Generation Zombie

Chapter 15: Dr. Sadman Hinks.

The engine sputtered and died down with relief as Elham turned off the ignition. From the windshield, she scanned the ghostly silent town. Picket fenced houses lined the street; their lawns overgrown, their driveways empty. There was an unsettling quietness in the air, like finding silence in a place that wasn't supposed to be silent. Up ahead, the sky slowly changed shades from bright blue to a diluted orange as the sun sank below the horizon.

The players piled out of the van.

Ruby begrudgingly supported her weight on Arthur. He had painfully snapped her ankle back into place and wrapped it tightly with gauze on their way there. He also apologized for making her run, and tried scolding her for not speaking up about her pre-twisted and now re-twisted ankle.

Ajax yawned and stretched. He had unintentionally fallen asleep in the van, amidst Dottie's repetitive lines of her address and Arthur's bickering with Ruby. Now, he glanced down at the little girl who was already peering up at him. The sheen of her hair reflected the orange shades of the sky. Ajax rubbed his eyes. She looked waxen and unreal. He cleared his throat. "This is where you live?"

Dottie blinked her lifeless, programmed eyes. "Daddy is not home." She said monotonously.

Elham tucked in her g*n and grabbed the baseball bat from the backseat, just to be safe. The neighborhood didn't look threatening, but it was b****y eerie, and she'd learn to associate 'eerie' with danger. "Do you know where his journal is?" She asked Dottie, although part of her already knew the reply she would get.

Dottie blinked again. "Daddy is not home." She repeated, just like she had repeated her address in the car over and over again until Elham set up the GPS.

"She's programed to say that." Arthur told Elham. She was already aware of that, but had given the question a try anyways.

She sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose. "Let's just go in." The day was starting to take a toll on her nerves.

The rest of them followed her to the front door of the house Dottie had pointed to as her home. It was a medium sized contemporary bungalow with a lilac shrub in full bloom to it's left, curving and disappearing into the backyard. The sidewalks had cracked concrete, in which tiny plants struggled to introduce themselves to the world. An uncomfortably drab dark brown paint coated the walls, and weeds freely lounged in the overgrown lawn.

It was the most unconventionally ugly house Arthur had ever seen. Ajax criticized the choice of color. Ruby tried to sniff the lilac flowers, but a faint smell of dead skunk mutilated her nostrils instead. Elham swept her eyes around the perimeter and scanned the neighborhood for the third time.

Dottie knocked before anyone of them could get their hands on the doorbell.

Not even a second later, a woman opened the door. She was the exact replica of Dottie, only with deeper lines on her skin, less vibrant hair color, and darker eye circles. She was wearing an apron and a bonnet.

Dottie ran into her arms and for a moment they seemed to both be loading. But then the mother pulled away and straightened, her attention coming back to the players. "Thank you so much for saving my little Dottie! Please, come in and rest. This town can be dangerous at night." She recited in the same monotonous voice her daughter used.

Ajax's eyebrows looped in confusion. "Night?" But it was only sunset... he added to himself, looking at the pinkish clouds.

All of a sudden the clouds faded with a glitch and a deep purple sky appeared, littered with stars that were unnaturally bright. It looked like a wizard's robe, complete with a crescent moon hanging low. The whole transition took less than three seconds.

Ruby shuddered and pressed closer to Arthur. "That's a perfectly normal thing for a sky to do. This game freaks me out." She whispered to herself.

Arthur solemnly nodded in agreement.

Elham stared long and hard at the woman. This wasn't a trap, was it? What if Escaldo had switched up a few things and they were walking into a trap instead? A trap she had blindly led them into? "Where's Doctor Sadman Hinks?" She asked Dottie's mother.

The woman blinked and waited a second before repeating; "Thank you so much for saving my little Dottie! Please, come in and rest. This town can be dangerous at night."

Ajax crossed his arms and huffed. "Let me guess, she's programmed to say that too?"

Elham released a sigh heavier than the first. "Obviously." She replied, folding the frayed edges of the black fabric she was using as a hijab and tucking it in.

"Who's Doctor Sadman?" Arthur inquired out of curiosity.

"The scientist character I created who accidentally made the Gene-Z Virus in a lab, according to the game's storyline." She explained. At first she wanted to place the blame of the outbreak on the government in the game, but she feared it might bore the gamers and instead decided to go along with the mad scientist trope.

Ruby suppressed a smile. "You came up with the name Sadman Hinks?" It sounded like something straight out of the Fantasy name generator website. Sadman Hinks. Happyman Hinks. For some reason the name was simply hilarious to Ruby.

Elham scratched her cheek and glared at Ruby’s trying-not-to-laugh expression. "I used an online name generator, okay? I couldn't decide on a name." She admitted.

"Thank you so much for saving my little Dottie! Please, come in and rest. This town can be dangerous at night."

Ajax considered the programmed mother cautiously. Her repetitive statement felt like an ominous warning. Maybe it was. His eyes frisked over the others. "I don't want to stay here and see the danger she's talking about." He said, wrapping his muscular arms around himself and rubbing warmth into his shoulders.

"I'm going in if it shuts her up." Ruby added. She also wanted to get off her feet and sit. Arthur’s side was warm and sturdy, but her other leg that carried the rest of her weight was beginning to go numb.

Elham cracked her knuckles and balanced the baseball bat on her shoulder. They’d have to move forward and go in. It’s what the game demands of them. "We need to find the journal anyways. Come on, let's go."

She stepped closer and the programmed mother along with her daughter Dottie moved out of the way. The rest of the players followed Elham into the house.

The interior was made of floral curtains, oak wooden floorboards and a bright blue wallpaper that dominated the poorly decorated walls. It looked pretty intact for a house surviving through a zombie apocalypse. The furniture stuck to their spots obediently; a brown couch and two grey sofas, a 90’s television set, and a coffee table with stacks of magazines arranged on it neatly. In total, four doors were in the living room; two blue ones to the west, two beige ones on the east wall.

Ruby instantly disliked the place. There was too much color riot, not enough proper organization, and patterns that made her brain itch. She huffed and tried not to go apeshit.

A glowing green bar blipped to visibility in the center of the room and pointed to the first blue door. It was identical to the one that had appeared above Dottie’s head back in the bakery. This time it read; ‘Objective: Find Dr. Sadman Hinks' Journal.’

“This should be easier than I expected.” Elham muttered to herself and led the way into the room.

It turned out to be a study or a personal office of sorts. A mahogany table with books and papers pilled upon it took up half the room. Behind it was a large bookshelf and another identical one opposite the table.

Arthur helped Ruby to the black leather office chair. Wordlessly, the players began to search the room for the journal. Arthur took to one bookshelf, Elham took to the other, and Ajax rummaged through drawers while Ruby careful thumbed the books and papers on the table. She was partly searching, and partly organizing the annoying mess.

“Aha! I found it!” Ruby announced triumphantly, lifting a drab brown leather-bounded journal to show them. As they quickly crossed over, she opened the journal. “It’s gibberish.” She realized, looking at the symbols and meaningless scribbles.

Or maybe it was a code.

Elham snatched the journal from her and flipped to the first page. “Not to me.” She said. The symbols swirled and twisted before her eyes, forming legible words, and she began to read.

“But how?” Ruby asked, utterly lost at sea.

"Hello? Navigator? I'm literally a walking map, that's why I'm the only person who can read it." She explained and shushed them immediately, concentrating back on the neat entries of Dr. Sadman Hinks.

She read through three pages before Ajax interrupted eagerly, breathing down her neck and trying to look at the symbols although he understood nothing. "What does it say?" He whispered too close to her ears.

Elham elbowed him. "Shut up." She warned and continued reading.

No one else interrupted her after that until she finished reading seven pages or so, and slammed the book shut with a nod of relief and satisfaction.

"It's the same six locations. The Hotel, The Airport, The Island, The Underground, The Desert, and finally The Isle Of Salvation. That bastard Escaldo might've tweaked a few things before developing the game and putting it on the market, but the ground basis is still my idea." Elham explained to the three pairs of expectant and curious eyes keenly listening to her.

"And the mission objectives?" Arthur asked, straighten from the table where he was almost bumping heads with Ruby.

"They'll appear once we get to the levels." Elham answered and stuffed the journal into the already cramped kangaroo pocket of her jumper.

Ruby swiveled mindlessly, reclining back on the comfortable chair. "What about the fifth player? We still need the gameplay instructions." She pointed out.

Elham shrugged. "Eventually we'll find them. For now let's do what we can."

"And by what we can you mean eat and sleep, until tomorrow right?" Ajax proposed with a loud, cavernous and contagious yawn.

"Yes, please, I'm exhausted, and my ankle is killing me." Ruby supported, stifling her own sleepy yawn.

Elham waved her hands dismissively, and brought out the journal again, her eyebrows furrowing over the browned papers. "Yeah yeah, y'all go ahead. I'll read this some more."

Ajax drifted out of the room to find something to chomp on and an empty bed to crash into. Arthur helped Ruby up, and together they shuffled out, leaving Elham sitting on the chair Ruby had just vacated, her nose deep between the pages.