Check out Part 1.2, HERE.

Check out the I Read Saga page, HERE.

A clueless computer-geek of an avid clepto-reading hacker guy accidentaly winds up in the middle of Z day. Follow him through the first few days of hell on earth. This is a work in progress, as I'm sure you'll notice. Part Two coming soon. AND A NOTE TO THOSE CONCERNED: I'm re-writing this, mainly with the goal of making the conversations more believable. They aren't very, are they? "The fumes are liable to catch on fire." "Oh, crap." BOO HISS!




I read. I’m Jack Angler, and I love to read. I always have, and I always will. I have read on everything you can think of, from metaphysics to fondue recipes. From hacking to body language. I also remember most of what I read. I know how to conquer ancient Rome, should the need arise. I have also read on every form of survival you can think of. From post-hurricane to surviving an alien invasion. From a nuclear apocalypse to a mutant chimpanzee attack. Everything. I can make an EMP gun, if given the necessary tools. But enough about my skills, I have a story to tell.
It started in a town about 254 kilometers from where I live. A “cult killing” the media dubbed it.
There was a total of five bodies, all but one partially eaten. Every one died from gunshots to the head, with a rather dull axe sticking out of one’s chest. The one which hadn’t been eaten appeared to have committed suicide, due to the facts that she had her bullet wound entering through the temple, and was holding the gun.
The police stated that they appeared to have been in a “hard core brawl” during the incident. All quite horrific. So much so, in fact, that the media appeared to have been banned from the scene. There was one witness, the one who called it in, but the police would not allow him to speak to the press. He had been bitten by one of the “cult maniacs”. They took him to a hospital, about 50 kilometers from my residence, to be inspected.
The whole thing was fairly suspicious to me. For example, this entire assessment was made within six hours of the incident’s occurrence. They interviewed no one. Half the police present were sharp-shooters; I could recognize the uniform. There were more officers there than at the station that day. They also refused to deputize civilians. And, one last thing, they had a very wide perimeter set around the scene. Odd.
There were conflicting press reports, none of which involved this assessment. Not that I told you I read on hacking.
Later that day, the witness went into a deep coma. Meanwhile, about 300 kilometers from where I live, a teenaged girl at a summer camp went missing.
She snuck out of her cabin in the middle of the night, against the advice of her friends, and had not been seen since. It was associated, although not officially, to the cult; another killing. A search party of all the campers was organized and sent out that same day. The witness remained in a coma.
No new news came through that day, so I though it in my best interest to sleep.
The following day, I awoke and turned on my computer, which took about a half hour to turn on, in no small part do to the fact that it was a super-computer, and took a shower. I went to make breakfast afterwards, and, because I lived in a high apartment, noticed smoke coming from the direction of the camp’s forest. I calmly ate my breakfast, and went to the computer.
The witness had expired in the night, and had been moved to the morgue of the hospital, without an autopsy. Eight of the members of the search party had gone missing; five boys and three girls. The screams of one of the girls had been heard. Two of the boys were younger than ten years of age. I was starting to get worried. These cultists truly were maniacs. I resolved to pay a visit the knife store down the block later, Ralph’s Knife Joint, to take a look at some personal protection. The camp was shut down, and some sociopathic co-counselor went crazy with a Molotov cocktail, hence the smoke. I saved all my accumulated information onto a file by the name of “Incidents” and headed over to said knife store.
The owner, an older man by the name of Ralph, asked whether I had heard about the “Incidents”. All I said towards the matter was “yes”, followed thereafter by an inquiry toward his selection of machetes. I bought a kukri, also known as a Ghurkha machete, and a “Pentagon Knife”, the standard issue U.S. Secret-Service knife.
I returned to my penthouse apartment, and checked up on the “Incidents”. Nothing new. Seeing as there were no new developments, I read up on the Earl of Sandwich.
After studying the Earl, I checked for more news, of which there was none, so I decided to sleep.
You may, by now, be wondering what I did for a living, with my penthouse, and all. Due to my rather deep pool of knowledge, I would write e-Book guides to things, which I sold over the internet. It paid quite well. All very simple, the whole process.
The following day, I followed the same routine as usual, but this time I noticed faint popping sounds. I was loosing the sense of security instilled by my new knives. I ate breakfast while reading on the computer.
Late in the evening, in the hospital morgue, a banging sound was heard ringing out from one of the body drawers. None of the staff was brave enough to check on it, so the police presence, which had apparently been placed there along with the witness, was alerted. They immediately evacuated the building, and called in a team of sharpshooters. The sharpshooters were posted all around the perimeter. Odd. A small team of grunt-equivalents (AKA SWAT), obviously expendable, was sent in to check out the morgue. One man was seen soon after, leaning out of a second story window. He stated that they found the drawer open and empty, with a recently dismembered body, wearing scrubs, sitting beside it, and that he was sent to report. The team split up to search the hospital. A scream sounded. Shots rang. Then nothing.
The man in the window went wide-eyed, spinning around. He vanished. The senior officer ordered the sharpshooters into a “ready” stance. More shouting, this time with a faint moan in the background. Injured personnel, obviously.
A large crowd of staff, patients, and passers-by was beginning to form. At this time in the document, I was reading in real time. There must have been a junior officer with a laptop on location, sending in the report to the barracks.
The senior officer ordered another team of “grunts” to clear out the crowd. He “could not guaranty their safety”. Shots, screams, shouts, and moans continued to radiate from the building. For whatever reason, the team in the hospital had no radios.
Meanwhile, in the area of the camp, the fire was raging out of control, despite the attempts of the fire-fighting teams. I turned on the TV, in hope of the fact that non-local news was covering all of this. All of the non-local channels had been cut off. I really started to feel. I turned back to the computer. The guy with the laptop was becoming more frantic, with misspellings becoming frequent, and the text appearing faster. Two explosions had gone off, with a fire raging in the basement. One of the “grunts”, trying to escape something, jumped out of a third-story window, dieing instantly upon impact. I held my machete for comfort, which did not come. There was one last shot, and everything went silent.
The laptop-bearing fellow waited for a few minuets, and then started listing possible casualties. It was only a team of five that was sent in. They called in every unit in the area for reinforcements.
I went to get a snack, when there was a fairly loud bang, and most of the lights literally exploded. Everything stopped working, some things smoking, including the fridge. I ran to check on the computer, which was still running. It had enough battery power to keep running for twenty minutes.
I had installed enough rechargeable batteries for 48 hours of emergency power in my apartment, which is usually the maximum time that would be taken to get things running again. I turned the computer off, and, because it was midday, sat and read a book. When the sun had set, I was surprised to find how tired I was, and so went to bed early, neglecting to turn on the batteries.
A high, shrill, bloodcurdling scream. That’s what woke me up in the morning. I, as you can guess, was quite startled. I fell out of bed, jumped up, grabbed my knives, and, seeing that nothing was in my room, ran to the nearest window. A roadblock was being erected under my building. I turned to look in the direction that the police were facing. There was a crowd, at least 200 people, slowly approaching. I turned back to the police. There were about at least thirty men, twenty-five of them sharpshooters.
There was a startling – or was I just jumpy – knock at my door. I held up my kukri, ready to strike, and went to answer it. It was a police sniper. His name was Will. There was another apartment building across the street, and the police were posting snipers in every apartment, to help maintain the roadblock. I invited him in, and pointed him in the direction of my panoramic window. He thanked me and asked if he could have some beer. I had none, so I gave him some warm diet rootbeer. He nodded his appreciation, and went back to the window.
“What’s going on here, anyway?” I asked, “Who the heck is this crowd?”
“Wish I knew. . .” he muttered.
“Do you know anything about what’s going on here, at all?”
“I only know that the roads out of town are all blocked off, all the buildings near the blocks reinforced, every officer armed with a rifle, and there is a very large crowd of very pale people coming this way, with very few men to hold them off”
“Oh. How many police are there in this town, anyway?” “Four-hundred-twenty-five. This is the main block. They could only spare a-hundred-twenty for this.”
“Eighty on the street, and twenty in each building?” “Nope. Forty on the street, and forty in each building. Now, could you please be quiet for just ten minutes? I have a lot of setting up to do.”
“Mmkay.” I muttered, in a rather dejected tone.
The crowd was only about three blocks away, now. Will took out his ammo boxes, and gave them to me, saying that I could give him ammo as the need arose. I accepted them, and set them down on the couch behind him, where I was sitting.
I reached the conclusion that the fragrance of rootbeer wafting from his glass was too much, so I went to acquire a glass for myself. My kitchen was the room closest to the next apartment, and I could here my neighbor, a young woman in her early twenties, chanting “oh-mih-gawd” in a high, frantic tone. I realized how little emotion I was feeling, and, as a result, started feeling panicky myself.
Just as I was exiting the kitchen, I heard a shot go off in the street. My neighbor screamed, and I spilt half my root-beer on the floor. I ran over to Will, who was just cocking his rifle. The crowd was about a block away. He fired. I jumped. I spilt the last of my root-beer. He cocked his rifle. He fired. I jumped. This pattern continued on for the rest of his magazine, at which point I gave him eight more rounds. He loaded. He cocked his rifle. He shot. I jumped a bit less then the previous magazine. I sat down on the couch, from which I could still see the street, and continued to give Will ammo. The crowd met the roadblock, and started pounding on it, wailing. Few people had been shot down by the roadblock. Even Will was starting to visibly worry. The mob breached the block, and started to attack the officers remaining there. Screaming, wailing, moaning, shrieking, explosions, shots, every terrible sound you can think of was radiating from that place. This was all before noon.
Rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), which a police force shouldn’t have, were flying all over the place. Something major was clearly up.
I saw one RPG pass through its soft target’s torso, blasting yet another hole in the barricade.
I was hugely creeped out, and fairly disgusted. Clouds of muscle, flesh, and blood were appearing behind targeted crowd individuals, no horrific wound hampering them. Mind over matter, I decided.
One fellow’s arm was blown off, knocking him over. He simply got up, pursuing his assailant. Another person’s spinal cord was snapped by a bullet, causing his legs to cease function. He just dragged himself along with his still-working arms.
An RPG went flying out of the crowd, blasting a gapping hole in the building opposite me. Debris fell onto the crowd, killing and injuring police and mob members alike.
The mob was attacking the police with their bare hands and, I couldn’t believe it, eating them! One man, bent over his fresh kill, took a bullet to the head, and he crumpled. I made a mental note of that.
I witnessed another stray RPG fly out of the crowd and, dear lord, arch toward my building! I jumped up and screamed at Will. He ignored me. Again. Nothing. I looked up. The RPG was headed towards my apartment! Running behind the couch, I screamed at Will again. The last I saw of Will was a rather annoyed look as he turned around.
The RPG detonated just to his rear, sending his corpse flying at me. His rifle hit me in the face, knocking me out.
It was dark when I woke up. My nose hurt. My ears hurt. My head hurt. My entire body hurt. I checked my Indiglo watch. It was 3:47, and, according to my watch’s calendar, three days after I had passed out!
“Will!” I called, “WILL!” Nothing. I looked down my front, which was covered in blood and dried up hunks of meat. I looked to my left, just beyond the couch, and saw a body.
I walked over and took a look. It was Will.
“Oh my--” I muttered, followed thereafter by a string of obscenities. Quite unlike me.
I was across the room from where the RPG hit, so staggered over to the hole that used to be my sitting room, and I stared through it to the street, where fires were still burning. Bodies were everywhere. Some were half-eaten, some missing half of themselves from explosions, some with no visible wounds, or at least in that light.
Cars were also strewn all around the street, most abandoned; the others’ drivers were dead, still buckled in. Some cars were just burned-out shells. There were craters everywhere. I could see no bodies within a ten-yard radius of a particularly large one. Must’ve hit a gas-line. Yup, that was it; all lower-level windows were broken in a 100-meter radius.
I headed over to where the switches for my batteries were, turned them on, and turned on all of my remaining lights. Some were blown from before, so I replaced them. I was beginning to notice faint screaming and moaning sounds. Probably just my imagination, considering the conditions of my last 20 minutes of consciousness.
I wandered around what was left of my apartment, and noticed Will’s rifle lying on the floor. It was still in perfect condition, with the exception of dried blood being spread all over it. I looked around for the ammo boxes. One had split open, with 200 rounds all over the floor, and one was just nicked. At least I got a gun out of the ordeal.
I now more distinctly heard moaning. It, quite certainly, was not my imagination. I got all panicky again. I picked up Will’s rifle, and headed to the entrance. It had half a wall against it. I had no reason to worry about forced entry.
The moaning was getting gradually louder. Bang! I jumped. They were trying to force their way in. Bang! I jumped. I took a deep breath, walked over to the ammo boxes, reloaded the rifle, and went to the kitchen.
I took stock of my rations. There were -- Bang! -- 22 cans of canned food, 14 Jumbo Snackmix bags, a lot of soda, -- Bang! – the water was running, still no power, -- Bang! – and I had 37 bottles of water. I was getting sick of this banging. -- Bang! --.
“Shaddup!” I howled, “Shaddup, I have a gun!” Bang! “I’m warning you!” Bang! I sighed, and went back to my rations. I only had enough for about 30 meals. I had to go looking for more food in about a week. I decided to sort everything into piles, and did so. The batteries died a couple days later.
From all the knowledge gained in reading survival guides, I knew that, unless there was a fire or something, it was a good idea to stay where I was.
Nothing new happened that week, besides the banging and moaning getting louder still. It went on all day and all night. Didn’t these people sleep? I spent the week brooding over means of procuring food, and decided that the best way would be to jump from balcony to balcony, entering the apartments and collecting all leftover supplies.
The day after I reached that conclusion, that being the evening of day 5 of my conciseness, I went out onto my balcony. Mine was the highest apartment on that side of the building, so I had to go down in order to reach another balcony.
I had no rope, so I decided to build one out of sheets and towels. It was just long enough to reach the apartment below me. I got a backpack, shoved one of the ammo boxes into a side pocket, got a water bottle, and tied the makeshift rope to a railing on the balcony. I went back to get Will’s rifle, and headed on down the rope.
I was, most certainly, not used to having to climb around, was fairly out of shape. My muscles were burning. The wind was quite strong, and kept slamming me against the side of the building.
I reached the balcony, and the first thing I saw through the glass door was the semi-carrion body of a police sniper on the floor. There was a bullet hole though his helmet, entering through the back. I grew somewhat worried. What if the idiot that killed him was still around?
The glass door was locked, so I smashed the glass with the butt of the rifle and waited, half expecting some half-starved maniac to come careening through the sitting room. No one came, so I continued in.
The front door was smashed in, with blood on parts of it. I quietly went through to the kitchen. It had all sorts of canned food in it. I filled my pack, and headed for the balcony. Then I heard it. A quiet, gurgling moan. It was coming from the hall, outside the apartment. More moaning sounded, still coming from the hall. I got all panicky. I now heard shuffling, thumping, and scraping coming from said hall. It was an overcast day, so I couldn’t see into the hall.
I ran to the balcony. A fierce wind was blowing the rope out of my reach, with me flailing in its direction. I heard thumping on the caved-in door. They were in the apartment. I looked around. The apartment was on the corner of the building, so there was only one balcony to the side, the opposite side to where my rope was. I grabbed for my rope, but the wind was blowing it out of reach.
I backed up right against the balcony railing, and ran as fast as I could toward the other side. I jumped up, jumped off the railing, and missed my target. I almost fainted. I fell past the intended balcony, ending up a story below, spraining my ankle. I heard the crunching of glass on the balcony I had just jumped from. Seeing as my position was a relatively safe one, so I lied there and watched.
A man with a slightly unbuttoned dress shirt came staggering into view. He had dried blood all down his shirt, and a gapping hole through his shoulder. He staggered over to the railing I had jumped off of, and fell right over the edge! I jumped up, and hopped as quickly as I could on one leg over to the edge.
I was just in time to see him hit the ground. He landed on his back, audibly breaking it, but continued to flail and snap his teeth at me! Another man went tumbling over the edge, landing face-first. A woman fell. She broke her arm. This continued until there was no one left on the balcony.
I had to figure out a way to get back to my apartment. With my sprained ankle, I was not very mobile, and could not climb. I was weary of going through the building, because there was, in all likelihood, bound to be more maniacs wandering the halls. And, besides, the entrance to my apartment was blocked. My best bet would be to enter the apartment whose balcony I was on, barricade it, and nurse my ankle in there.
I sighed, and hopped over to the sliding door. It was not locked. I opened it, and jumped over to the couch. All the apartments in that building had a generic design, so I did not have to see the door to know where it was. I started shoving the couch towards the door, when I heard rattling coming from the kitchen. I held the rifle ready, and shouted, “Hello!” Silence. They had stopped rattling. I called again. Nothing. I started pushing the couch towards the kitchen, figuring it would be sufficient cover. Soon before I reached the door, a knife came flying through, just missing me. I held my rifle up again.

“ What are you doing? I can’t even work this gun!” I realized that that was a stupid thing to say.
“A gun?” the person in the kitchen muttered. “You have a gun.”
“I believe that’s what this is.”
“You aren’t one of them, are you?”
“Not as far as I can tell.” The person came out of the kitchen. It was a man, early twenties.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Names are for friends,” said a rather paranoid Jack Angler. “What’s yours?”
“Names are for friends.” He replied. “How’d you get in? The door’s blocked.”
“It is?” “Why else would I still be alive?” “Your mortifying face?” He sneered, “Sorry. You didn’t have a police sniper come?”
“I did. He jumped off the patio. Left his gun, though.”
“Nice.” I stood up, lowering my gun. “Name’s Jack Angler. Yours?”
“Barry McGee. I know. I get enough crap from it, don’t add to it.”
“Mmkay. Do you know what happened?” “Kinda. These psychos came from the town of Avon, what is that, a-thousandish kilometers South-South-East of here? Anyway, they have some sort of rabies, or something, and that’s why they’re so. . . mean. It isn’t airborne, at least, so you can only get it from bodily fluids.”
“How do you know all this?”
“A doctor friend of mine living in Avon. A patient came in with bite wounds, and started eating the nurses. The doctor blocked off the ward and watched. The police arrested him, the transporter was attacked and crashed, killing the two cops, but the doctor managed to escape.”
“He’s sick.”
“Ain’t that the truth. I had no idea when I met him.”
“Anyway,” I said, “please continue.”
“That’s all I know.
“Oh.”
“So, how did you get in here?”
“I was searching for food, and the nuts heard or smelled me or something, and I couldn’t get back to my place, so I tried to jump, and missed, and sprained my ankle, and wound up here.”
“Do you have a tendency to ramble?”
“Yes, yes I do,” I muttered.
“Hmm. How do you plan on getting back?”
“Well, I was hoping I could stay here. For a while, at least.” “I dunno. . .”
“I have food!”
“Ah! Well, that changes things.”
“Thank you, kind stranger.”
I unloaded the contents of my bag into his pantry, and checked my watch. It was 5:53. “It’s getting late.” I said. Berry checked his watch, and agreed. He went and got out some flashlights, and a kerosene storm-lamp. He lit it up, put it on the coffee table, and invited me to sit down. We chatted until around 11:00. I only then realized that the crazies were moaning at his door, too.
The following two weeks were relatively uneventful. My ankle healed in that time, and the familiar moaning and banging had gotten louder at Berry’s door. We never really went particularly near the door; we found the banging quite unnerving.
Berry was out on the deck one day, and noticed a person running around in the street. He seemed to be carrying a torch. Barry called me over.
“What do you think he’s doing?” he asked.
“Well, I doubt that it’s a dance.” I said.
“He seems uninfected. See, he’s running.” “Ah. True.” I went and got my rifle, and used the telescopic sight to get a closer look. It wasn’t a torch he had, it was a Molotov cocktail!
“He has a Molotov.”
“The fumes,” Berry shouted, “The fume’ll light up!”
“What fumes?” I asked.
“The gas line!”
“Oh. Yes.”
We watched him for a while. He obviously had lost his mind, but was still lucid enough to chuck a Molotov. He started charging at our building. Berry and I went wide eyed. He hurled the cocktail through the lobby window of our building.
We watched a small jet of fire go shooting through the broken window. The fumes had ignited. A small ball of fire quickly spread, engulfing the Molotov-wielding man. It reached the gas-line in less that a second, causing the street to explode. The shockwave blew out all of the remaining windows, as well as knocking us over. I heard cars landing after being chucked several yards. I got up and ran back to the railing. This must have been the main gas line.
Most of the closest lower-level buildings to the line had large chunks missing; some had collapsed. There was no trace of the man. He must have just been vaporized in the explosion, or been thrown somewhere. There were now lots of fires burning in the street. That was the least of our worries. Smoke was streaming out of our lobby.
I turned to Berry. He was still on the balcony floor. He was not breathing. I dove down to his side. Blood was running from underneath him. He had landed on a pile of glass from the broken window. I was speechless. Emotion left me. I just got up, and went to get a backpack. I still cannot figure out what happened there.
I found a bag, stuffed it full of ammo, food, and other such things, grabbed the rifle, and sat down on the couch, thinking. I couldn’t climb down onto the street, because I didn’t have enough sheets, and because the building was on fire at the lower levels. I walked back to the deck and tried to judge the speed at which the fire was burning. It was spreading up the building surprisingly quickly.
I only had one option, and that was to jump across the street, to the other building. I know it wasn’t a good idea, but it was all that came to mind. I went to the back of the apartment, and charged for the edge of the balcony. I jumped off the railing again, and went soaring across the street. The fires below me were incredibly hot.

I hit my shin on the railing of the targeted balcony, and flipped onto my face, breaking my nose. I was about four stories down from Berry’s apartment. The fire was half-way up the building now, and almost burned through at the bottom.
My nose was bleeding in copious amounts, I could barely see through the tears that had welled up in my eyes, and my whole head was burning and aching. My left leg was extremely painful, but not broken, and I could barely stand on it, for all the pain. The tears became less of a hindrance soon, and I managed to stand up. I looked over the railing. A car was nearby, with a fire burning under it, my building was on the verge of collapse, and the fire had reached the point of Berry’s apartment. I collapsed down against the wall of the building, and watched the other building burn. I realized that I had forgotten my knives in there, and that my poor computer was going to be destroyed. I decided to just go to the knife store and rob it, seeing as Ralph was probably dead.
I heard a loud bang, and looked up just in time to see the car with a fire under it in midair. The gas tank must have blown. It went crashing down. I heard creaking. My building was collapsing. But it was not imploding. It was falling towards me.


Full credit for this story goes to Drewbie_is_me,Drewbie_is_me or Drewblet (same person), or Drew Ryttersgaard.person).

All comments welcome.

Check out Part 1.2, HERE.

Check out the I Read Saga page, HERE.