Survival Bunker System Developer

96 Days

Pancake mix was one of the best inventions Caleb swore by. He was way too lazy to measure out flour for a simple breakfast. Why do all of that when he could add water to a pre-packaged packet of ingredients and stick it into the microwave while he brushed his teeth and shaved? Besides, Jeremy loved pinching pancakes from him when the cat had the chance even though the vet doesn’t recommend it.

Twenty minutes after Caleb returned to life, he had a steaming mug of black coffee on the table, a plate of pancakes beside his keyboard and a calendar opened on his laptop. He still recalled the day he died and the unpleasant memory only made his breakfast taste bad. If today was the 24th of April, the first sightings of strange animal behaviour in the city would be on the 28th of April although it wasn’t reported in the news until the 1st of May. The system developer knew that the strange animal behaviour started earlier because he was out to get his refill on cigarettes when he overheard the conversation between the store manager and one of the other regular customers. The pigeons had started to eat stray rats for no apparent reason and ignored the stale bread that they normally fought over.

The system developer frowned. He heard about it on the 28th of April. However, Caleb wasn’t sure when the first case started. If anything, the virus PXE22 could have already infected the city way before that and only progressively worsened after the first human became infected. If that was the case, prevention wasn’t going to be helpful. Caleb didn’t have time. He could only take precautions and measures. The first thing Caleb should be doing was to get as much information about Project PXE22 by the end of the week so that he could find the researcher responsible for the mess and get them to create a cure for the virus.

Apart from that, Caleb started writing down everything that happened in chronological order. As a survivor from the last apocalypse, the system developer had two advantages. The first advantage was his knowledge from his previous life that he could use to devise a plan to prepare for the worst-case scenario of fighting that strange intelligent ghoul. The second was the mysterious powers he received from the higher being that brought him back to life. No, Caleb refused to admit that the powerful being he met in the afterlife was God even if they truly were one. He was an atheist and a man of science. Even if that being was truly God, he wasn’t a very responsible or capable one in Caleb’s opinion so he wasn’t going to show them any respect for roping him into doing their dirty work. If God truly was that powerful, why would they trouble Caleb to save humanity? They could have simply eradicated the ghouls with a flick of their finger but they didn’t. Something screamed fishy so Caleb reserved his rights to be suspicious everything. Yet, he wasn’t going to complain about the second chance he was given to live. People often said that life was short but Caleb never knew how short it truly was until he pulled the trigger. He regretted too many things in his previous life so he was going to do his best to ensure that he didn’t regret anything this time.

Caleb highlighted an entire week on his calendar. That was the week when Caleb started to notice something off with the city. Local authorities tried to dumb it down to avoid causing unrest among the citizens. New York’s shadiest neighbourhoods were heavily affected by hostile pets. That happened during the second week of May when things started to go downhill progressively. The affected areas were marked out on a printed map of New York City. Caleb circled them and marked down the dates of the incidents he remembered.

“Brownsville wasn’t the first area to be affected by PXE22. In fact, Brooklyn wasn’t the first to be affected by the animal ghouls. Manhattan was the first borough to be evacuated and clamped down, the south of Manhattan to be exact. By the second week of May, most of Manhattan’s citizens had fled the city, way before the government decides to send the army to control the situation.”

As Caleb observed the circled parts of the map, he frowned. Something was missing. The order of the severity back then seemed wrong. Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens were hit roughly about the same time but the system developer thought that it was odd. Of the locations hit, Williamsburg, Astoria and Upper East Side were the first neighbourhoods to be evacuated from a ‘pest infestation’ issue. Their locations may be in different boroughs but after drawing circles around the area in an orange highlighter, Caleb used a yellow highlighter to mark out the second wave of impact from his memory. The three locations formed a triangle with Williamsburg being north of Brooklyn, Astoria being the west of Queens and Upper East Side being the centre of Manhattan facing the East River.

“Jersey City, Brownsville and Upper Manhattan were the three worst affected areas in the second wave. By this time, the government declared that it was a pandemic. From the second week of May to the end of the month, many things happened. Around the 20th of May, the government announced that the city was on red-alert for lockdown. No public transports were allowed to operate and the John F. Kennedy International Airport’s activities were suspended completely. Back then there were too many things going on such as protests and the fighting between the citizens who were trapped in the city and the army sent to suppress the situation. I didn’t realise it back then but now that I think about it… this makes more sense.”

Jeremy purred in Caleb’s lap and the system developer scratches the cat’s chin lazily. By the 25th of May, the world had started reporting cases of the cannibals appearing in their countries, especially major cities. Only five days after New York City was isolated, the world started reporting similar cases. The government also didn’t release a statement about what was going on until the end of May when the citizens were forcefully made to evacuate the city after going through some very stringent health checks to ensure they wouldn’t spread the virus known as PXE22.

Looking at the map of New York, Caleb was very sure about one thing. The virus did originate from New York City for some reason. If it had been imported, the cases would have appeared in humans first like in other countries. However, in New York City, something was slightly different.

Rats were the first creatures to turn into ghouls. In his previous life, Caleb thought that it was odd for rats to start terrorising the city during the day but didn’t think much about it because the pest control companies were doing a good job. Then, stray animals started to become a nuisance and not even the SPCA can do anything about it. They were short-handed and also were not able to catch every stray animal in New York City. Stray cats and dogs weren’t the only victims. Stray crows and pigeons were also a problem as were some reptiles like the huge river monitor lizards.

Caleb paused. Was there any creature that was not affected by PXE22? Now that he thought about it, insects didn’t behave abnormally and fishes were fine. Speaking of fishes, the system developer had a terrible suspicion. It was no coincidence that rats were the first ghouls. It was also not a coincidence that the first wave was near the delta of Hudson River and the bays of New York’s southern area. New York and New Jersey’s territory was separated by only the Hudson River. The fact that the first wave affected only those on the East River’s side meant that it originated from New York City. More specifically, it occurred somewhere within the triangle of the three boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens that had something in common.

There was one more thing that Caleb was now certain about. The rats started the spread of PXE22 as carriers and the place that rats frequented were the undergrounds of New York City. Something that was connected to rats and the area around East River could only point to one thing. They travelled through tunnels like the subway, sewers or water tunnels. Somebody released the virus in those shady places thinking that they’d dispose of the evidence of whatever top-secret Project PXE22 was meant to be. However, things didn’t go according to their plans and became out of hand, causing a chain reaction and triggering an apocalypse. The location was somewhere near East River or rather, in East River. The other side of Manhattan closer to Hudson River wasn’t affected at all until much later in the second wave that was somewhere in the first or second week of June. This virus didn’t spread through the air or water. It was contact based.

Taking a logical guess, Caleb bet that the infected rats caught the virus from the sewers or the water pipelines that travelled across the East River. There were only two possible ways for the rats to do it but one more likely than the other. If the rats travelled through the sewage and pass through Ward’s Island Treatment Plant, the virus would have spread north towards Bronx as well in the first wave but it didn’t. The second possibility and the more likely of the two was that the rats caught the virus in the water pipelines or near the water pipelines from the third pipeline and newest water pipelines that New York City built. The system was extensive but the connecting points and distribution made sense according to the pattern of how the first wave occurred. The pipeline connected itself from East Manhattan down to East Queens and down to Brooklyn in that order. The reason why the western part of Manhattan wasn’t as badly affected was due to the on-going constructions for the new water pipelines. The western parts of Manhattan were still relying on the old pipeline system coming from Croton so the west side of Manhattan and New Jersey were only affected in the second wave when birds started getting infected.

Caleb wrote down what he remembered about the timeline between May and June. The army arrived in the second half of May but left after a month when they discovered that the second wave was worse than the first. The safe shelters that the government created in New York City weren’t able to withstand the power of those ghouls. Many soldiers became infected while fighting on the front lines and the government decided to cut their losses when they saw a losing battle.

By the 25th of June, approximately two months after the virus breakout, the government gave the citizens of New York an ultimatum. They either signed up to join the army and participate in the ghoul suppression efforts or they would be abandoned to fend for themselves in New York City. Back then, Caleb had no intentions of joining the army. Those soldiers stood no chance against the ghouls who might have lost their intelligence and attacked any living thing that had a brain and moved on land. They were powerful and didn’t have any fear for their lives as if they only existed to eat. Caleb made his decision to remain in the infected city. The bunkers were safe enough and as long as there were resources he could help himself to, Caleb would do alright. He was going to survive in the city instead of fighting for the government who didn’t know a thing about these ghouls or how to deal with it. If he died, the system developer wanted to die doing what he believed in.

How wrong he was. Caleb shook his head. At the end of June, after the army pulled out of the city, the government announced that they would provide self-help packages by air regularly for the citizens who were still in New York City. Caleb made use of that and gathered resources he needed to secure his apartment while ghoul hunting to contribute what little he could in hopes of making the city a little safer for the young, old and weak who remained in city bunkers. However, he didn’t expect that about two weeks after the army pulled out, the government made a bastard move.

The government announced on television that they were going to cut the city’s water and power supply in New York and New Jersey because they needed to save money and reinvest that money into buying more firearms for the army to fight the ghouls that were beginning to surface in other areas of the country. They mentioned that airdrops will continue but only necessities like food, water and medicine will be included. There were no more air supplies for weapons because they discovered that ghouls could die from starvation and if the survivors held out for long enough in the bunkers, everything would tide over.

By 22nd July, New York City went from a city of lights to a city of darkness. Caleb scrambled to put together a power generator modified from stolen cars and fuel cans from gas stations while he fended off ghouls. The system developer also recalled building his very own water purification system from charcoal and scavenged materials to make water from the East River drinkable. The government might have abandoned the citizens in New York City but Caleb was still optimistic back then. If he could impart his wisdom to the unlucky victims of this mess, they could wait it out to see another day.

Except, that day didn’t arrive. After the lockdown and the supply cut by the government, Caleb didn’t even last a full week. 29th July was the day he died, just touching the three-month mark into the apocalypse. He thought he was doing well to survive the ghouls in the city but then a mutant appeared that nobody has seen before. While many ghouls were starving like what the government said, Caleb didn’t factor in that PXE22 was capable of mutating and transforming the infected host into a true monster that ate even its comrades to survive.

He recalled the horror to this very day how the mutated ghoul was initially shot by him. Normal ghouls might not die from a gunshot wound to the arm or stomach instantly. However, it would severely cripple them and render them unable to move so that he could finish them off easily. Ghouls felt no sense of pain but they were still humans and will die from blood loss or infection if it wasn’t treated. The mutated ghoul was different. After Caleb shot it in the chest, the monster tore off the head from a nearby ghoul and started devouring it. The wound on the chest recovered quickly and Caleb remembered watching everything happen from his bedroom window with a telescope.

The new type of ghoul displayed cunning intelligence that surpassed humans. It targeted bunkers that were designed to keep ghouls out. Ghouls would attack anything that it saw moving if it was alive. The new type of intelligent ghoul didn’t do that. It wasn’t waiting for a prey, it knew how to hunt. The ambush and coordinated attack that breached Caleb’s bunker defence proved how much of a threat the new ghoul was.

With only exactly ninety-six days from now till his predicted day of death, Caleb didn’t have much time.

“I guess we have to apologise to our clients for not being able to deliver their projects for a while, huh?” he asked Jeremy who didn’t reply.

The black cat was fast asleep on Caleb’s lap and the system developer ran his fingers through the silky black fur. If he had less than a hundred days to prepare for the end of the world, then there would be no better time to start preparing for it than now. But first, he needed his stress relieving food. The one thing he seriously craved back then was a good old pepperoni pizza and cola. He will start working on a plan after lunch.

“Hello, this is Caleb Houston. I would like to order two supreme sized chicken pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese…”