2076: Civilization Zero

Revisit Death Prompt 3: Scifi dystopian horror

Some prompts, you have to challenge yourself. This writer put me underneath the scope. I had fun with it. Reacquainted myself with human anatomy.

This prompt would be impossible to figure out, but I still welcome it regardless.

I will be honest the only sports I know a little bit about is martial arts, but regardless Matt Cyr is a nice guy who supports the lit fiction community. I do appreciate him taking the time to donate and support the cause outside of homelessness and fighting bullies. No one likes a bully. I apologize in advance to him if this work is too intense. I action packed it as densely as I could.

I can appreciate the psychology behind baseball. If sports is your thing, check out his work, and get a reader who will appreciate you as a human being. It’s the best any of us could ask for, truly.

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Circa ME 10+ years ago/photography me. Heavily distorted to fit the story of the piece. Sort of works. I also, gave myself better eyebrows. True story, I don’t pluck my eyebrows.
Stream of Consciousness POV, zero draft.

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I woke up with the power out. City neighborhoods black, animal noises crippling our ears. Cell Phone bars, gone. Light a candle for my lover and friends. Nobody’s cold, nobody’s warm. A stillness that lives inside your body. You’re going to puke, the sludge slinky chains up and down your throat. Everything feels intense, and it’s only morning. There is a chopstick on the marble counter for when your lover makes your tea. Swirled the honey thick on the bottom. Balance. Cultures talked about that as though you’ve got one. Just photographs of memories that were never yours.

Body’s not quite tuned to the quiet, everything has been bright lights and designer drugs. Drums so loud that vibrations electrify you throughout your body. Daily Routines, took their tails and ran. Off this map, off the grid. Electricity is a commodity in the modern age. Can we survive without it?

Bedhead cataclysms slip out of their beds, we hear chirping of some deranged birds. Gunshots and silence.

It stays with you. Shocks the fingertips and ear canals like a southern tongue. Heavy handed. Eerie, I grip the chopstick as if it can stabilize me. I feel the fire in my veins begin to build. Your body doesn’t move. Your eyes trail the gun blasts from nearby. It’s not dark enough to see the lights.

Before we take the rest of the drugs and drown in it. An escape plan. Our widescreen TV tries to communicate. I hear the buzzing behind the panel.

A crippled man, I barely recognize sits on the floor surrounded by masked men. His skin wrinkled with glitter and silver. It stabs the camera lens and you can see sun glow off the armor. Flat face mother fucker. It’s Grok Rush, not enough plastic surgery to make him beautiful. Barely human.

“Is that the pedo guy from back in the day? Shouldn’t he be dead?” My friend speaks to no one, we can’t hear her.

I slink my feet down into the couch pit cold tile biting my heels.

“Civilization zero. We have a new technology for all the rich. You’ll be hunted for fun, my treat.” He pauses, his face muscles don’t move. “There’s not enough competition for bottom feeders to live here too. The machine is GOD.”

He coughs blood stains on the camera lens. Why isn’t he dead yet? The masked men don’t move, and you hear them crank their heads. Metal clanked together. I press my finger up to my ears, it pierces them loud. Chirps of birds I’ve never heard in my life. A new species.

“The human experience will learn competition with my children. Not the live ones. They’re not real. Not anymore.”

I grab the controller and attempt to shut it off. Get me off this joyride. We’re in danger. Nothing happens. I press, jam it down until it’s stuck. Oblivion. I admire its sleek design. Real silver. A gift from the Company.

Slam it straight in the middle, oblong shape.

There’s nothing to believe in anymore. We’ll just seethe and be destroyed.

My friend takes a knife to her neck. “Fuckity this. Bye.”

I can’t stop anything from happening. We disassociate to protect ourselves. Our memories belong to us.

“May the best man live.” Rush speaks high pitched, hardly human vocals, felt forced. Rehearsed. Automated. Not enough pharma could hold his body together for his final moment.

He slumps forward on the floor, you watch the blood pour out of his body on the spliced television skin pixels at war with each other. His skin decays green and gray. He growls, inhuman.

Not real.

My heart aches for anyone listening.

←Day 30→

I can’t stop running. My legs intuitively move between bullets flying. Between the living and the dead. The people I love are all gone, I have a few members of the underground working with me.

My love. My ceremony. Sacrificed their body from all the cyborgs enclosed on our territory. The warmth of their skin, the blue of their eyes faded to exploding galaxies in my head. The sick part of me wanted to fuck their corpse as a ritualistic good bye.

Grief stretches your brain thin, you barely recognize what kind of human you’ll end up becoming in the end. One more time. In our story. The world will travel so quickly, it’ll leave us behind.

My fate has been rearranged by the insides of these parasitic zombie cyborgs. I can hear them counting our bodies like bitcoins. #STREETRATS, #$TR33TM3AT, #$$$BESTBOY.

My lover’s dead weight held by fingers, they told me to play dead and I carved myself inside their corpse living in the bacteria of humanity. The ribcage kept me warm. I took pieces of their bones and when no one was watching I whispered all the things we’ve never done, all our goals washed away by greed. Horns blow their battle songs of tragedy within me.

They’ve given me no mercy. Watched love gnaw at me forever. No drug could replace the escapism needed to understand this level of grief.

My new people collected me in fetal covered in days old blood. Such a lovely day for them to find me that way. My breaths feel small enough to barely make a mass amongst the silence. Weighted chambers crushed within. An eye glass to analyze my grief. We’ve never talked about it. Rituals. Daily Routines. The best way to stay alive is to not remember. Lie to yourself long enough and all your dreams become real.

I was their new babe. Carried out barely alive. Shaken with the cold barren hands of life. A small dog with brittle bones. Thought, I should’ve died that day. Thought they should’ve left me there. Would’ve been a better end. Bit my tongue, because I couldn’t face reality.

When we all line up in the underground all of us have a story. Our cities have become dunes and mud houses underneath the soil. No one asks how you got there. We have every person in the field collecting resources and digging tunnels. They dug miles with dead ends and death traps. The cyborgs can’t make it too far underground, their wifi craps out. First generation.

When we fight, we zero in on our targets. Everybody’s face of grief screams on the outside, hearts on their sleeves, madness. Blood engulfs our faces, our mud masks by design. Battle cries of every loved lost. It guts you from within and becomes poison. It keeps you alive when no one’s watching. Ugly pain, masks off.

Tormented inside, these cyborgs wander into our den, some carnal hunger they need to feed. We behead every classist and use the data to analyze their names. Some of them are prototypes. We don’t know the population in Civilization Zero. It’s only theoretical. On the field, we find a live human everyday. In the trenches, the cyborgs collapse against our weight. The wasp’s nest.

We know when they’re coming. Frequencies sound like a high pitched bird chirping. Its alien distorted noise. Experimental, their sunlight eyes. Bird’s with machines. I’m pearly like their whites when it fades. Between those things and I, we trade our roles. A different job for every hour.

Above ground, I don’t kill them immediately. I take them apart piece by piece until I get all their Intel. Until I’m satisfied which isn’t very often. I want them to be jealous of what they used to have, all mixed up in the wash. Wrung out until there is nothing left to drip.

Sure, they got their wish.

Men love it when I’m evil.

I’m not your girl. I’m not your toy.

I make them believe they got a chance.

Have a kiss.

Men who went to otherside. Got new parts.

Creatures want to be sucked into the sky. Everything’s gonna burn.

My new friends named me, The Sadist. I prefer the name Night. I got new numbers for different area codes. I’m waiting, I am waiting for you.

←Day 99→

Morning wakes up, miles away from night. It whistles stuttered horns and sloppy piano. My knife is so shiny, so bright. A rogues galley, bodies of my enemies dress my feet with blood. My cigarette hangs from my lips. I hear them screeching bird chirps trying to locate my body. When they die their body turns green, plant food.

A folk band no one’s heard of plays in my head. They stopped making albums almost 80 years ago. Found them in the archives. In the parties with the Company. Quick fingers. I’d whistle it, if it didn’t give up my location.

A human person screams and takes my attention away from sharpening my knife.

“Jesus Christ.”

I suck the tobacco until the smoke encases every part of my mouth. Blow it out of my nose until it leaks. There’s about four of those fucking things out there. I’m getting reckless. Tired, is a better word. They smell like shit piled on shit when they die.

Exhausted, I bend my knees and crawl until one is near my eyesight. At least there isn’t a jumpsuit. They’re still mildly human shaped. I float faster with my legs and feet barely touching the ground, like I’m a quarterback and they got something I want. I don’t have time to collect anything useful from them today.

I give them lyrics of songs from records that no longer exist. First one, their body is partially warm under the winter light. I feel their pulse underneath my fingers, in one clean swipe. Two seconds pass, vocal chords gutted. A butcher in his shop. This doesn’t take them out initially. You gotta dig into that jugular hard if you want them to drown.

“May you live everyday for the rest of your life.”

I hear it cough, choking in a delightful manner. This is a bloody bite of wagyu after you rummage the chef’s art meat steak. You gotta roll when their body starts to seize up, because the others are going to see these things lose their lifeline. Drops quickly. Its technology glasses with emptied batteries. They fuckin hate when they become zero. We’re citizen zero, public enemy number one.

Word from the underground said their stocks get sucked out of their life forms and sent somewhere else. Not everyone hunts. Some do it for the thrill. Cults love to throw stones at somebody when they’re already down. A specific kind of hatred. Ages them dirty, they have to keep pumping their body with filler. They’ll never get enough to stay in the real. Casino noises traded for flesh. Blink blink. Chirp. Rich people have always hated the poor.

My head slammed against the soil sliding as if hidden sleet graced my presence. I’ve always wanted to slash knee deep in an achilles tendon all the way up to the calf. The flop fall is both endearing and amusing. Imagine a giant person with tiny little legs. No balance, no bounce. Just crunched up cars the way they used to in those old car junkyards. Smash smash goes down number two. A quick femoral artery stab wound. It’s witchcraft. Glitches out their system. Mangled rabid machines.

Last two cyborgs have noticed me, I can sense the direction shift. I have to use shit skewer sleep stock as a body shield. Plant food is fermenting its raw rotten juices on the outside of their skin. It’s a clear muddy gooey liquid at first before it begins to disintegrate.

Bird chirps turn into screams, they’ve already forgotten the lady they were trying to hunt. I felt her shadow wisp past me toward the tunnels. My team is waiting for me, but they’ll find her instead. No one is ballsy to go up against two let alone four, so they know I’m real fuckin’ tired.

We call them death watches, you know. Everybody hits a stage where we want absolute darkness and the abyss to soul suck us off this joint. Not everyone is quick enough to do their part. Sometimes we lose one or a couple to straight suicidal ideation anarchy.

Cyborgs don’t look like birds the way we used to remember them. It’s not a bunch of people running around with bird heads gunning down kids. Rush wanted to drive capitalism home, every shield mask covers the top of their heads down to their chins. Stickers like sponsors backing them up for coins. Olympic dreams down the cash slot. Dense shields. You can’t throw a machete at it and expect it to crack the egg. You’d have to empty a full AK round to see the fucker behind it.

Unsurprising, it’s dudes pushing fifty, trust fund generational wealth bullshit. Yoked ass dudes with veiny limbs with no real combat skills. Appearances will deceive you, they’re never prepared for the art of war. If you’re lucky, they’ll be high on synthetic drugs and take a woman out on a date in these things. Explorer voyeuristic shit. When you see these women after the kill, it’s hard to decide if the liposuction must’ve taken the emotion out of their eyes. There’s no logic to their madness, they’re blind leading themselves to ditches. New mantra is genocide of their own people is the righteous path. Kill your neighbor, save your family.

Number two must’ve been a woman with the birth decline, women are pricy cattle, especially when you come from the Company. Women there are all about tradition and maintaining the cult. Not for survival, delusional beliefs of freedom to be soft girls without worries. We saw them all in those docuseries from the past. Psychosis miosis. She definitely hallucinated her God before her skin rotted to sludge. Some hallucinatory effect like how kids see butterfly people in Tornados before they die. These bastards are still screeching long enough to get my ears wet with blood. Never carry guns, which is a shame. I like to feel them real close to me before they go. I’m split down the middle on nurturing their sacrifice as a ritual that must be made, and a cancer I must abstract from the outside world. My knives are syringes of protection. After enough hits, prey drive kicks in.

Number three is getting real savvy popping off rounds into corpse number two. The bodies of these people when they go is some fucked up genetic nightmare. Bodies absorb everything, blobs that reach out for photosynthesis elsewhere; but it’s just garbage consumption. After a time the body lets go, sizzles out to moist green manure. It’s essential on the field to take pictures of their faces and log them. There is a four hour window of opportunity to capture their facial profile before it’s wiped off the map. One has to wonder if Rush was high on some ketamine trip. Had to be in this reality. No reason to desert your body to this feastless salvation.

In the distance of your brain you hear Rush’s volatile diatribe, “They’ll never find us if we dissemble identity! We heal the planet with our bodies! Green energy and Bitcoins is the new future to GOD!”

After number three emptied his magazine, I dug my fingers into number two’s body mass. It breaks apart like meatloaf, and I splatted corpse flesh on number three’s face shield. They didn’t get to the what if stage in the First Generation. They can’t defrost themselves out of it. The sludge is a beast of its own trying to propagate on your mask. Names become numbers, the species wants to multiply and evolve.

A moment of clarity is realizing the impossible. No one was coming for me now. No radiant save the day, I got your back dream team. All that was mine has gone radio silent. I jumped straight for number three, kangaroo cocaine spun my foot right into his chest. Rapid motion turns into a rampage and partial beheading right at the neck. Kicked him in the knee caps to keep him down. He was in my way.

Pivot the body to the left, and number four slams a sword straight into my solar plexus. In one last attempt of redemption, I got him under the collarbone subclavian vein. It had to hurt. Bird chirps go muted. We stand with each other slippery in time. He clicks the side of the helmet, and I watch the shield pull back to reveal his face. At first it felt too convenient for someone like me. I was a nobody, I couldn’t have deserved it.

I recognized his face immediately, “Well, well. If it isn’t the Company’s pres, you bastard.” I laugh, blood shining through my teeth.

“You—”

“I was your best PR, your best girl. Came up from the streets. I wasn’t going to be you.”

“You had—”

“The opportunity? Shut up. Stop talking. Listen to the world now, it’s quiet.”

Pain is swelling all around me. My face gets close to him. Breath on his face. He shutters in fear. No, he cannot survive. We recognize each other in silence, eyes dilated at the tip. I pinch his nose and cover his mouth.

“Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel.” A whisper, a song, a warning. I didn’t want to taint our moment with blood regurgitating out of my throat. Not for us, not ever. Two sides of the opposite spectrum.

It happens. When life plucks you out of thin water. I watch his eyes go white shiny pearls. I want to pretend that the stench isn’t unbearable, as my body begins to shiver. Water drips on my temples. My bloodied smile, remembers all the lines.

Rituals. Daily Routines. The grind never lets you go.

And I’m feeling good.