Lost in the Wilderness (1st Ch Novel)

Growing up in the Canadian prairies, my family had a summer tradition of driving to the Rocky Mountains to hike and explore. Now living in the big city of Toronto I find that I often miss it and even yearn after the splendour of that natural wonder and beauty. This novel is the story of an imaginative man named Morton Climchi who wants to escape his mundane life and the chaos of the big city to live in the wilderness. It is not as easy as he expects. Mysterious things, both good and evil begin to happen to him in the wild as he eventually finds himself depending on mysterious creatures and fighting to protect the wilderness they all call home. Here is a small snippet, which only begins to introduce his creativity, desire to escape, and some themes that will be explored more later in the story. I am in the early writing stages of this novel.

Written By Rev. Philip Stonhouse

Living the Humdrum Life

I might be one of the most boring people you have ever met; at least I am definitely the most bored. I sell insurance over the phone. I sit in this little cubicle and stare at this nodding dog, saying the same words I have said a thousand times before. Sure sometimes I get to help people that seem to really want or need this insurance, but most of the time . . . I don’t know . . . it just feels, blah. Or if not blah, then I am being yelled at by someone for any number of reasons, good or bad. 

Most of my colleagues are pushed forward by the weekly incentives for bonuses: sign this many people and you get, blah, be the top-grossing salesman and you get, blah. It’s all just distractions. Joe next to me is so excited because he started this special kind of boxing, I think it’s Thai or something. Sheila on the opposite side of me is so excited because she just got a new dog; I think some kind of Shitzu. It’s all well and good, but what’s the point of it all. Where is it all going? 

This day goes on much the same as always. I get pressured by my boss to make more sales, even though I am making the quota. At the coffee machine in the kitchen, Jack talks about the new videogame he bought, some sort of alien conflict shooter. I make a few hundred calls and sign about one in fifty, which is actually better than normal. The team ordered pizza, because we beat our weekly goal last week and we all eat cake that I think was left over from Sheila’s birthday, hence the dog: a present from her boyfriend. They talk about the new president and I just listen. It turns depressing pretty fast and I want to ask: “What are we doing to change this?”, but I don’t have the guts or something; so I stay quiet.

As I leave the front doors, after giving my regular friendly so long to security, I look up at this huge glass building that I have worked in now for at least ten years. With the overcast sky and the slush underfoot the whole thing seems grey. Like some future post-apocalyptic reality, where all colour has been replaced with drab. I see the window closest to where I work and it seems like just another hexagon in a honeycomb, only instead of drone bees, we are drone people working under our queen “the almighty dollar”. As the dark clouds blow by they are reflected off of the glass and it seems like the storm is brewing inside of every one of these towering structures that seem to blot out the sky. 

I can’t stand here for long though because the crowd is all trying to get somewhere. So, I am pulled along by the movement of society. I don’t think I was meant for this, but I have been following for so long, so what else do I know. Suddenly, I hear my name.

“Hey, Mort!”

Oh ya, there is that too. That is all without even taking account of my name.

“Hey, Mort!”

I turn around to see Jack. He’s probably one of my better friends. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it’s because we are both creative people looking for an avenue to express it. Last year we had an office-wide talent show and we did a dramatic retelling of Where the Wild Things Are. Full out with costumes, cardboard cutouts, but I don’t think the others really appreciated it; at least we had a lot of fun. 

Jack catches up to me, “Mort, you wanna come over. We can order some Chinese and start Harbinger that new game I was talking about”

I don’t love the idea of Chinese and pizza on the same day, but this plan is better than the alternative, I think. I was just going to read, sip some tea, maybe watch something, maybe go for a walk, who knows; exciting things are always in store for good old Mort.

“Ya sure.  

As he steps down the stairs into the subway tunnels, “You’ll really like this one”

I don’t think I will as much as he does, but it could be good.

“It is supposed to have this great story that all the reviewers are saying you have to experience to understand. It’s the one time it’s better than the book.” 

He moves into the crowded subway, so I have to push past a few people to get beside him, “It’s based off of a book?”

“That intrigues you doesn’t it”

I’m not sure that was an answer. I begin to imagine some books made into videogames. Moby Dick, but who would be the protagonist. I could imagine some Agatha Christie-style detective stories as videogames. You play as the detective and try to avoid being trapped by the killer all while finding clues to reveal the killer; that could be interesting. The designers would have to make sure that when you died you were never sure who the actual killer was. Oh, I guess Lord of the Rings had videogames; though I wonder how much the story really came through or connected to the gameplay.

“Hey, Mort, where’d you go?”

“Just began to think about some of my favorite books as videogames”

“Any good ideas?”

“Ya a few, but most of them would be awful. Image a pride and prejudice videogame”

“Ya . . . I don’t really want to do that . . . . Wait did you say favorite? Pride and Prejudice is one of your favorites?”

I feel like he is implying something I don’t quite understand, “No, it’s a good book, but not a favorite”

“I just didn’t know you were into old romance. I’ve learned something new about you”

“A good book is a good book; it’s not like it’s a harlequin romance or something. There is no Fabio in this story”

“Hahaha, I guess you’re right. So, are you saying I should read it?”

“For some reason, I don’t think you would like it, but it is worth the read”

“Ya, you are probably right.”

Suddenly, the subway car becomes the orient express. The lady reading in the corner is the missionary reading her bible. The woman in the corner trying not to touch anything is the duchess. The snooty guy in the tweed is the ‘German’. I snap out of it, not sure of how much time has passed. “Are you reading anything interesting these days?”

“I’m on this kick of reading through some of the classics I never read as a kid. Right now, it is Alice in Wonderland”

“That’s a good one. Can you imagine that: just suddenly being pulled away into another world where things don’t just look different, but the whole world just works differently?”

The automated subway voice calls our stop and Jack starts to move towards the door. “I feel like all you have to do is leave the city and things look like another world, they function differently. I once went to the prairies with my family and it just went on and on and on.” As he walks out, “Time just seemed to disappear. We could have been driving for a minute, an hour and I would have no idea. The people there seemed to function like that too. They seem to always have time. It was weird”

“Funny you mention that, I once had a dream of running off to the mountains and just living there. Escaping all of this monotony and consumed people to go to a place where there is such life and things just slow down”. 

“You want to escape? You got just the right guy. I have about a thousand escapes and they are all at the end of a remote” He clicks an imaginary remote at the direction of his apartment window

For some reason, I don’t think they are quite the same. “I love the mountains. There is something so freeing about being on one” Suddenly, I see his apartment as this towering cliff face, Jack and I are climbing it. This image quickly fades to us as window washers and then nothing at all.

“You ever watched Planet Earth, I have been to some of the greatest mountains”

“It’s just not the same. Have you ever actually climbed a mountain?”

“I’ve definitely climbed a few in Breathe of the Wild; I’ve jumped off a few too”

He scans the key fob to get in, “So no?”

The door clicks open, “So no.”

“Man, you should try it”

“Ya, it could be fun”

“Why don’t we go?”

“Sure, let’s do it. We could just up and quite tomorrow and live on the mountain”

“I bet I have read enough that I could build us a wood shack; though it would probably take us a long time”

“Then we could just live off of the land. I could whittle a few spears for hunting. I’d probably get so good I could carve statues to decorate our shack.”

“Sounds like a good hobby”. He opens the door as his keys jingle underneath, I notice a key chain of the key blade from kingdom hearts and I am not sure if this is meant to be ironic.

As we walk into his man cave with his big screen, big speakers, gaming chair, he stretches out his hands, “As long as I could bring my games”

“This would be like a game. The game would be right in front of you”

“I’d have to level up my stats enough to be able to do some of this stuff”

“I think in real life its called practice”

He starts to boot up his whole system, never turning on the overhead lights, “Oh, people actually do that?”

“Some people. I’d have to figure out what books to bring though”

“Ya, you couldn’t bring many, because you would have to carry them out. Just the bare essentials. Like Jurassic Park”

“Which one, the book, the movie or the game?”

“Your pick”

“I pick none of them”

“What?! But you can’t go wrong, they are all good.”

The opening title screen for harbinger flashes lightning across a stormy sky. “Even the game?” My mind flashes back to the early Super Nintendo game of Jurassic Park that I barely remember.

He selects load game and suddenly something zips across the screen so fast that I can’t tell if it is a ghost, a man on a horse, an angel, or something yet unimagined. “Okay, maybe you can skip the game”

“Should I call up our order?”

“You are behind the times. Watch this.” He pulls over his keyboard types something in the text box, which seems to be scrolling with an endless chat. It reads [Hardwok Café] Pad Thai – Shrimp, Chicken Balls, Ginger Beef, and Fried Veg. Then he hits send.

“What did I just see?”

“You just saw me ordering food on the chat box of this game”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I just had to set up a few micro-actions, but the rest is automated”

I don’t know if I should be impressed or depressed. “So, what you are telling me is that you never have to leave your game or interact with anyone?”

“Well, I have to answer the door and go to work”

“Wow, life is hard sometimes”

“You’re telling me”

“Here I am trying to save the world from utter calamity and yet the world still wants me to sell insurance. I guess they might need it just in case I fail”

“Well, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen”. Just like that the whole room closes in and this man cave becomes a cave and the adventure unfolds before us as we delve deeper in search of the harbinger, the corrupter of worlds. 

The screen plays a quick bright white flashback of a beautiful woman talking to you in a lab. The female voice speaks as the cinematic switches and we see a man in some sort of “space suit?” worriedly breathing, finding his way through a cavern with just a little light emanating from the wrist of his suit. We are then switched to a first-person perspective as the female voice continues. “There has been a great corruption spreading across the universe. A corruption that enters into the very nature of life and deforms it.” 

He finds a pool of water and jumps in. The bubbles rise up in front of our face, temporarily blinding. When it clears, I am shocked by this deformed image of a fish, long-dead because its teeth had pierced through its skull. The man swats it away. The man yells, “ow” you look to his hand and see a little bit of blood now mingling in the water. You see immediately, somehow that the suit heals itself and the hole is no more. “Shit, shit, shit”. You hear the man’s breathe getting heavier and more frantic as he searches himself. Feeling his chest and then putting his hands on his head. Until finally his breathing slows. “Okay, good”. 

We find our way back out of the water, back into the Closterphobia inducing cavern and the voice continues again. “This corruption, it is like it turns a switch in the instincts of all it touches so that what a creature, or plant, or algae now wants to do is pushed towards destruction, eventually even its own.” The small beam of his flashlight points towards the heavy black walls. All of a sudden this wall seems to move, the black of the wall bubbles and begins to move. The female voice adds, “Except, it goes deeper than just one’s instinct, it seems to affect one’s DNA. What once was beautiful, natural, having some semblance of order and intention now seems chaotic, lost, ugly, corrupted.” 

Suddenly, the light flashes to the ground in front of us and there are now three of these bubbles moving quickly towards us. The man falls back out of shock or fear and you hear a pop. He turns around to see that his right hand has gone through one of these bubbles and now it releasing these black spores into the air. Suddenly, we get this privileged perspective as the screen zooms in on these spores. At first as it zooms in they seem fuzzy, until is zooms in more and suddenly you see that they are spiky. Sharp and deadly. Not only that, these spikes seem to move to become like barbs. He gets up and looks at his hand and sees them very clearly grabbing hold of his suit. Panicked he tries to wipe them off on his pants, but that only sticks his hand to his pants and how he can’t free his hand from his leg. 

Out of the corner of his eye he sees something else move. He flashes his light on it to see a rat, or what was a rat running across the floor, it breathing in the spores and slowly stops. It lays down and stops breathing. Suddenly, it starts to breath almost violently and you see these black spikes begin to pierce through its flesh and join its diseases, miscoloured fur, holding on so that short of eviscerating the rat, nothing would free it. Now its breathing just becomes a terrifying ballooning. “Okay”. He attempts to calm his breathing. He looks down at his right hand once again. He reaches for his wrist and suddenly his left hand is stuck too. Only his whole suit starts to glow orange and suddenly all the black that is touching him catches flame. The whole room glows bright as the fire moves across everything, consuming everything. “I am not made for this. You couldn’t have given me a day of training”. As the black burns away it reveals a much more expansive hall, where the fire is spreading to as well. 

You hear bubbling and the man turns behind him to see that the water he came out of is bubbling like a pot on the stove, violently and ferocious. You can just see a few faint dots of colour dart underneath this bubbling. The man touches something on his palm and puts his hand to the water and it begins to freeze over. “Better safe than sorry”

Suddenly, you see an icon appear on his visor and a seemingly over-sexualized robotic voice reads out, “Battery low, danger of contamination imminent if not recharged”. Suddenly, a percentage and estimated timer appears in the top right corner. “Okay I get it, maybe not better safe than sorry. Well, let’s do this thing and get out”

That same female voice plays out, “If we can stop it here, find its source, we might be able to stop its spread. You just have to go into the belly of the beast. No pressure, but it’s going to be on you”. He replies to the voice even though there is no one there, “I know I heard you the first time. I’m doing the best I can”.

You see him stretch his arms and neck and then he reaches for a gun that has been at his hip the whole time. “Okay, let’s do this thing”. Suddenly, now the player has control again, as you have to decide where to go in this huge cavern that looks like the inside of a closed-in colosseum; there are so many openings at every level. 

As Jack approaches an opening suddenly he sees these big red eyes appear in the darkness. He shines the light on it and reveals this bear, though this bear appears to be wearing much of its skeleton on the outside. The skeleton has also scaled over to form this hard bone armor. The bones in its arms, legs, and spine have grown so that now they puncture out of its shoulder, elbow, hand, knee, foot and back. You can see the tendons have been stretched with it, but as the bear moves forward, it more seems to clob than walk; half stumbling and lurching, using its momentum to keep it up. At first Jack fires this heavy laser at the bear, but it doesn’t seem to be too affected. He turns his sight on the rock wall of that particular cavern. The screen shakes and suddenly the roof in front of him falls in right on the bear.  The bear squirms enough to get its arms and head out. Jack fires at its head and it gives up its life. 

The man says, “Phew that was easy”.

Jack replies, “That’s because I made it easy”. He turns to me, “I learned that in the first little section of the story. A few goliath rhino things attacked our base, and the lady you heard, Casandra, sacrificed herself to collapse the base on the rioting crash, while I had to watch.”

“Sounds rough”

Suddenly on the screen there is the image of a phone vibrating and some cheesy 70’s country-rock song starts playing. Jack looks at me, “You like that?” 

“It’s funny in the context of this game”

“I put that in”. The vibrating phone turns into a speaker icon. “Hello”

“Hello, we are at the front door”

“Okay, I’ll buzz you in. Just knock and leave it outside the door”

No need to even interact with anyone, “Don’t you have to pay?”

“The game did that too. It’s all programmed in”

“So what happened before this”

 Well before this, I had to escape the city, where people were already being corrupted. Casandra had warned me and had already set up a facility testing and preparing. So, I got to her there. She had enough time to talk a little about the corruption and show me a few things about the technology before the area sensors went off. She had shown me satellite videos of how it had already killed off other whole planets and now it was on earth. Then the attack. I went outside to deal with them. I had just spent everything I had to stop a few other rhinos outside, but others came in the back, but the sensors had already been taken out. Each rhino took a lot to take down.”

“I don’t know how I feel killing these bears and rhinos. It’s not their fault they are corrupted or whatever”.

“Ya, Casandra and the Fenton were talking about the same thing before the rhino riot happened. Turns out that this corruption always leads to the creature’s destruction and also too much devastation around it, so sometimes the best way to save from deeper hurt is to cut off the corruption. Like radiating a cancer to protect life; her analogy not mine” 

“I can see how this would be a pretty cool game”

“Ya, I can see how this could dominating my life”

There is a knock on the door

“Leave it outside!”

“Sir, what about a tip?”

“Oh, that should have happened automatically too? Wait a second!”

Jack turns on a lamp and fumbles through this stuff, emptying a pair of pants on the floor, looking under random junk, fumbling through his pockets. 

“Jack, why don’t I get the tip? You got the food”

“Oh, but I like you owing me”

“Well, this doesn’t tip the balance for all I have paid for”

“True, true. Okay, go ahead”

I had already gotten up and now was moving to the door. I open it to see a young white man with long brown hair and a beard, holding two large white bags of containers and balancing a machine between his arm and side. 

“Ah, I’ve got your Pad Thai with Shrimp, Chicken Balls, Ginger Beef, and Stir-fried Veg”

I turn around to Jack

“Good enough”

I pull out what ever change and small bills I have and give him 6.50$. “Here you go”. We exchange the bags for the tip and I close the door. “I’m never sure how much to tip on deliveries”

“I always thought you were supposed to tip based on distance”

As I move back to my seat, “What?”

“Ya, they took that amount of time so I give them that amount of money”

“So, you look up how far a place is away and tip them based on that”

He opens up the bags, untying these tight knots, “Sure”

“So, how much would you tip him?”

“Well, he’s a block away, so like a dollar”

“Is this just your excuse for being a bad tipper?”

He stops rummaging with the food, “What? No! I am being fair.”

“Riiiiiight . . . . That’s what we are calling it now.”

He brakes a pair of chopsticks and starts rubbing them together, “Okay, okay, let’s dig in”

I do the same, “Interesting it was a white guy delivering Thai food”

“He’s probably dating the owner’s daughter or something”

“Or he just likes the food”

He plops a whole chicken ball in his mouth and half talks with his mouth full, “Or he’s part of a secret Thai crime syndicate and this is his way of staying under the radar as the deadly white assassin”

I pull the Pad Thai towards me, “Or he just needs the money”

“I like mine better”

“Me too”. This is how we have always been. There is not a lot of etiquette, but a lot of . . . imaginative musings. “So, I’m still interested in this idea of moving out into the forest. Where would we start?”

“Well, I think you need your adventures pack. You know you need a tent, a few potions, a sleeping bag, a weapon”

“Like a good hatchet”

“Sure, but I prefer a submachine gun. I find it’s better for cutting down trees”

As I see him stuff his face with another chicken ball, “How many days would you pack rations for?”

“Well, you would need enough to get settled and to start finding your own food supply or build a greenhouse”

I switch the pad Thai for the stir-fried veg, “Well I could just bring out seeds to plant a farm. In harvest moon, some crops only take a few days”

“Right . . . I think you might have a few more issues with animals; hence the submachine gun. You know you are really selling me on this machine gun idea, hashtag best camping tool”

“Ya . . . I don’t think that’s a thing”

“It is now. I just made it a thing. Besides how else are you going to fight off zombies?”

“I’ll just climb a tree. Everyone knows zombies don’t look up”

“I forgot that one”

“My cottage will be so legit anyways. I could bunker down for a year”

“Do people still say that?”

“What?”

“Legit”

As I grab the ginger beef, “They do now. . . I’m bringing it back.” I start bobbing my head and do my best impression, “Too legit, too legit to quit”

He gets really serious and sniffs, “Do you smell something rotten?”

I look at the food, “No, why?”

“Because what you are spewing is old and bad” 

“Nah, it’s just like old cheese . . . better with age”

“No amount of time can make that cheese good”

“Your taste just hasn’t been refined enough”. I then proceed to stuff my face with some more Ginger Beef.

“Eh, at least this is good” pointing to the pad Thai on his lap. “Do you want to take a swing at the game?”

“Sure, I won’t ruin your game or anything?”

“There’s something about post-apocalyptic worlds, I don’t think you can really ruin it”

“Fair enough”

We switch seats so that I have the prime gaming chair and now I take control, while Jack can chomp away.

As I unpause it, I see the broken rubble of the cavern and the motionless corpse of the corrupted bear barely peeking through. “I feel like in these games you are supposed to go exactly where the danger is”. So I climb up the rubble. The bear moves in front of me, but I soon realize that is just the rocks being displaced. I get to the top to find that there is still enough space for me to get into the rest of the cavern. I see a flash of little bluish light flutter past deep within the shaft. “That doesn’t seem menacing. 20 dollars says it’s a friend”

I make my way to the end and find another one of these big toothy, bony rats set ablaze in this haunting blue fire. This fire was strange, it seems like water to be flowing out of the rat and growing. It got brighter and brighter until for a second it was blinding and then was no more. The weird thing was that the rat wasn’t charred, it just looked like it had aged 10 years in the last 30 seconds. 

There was another light burning in the distance. As I sprint closer, I see a shadow move past it. For a second I can see its light but then it seems to be smothered; very different than the death glows of this rat. When I get closer I see a humanoid-shape draped in black huddled over a long black fleshy thing. It looks up at me and I see a human face, only this blue fire is in his mouth and somehow dripping down his chin. In its light I can see that his teeth have grown, but especially his canines, I think for a moment of a vampire and realize that the deformed shape in his hand is probably a bat. This man’s eyes are blood red, with large black pupils. All the rest of his body is shrouded in black so undiscernible how else the corruption has spread. 

I fire at him and see the black dissolve away to reveal simple flesh. He lets out a blood curdling scream, which seems more in anger as his jaw bone seems to dislocate itself in the process. With what remains of his mouth he seems to breathe in his words, “Yar doommmmed”

“Who are you?”

“I ammmm the har-inger. I air the cursh to all worldsh”

“Well, sounds like I found my guy”. He pulls the gun back and points it at the harbinger.

I start to fire, but before I can his black shroud balloons and when I hit it is explodes once again releasing these black spores into the air. I am far enough away though that they don’t reach me

Jack points to the controller, “use the y to switch the gun to the flame thrower”

“Oh seriously”. I do just that and the black in the air burns away. This time the fire in its regular shades of red and orange are much more comforting. I see just beyond the flames that the harbinger has disappeared into another tunnel and of course, I give chase. As I run through the fire, the heavy ashes spark off my visor and leave a little bit of ash smear. 

As I come into the next cavern for the first time I see clearly a few of these living bats. There whole body and wings seems thicker than regular bats and there wing span is ginormous; not really fitting for tight caves. Their distinguishing feature though is that from numerous points on its body, but especially its face this blue flame drips out of them. Everywhere it hits, there is a moment where this flame seems to suck at the substance around it before going out. 

They spot me and start at me. I fire at the closest, still, by accident, with the flame thrower. It doesn’t hit it until it is close, but when it does once again there is this blinding light, but this time the blue flame shoots out all over the vicinity. It hits this patch of tangling moss beside me and it immediately goes up. It is on my suit too and suddenly I see an icon in my visor showing that the battery is draining. I can see it now, the flame is absorbing energy and as it grows it seems to want to absorb more. I try the ice on the suit, but that doesn’t seem to do it. I look around but see nothing, except for a few more of these bats flying at me. I back up and fire at them and they too explode covering me in more flame. As I step back I hear a splash. I turn around to see a pool, which I immediately jump in and crouch. There is barely enough water to cover me, but I can see the flames floating above the surface trying to suck at something that isn’t there, anymore.

The character speaks before I can, “That was close. I don’t know what I would have done if there wasn’t water”. 

The suit rhymes off, “battery life critically low”

Jack wonders, “I bet there has to be a way to stop it if there isn’t water”

“Ya, it’s called not get hit by it”

“That works too. Maybe there is a way to shed the skin of the suit or smother it?”

“Both good ideas.” I get the idea “Or you could just remove the energy source?”

“Oh right. You could just turn off the suit. I didn’t think there would ever be a use for that, because of course it turns off heating, cooling, healing, etcetera and it takes a while to reboot”

“Next time” I suddenly remember the harbinger and get out of the water. The cavern has many routes, too many options. The blue flames are still licking at a few spots and I see it: one of them is in the perfect shape of a footprint and there are more leading into a tunnel. 

I quickly follow these for a while. Along the way I have to fight off a few rats, but nothing too monstrous. Until finally I find myself once again in a big open cavern my light scans the walls and I notice it looks eerily similar to that initial cavern, like a closed-in coliseum with tons of tunnels pouring out of it at all levels. A few doors away I see the collapsed rocks, only the bear isn’t visible. I scan to the middle of the room to see the black figure is sitting looking up at me holding its jaw closed. My dim light eerily surrounds him and I can just make out his black cloak moving of its own will. It must be that spore fungus stuff. 

He breathes in with his words, “No, or runin. Thith world ith awla re-dee doo-ed. Yar, tie ith u . . .”. Out of anger he lets out a sound, though this sound is less of a scream and more of a yell “aaawwww!!”. 

Suddenly, blue lights start appearing in the highest tunnels and I start to see big shadows moving in a few others, which I can only assume are bone bears. I flash to what seems like a lot of movement and see the floor moving. Only it is not the floor it is a swarm of rats.

“Too, anee for ya” He does this breathy creepy laugh.

“They don’t matter. All I have to do is take out you”

“Ya lie atterth that littlllle”

“I don’t know what you are saying”

I begin to charge at him and fire the heavy laser. This time I don’t let up. His spore cloak explodes a few times, but I don’t stop shooting or charging. I set blaze to my suit and see the room light up, as he does too, just as I see the battery run out. I keep firing though. He jumps at me and now I see that he is naked, except his bones seem to be growing on his outside too. He lands on me and immediately we enter into this grapple. I get new options for my controller around using my feet, arms, head, letting go, shifting my body back and forward. At first I try to use my arms, but he overpowers me and I find myself thrown on the ground. Immediately, he is on top of me. Quickly, I use my legs to kick him off. I am up and we are face to face. I move forward just as he kicks. I am fast enough to react and grab his foot and throw him to the ground. I quickly go for my gun, switch to ammo and fire a clean one through his stomach as he leaps through the air. He falls on top of me and we are both on the ground. 

I stand up over him as he speaks, “it daws-n’t atter. Thar are ore”. He laughs that half choking laugh and I shoot him once again only this time in the head. 

The other creatures are basically on me now. My looking suddenly phases into a cinematic. The main character, Fenton, backs away and try to find some kind of escape, while firing nonstop at everything. Things are exploding, other creatures are being caught up in the flame and now there are blue fiery bears running at us. He finds a tunnel that is mostly empty, except for a few rats and goes through that. He finds himself in a three-way intersection. The whole screen begins to shake and through the left entrance comes these giant rhinos. So he takes the other one. After a few paces he finds himself at a cliffs edge he looks down and only sees the rocks fall into blackness. He is trapped. He lifts his gun and fires the last of his ammo, energy, fuel until his gun has no more. He throws it to the side and boxes off a few rats and bats before a bear takes him off the cliff. Everything goes black, you hear a splash and then no more. 

“Okay, I think I should probably go”

“Seriously, it’s just getting good?”

“Well, it’s going to take me at least 30 min to get home and we’ve got an early day tomorrow”

“Oh right, that meeting. It’s not going to stop me”

“There’s nothing like some icebreakers and a pep talk”

“I think they could be good if it wasn’t Henry leading them”

“True, put Joe in charge and I would be happier”

“I should go”

“Okay, but at least see what happens next with me”

He unpauses the game. You hear Fenton’s voice in the blackness, “I don’t understand why you have to go. This is so far away and you can’t even tell me how long it will be”. In the background, you hear something fall over. “Oh, crap”. Suddenly, the screen fills with white light as Fenton blinks. There is this female figure haloed in white.

Casandra yells, “He is waking up! I am glad you are okay. You can tell . . .”

Fenton moves forward, but falls back again with her push, “Keep laying down. You sustained a lot of injuries”

“I am so glad you are okay. I thought you were dead. I thought you were gone for ever”

“I’m sorry? Are you okay? Do you know what the date is? Where you are?” Her voice begins to change just a bit and the bright white begins to fade to reveal a human woman wearing a very sleek quarantine suit, but she is not Casandra. Though her voice is close to hers. “Who do you think I am?”

“Sorry, the light was blinding and you reminded me of someone I used to know. Where are we? How long have I been out?”

She pulls out a sort of electronic tablet and shows me as she speaks, “We are on one of 12 ships of human survivors that escaped. We had 50, but they didn’t escape the storms or they never took off because of the corruption. There was 13, but the corruption had found its way on board and the driver drove it back into the gravitational pull of Earth”. I can see this unfold as a humongous ship glowing red hot from re-entry is absorbed into the dark clouds. 

“Is that earth?”

“Yes, earth has been enveloped by dark clouds that make up a giant unpredictable weather pattern. After doing a bit of research, this seems to happen on all of the planets that the corruption infects.”

With some labour in his voice, “So . . . Earth is no longer . . . ?”

“A viable option for life? It would seem so”

“Do you have a list of passengers on these ships?”

“No, not yet, but we are hoping to soon. Most spaces are quarantined until we know for sure, there is no corruption. The problem is that the incubation is unpredictable”

“So, you don’t know if I have it?”

“No, we brought you on against my better judgment. One of our engineers found you washed up on shore. You were scratched up to shit, a few broken bones, yet now somehow you are pristine. We are wondering if this is a mutation of the corruption.”

“My ummm, she was a biologist specializing in viral makeup. She gave me a few serums that may be the cause. You can probably find their compounds still coursing through my blood”

“We did. In fact, there were quite a few anomalies”

“Yup, sounds about right”

“Well, we still want to watch you for a long time”

Suddenly, the lights above them start flashing red as an alarm starts sounding.

I have to stop this or else I won’t leave, so I get up “Okay Jack, this looks really exciting, but I have to go”

“Ah come on Mort, really? Just stick around until we figure out what this alarm is”

I feel so lame anytime anyone says my name. Jack almost convinces me just by saying my name, but it doesn’t work on me anymore. I know I am lame and I am fine with it. “Nah, sorry. Tell me what happens tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if I can play it without you”

I look at him doubtful and he looks at me with these fake sad eyes.

“Eh, who am I kidding, I couldn’t stop if I tried”

“For a second there I didn’t know who I was talking to”

“You’re right, I’ll probably finish it tonight”

I begin to gather my coat and things, “Please don’t do that”

“Eh, what is one sleepless night?”

“A really bad week”

Thinking to himself, “true”

“Besides what would you have to play tomorrow?”

“Well . . . Okay, you convinced me. I will not finish this game tonight”

Yelling from the door, “I live for these little wins. Goodnight”