shady store, a few deep breathes and I’m ready to go. In the exact moment as I set my foot inside, I glance toward the former cash registry. The entire wall and floor is blood splattered with bits of flesh and intestines dried onto it.

 

From what I can tell, the murder weapon was possibly a 12-gauge shotgun, not very difficult to conclude judging by the empty shells lying on the marble floor. There is no body to be found, but I notice something looking rather organic lying in the blood. I take a closer look and distinguish a cut off thumb. It makes me wonder what this person did to deserve this. The ones responsible must really have wanted something badly since they decided to afflict so much pain upon their victim.

 

I look away from the gross human remains and try not to think about the merciless act that left them there.

 

Instead I start checking the dusty store shelves; they’re all since long covered in concrete dust probably because of the big hole in the front wall. I search accurately in one of the shelves and suddenly, in front of my eyes lay an unopened coke bottle. I feel how my mood changes into the better right away; the thought of drinking something which isn’t water is indescribable. It’s covered in dust so I make sure that it’s proper dirt free before happily placing the bottle in my worn out shoulder bag.

 

I turn around and walk back to open the drawer under where the cash register used to be. Inside I find a mysterious small note, it had been folded. I take it and start making my way to one of the nearby walls where I sit myself down and lean back. I unfold the note and start to read. The title reads, » A Mysterious Friend «.

 

―

November 21, 2072

Dear Mr. Stranger

 

If you have found this note in my old drawer, well, let’s say that I am satisfied and happy that you did my faceless friend.

 

It’s cold here and my fingers and feet are constantly stiff as I write. Four years has passed since the day of devastation. I have survived this long but my days are now numbered. I don’t know why I choose to throw all my guilt on you, my friend.

 

I have come to the realization that the situation isn’t getting any better only worse. I have waited and prayed but I no longer feel hope within and it’s killing my sleep every single night. In my restless sleep I have nightmares but this life isn’t really worth living when you awake from one hell and exceed into another.

 

Since man first came into this world he has soaked it with the blood of countless lives but never like this time. The world changed into a forever unchanging world. A place we’re love is a weakness and survival of the fittest is a fact rather than old nonsense but for the ones who survive reality are in those words. The weak will die out and the strong will survive.

 

The terror campaign started during the day there wasn’t any warnings not even an emergency television broadcast. All the major cities were incinerated and the people vaporized at their work, in their sleep, unknowing.

 

Crowds began to invade the streets. Rumors spread, the enemy had apparently deployed execution squads to exterminate the last of us but that wasn’t true. The true killer had been approaching from the skies. Ever since the bombs impacted, it had been waiting to strike without mercy, and when it did not many expected it.

 

It started as innocent drizzling rain but moments later a monsoon of highly poisonous radioactive rain began pouring down from the gloomy discolored sky. It happened so fast that most people didn’t even react. Most of them panicked instead of taking shelter.

 

As days passed I witnessed day by day how the heavenly blue sky and its white rolling clouds turning into a jade green mist, gradually the surface of the planet. A month passed, we didn’t eat very much our store had already been plundered and nothing was coming in. We couldn’t even drink water from the tap anymore.

 

A second month passed. Things got worse and it was my youngest daughters seventh birthday. I couldn’t provide her with anything so I didn’t tell her she was turning seven. We had more important things to worry about. Like perhaps the fact that there wasn’t a tiny piece of bread left and our bottled water was running low.

 

It only took two months of darkness and devastation and together with nothing coming in or going out from the town it didn’t take long for the inhuman behavior to begin. I had forgotten that the stubbornness of humans knows no boundaries. We do anything to survive even at the cost of our humanity.

 

I’m sorry for wasting your time stranger but you should know. This town isn’t very safe anymore you should leave now. I don’t mean to scare you.

 

Yours truly,

Mark Spencer

 

―

 

I can’t avoid thinking of the past; it’s been to long since I last did.

 

I remember a world once green and prospering frequently giving birth and repeating its sole given task. And animals used to live here but because of the acts of mankind, they are now too few to mention. We lived here and we gave nothing back, and sucked the life out of her slowly. And so we took away something far more precious than our machines, skyscrapers and beautiful monuments which we created to manifest our greatness.

 

A self-regarding race in other words, we gave her nothing but took from her… everything. Not much is left of what we built in our prime time. We attempted to stop diseases and viruses from killing us but we never stopped to think of ourselves as parasites. Our own capacity for destruction overtook ourselves.

 

We regarded ourselves as an intellectual life form but our facades faded and our leader’s selfishness and sickening grins revealed. That was the past and it’s rather evident today looking out from one of these windows. The polluted sky look like images reminiscent of the awestruck impressions on the survivors faces then.

 

It didn’t use to be like this. I remember being young and things we're different. I don't remember anything specific, but I remember feeling " I remember feeling happy and that I used to smile. One day (not that I remember when) everything changed. That day I remember waking up on the floor, hearing screams but I don't know whose it was.

 

There was a bright outside the window that was just starting to dim. I got up off the floor and stepped over to the window. The light still continuing to dim as I pushed the blind aside, it was a blob of white light climbing out of the ground, it soon took shape. I still have these images burned into my memories. The white blob-like cloud that was lifting upward into the sky and then it took a general outline of a mushroom.

 

I just kept looking at the dimming white blob in the distance, frozen to my place. I didn’t know what it was, or what was going on, but I knew that something was very out of the ordinary. I just kept on watching I didn’t have much of a choice, my body wouldn’t let me move.

 

I fold the note and try to push my emotions aside by saying to myself, “This is no place to stand around and reflect.” After folding the note I put it into one of my pockets, could be nice to have.  I then carry on strolling around in the store, stopping by a broken window. I peer out and set my eyes on a yellow vandalized street sign. It has scribbling but I manage to distinguish the words written on it; “DANGER. Go Slow Children At Play.”

 

The mere sight of the sign makes me associate back in time; I feel how lucent memories reappear in my repressed mind.

 

The sun is now shining, and birds are tweeting in the distance--everything is heavenly and peaceful again. I hear the pure and innocent happy laughter of children; it gives me a sense of warmth and safety. I see the black drabbled clouds turn into a crystal clear blue sky with white rolling clouds. I behold the luminous rays of light as they shine upon dark places and revive all the life that had died… I’m abruptly awakened--only to realize that I've just been staring into the dwindled down rock covered mounds of the past.

 

I can’t figure out what just happened I can’t either help but to feel absent. I turn away from the window and start walking toward the exit, while at the same time shaking my head a few times. Suddenly, out of the blue, I hear a loud horrific female shriek from outside. Before I can grasp what’s going on, I’ve already thrown myself instinctively on the floor. Impulsively I begin crawling to one of the broken windows, I then cautiously peek out to see what’s happening outside. It’s a lonely woman sitting on the ground, surrounded by three men, pleading for her life.

 

They begin kicking and beating her, like she’s just an animal to them, landing punches in the back of her head, laughing and spitting on her at the same time. They violently assault her over and over again, showing no signs of ever wanting to stop. I watch as one of the men pulls out a knife from his back pocket at the same time as one of the others takes a firm grip around her skinny, emaciated wrists. The man who’s holding the blade then cuts off her ragged clothes and overpowers her. I feel disgusted, I have become well aware of what’s about to happen next.

 

The woman doesn’t stand a chance against them as they assist each other in holding her down and spreading her exhausted legs. The three men then force themselves upon her in a sadistic way, one by one, like blood thirsty beasts on a submissive prey. The poor woman tries to kick them off and screams from the bottom of her belly, but it’s no use. The men only glance at each other and laugh as they continue raping her violently for several minutes.

 

When all of them have gotten their fair share of the female, they start to kick and stomp on her already battered and bruised body until she stops moving. I feel agonized as her blood starts leaking out on the asphalt, slowly forming into a ruby-colored pool. I listen as the woman silently begins to cry and mumble inaudible prayers to her God. “It’s useless” one of them screamed, sounding patronizing. Just seconds later another one of them said; “We should eat her!” and laughed distinctly.

 

The man that earlier had brought up the knife reaches into his jacket and brings out a gun, hence handing the piece to one of his henchmen. Two of the men then hastily turns around and walks toward a nearby alley.

 

One man is left alone with the battered women lying by his feet. I’m completely powerless; the woman is going to die of blood loss anyhow. The man raises his gun and tugs the slide back to check the chamber. It’s loaded. He tugs the slide a second time, now ready to fire.

 

He aims the gun at her head; “Give Jesus my best regards!” he said and let out a wheezy laugh. The woman’s awareness engulfs her and she starts to rattle and squeal when she realizes death is only a trigger push away.

 

The man squints with his eyes and the muzzle flashes only for a split second as he fires a shot in the back of her head. He didn’t even hesitate for a second. “You don’t scream much now, do you?” he bawls at her dead corpse and gives it a sick grin before holstering the gun in his belt.

Reviews

[cherrie-currie]

I like how descriptive you are, as I read, the images I could paint in my minds eye came easily. Do take note of incorrect grammar.

Cheers,
shin

[MassThinker]

Thanks buddy. Thanks for reading! :) I appreciate it.