He slams the door shut behind him, shoves the broken lock in place, and leans against the wall.
His hands are still slick with blood. His chest won't stop heaving.
The apartment’s quiet. Too quiet.
Except for the fridge. Somehow, it’s buzzing again. He wouldn’t put it past that damn thing to be immortal now- he’s half sure it’s older than he is.
He’s at the sink, scrubbing the non-existent blood from his hands while using his dish soap[ not that he has dishes.
The water sputters out.
Makes sense. Of course it’s the water pressure first- no shower for me!
Fuck.
He shuffles toward the couch—or what’s left of it—and lowers himself slowly, muscles aching like he just fought a war instead of a single faceless freak in the street.
His phone's screen still glows beside him, faint light casting harsh shadows against the wreckage of his living room.
He picks it up.
The stickman stares back.
So does the word: NOMAD.
Now, he knows what a nomad is, and quite frankly he isn’t liking the implications. Give him some mountains, or really just a forest in the middle of nowhere and he’d be happy- he’d just had a revelation in his life after all.
But he doesn’t really wanna be an apocalyptic nomad.
Apocalyptic nomad actually sounds kinda cool, but still.
Living on the road in the middle of an apocalypse filled with faceless- things, cuz it’s better than thinking of them as people- kinda sounds a little, itty bit like drawn-out suicide.
If he had music, different story though, but that was gone on the first day of the countdown.
God, he’d even settle for some Katy Perry at this point.
He looks at his phone again, trying once more to tap different things in his status, looking for descriptions.
Nothing.
“Cool. Cool cool cool.” He tosses the phone onto the cushion beside him, or what remains of it. “Thanks for the upgrade, I guess.”
His eyes drift toward the window—what’s left of it. City’s quiet. Eerily still, like the apocalypse called in sick for the afternoon.
He leans back.
“You’d think world-ending eldritch coding nightmares would at least come with a tutorial.”
Nothing answers. Not that he expected it to.
But the silence feels heavier now. Watching, almost.
He hates that.
He gets up, walks over to the outside wall that didn't get torn away, and closes the blinds.
He glances out of the massive hole in the wall and starts giggling.
He stares out at the gaping wound in his apartment, the city beyond twisted and sun-bleached like some kind of art school dystopia project. His laugh dies slow, stuck halfway between hysteria and resignation.
“I should charge rent,” he mutters, eyeing the open air where his wall used to be. “Or at least hang a sign. Scenic view of the end of everything. No smoking on the balcony, 'cause the balcony’s dead.”
He sighs, rubbing a hand down his face.
Blood’s still crusted under his nails.
God, he needs to sleep.
Or drink.
He glances at the still face down fridge.
Not that nice, though.
Wasn't there a magnifying glass, or something?
He grabs his phone, hits the hourglass, and his camera pops up, with his half-couch in center view and a little (+) hovering over it.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He hits the plus.
RATTY COUCH
A couch that has definitely seen the end of its days.
He stares.
Your kidding, is everything of importance through the phone?
He sighs, before pointing his phone at different objects in his house.
A desk, an entertainment center, the fridge, nothing really interesting until he points it at the kitchen knife from before.
KITCHEN KNIFE
A knife that was used to kill a corrupted integration.
Blade dulls 3% slower
Corrupted integration?
Yeah, I think I'd rather not think about that.
Although it could do better than 3 percent, fuck.
Deciding enough's enough, he sits back down, and just stairs out of the hole in the wall.
And on the top floor of a parking garage that is usually blocked by the now-missing building, is something looking towards him.
He blinks. It might blink back. It might not. Hard to tell from this distance.
Raising his phone slowly, he zooms in and clicks the +.
CORRUPTED INTEGRATION
CLASS:OBSERVER
LVL:?
STATUS: WATCHING
He blinks. Then sighs.
Then he gets up, walks to the fridge, and tips it back over. Doesn’t care what’s in it. Doesn’t care what spills.
He just opens it, grabs the warmest beer he can find, pops it open on the torn countertop, and walks back to the couch.
Sits down.
Stares out the hole again.
And drinks.
Looking at the backpack on his bed, he does one more checklist.
Water bottle, beer, canned food, extra clothes, rope, the blanket off his bed, a pillow, the sleeping bag he never actually used and, quite frankly, forgot he had?
All here.
He steps out of the bedroom, doesn’t speed up when he walks past the spooky-ass closet, grabs the knife off the counter, and heads for the door.
Passed the sadly inoperable elevators, he races down the dark stairs, and out of the building.
Take a glance left, then right, he turns left and sets down the street.
A few blocks away, there’s a hardware store. Kind of like if Home Depot and Dick’s had a hate child. It sells nails and screws, yeah, but also heavy-duty camping gear, power tools, hunting bows, machetes—along with basically whatever the owner felt like stocking that week.
He used to love that place.
Family-owned stores always had character.
Sucks that they aren't a thing anymore.
The walk to the store is uneventful, the lack of people in a city actually vaguely unnerving.
There's a gunshot here, a body there, yea, but the gunshots are distant.
It feels oddly lonely, kind of like a school during a break, or a closed mall. Liminal spaces, he thinks they’re called.
He shivers, and glances over his shoulder.
Nothing.
Breathing deep, he turns back around, and crosses the small parking lot to enter the store.
The lights are out, the doors shattered inward leaving only frames, and the “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign still hanging[ albeit by a thread.
Aw, damn, guess I’ll come back later
He steps in the door anyways.
A glance left and right reveals nothing, and looking forward the same.
Lets see, I think the tents were over here…
Grabbing a cart and wheeling it through the broken glass, he walks towards the left side of the store, squinting through the darkness.
God, If this was a horror movie, this would definitely be where I die.
The shelves are already mostly empty, already taken by the looters from during The Countdown.
The best stuff is gone, but that doesn’t mean there isn't anything worth taking.
He hopes.
Picking up a backpack from the ground that isn’t really all that bigger- he just likes the nice dark green color- he stops as he hears a crunch.
Fingers crossed it stays over there.
He doesn’t dare look, just keeps moving. The store feels too quiet, like something’s watching him from the shadows.
With his pulse still racing, he picks up a hammock here, a tarp there, and a heavy-duty bowstring from a shelf.
Sucks that it doesn’t come with the bow, but, well, it’s probably safer that way.
He races back out of the front of the store with the cart, his heart not quite calmed yet, and when he glances over his shoulder, he freezes.
That observer thing from before?
Turns out it didn't have eyes.
It has an eye, singular. Instead of a face, it's just one big eyeball, like a cyclops on steroids.
Also a whole HELL of a lot scarier.
How does he know this?
Because right there, in the broken doors he just walked through, it stands.
He backs away slowly, not taking his eyes off of the thing, dragging the cart around to be between him and the Observer.
Just because it hasn’t done anything yet doesn't mean I like it.
Dragging the cart with him, he goes not towards his apartment, but towards the city edge.
I mean, my class is Nomad, and I might as well make the best of it.
If that's even how it works.
Oh well.
Staging walking backwards another minute after he loses sight of the Corruption, he finally turns around and sets down the road.
Good-Bye Somerset, and Hello Beaver Creek.
