Wave: Epidemic (1)

Part 1: The Pokémon

Chapter 1: Wall Us Away

You know, Drew.

You're a little pain sometimes.

I love you to death though, and I want you to get back on your feet. I want you to wake up. I know you can do that for me, Drew. I saw you open your eyes.

I want you to take advantage of what's been given to you. You're no longer human. You're something so different. Use that. I promise it'll help.

Most importantly, I want you to fight back. Maybe you can't do it alone. That's okay. There will be friends along the way.

Don't let that bad person hurt you anymore, Drew. You have to fight him. Fight your way to the top. That should be nothing new to you. It's going to be a lot like that game you play!

Sorta.

We'll see each other again someday. Edge, I love you.

...

...

...


Sitting with my legs crossed, I pressed my palms into my knees, pushing them into the dusty cement. My back was hunched, eyes fixed on the ground before me. I felt heavy, and so did my eyelids. And my arms. And my conscience. Paranoid. I was paranoid. Was I? Yes. It felt like I needed to be, like the walls were watching. Were they? For all I knew, they were.

Noon blindsided me. The alleyway between the locker rooms and the gym was empty just like it was during those days at the end of the year where no one gave a damn about showing up. There was a car or three in the old, ruined senior parking lot the district never cared enough to renovate. Zack's truck wasn't one of them, but that was always one of them, and when it was here, there were other human beings around me.

Noon made me realize something about Autumnridge: I needed to get away from it. Metedia High wasn't far enough, although it felt that far when you're the only one of your clique who decided to show up. And stay human. Maybe I was full of it, then. Maybe I was already far from Autumnridge in some way. Yeah, I was at Metedia High, and you only came here if you were human. You had lunch alone, because your friends were kidnapped by humans, because those friends weren't humans.

Because you're a pussy and you didn't help them.

The walls made me feel like trash today, even though I was blanketed by a self-awareness like none I've ever had and was already making me grind my teeth together, a red daze. It was hot under this thing—self-awareness—and there was no way of taking it off, because it was my skin. But my skin was bare. There was no fur, no scales, no leaves. I wanted to keep it that way, so I came to school today.

And so did I. I'm waiting for you to turn into me, Bryan!

My head was in places it'd never been before, and all by its lonesome. It made me feel anything other than human.

You don't want to be a human, because the thoughts of a man are going to tear you apart from the inside and make you regret ever leaving them in the forest.

I had to get away from here. I wanted to be Bryan, and I couldn't do that here. The walls were talking to everybody, like street dealers; they were all so faceless, taking and receiving. There was no lunch today. They took that, too.

I hoisted myself up, exhaling, a palm at my forehead. I lifted my head, leaning against the wall behind me, but only because it let me. The month's events kept catching up to a phantom inside of me, forcing me to feel the cold, contorting eyes of a Junior leaving campus, and how his fists gripped the branches so hard. Failure. The branches didn't snap. He just lost his fingers and couldn't hold on any longer.

I was wondering how I could have escaped without the walls noticing me. It had to be done during lunch, because they were watching the other students, which came out to a small number anyway. Ten minutes remained before the class bell sounded, and then I would've been herded into a room where four walls effortlessly perused our thoughts and mocked our bodies because our ears were in the wrong spots, or because our tails were cut off before they left our asses. Walls couldn't do anything about us, but they were only at the base of the hierarchy that had this declarative force over our bodies.

I walked away from the gym, backpack strapped over one shoulder as a numb hand held it in place. My first destination was the old lot. With each crunch the gravel made in response to my footsteps, there was a “no”. A “no'. “No”. No. No. No. No no no. But there were no more walls around me. There were chain link fences and wooden posts and slabs of busted concrete. There was a car or three, or four, now that I had a better view of the parking lot. I had a better view of the treeline, too. That was Autumnridge's woodland. It was where I went with my Circle after class. There were gaps in the thickets beyond the vast, empty space of the abandoned lot. Those were the paths that no one walked down, because they led nowhere, and the woodland wasn't the type of place where you could just turn around and go back the way you came. The way looked different when you came back, which you didn't. You went a different way, and you didn't speak of it when you got home.

I didn't turn my head for a second. I went to the treeline, stopping to take note of the vegetation leaking into the lot, cracks multiplying in the asphalt. The area didn't look like this at the beginning of the year. These plants advanced  like they wanted to fight off the walls for us, because they were the good guys, but the worst things about this—something the walls and the forest didn't compare to in any way—were the meteorites. I wanted to go see one, and it was in the forest.

I passed through the thick brush at the forest floor, straying from the wheel-carved path, because I knew that was bait. I assumed I was safer here than at Metedia High, because the only things breaking were twigs I tread upon instead of the society I was raised in. A spider web, too. That home was now as torn apart as mine. A few strokes across my face did away with the gluey web, but not the bushes clawing at my bare legs. At least there was no fur, no scales, no leaves. And if there were leaves, they weren't mine. The belonged to this wilderness. Life belonged to this wilderness. Size did. It was a place you came to get lost in if you were human. I didn't feel lost, but I felt human. The sensations of a hand across my face and a scrape on the calf told me that much.

My eyelids were heavier. The sun was shy here, and, as it stood, the only differences between a gloomy day and a moonlit night in the thicker parts of the woodland were null and void. I could've slept if I wanted to, and I wanted to, but I wanted to see the meteorite again.

The unpaved path came to a horizontal clearing of dirt and thin arches of intermingling leaves above. I trusted this road enough to traverse it. For a brief time, I followed the archway, the green and yellow of pollen and willow drizzling, sappy snowflakes in front of me. Moths stuttered with whispers of wings beneath breaths of wind and falling leaves. The sun spoke up over them, showing me all of the glistening, wet webs I could wear as an itch if I walked too far from this path. I didn't need to do that. I went where the dirt forked off into a muddy passage, narrow enough for one person to comfortably crouch through.

My friends' backpacks and clothes were still here. They didn't need them anymore.

The obsidian circle, a site of rituals that a Native American tribe put their spirits to. The place was unusual, with eight black rocks encircling a larger, central piece of stone. The trees surrounding the open area were bent inward, like they were leaning in, listening to whatever was going on at the time, a hunched cult. The ground was charred, though moist, like sooty mud. The center of the obsidian circle hosted a clear view of the sky, and, as a consequence, took a space rock to the face. The once smooth stone centerpiece was decimated, a glowing, metallic anomaly taking its place. It was all about taking places now. Creatures took my friends' places. Chaos took Autumnridge. That's what this rock meant to me, and I was here just knowing I could be. I could keep my body, keep going, and be left with the thoughts of walls crunching me, closing in.

No one came to the woodland since the outbreak—since those walls started watching people and telling a higher power to change us. Who had the power? Who was the power? It must have started with this. Pieces of it, anyway. Were they seeds? They planted themselves into somebody, and out of that grew an infection so bizarre that it almost made me feel something positive somewhere in knowing Autumnridge was the first to get it. It had to be. Nowhere else could have.

I sat on one of the dark, shiny stones: My stone. It was right at the edge of the clearing's orientation. Al's was across from me. I sat here when I was with my Circle. Like the trees, I leaned forward, hands folded.

Since the outbreak really hit, Autumnridge had been left with some fraction of its population, some of us diseased, the meteorite's bugs eager to steer some sick fucker onto my doorstep, or maybe one would sneak into my lunch spot so that the walls could watch me change away. They called where I lived a hot zone. It was hard to sleep in a hot zone, stuck in a prison of alien germs. When I slept, I thought the only thing keeping me from the germs were my pajamas and blankets. It could get it, stay there, and change me, violent cracking of my own shifting bones and tearing ligaments waking me up, or just killing me. On the off chance, it could be some third thing, which went and happened to Cruce and that other poor kid. One month in, too. Didn't seem like they were gonna wake up.

The walls liked to watch the hot zones, because Metedia was pretty boring to them. You didn't go to school if you were infected. Only a couple transformations ever happened there. It didn't mean they weren't watching you at all times. They just cared a little less when they knew you were going to be okay. The hot zones weren't like that. They were places so poisoned that the water in our pipes was as dangerous as the unsuspecting infected walking in the streets, searching for sanctuary; a safety net that didn't come down on them quite the way the authorities had in mind. Here though, there were no walls, and if I changed, I could have done it in peace. Peace and pain.

My mouth was dry. I left the obsidian circle, meteorite's glimmer fresh on my mind, like it mattered to forget, even though I couldn't forget it if I tried. I ignored the Circle's belongings a second time, making my way through the narrow mud passage. I had a place in mind. A nice one. It wasn't as gloomy as the obsidian circle, or as the atmosphere of a classroom I should have been in right now. It was the woodland bridge, with its small, man-made promontories overlooking the widest portion of the river. I followed the dirt trail again, going the opposite direction. The arches above me started to bend away from the dirt path, as if learning a repulsive thing or two about it. There was nothing wrong with the dirt. It wasn't contaminated. It sloped upward, oaken wood taking its place. It carried itself over the approaching river, leaving the trees and the brush behind, before diving back into another dark woodland.

I was there. Stopping at one of the semi-circle balconies at the midpoint of the bridge, I set my things down beside me and rested my arms on the oak railing, knuckles pushing into my cheek. The wood was warm, the sun's rays notably more social. For some minutes, I was at ease, gaze lost in the tall stalks of grass at both banks of the river. My eyes wandered into the water, descending, catching the shape of a ball. The shape took me from my drowsy trance like a startling tap to the shoulder that should've seemed more like a punch to the gut. One shape was two. Both were blue. The larger of the two had big, round ears and a white belly. The smaller was featureless, its tether to the larger ball unseen.

The creature hadn't taken notice of me. That was because it was as relaxed as I wanted to be. With its tiny appendages as far as they'll go from that round body, it lay undisturbed upon the surface of the water, eyes closed, drifting gently, infected.

It was alive, but part of me had to make sure. I addressed my presence to the infected with a feigned cough. It came to, eyes going wide, blinking a few times. It seemed to lift its body slightly to get a better view of me. A shared fascination and fear settled between us.

“You won't report me, will you?” aked the blue ball, stiff and quick, which was a strange puzzle for my ears. Was it a girl, or a boy? Whatever gender, its idea of a greeting was as cringed as I was alarmed to see another living soul in the forest.

“No,” I began, leaving some silent air for the thing to huff its breath of relief. “I think you're better here than anywhere else in town. How'd you escape?”

“Urm, I swam.”

“And ended up here?” I extended my forearms, both laying over the railing.

“It's not easy when you don't have hands. I floated most of the way. Uh, you really won't tell anyone about me, right?”

“I won't, I won't. I don't know what it's like for you, but I lost most of my friends to the officers, so,” I shrugged. “So, what, you okay now?”

“I'm fine. I don't really understand what happened, and I don't know what to do. If I leave the forest, they'll throw me in a van and take me away again. I don't think I want to go away, but I don't know how to live out here on my own. I can't go back and get food, or anything.”

The creature didn't want to leave Autumnridge because it was safe in this forest. I was a human who wanted to leave the town because of the walls and the infected. But the woodland was a place with no walls. I was already fighting a battle to stay human just for the sake of staying human. That felt like enough of a reason to be afraid. If I fought that battle to stay human knowing that it helped the infected live without the fear of capture, I would stay.

“I'll help out.” I jumped into that with no time for laments. The blue mouse thing would have frozen if it wasn't at the mercy of the gentle current.

“Serious?”

“Yeah, why not?” I gave something of a reassuring smile.

“Thanks, um,” It paused for a few moments, eyes shifting around, searching for greater gratification. “Wow, thank you. You're a good guy, uh...”

“Bryan.”

“Bryan! I'm Travis. You from Metedia too?”

“Yep.”

That was a discovery well made. A student named Travis went to Metedia High and suffered the change anyway. Offering to help the little guy might have been the smartest thing I've done since the outbreak, let alone the only thing. It was also the only thing that kept me in Autumnridge. I was human, helping what should've been my Circle, but because was human, I didn't end up with them. I ended up with Travis.