• Chapter 1: Instability Rising


    My name is Alex. If you’re reading this, there are some real problems on planet earth, and almost everyone on it is either dead, or insane. The story you’re about to read is a condensed version of my personal journal that I kept as this was going on. Most of it probably isn’t very important, but pay attention. Maybe you can learn from what I’ve seen, avoid some of the things I’ve encountered.

    If you’re reading this, everyone’s gone crazy.

    If you’re reading this, the world had ended.

    I was test subject number 11012, and I was being studied for the effects of mind altering brain wave frequencies on the human capacity for telekinesis. I lived in the top floor of a skyscraper, with no windows, and all the doors were locked all the time. There were always doctors running in and out of the building, running tests and analyzing data. Being a test subject, the data was often concerning me.

    There were two kinds of tests, the ones with the big machine, and the test where I moved things. At first, the machine nearly killed me, and I could only do that test only once a month; and my eyes would start bleeding. Then, I did the test at least three times a day, but the machine still hurt. The test consisted of me lying on a table, inside of a big machine with a metal bar that wraps around my head. The doctors used to put these needle probes into my head, trying to “measure brain waves” or something. But one day, the first day I started passing out, I woke up and the probes were fried, sticking out of my head like burning hot metal horns. After the resulting surgery to remove the probes, the doctors were worried about me. They didn’t know why I had fainted, or what would happen if they put me in the machine anymore. The worrying stopped when I took the other test.

    The tests where I moved things were much less painful. Basically, these tests consisted of me sitting in a chair, tied down so I couldn’t escape. There were doctors in the same room, watching through the glass window at the objects placed there. What they told me to do was focus on the object, to try and make it move. At first, I couldn’t do anything but just stare. Then, after a couple weeks, I could make the items vibrate a little, by focusing on it intensely. Afterwards, however, I had a migraine for quite a while, and I noticed a slight glow in my veins. But then, I started passing out during the machine tests. After the first time I passed out, I did the test again, and could easily move small objects, such as a pencil and a quarter. Then, day after day, they tested me with bigger and heavier objects to move. A teddy bear, a football. Then a few weeks later, a computer. And a car tire. An engine block. The entire engine. The whole car. The more I moved, the more my veins glowed, and stretched out. I could move whatever I wanted, including the doctors. But I’d gotten enough scars to learn not try that again.

    The machine tests were happening more and more often recently. My eyes continued to bleed. My veins continued to glow and stretch. But I was getting stronger by the day, and the doctors knew it.

    During most of the machine tests from then on, I fell unconscious.
    The dream I had when I passed out during the machine test was always the same: my tenth birthday. The day they took me. I was sitting on my bed, wondering what my presents might be, like any other ten year old kid would. I walked into the kitchen, my head filled with thoughts of the new toys and how much fun the next few days might be. Then, almost to the kitchen, I heard a voice. A low, angry voice, too deep to be Dad’s. I opened the door, only to found my parents lying on the floor, in a pool of blood, and three men in black coats standing around them. The one I heard before saw me, and grabbed me. I tried to break free, but he stuck a piece of cloth over my mouth, and everything went black. Then I would woke up, and the tests would be over, and it would be time to went back to my cell, and clean my bleeding eyes and watch as my glowing veins dimmed with every pulse.

    Then, after three times of that, they made me move things again. Then dinner with the other subjects, who were also my best and only friends, then back to our cells. Daniel, Ian, and Matt, the others, weren’t the same as me, or each other. I think the machine did different stuff for all of us. Matt seemed to always be really hyper and twitchy, and moved a bit too fast. Daniel knew things that nobody else seemed to. He knew when things were about to happen sometimes, and could learn about different objects simply by laying a hand on it and focusing. Nobody knew what Ian could do yet, but he had severe anger issues and was always getting mad and trying to fight. The doctors were always talking about brainwaves during our few and far between ‘school’ lessons, something about broadcasting radio waves at a frequency the brain could picked up. I guess that’s what the machine was doing to us.

    Sitting at lunch after the first test of the day, Ian was telling me about how mad the tests make him, while Daniel thought and Matt twitched. Just another usual day here. I zoned out while Ian was talking to me, and I thought about what that place was to me: all of our failed escape attempts, all the scars I had because of the place. Even if I left, somehow miraculously escaped, I would never get back what these people took from me. I thought of all the times I’ve been beaten, how many times the machine had made my eyes bleed, so many that whenever I move anything, they fade to completely solid red, the pupil and iris disappearing behind the odd coloration. The way that, when I move things without touching them, my veins glow an eerie blue color, for reasons unknown to me. The things I never did, the things I’ll never get to do. The pain they’ve caused me, and how badly I wanted revenge.

    Thinking I’ve zoned out, I heard the whirring of spinning blades in the distance, getting closer and louder, and a voice somewhere beside me whispered, “Get ready to run.” That snapped me out of my daydream, and I looked at Daniel. He nodded, and shook Matt. I kicked Ian in the shin. We stood up, and walked slowly towards the cells, as if we were going to bed.

    Suddenly, there was a really loud noise, like an explosion, and grinding metal. Like the car crashes in all the old movies we had watched, on those rare occasions the doctors let us watch TV. We all ran through the hallway, with the guards, to saw what had happened. Above the carnage and anarchy, Daniel yelled to us, “A helicopter just crashed into the building!!!” All the guards and doctors were in a panic, wondering what to do. I looked to Ian, Daniel, and Matt.

    Sensing an opportunity, I shout, “Let’s go!” We all ran towards the hole in the wall, and without a real plan, leap. Stunned for a moment, I stare.
    I looked up, expecting the bright blue of the sky as I vaguely remembered. Wanting so badly to saw that blast of color, that sweet vision of freedom, the disappointment almost physically stung when my eyes met the cloudy grey of the beginning of a storm. The clouds were ridiculously shaped puffballs, and a shade of depressing grey. Already starting to unleash its payload of water on the earth below, we fell with the rain.
    Freefalling is a terrific sensation. Like being part of the air, almost. Unfortunately, thanks to a little law of nature named gravity, it can only last so long.

    I looked below me, and saw the city I left behind, so long ago. It had grown considerably, and I stared in shock as I saw the seemingly impossibly tall new buildings. Needles of concrete and glass sticking into the thunderstorm clouds, my first view of freedom seemed an ominous warning. Finally, my sense of awe and shock over freedom ended, and I then saw the ground rushing up to greet us with a cold, hard slab of concrete. The adrenaline kicked in, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I picked up Matt, Daniel, Ian and I, just like a couple of objects in the tests… and right before we hit the ground, I caught us all, stopping us from becoming smears on the sidewalk.

    We landed safely, and sat there for a moment, looking at the surrounding city; only one thing came to mind. “Freedom!” I looked at us, four random teens that fell from the sky wearing uniforms with numbers 11011 to 11014, and looked at the people standing around, pointing at the smoke billowing from the building, totally ignoring us. I turned to the others and said, “We need new clothes.”

    I looked around, and saw a familiar sign from my early childhood: Good-Mart General Store. We walked inside, calm, as if nothing were happening. Then, picking up a few articles of clothing, we hopped into the dressing rooms, changed quickly, and sprinted out of the store. With all the commotion and disturbance outside, we slipped out unnoticed. Ian even managed to steal a few dollars and a lighter from an unsuspecting man’s pocket. We ran out, fully dressed in our newly shoplifted clothes, and headed towards the outskirts of the city.

    Once we got away from the craziness of panic, and everyone running and screaming from the helicopter crash, we came to meet the true hustle and bustle of being in a big city. Daniel seems to remember his way around, or at least he figured out the city layout by standing on the sidewalk. Who knows?

    The edge of the city, the suburbs, reminded me of my old life. I thought, for an instant, “I’m free; I could had that life again!” Then a familiar nightmare image that even now haunts my sleep returned to me. My parents, lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood that’s flowering out, framing their faces that were screaming in silent agony, their voices extinguished by eternal sleep. I ran. Just ran, not caring about being free. What was the point of being free if you had nowhere to go? So, I ran… and the others followed. I turned to them, and I asked, doing my best to keep my broken voice from sounding too weak, “Why are you still following me? We’re free now. We could do whatever we want.”

    Ian spoke up for them. “Exactly. And we want to stay with you. So shut up and stop complaining.” He laughed heartily and patted me on the back.
    I gave him a weak smile and replied, “Well, I can’t really argue with THAT logic…” But honestly, I was really relieved they stayed. They were the only friends I had, the only people I actually knew. The fact that they were the only ones anything close to what I was hadn’t even concerned me yet; the fact was that they were the only people I was comfortable dealing with, the only ones who weren’t strangers.

    We continue walking, past the suburbs, right out the city limits, into a road that lead into a forest. We walked through the forest, looking around, not really scared. It got darker quickly, but we knew that there was nothing in these woods that could hurt us any worse than what had already been done. We occasionally heard a rustling in the bushes, or some noise in the trees, but it was nothing dangerous. So we continued on our way, not really paying any mind to our surroundings, mostly buried in thought about what we were going to do now that we were free.

    We got through the woods with little effort, and emerged on the other side to saw a small town nestled in a valley, with mountains on both sides. From our view in the edge the woods, with night having fallen completely, it looked like a popup picture from one of those fairy tales. Like the perfect little peaceful village settled in the valley, with the mansion on a hill with a pond at the bottom and a clock tower in the distance, with a perfectly crescent moon lying above it all in the darkness. I’ve read enough fairy tales to know that its towns like this usually burn to the ground early on in the story, and the main character swears revenge or something. But this was real life, not some book that someone was reading.

    Wasn’t it?

    Walking towards the town, we started looking at the houses. Spotting a particularly spooky looking house with broken windows and a hole in the roof, we realized that it was most likely abandoned. I turned to our band of misfit test subjects and said, “Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?”

    “It’s been 6 years since I’ve had a piece of pie?” Matt asked.

    “Well… that and that house over there was probably abandoned and a really good place to hide out for a while.” I said.

    “Oh…” he said, then smiles. “We could get pie later though, right?” he asked.
    “What was it with you and pie, dude?” Ian asked.

    “Pie was amazing!” replied Matt.

    “He had a point, you know,” said Daniel.

    “Enough with the pie already!!” I yelled. “Can we just go to this house and chill now? I’m tired!”

    “Alright, alright. Calm down.” Matt said, and we all went into the house. “We’ll just get pie later.”

    I smacked him upside his stupid head.

    “Ow! Hey, what was that for?” he whines.

    “I said enough with the freaking pie already!” I yelled, and then turned back to the house, which we were now standing in front of. I looked at this ran-down shack and smiled at our new home.

    “Well, its windows might be busted, and there may be a hole in the roof…” Ian said, “But I think we could live here.”

    “Well, that’s the plan.” I said, and everyone nods. We head inside, and looked around. It was a total dump, complete with roaches crawling over every non-toxic surface, and a dead rat lying on the torn sofa. I picked up the rat the same way I picked up those objects in the tests, and I toss it out the window. Ian takes out a lighter he stole off of a smoker back in the city, to light up the place a little. We found some previously used, but still serviceable candles to light. After the house was more illuminated, we saw the sofa had a large, dark stain on it, and I wondered what made it. Deciding I’d rather not know, I flipped the cushion over and we just pretended it wasn’t there. “Home sweet home,” I said.

    “Yeah. Right.” Daniel replied sarcastically.

    The next morning, I awoke to a growling stomach. “Man, I’m STARVING.”

    “Well, there’s a dead rat outside on the porch,” Matt replied sarcastically.

    “Don’t be crude,” Daniel said. “What we need to do is get a job.”

    “I’ve got a better idea.” Matt said.

    “And that would be…?” Dan asked.

    “Well, we’re poor, orphaned, and homeless…” Matt said. “We could probably beg up a good meal and some spare change don’t you think?”

    “I’m not begging.” Ian said coldly, glaring down Matt with the ‘death look’ he was so good at.

    “Suit yourself,” Matt said, and walked out the door to go begging. I watched him go, and shook my head.

    “There goes a true moron.” I sighed, and Matt yelled from outside,

    “I heard that!”

    I laugh, and then turned back to Dan. “So, what was this about getting a job?” I asked.
    “Well, I saw a grocery store as we were walking to this house,” he said, “so maybe if we got a job there, we could get discounts on food too.”

    I smiled, patted my genius friend on the back, and said, “Alright, let’s go.” So we did. Walking down the street, we saw the few people walking around, glancing at the few strange looking kids heading towards the store. I spotted Matt on the curb, holding out his hands and doing a good job of looking pitiful. Grabbing him by his collar, I dragged him along behind us on the way to the conveniently located grocery store.
    I walked up to the counter, looked at the tall, bearded man standing behind it and said, “Can we speak to your manager? We’re here to apply for a job.” He looked at me for a moment, and then laughed. It was a full, dark sound, like Santa Claus with a lot of extra testosterone.

    In an almost ridiculously heavy southern drawl, he replied, “Sonny, I AM this here store’s manager. Now what can I do ya for?”

    I repeat myself again, “We’re here to apply for a job.”

    He looked at me funny again, and walked to the back room. Coming back out after a few moments, he said, “Well aint you four just the durn luckiest? We just so happens to had four openings, right here.”

    I tilt my head to the left slightly and said, “So, that’s it then?”

    “Well, to be formal and official, I had to get some identification and what-not.” He said, frowning slightly. “But other than the formalities, yessiree, those jobs is as good as yours, if’n you want em.”

    “Alright, cool,” said Ian, and then he takes his dog tags off and hands it to the man.

    “What in Sam’s Hill was this?” he asked. “You aint no marine or army man. What’re you doin’ with them here dog tags?”

    “Those are my ID tags, sir. If you looked on there, that’s my name and subject number.” Ian replied calmly.

    Dan said, “I didn’t think it works like that here…”

    Ian, casting an ice-cold glare at Daniel, said, “Well, that’s the only identification we have.”

    The manager looked at us funny. “Where’d y’all said y’all was from?”

    “Do you have a map?” I ask.

    “’S on the back wall,” he said. “Why?”

    “Well, I could show you. I didn’t know the name of the city.” I reply.

    “Aw, durn… Y’all is them there city types, aint ya?” he laughs.

    “Technically. I guess you could say that, yeah.” I said, and then walked to the map, and point to the small dot that represents the city we just came from.

    “Y’all are from Mordreth City and y’all didn’t know it?” he said, dumbfounded.

    We looked at each other for a moment, silently.

    The manager takes a closer looked at us, a strange, lost group of abandoned teens. Then he turns to me, and frowns. “I don’t normally went ‘round, hirin’ strangers to do local jobs. Got plenty of local kids to do local jobs… Where are y’all stayin’, anyhow?”
    I shrug, and point a thumb over my left shoulder, out the door. “That old shack, right on the edge of the town.”

    “Just why are y’all lookin’ for a job?” he asked. “Ain’t y’all got no parents?”
    Matt looked at the manager with the biggest, saddest puppy eyes I had ever seen, and said simply, “no… Our parents died, all of our parents died. We need food, and money to repair our house.” He looked at us again, and he sighs. Then, with a twinge of pity in his voice, says,

    “Y’all are hired, I guess.”
    For the next few weeks, we worked. Daniel and I were box boys, setting up boxes in the back room. Ian was a shelf-stacker, putting supplies on the shelves in the store. And Matt was a delivery boy, running to and from houses that ordered things from the store. The jobs were relatively easy, and they’re made even easier for some of us by our powers. Stacking boxes was a piece of cake when you could pick them up without even touching them. Of course, I had to do that when Keith, the manager, wasn’t looking, otherwise we’d be fired. I’m pretty sure that Affirmative Action didn’t cover super powered teens as a minority.
    We got the same neighborly treatment as any newcomers would have, people showing up at our door offering trays of cookies or homemade pies, invites to barbecues and housewarming parties. All at someone else’s house, of course. Even after we renovated, our shack was in no condition to withstand a party, or even a barbecue cookout in the backyard. It could hardly withstand four teens living there.

    We were heading back home, now into our 3rd month of freedom. I sighed, and I realize that I’m almost happy with this. I had a good job for a kid, I’m living in a house that’s in much better condition than when we found it, and I’m living with my best friends, in this pretty much perfect, friendly little town. The only thing missing was… well, nothing.
    I’m lying on the couch, next to Matt who’s in one of the chairs, and Daniel in the other, and Ian on the floor. We’re talking, relaxing, and just enjoying our freedom. Lying there, talking with my best and only friends, I asked them, “How long do you think this could last?”

    Nobody answered for a long time. Then Ian said, “I don’t know…”

    Matt added, “Hopefully, a long, long time.”

    Daniel stayed silent.

    The next morning, as we headed to the store in silence, I thought aloud: “why is it so quiet?” only to look around and realize that there was no one around us. Wondering what was going on, we went into the store. Behind the counter, Keith the country manager was sitting there, talking to himself. Mostly mumbling, but occasionally twitching and moaning.
    He turns to us, and we saw him fully: his tall frame hunched over, his dark beard stained darker with blood. He growls at us, and hops up on the table, a five foot leap that shouldn’t have been possible.

    He shrieks; an animalistic, tortured sound. Responding to the call, we heard calls eerily similar throughout the store. Bodies stumble out of the isles, people rush at us from all directions. Suddenly, we’re surrounded, at least six people on all sides, all in the same condition: Howling, covered in blood. Twitching and groaning. Looking seriously pissed. They all came for us at the same time, and before any of us had time to react, Ian screams in fury, and flames erupt from his fingers and mouth, enveloping the onslaught of insane creatures. Within seconds, we were surrounded by charred bodies. We just sat there for a moment, mostly from shock, but also partially wondering just what exactly was going on around here.

    After grabbing a ton of food, and a pie for Matt, we head for the parking lot, where the plan was to hijack a car and get back to the house. Out the window, however, we saw something that sets the alarm bells ringing: a limping, bloody figure, heading straight for the store. Instantly wary, we decide to take the side exit instead, to sneak around and get to the parking lot from the other direction. We walked to the side exit, past the bathrooms, and through the door….

    Straight into a garage full of people, all snarling, twitching, and covered in blood. They stopped snarling for long enough to spot us, and then charge. One thing and one thing only was written across their faces: Murder.
    The next few moments were a blur: Matt was fighting so fast I could hardly saw him; Ian was blasting people to bits and leaving a trail of charred, smoking bodies in his wake. I threw someone into a group, and they all went down. I turned and face one, and rip him apart, beating someone with the pieces. Daniel pushes a rack of boxes over onto about five of them.

    And just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. I was looking around at the carnage, when we heard screams in the distance. “I think they heard us,” said Ian.

    “What makes you think that?” said Matt, in a very sarcastic tone.

    “Because they’re right over there,” I answered coolly, pointing towards the horizon, and at the army of people running at us, thirsting for our blood. Hungry for violence. People who, just yesterday, were asking us how we were and inviting us to dinner. We all sprinted towards the nearest car. Dan gets in the driver’s seat, then hotwires it and starts it up. I get shotgun, and Matt and Ian were in the back. Matt just sits there, as Ian blasts fire at the insane people chasing us, and I grabbed random objects we passed and kill as many as I can. The damage we’re doing was cataclysmic, but still not enough. And the car we picked just happened to have run out of gas. I heard Ian mutter “just freaking perfect.”

    I heard Matt say, “I’m going to look in the back,” and luckily for us, whoever owned this car was a hunter. There was a shotgun, two pistols, and a machete. Ian looked at Matt when he offered him a weapon, and laughed, giving a dismissive wave and hopping out of the car. So, Matt tossed the shotgun to Dan, and he kept the machete. I got the pistols. I loaded them, and said with a grim scowl on my face, “Is it just me, or are we going to do stuff like this a lot?”

    The car stopped. The mob was almost upon us, and there was hundreds. We hopped out, and instantly started shooting and blasting away. Immediately, I could tell it’s hopeless, but I kept fighting. A headshot here, picking up a car and slamming it into a few people here, lots of casualties, but not enough. They just kept coming. Ian blasted them away with huge flares, ten by ten, leaving piles of ashes and a smell oddly reminiscent of a sausage breakfast at the lab cafeteria. Dan pumps the shotgun and blows them away. Matt was nowhere to be seen, but the random person who falls over for no apparent reason had just met his machete.

    They didn’t stop coming, and we didn’t stop fighting. It was clear we needed to run, to get away, but we were surrounded. We had already lost; it was only a matter of time. The fighting was a blur, randomly crushing people with whatever I could grasp my mind around. Explosions every few seconds, Ian was completely out of control. Blasts of fire erupted off the middle of the street, looking like a demonic volcano got up and started to walk around, going off randomly.

    I decide to take some inspiration of the cartoons I watched as a kid, and try the “flip the roads like a carpet and they all fell over” trick. It didn’t work quite as I expected it too. A chunk of asphalt, about fifteen feet across, flew up, all the people on it included, and slammed into the side of a building. Getting an idea for a miracle escape, I called for everyone to get beside me.

    As they all gather, I started lifting the asphalt below us. On command, it lifted and began floating. I turned us away on our makeshift air-raft, and we flew to our shack. The sensation of flying was amazing. The knowledge that I had total control made it even better.
    But as I flew, I started to feel woozy, and blue spots started showing in my vision. I guess I didn’t have total control after all. Just when we get to our building, I dropped the asphalt, and suddenly the world vanished. Just faded out.

    I woke up, and I’m lying inside of our building, lying next to Matt on the floor. Matt was asleep, and Daniel and Ian were nowhere to be found. I started to worry, and then I heard the door slam shut downstairs. I walked to the stairwell, right into Daniel as he ran up the stairs to wake Matt up.

    We both screamed, and we both fell over. Ian just looked at us and laughed, and then Matt woke up and with a confused look on his face, asked, “What just happened?” Then we all laugh together, with the exception of Matt, who was still confused, which made it all the funnier. Then we heard a scream from outside and a car alarm went off, and that snaps us back to reality. Then Ian and Daniel remember the reason for their haste:
    “We found out what’s going on!” yelled Daniel enthusiastically. “It was in the newspaper!”

    “Remember the machine, and the day we escaped? That helicopter that crashed was just a distraction! Whoever crashed that helicopter stole the machine!”

    “How did that explain everyone going crazy?” I asked.

    “Whoever stole it must have reprogrammed it to drive people insane, instead of enhancing the brain functions!” said Dan.

    “That didn’t explain how everyone was crazy. We had to go into the machine one at a time, didn’t we? So how could that effect all those people in so short a time?” Matt wondered, frowning.

    “Whoever stole it and reprogrammed it must have hooked it up to something to broadcast further! Like… a radio station, or something!” said Ian.

    “Would that work? Would a radio station broadcast a powerful enough signal?” I asked again, trying to think.

    “No, it must have been something even more powerful… something with frequency broadcasting signal capabilities much higher than a radio station.” said Dan.

    “What do you think it is?” Matt and I asked simultaneously.
    Silence hung in the air as we awaited Daniel’s answer. The seconds stretched by, and after what seemed like an eternity, Dan looked around, takes a deep breath, and sighed.

    “A satellite.” Silence for a few seconds, as the depth of this news sinks in. I’m sure that we’re all thinking the same thing: if it’s hooked up to a satellite, could it affect the entire world?

    Were we the only ones left?