Chapter 1
A bell tolled to the sound of birds chirping on wires of an early morning, streets clean of cars, people, or debris. The sun shining inside a close, tight-knit city, no clouds in the sky to interrupt the crystal-clear rays of sunshine. Moments later, sickly people came out of the buildings, hobbling outside to look around and what had happened over night. They began to huddle together and stick in group with no order or identifiable reason until they decided all was clear, except for one dead body. Unable to be known, two people picked up the shredded body, trying to keep it together without falling apart over and over again, apathy and coldness painting the paleness of their face.
A young healthy-looking girl peeks outside of one of the condos nearby, watching for signs from any of the people. She waits for a bit in her black, athletic leggings and red crop top, her brown hair tied up into a messy bun, wearing running shoes.
“Is it safe,” she questioned one of the zombie-esque people walking around, receiving what could be seen as an affirmative nod.
She smiled, admiring the pretty sunrise she rarely got to see on a normal day, beginning her jog around the city. She was ecstatic to be able to be out of the house compared to what felt like a constant jail for her otherwise, but still understanding why and how dangerous it still was anyway. Thinking about how many times she increased her chance of becoming sick or dead. Thinking about how many times she’s risked her life but got nowhere outside her own city due to their plague. She sighed, it was becoming depressing to think about, she reached a new distance in her jogs and walked until she became too scared of the other side–an abandoned side of the city ridden with bones or decomposing bodies that have been slowly but surely rotting–and marking where she took her very last step. She smiled happily, giggling to herself.
“Reaching new goals.”
She ran home, only stopping to check places for dead bodies, or very small breaks of walking. The sun brightly shining overhead now, illuminating everywhere the light could touch. The deathly looking people barely outside anymore, healthy and vibrant crowds replacing them, as if they were just hallucinations or from a movie. “Hey, Morgan, how are you?”
A voice called to her from her right as she was walking across a now busy street.
“MORGAN!”
The girl about to walk across the street, Morgan, jumped with a major panic turning toward her friend, Abigail. “Jesus.”
“How are you? Reached a new goal,” Abigail inquired curiously. Morgan exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Yes. Yes I did. You also scared the living daylights out of me too.” Morgan rolled her eyes, Abigail returning the favor. “What’d you do today?”
She shrugged at the answer. “Not a lot. I weeded out my garden and cut up some flowers for the burial of all the bodies. Only three, quite astonishing, usually more to fill up the morgue.”
Morgan saw another chance to cross the street, and Abigail put her hands politely behind her back, walking with a sway as her blonde hair blew in the wind with her black dress. She was always dressed for a funeral. Depending on where you were most people were either dressed in mourning, casual, religious, or apocalypse. None were far off for the day-to-day life in the town anyhow.
“Did you know, Decity finally reached 9,000 residents? It’s almost as if they have been fuckin’ like rabbits at night,” Abigail giggles while making an obscene hand gesture to her fun fact.
“How’d you get the census of the city? Shit, I never even realized we had that many. I guess I don’t get out often enough or see many people, huh?”
“Well, it’s more of just difficult math and estimation. We have been stuck in the same predicament for the past decade, and we always counted the dead… So, we had the max number before and just subtracted the life and death” Abigail said, looking over at Morgan to make sure she was paying attention. “Similar process with people poppin’ out babies. If we are really lazy, we just do death and life and subtract to see if we added or negated the population.”
Morgan processed the information, thinking back to if she ever remembered her life as a 7 year old being stripped away. Her life being sick, plague-ridden, taken, and abandoned, full of death as it was now. She was hesitant on her next question she asked.
“What was the original population before?”
“3,430,213.” Abigail said bluntly. “A big number for such a small piece of land, yeah?”
Abigail laughed joyfully, despite the new population increase not even being a meaningful fraction of what it was before. The decay of the city is constantly withering away, being too dangerous to wander past the city’s limits of nothing more than what can sustain them. As far as anyone outside of them knew, they were dead. Wiped out by the mysterious plague that would cut up the human body into nothing but slices of human meat, faces contorted into horror and trauma. Tortured by pain of something unknown that had no cure… That wasn’t it. Maybe if it was, the city wouldn’t be desecrated and nearly inhabitable without close proximity to the heart.
They walked in silence until Morgan reached her house, a smaller compact ‘family’ condo, saying goodbye to each other as she walked in, and Abigail walked on. A woman began shouting for her:
“Morgan! If that’s you, I need you here for a moment!”
Rushing over to the next room, she sees her adoptive mom in the kitchen with canned food around her in piles. The kitchen, a mess with the cabinets, drawers, and cupboards open. Her mom, standing in the middle leaning on the kitchen island.
“Hello, love. Can you please help me organize these? I have been realizing some of these cans are starting to expire unfortunately and collecting dust,” she sighed.
“Uh, how? They last for years if they are untouched, right?” Morgan asked, confused.
“Well,” she began. “That’s true but they still expire, don’t they? It’s so disgusting to open a can to… That.”
She started gagging at the thought and so did Morgan at her emotional display. Morgan didn’t want to be as traumatized as her mother already was from how putrid food can become when left alone.
“That’s... So gross, ugh. What do you want me to do?”
A few hours pass as they organized the kitchen and food, throwing away old or unusable cans. Separating what was edible and what could literally kill more than their own plague or even more than an atomic bomb with just their smell alone.
Morgan sighed, heavily. “That took a lot longer than I really expected.”
“Well, I’m just glad you helped me and cut the time down by so much, love.” Her mom smiles warmly at her.
“It’s really no big deal. It is pretty important, and while I didn’t want to… I also don’t want to suffer radioactive exposure from a can of condensed milk that mutated into a breathing organism.”
They both laughed at her comment, knowing damn well the risks of what anything with the words of dairy can have.
“I’m gonna go shower now, it’s almost 7pm. I love you, Mom!”
“If I don’t see you before you sleep, goodnight, Morgan! I love you too!”
Morgan ran up the stairs and walked to her hallway, the old boards creaking underneath her quietly. Entering her room, yawning as she stretched, she grabbed her clothes and towel for her relaxing shower. Before she could enter the bathroom though, Abigail messaged her.
“Hey.”
She was a bit confused at such a basic message. Usually, she was more dramatic or eccentric if she was the one starting the conversation. She replied back:
“Hey, Abigail.”
A message showed up instantly.
“I have a bad idea I really wanna commit to.”
Morgan’s eyes widened in concern to her screen. She quickly sat down on her bed, tossing her clothes to the side. She replied back:
“What the hell do you mean? You literally have commitment issues??”
There was no response and no chat bubbles. Morgan paced around in her room panicked about what Abigail said. Abigail was the type to be a very concerning person. She was the person who would be obsessed with death and rigor mortis. How the body would react when freshly killed, hours after, and the decomposition of a body or carcass. Of course, she had bad ideas.
Morgan thought to herself of what it could be. Abigail would totally die for the end goal of science, but she wasn’t suicidal. She’d get a guinea pig to see how much it was worth it. Only then would she truly make that big of a sacrifice. She was very curious about why people would be mutilated staying out past the curfew, 8:34pm. It would truly solve why their society turned out the way it did from the way it was. Maybe she could figure out how to walk through the DeadLand of the Ruined City. Maybe they could then, and only then, find a way to contact the outside world?
Morgan took a deep, unsteady breath, while grabbing her stuff again. Anxiety-ridden, she went to take a shower to hopefully be able to calm down again. Abigail is smart and won’t do anything dumb in her mind anyway, right? Hopefully.
