The Fall of the Boy Addicted to the Apocalypse

Monty’s dad’s name is Ben. There won’t be much about Ben in this story, but we must begin with him. This started last winter, Ben had driven home from the Kansas City International Airport. There was a Toys R Us on his way, he stopped there. It was Christmas/December 2006.

Monty was reading a Calvin and Hobbes book on his bed, he doesn’t remember which one, when he heard his dad come in through the front door downstairs. His dad yelled, “I’m home.”

Monty’s dad felt bad because the divorce had just gone through, and Monty missed his little sister Juniper. But that guilt led to Monty getting a very expensive present.

Over dinner, Monty noticed a large plastic bag sitting near the front door. Ben saw Monty notice it and said, “Merry Christmas.” When Monty didn’t say anything, Ben added, “I saw in the newspaper that drones were being approved for civilian use, so I got you one. They had this weird rule about zip codes when I paid for it, I gave them your grandparents zip code up in Minnesota, no one noticed.”

Monty perked up when his dad used the word ‘Drone’; some of the kids in school had been talking about drones and how cool they were. But at that time, he really didn’t know much about them.

The Christmas present sat in the plastic bag until Monty moved it up to his room without looking at it after dinner. There it got moved to the corner.

Sometimes Monty would look at the plastic bag, but the anger of his parents’ divorce distracted him. In February, Monty picked out his clothes for the following day and laid them on top of it. Then the clothes in Monty’s room piled up, then the drone disappeared and was forgotten.

June 2nd of 2006 was a Friday; it was also the last day of school.

Monty exited school with his hood up and his head down, surrounded by hundreds of teens. He adjusted his backpack and walked home silently, no one noticed. Another kid had disappeared from the high school across town, kids said ‘Yellow Lights’ were involved, that usually meant the Backrooms, but the adults didn’t believe it, they never did.

When he got home his dad had written a note with a twenty-dollar-bill attached, telling him to “Order Domino’s if you want, I’ll be home late.” Frustrated, Monty kicked his shoes off in the closet and headed up to his room. Once there, he threw his backpack across the room to the wall, where it fell to the floor after bouncing off the box in the plastic bag. When he saw it, he instantly remembered and thought, Oh yeah, the drone. For the first time that day, he forgot about his parents’ divorce.

He crumpled up the plastic bag and looked at the box, it was large and yellow. It was taped up something fierce, Monty had to rip the box to shreds to open it. When he was done, there was a blanket of snow-like Styrofoam pieces scattered about his room. What was weird was the piece wasn’t a drone at all. Instead, it was a helmet, like a football helmet with viewing glasses that came down in the front.

Monty looked at the helmet in his hand and the pile of garbage on the floor. Digging through it all he found a black cord that attached to the helmet to charge it. Monty was confused and thought, Dad told me this was a drone, right?

Finding a piece of the box he hadn’t destroyed, Monty found the name of his gift, sure enough it said, “Multiple Drone Kit” on the box with an Async logo. Monty looked at the title and thought, Multiple Drone’s? When he stood up from his bed, he stepped on something that dug into his foot, it was hiding underneath Styrofoam. Complaining and jumping on one foot, he picked it up and found two pieces for his hands, they were like little controllers, with spots for his thumbs to move around, buttons for his pointer fingers.

So, he thought, I have the controllers but no drone, great. He plugged in the helmet and it beeped, there was also a flashing red light………DING. A soft voice said, “Your Multiple Drone controller is now charged.” Monty looked at the helmet he had placed on his bed and thought, No way that thing is charged already, it’s been sitting there since December.

He started picking up his room, cleaning the drone package garbage first. He also wanted to see if there was an instruction manual, there wasn’t. Once the garbage was out in the can in the driveway, Monty grabbed a clothes basket and continued cleaning his room. Dirty clothes went in the laundry, dirty plates went to the kitchen sink.

Once done and feeling better with a clean room, he laid on his bed and picked up the helmet. It wasn’t heavy, it looked like it would fit on him just fine. He put the helmet on his head, a giant screen opened up in front of him on the glasses. If you were standing in Monty’s room looking down at him on his bed, he would look like he was dozing. On the screen read:

GREETINGS AND WELCOME TO YOUR BRAND-NEW MULTIPLE DRONE KIT CONTROLLER

DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

YES/NO

Monty thought what any man would think, he made his selection, No. The helmet continued:

ALRIGHT LET’S GET STARTED:

I SEE THAT YOU’RE IN MELROSE, MINNESOTA, IS THAT CORRECT?

Monty thought, Melrose, Minnesota? Then he vaguely remembered his dad saying something about his grandparent’s zip code. Melrose is where his grandparents live.

Monty almost corrected his location, he almost put the Kansas City zip code 64121, instead of keeping the Melrose one, 56352. But he didn’t change it, the helmet continued:

GREAT, SINCE YOU LIVE IN MELROSE, MINNESOTA, YOU CANNOT VISIT ANY LOCATION IN THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

IF YOU DO MANAGE TO GET INTO MINNESOTA, YOUR MULTIPLE DRONE USER WILL BE REPOSESSED AND YOU WILL NOT BE REFUNDED

THAT BEING SAID, WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO FLY TODAY?

Monty was relieved for some reason, it would probably be cool to go and look at his grandparent’s house, but whatever. So, he couldn’t go to Minnesota, big deal. He typed in New York just to see what happened.

When someone saves thousands of pictures on their computers and tries to look at all of them at the same time, there’ll be hundreds of little thumbnail pictures for reference. When Monty typed in New York, thousands of little thumbnail options popped up. What was weird was they were all moving.

There were some that were all white. Some that were all green. Some that looked like there was nothing wrong at all, people were walking around and stuff. Monty clicked on one of the white pictures.

There was a loading bar………it loaded………..and loaded……….and loaded.

After a full minute, Monty was updated,

YOUR DRONE IS POWERING UP. IN THIS WORLD THERE ARE 14 DRONES LEFT, IF YOU ARE FOUND TO BE WASTING THEM, THERE WILL BE PENALTIES

YOU ARE ALLOWED VIEWING PRIVELEDGES ONLY, NO INTERACTIONS

AFTER THREE WARNINGS, YOUR MULTIPLE DRONE KIT WILL BE REPOSSESED

IN THIS WORLD, ASYNC WAS LOACATED IN MANHATTEN, NEW YORK, THE WORLD ENDED THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, NUCLEAR WAR

Monty knew that word, Async, from somewhere. As he thought about it, on his viewing screen a little door opened up and there was snow falling. Using the two thumb controls, Monty, who had never flown a drone before, urged it forward until he was in a world of white.

It was windy but the drone held its height and balance well. Monty had no trouble moving it around. The sky was white and it was difficult to see anything. He turned it around to view the space he had just exited from, it was a little cubby hole, there were tracks to slide the drone forward and backwards on. It looked like there were charging prongs the drone could back into.

When he turned the drone around to explore, Monty’s first thought was, Man, the graphics in this game are really good. The drone had been located on a floor that was high, like five floors up. When Monty lowered the drone street level, he saw an old white Pontiac sitting in the street under a pile of snow. Looking at the stores he saw a Sam Goody CD shop. He saw a Liberty Tax preparer. Then he saw written on the wall in black paint, THE END IS NEAR.

Monty saw mostly snow, but he rounded the corner and saw a pile of frozen bodies in the street. There were green military trucks parked around them, the bodies of dead soldiers were scattered around the street. In the distance, Monty saw the Brooklyn Bridge, which he remembered the name because his dad made him watch, The Godfather movie.

Monty could see, in the buildings near where the snow-covered pile of dead bodies were, bullet holes in the walls. There were also big windows that had shattered from gunfire. Monty hovered over to the broken glass and tried to look in the building, it had been a pet store. All he saw were cages of dead animals. On the floor was a little area for petting pups, with a sign that read, “Free Belly Scratches”, behind that was a pile of frozen dead puppies.

He lost track of time, as he was taking this in, a little red light in the upper-right-hand-corner of his view screen had been blinking this whole time, battery alert. Monty tried to turn the drone back to its home space, but he didn’t have enough time, the drone shut off and the screen went blank. His view screen read:

BATTERY DEATH DOES NOT COUNT AS A WARNING WHEN YOU LOSE A DRONE

REPEATED LOSS OF DRONES DUE TO BATTERY DEATH, HOWEVER, WILL BE VIEWED AS INTENTIONAL. IT WILL LEAD TO A WARNING. FROZEN WORLDS SHORTEN BATTERY LIFE

NEXT TIME HIT THE ‘RETURN’ BUTTON AND WE WILL RETURN THE DRONE FOR YOU

Monty’s viewscreen returned to the thumbnail selections, he thought, That looked like real snow. And it looked like real dead bodies.

Curious, he found the search bar and typed in KANSAS CITY, a hundred choices popped up. Again, there were little red thumbnails, little green ones, more white ones and a couple that looked normal.

This time he clicked on a green one.

THIS WORLD ENDED THROUGH VIRAL INFECTION, 99.93% DEATH RATE, MINIMAL SURVIVORS

Because it wasn’t cold, the drone didn’t take as long to power up. The little door slid up and Monty was hovering outside of its cubby hole. This time he looked around Kansas City and saw the streets were overgrown. Monty thought, That’s what the green thumbnails are, overgrown plants. That explains the snow, white thumbnails. So, what are the red ones?

He was in a part of Kansas City he had been before, but not for a while; it was familiar. The parking lot of the building he had exited the drone from was full of cars. There was a giant Async sign with a guard shack, there was another big Async sign on the building. Some of the windows to the building were broken out. Red spray paint on the building read, ASYNC KILLED US ALL. He saw another one that read, ASYNC GOT AWAY WITH IT.

He buzzed the city for a while, he saw overgrown playgrounds, a Merry-Go-Round was tilted to the side but it looked like it could still go around. There were swings swinging in the wind, one had its chain broken, the broken end dragged around in the dirt when the wind blew.

Monty saw a dusty billboard for the movie, Kill Bill 2, then he saw one for Shaun of the Dead and thought, Those movies were big a couple years ago.

He buzzed over Interstate 35 and saw a line of dead vehicles going on for miles, forward and back. He raised the drone straight upwards and after he had gone up a mile, he still couldn’t see the ends of the cars on Interstate 35. But he did see his little sister’s school from way up in the air and thought, The detail these people went through is amazing. It looks like they got every nook and cranny of Kansas City. As Monty began lowering the drone to check out his little sister’s school, the red light started blinking again. Next to that was a button that had RETURN written in little letters, Monty hit it and his screen went blank.

He waited for almost a minute without doing anything, he expected to get a warning for wasting a drone, but he didn’t.

He picked another Kansas City thumbnail, one of the red ones.

THE HUMAN POPULATION OF THIS WORLD IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING DESTROYED

THE HEAT WILL ALLOW ONLY TEN MINUTES OF DRONE FLIGHT

68.39% OF HUMAN POPULATION DEAD

The little door slid up and Monty’s drone was hovering. He didn’t like it immediately, the tops of trees were on fire, the sky was dark red, there were no clouds.

In the parking lot, Monty could see paint dripping off cars. The tires were puddles of black, oozing into pavement cracks or sewer holes. In the guard shack at the end of the Async parking lot, Monty could see someone inside. There were windows on all four sides of the shack. Getting closer, Monty hovered over and saw a man inside, the man was jumping from one foot to the next, his face was misery. As Monty closed the distance between himself and the man in the guard shack, the man decided to make a run for the Async building.

The second he stepped out of the guard shack and started running toward the building, his hair caught on fire. Then his clothes. He got maybe thirty feet before he fell to his knees, then he fell face forward and stopped moving. Then Monty’s drone was ordered back to its cubby and he lost the video screen. Once again Monty thought, Man O’ Man did that look real. He expected a warning or something but didn’t get one. He wasn’t sure if the drone was lost or not.

When Monty went back to the thumbnail screen, he was uneasy. He wasn’t a sicko, he didn’t like horror movies where it showed people getting hurt or tortured, especially for no reason. He had no desire to see some poor guy get cooked in a parking lot.

He picked one that looked ordinary, the thumbnail wasn’t too much green, there was no red and no white. He got this intro when he clicked on it:

THE HUMAN POPULATION OF THIS WORLD IS BEING ELIMINATED, DEAD CONTAMINATE

FULL DRONE TIME CAN BE ACHIEVED, NO TEMPERATURE RISKS

79.83% HUMAN POPULATION LEFT

Monty forwarded the drone out of its cubby hole. He hovered next to the Async building and once again saw it was full of cars, all abandoned. But it wasn’t as full as the last one, and the cars weren’t all parked in their spots, they were crashed. There were papers scattered all over the parking lot, some of them read: TOP SECRET, or CONFIDENTIAL ASYNC PROPERTY.

In the distance, Monty saw smoke rising from some of the Kansas City downtown skyscrapers. He rose the drone far up and could see some cars zipping through the crashed cars on the highway, and more importantly, he saw people walking. When he saw how beautiful the trees looked with the sunshine, he thought, Wow, does this look real. It felt like he was really in this world.

When he zoomed over the highway on his way to the city, Monty took a closer look at some of the people walking and saw their clothes were ripped, some of them had really bad injuries. One that looked like Burt Reynolds with his black hair/moustache, and red jacket, had half his face ripped off. Monty could see his skull and his teeth through the rips. Monty thought, Zombies? There was graffiti spraypainted on building walls, on billboards that read: ASYNC DID THIS and THE ZOMBIES CAME FROM THE BACKROOMS.

Thinking it would be cool to see his little sister’s school, Monty buzzed the city and made his twists and turns through downtown. When he saw The Little Sisters of The Cross, Catholic School. The grass was cut, but everything else was trashed. There were crashed cars in front of the school, smoke rising from a green dumpster that had been kicked to the middle of the street. Garbage laying everywhere and zombies were banging on the front doors of the school. A lot of windows were shattered.

Monty couldn’t stop thinking about how real this all looked as he rose to the top of the building, when he saw a group of five little kids all huddled together on the roof. He hovered right above them when Monty’s little sister Juniper stood up and pointed at him and said something.

Back in Monty’s room on his bed, Monty said out loud, “Juniper?” Somehow, this whole time Monty hadn’t turned on the audio of his headset, when he clicked the button, Juniper’s voice was loud and clear, “Maybe they can get us help. Hey, you, whoever is flying that thing, can you help us?”

Monty could see that his sister was hungry, her lips looked dry, and her eyes were bloodshot. Monty stood up from his bed and thought of what he could do, when the door to the roof of the school was kicked open and ten or so zombies spilled out. Juniper talking must’ve made them crazy. He watched in horror as his sister was ripped apart. He couldn’t get the helmet off fast enough.

*

For kids ages 5-10, (Juniper’s 5), there is an after-school program, sort of like daycare for young kids. Juniper’s school didn’t end the same as Monty’s. So, on days when Monty and Juniper’s mom had to work (or get drunk), Juniper can stay behind at the school until mom can pick her up. There were coloring books and board games she could play with other kids. There were also movies to watch and snacks to eat.

Juniper was sitting at a round table while some girls around her played on the floor. Her brown hair was in a ponytail, tied with a dark red ribbon. She was using red, filling in a ‘My Little Pony’ coloring book when there was a commotion out in the hallway.

She, like the girls on the floor, stood up to try to see if they could find out what was going on when Juniper’s older brother Monty slammed open the door and ran across the room to her and picked her up.

Monty hugged Juniper so tight she couldn’t breathe, then he kissed her all over her face as she tried to ask him what was wrong. She wasn’t mad because she could see he had been crying. The teacher, who had followed Monty into class, saw Juniper knew who he was and wasn’t scared, then asked, “Alright kids, what’s going on?”

The teacher decided not to call their parents, Juniper assured her everything was fine. Monty had ridden his bike downtown to see her. Hugging her goodbye, he reluctantly left.

Biking home through the city, Monty found a twenty-level parking garage and out of breath, arrived at the top, the sun was bright, orange and setting. There was a heavy wind, it was cool, he welcomed the chill.

Across the highway, past the Burger King was the Async building. It was two miles away; he could barely see it, but it was there. He only knew where it was because he had been flying drones from there, the city looked the same no matter what world he was in, apparently.

Thinking practically, Monty concluded, The drones are real. Those other worlds are real. That guy’s hair caught on fire for real. He died for real. He’d seen a starving version of his sister get eaten by zombies, he didn’t want to see that again. Zombies are real, he thought, It would be cool if it wasn’t so scary.

It was getting dark; with school out for the summer he could check out the Async building anytime, it didn’t have to be today. But also, he didn’t want THEM seeing him. Hmm…he thought.

His dad left him chicken salad for dinner, when he remembered his stomach started to grumble. As he biked home, he wondered how he could get in the ASYNC building and look around. The more he thought about it the more his curiosity grew.

With a full belly and charged helmet, back on his bed Monty looked at the thumbnail selections for exploring. As he was browsing, he saw up where the audio button was, another button that released the drones’ arms. They weren’t much, but they could pick things up and move them, like a bottle of water for example, in case he wanted to give one to his sister hiding from zombies. As he scrolled through the selections, he learned that thumbnail pictures with a slight blue tint were viral, meaning: Any world that ended/or was ending, due to virus outbreak. Some looked like they were active, when Monty hovered the mouse above the picture a percentage popped up, 65.44% mortality rate, 88.88% mortality rate. He clicked on one that read, 99.98% mortality rate, blue tint:

THE HUMAN POPULATION OF THIS WORLD IS BEING ELIMINATED, VIRAL OUTBREAK

FULL DRONE TIME CAN BE ACHIEVED, NO TEMPERATURE RISKS

99.98% HUMAN POPULATION DESTROYED

As the little door to his drone cubby opened, he flew the machine out and turned to face the Async building. From what he had seen from the parking garage, it looked the same here as it did in his world. So, he thought, If I can’t explore the Async building in my world, I’ll explore it here. He found more spray paint on the Async building, this time it was written in red paint: ASYNC BASTARDS, with a line after that leading to the ground, like the painter hadn’t the strength to finish.

Monty wondered who wrote it until he saw a loosely clothed skeleton lying face down on the sidewalk, a spray-can not far from its hand. This made Monty sad. He noticed how quiet it was, a light breeze was his only company.

He looked the building up and down, he did find one window that had a brick thrown through it, there was glass on the ground. Using the little drone arms, Monty pulled the glass aside and entered an office. There was a desk, a chair and computer. It had rained a few times, the carpet was molding, there was dust everywhere.

Then he thought, If I was a big executive, I’d want my office on the top floor, not the office right by the entrance. He exited the building and flew to the roof. The only door was open a crack, there was a long board that had been set against the doorknob to prevent it opening. Using the drone arms, Monty easily knocked the board to the ground and ten skeletons toppled out of the exit almost on top of him. He narrowly missed the first body which would’ve crushed his drone. The dead bodies did scare him bad; it took a few minutes for his heart rate to return to normal. Hovering above the dead bodies lining the stairs, Monty hesitated to pass them, he kept imagining a bony hand reaching up to grab his drone. There were dead skeleton ladies with pearl necklaces, dead guys in suits with Rolex watches on their bony wrists. He saw a pair of Oakley Sunglasses on a guy, whatever hair gel the guy used worked great, his blond hair still looked perfect.

Monty took the first exit, one flight down, the red EXIT sign had stopped working long ago. Even the emergency lights weren’t on. He could see it was expensive, the hallway looked fancy. There was brown carpeting, his dad would’ve called it ‘Shag Carpeting’, very 70’s. He passed an office that looked over the parking lot with the dead guy and his spray can, written on the door, the office used to belong to Douglas James.

In movies and books, Monty had heard the term ‘Corner Office’. He took this term to mean ‘High Class’ or ‘Important’, so he made his way to the corner office. Along the way he passed doors that read, Snowville, Smallville, Heaven and Hell. There were also long passages with no doors at all, it was an odd building.

When he found what he thought was a corner office, the door was already open. There were papers spilled on the floor, there was a rotten hot tub and steam room. There was a music room, a TV room, a bath house, a massage table, and a dresser for last minute clothing changes. Damn, Monty thought, this guy was a serious fancy pants.

He looked at the papers lying on the floor and saw those words again, TOP SECRET, he could see United States Government paperwork scattered about as well. He started paging through them. After the first forty-five minutes it started to get dark, so he punched a button for the light on his drone, it was bright, Like searchlight bright, Monty thought. The paperwork was all about something called the EXIT PLAN, for Async top-level employees only.

There was a virus outbreak, Async was responsible, it started in Kansas City and spread worldwide. The CEO and his cronies escaped to another world, one that wasn’t ruined by Async, yet. The lower-level employees were all given a million dollars to die on. If they were careful, they had maybe two days to spend it before they died, What a crock, Monty thought.

As he was fishing through more papers on the floor, he saw something under the dresser. Monty looked up and saw a tattered man in a tattered shirt, raise a tattered ax and bring it down on his face, Monty screamed and fell off his bed in a pile of blankets.

ATTENTION: YOU HAVE LOST A DRONE

THIS WILL COUNT AS ONE WARNING

THREE WARNINGS WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF YOUR MULTIPLE DRONE KIT

Monty could hear the warnings, even though he had dropped his headset. And although he was scared, he started to complain as he retrieved it. “C’mon, that wasn’t my fault, some dude surprises me with an ax and I get punished?”

He put the headset back on and saw an alert in progress:

ATTENTION: VERY RARE, REAL WORLD ENDING EVENT IN PROGRESS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE?

THERE IS ONE DRONE STILL AVAILABLE

A gold thumbnail popped up, Monty clicked on it, as the little door slid up, Monty was amazed. As he began flying, an alert flashed across his screen:

PLEASE FLY CAREFUL

YOUR DRONE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RETURN BECAUSE OF THE GOLD CONTAMINATE

THIS WILL BE YOUR DRONES FINAL FLIGHT, PLEASE DON’T WASTE IT

FLY UNTIL THE BATTERY DIES OR TRANSFER TO SOMEONE ELSE