Untitled

Chapter 1
         
If you are reading this, I’m already gone. I might be dead or they might have just taken me somewhere far away. Right now I really have no idea what’s going on. Things have happened over the past couple of days that could change everything. Not just for me, but for you too.
         I know that we don’t know each other, but I had to turn to somebody and you were the only person I could trust. Why do I trust you you ask? I trust you because  you are in the same boat as me. If you don’t do something quick, you may get taken away too. You are everybody’s last hope.
         I’ll start at the beginning, when things were still normal. First off, my name is Alex Johnson, and I’m a senior at Central High School. I’ve lived here in Corvallis for most of my life and I’ve always fit in pretty well. I’m 6’2” with sandy blonde hair and grey eyes that some people say look like little moons at night. I have been on the swim team since before I can remember and have always, for the most part, loved it. You’ll probably remember me by either my eyes, or the neon green shoes I wear everywhere every day. That’s enough about me; let’s get to what you have got to do to save this world of ours.


Chapter 2

         Sorry to dump all of this on you like this, but you really are the last hope for the world. Some bad people are doing some bad things, and I’m sorry to say, you are the only one who can stop them. About two weeks ago I overheard some people talking at Big River, a classy Italian restaurant downtown, about something that they called “the Coming.” I heard things like, “It is so close! We have been waiting for this for centuries!” It was when I heard the word centuries that I kind of tuned into the conversation.
         “How do you know it is close Doctor?” a man with an Arabian accent asked excitedly.
         A misty-eyed old man with a shiny head and expensive looking watch replied, “You just have to trust me Martinez. We have been chasing this for two-hundred fifty years and it has finally led us here. Why? I do not know.”
         The Arabian man solemnly replied, “I am sorry for questioning you sir. It is just that we have been waiting for so long, and for it to be so close now! The other men are having trouble concentrating. Can’t you tell us more?”          
         The old man shot the Arabian man a look that said, ‘Who are you to question me?’ The Arabian mans eyes fell to the floor and he quickly stopped talking.
         “You are on a need-to-know basis Martinez, and you do not need to know any more yet! That goes for all of you!” The man sounded genuinely upset for being questioned about this issue he called the Coming.
         A young boy who looked to be about fifteen quietly looked up at the man and said, “Doctor Payne? What is the Coming going to be like? I’m scared…” The boy’s voice trailed off as Doctor Payne looked over at him.
         “You will soon see son…you will see. Everything is going to change! There will never be sickness or illness again. Never will there be another war between mere men. I am going to change the world, even if it costs five billion lives!” The Doctors voice got more and more excited as he finished his little speech.
         Five Billion People? I figured that this had to be some kind of sick game that this group was playing. How could a group of seven or eight men and a boy kill five billion people? What was the Coming that they were talking about? I didn’t know, but as I looked back over the Doctor continued.
         “In five days it will begin,” Doctor Payne said in a much quieter voice that I had a hard time picking up. “Tonight we will go to the site and start the ritual. By this time next week we will be some of the few survivors in the United States.” Sensing that somebody was listening in, Doctor Payne quickly shifted his glance. I almost jumped out of my chair when his eye locked with mine. That’s right, his eye. The place where his left eye should have been was instead a large, dark crater in his face.
         I shifted my gaze probably a little less casually than I should have, but I could still feel the Doctor’s eyes cutting through me. I refused to look back in their direction but I began to feel uneasy as the conversation didn’t pick back up. I heard the sound of a chair squeaking backwards across the ground and heavy footsteps coming towards me.
         A whispered voice slithered into my ear, “Did you like my little story boy? How much did you hear?”
         I felt like I was going to be sick as I turned my head and came face to face with the hole in Doctor Payne’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about sir…” I tried to sound as sincere as I could, but I doubted the Doctor bought it.
         “Don’t be scared, son. Just tell me what you heard and I’ll let you go.” The Doctor was so close to my face now that I could smell the sour smell of beer on his breath. His moustache was twitching as he stared at me and I didn’t know what to tell him.
         “I didn’t hear anything, sir! Just let me leave, please.” I was trying to sound as truthful as possible, but I was having a lot of trouble lying to this Doctor for some reason.
         The Doctor’s response chilled me to the bone. “I’m so sorry to hear that Alex. It looks as though you are coming with us.”
         “How do you know my name?!” I quickly yelled at the Doctor. Something wasn’t right here and I was getting really scared now. “Get away from me! I’m not coming with you!”
         “I’m sorry it has to be this way Alex, but you are lying to me and I can’t risk having somebody outside who knows my plan. We can do it the easy way, or the hard way.” The gears in my brain were turning like the wheels on a speeding Ferrari, but I was coming up blank. At the last second I made a split second decision that I knew I would regret later. I planted my hands on my chair and pulled my knees into my chest. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but the next second both of my feet were making contact with Doctor Payne’s chest and he was flying towards the ground.
         “Oooooff!” The Doctor hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and I was out of my chair and heading for the exit. The last thing I heard before I was outside was the sound of the Doctors angry voice yelling, “Get that little rodent! NOW!!!” followed by the sounds of seven chairs squeaking across the floor and footsteps running towards me. I thought I heard another sound that really scared me. I thought I heard the Chck CHINK of a gun being cocked. God did I hope I was wrong.



Chapter 3

         I welcomed the cold wind and rain on my face as I ran down the riverfront. What I didn’t welcome was the sound of a group of men running behind me with one goal in mind. Take me down and get me back to the Doctor. I was running faster than I had ever run before and as I sprinted down the riverfront I saw a small alleyway to my left. I made a sharp turn left and sneaked a peak behind me as I leapt into the alley. What I saw got me running even faster. Now there weren’t only a bunch of angry men chasing me, there were two very angry looking dogs. I. Hate. Dogs.
         When I was seven I got bitten by a big, mean, hungry Rottweiler, and since then I have never gotten near another dog. That was why I was so scared now. I knew what dogs could do to exposed flesh, and I didn’t want it to happen to me again. As I frantically ran down the alley I kept looking to both sides of me for any signs of a door or ladder. When I finally reached the end I spotted the answer to my somewhat choppy prayers. A large fire escape reached right down into my hands on my right and without even thinking I grabbed on to it.
         As I pulled myself up on to it I heard the sound of two dogs barking and growling below me. As I looked down one of the dogs literally flew up into the air and latched itself onto my leg.
         “YEOWW!!!” was all that I could get out my mouth as I hung there with an angry dog hanging from my leg. I could hear the dog growling as it kept trying to spin and tear my muscle clean off. I hate hurting animals, but in this case I was willing to make a sacrifice. With my free leg I started kicking the dog as hard as I possibly could in the head. With every kick a small yelp would escape the dogs clenched jaw. Finally after five painful kicks, the dog released and fell to the ground with a large “Yip!” on impact. I felt bad for hurting it, but I’m sure it didn’t feel the same remorse about me.
         Right around that time the group of men caught up to me. Now while dogs can’t climb ladders, large groups of men can. When I spotted what two of them were carrying my heart nearly stopped. My worst fears were answered when I saw two of the men, both dressed all in black, carrying large, deadly looking rifles with expensive looking scopes on them. Great, now they’re not even trying to catch me! They’re trying to kill me!
         When I got to the top of the fire escape I heard a small explosion from below and I knew that they were starting to shoot at me. A loud metal on metal ricochet sound echoed near my right ear.
         If I could make it up one more set of ladders without getting hit I would be able to get through the window above me and hopefully escape these lunatics. Rather than climb the ladder rung by rung, I gathered all of my leg power and launched myself as high as I could go. My right hand hit the top rung and I quickly grabbed on with my left hand and pulled myself up. I was halfway up when I felt a tug on my left foot.
         Awesome, now the assholes are on my butt and trying to pull me down! Maybe this won’t be easy after all. I started kicking with my right foot, but it was a little bit harder as I already had a mouth full of holes on it and it was really starting to hurt. Even so, I managed to kick the man on my leg hard enough for him to lose his grip. I didn’t feel any remorse as I watched him tumble to the ground and land on top of two of his comrades.
         The dogs were barking again and I could hear all of the men yelling up to me, “Get down here you punk!” and “Just make it easy on yourself and come down now!” But there was no way that I was just going to come down! Were they crazy? They are down there waving big hunting rifles at me and now they were shooting at me and then want me to come down?
          “Not today buddy,” I yelled down as I reached for the window to open it. As the window effortlessly slid open, I jumped in and found myself in a dark room with almost no light. What I saw next almost made me choke. I wasn’t in a dark room, I was in a bright hallway, but my vision was getting darker with every passing second. Everything was closing in on me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. As I reached behind me I quickly felt why. A small feathery thing was sticking out of my back, and as I pulled it out I knew instantly what it was. I looked at the tranquilizer dart in my hand and collapsed to the floor unconscious. The last thing I heard were the words, “You shouldn’t have run boy… You just made everything a lot harder for yourself.” Uh-oh. They got me.



Chapter 4

    As I opened my eyes it seemed as if I was staring straight up at the sun. I quickly closed my hurting eyes and noticed that my mouth was as dry as cotton. I needed some water quick, and some sunglasses would be nice too. Where was I? Did all of that really happen to me? Who were those people? What is the Coming? All of these questions were flying through my head, answerless, when I heard the sound of a heavy lock unlatching.
         “Ah, you’re awake, Alex,” I heard the semi-familiar voice of Doctor Payton coming towards me, only this time I didn’t have to smell the beer on his breath. “You have been out cold for forty-eight hours. I was worried that you weren’t going to wake up.” I didn’t know who Doctor Payton was, but God did I hate him.
         “Who are you? What do you want? Why am I here?” I had a million questions to ask and I wanted answers now.
         “Whoa whoa son, slow down,” the Doctor laughed as I rambled off the questions. “All of the answers will come in time. My name is Jonathon Payton, and I am a Doctor here at the Salem Hospital. You can call me Doctor, Alex.”
         I didn’t like the snide way he talked to me, and I wanted him to know that, so in a perfect imitation of his voice I replied, “Well, I’m Alex, and you can call me kidnapped. You realize you are going to go to jail for this right Doctor? I tried to sound as comfortable and unafraid as I possibly could, being strapped down to a cold metal table.
         Payton was unfazed as he looked me in the eye and said, “Oh, how wrong you are, Alex. Nobody knows that you are here. They all think you are just home sick from school. It’s amazing how…convincing a gun to the head can be to a single mother.”
         “You better not have hurt my mom, you piece of shit!” I was yelling as I said this to him. My father left her before I was even born, so she had had to deal with a lot being a single mother working two jobs and raising a child. I wished I could do more to help her, but with my last year of school coming to a close, and swimming twice a day, my schedule was completely full.
         “Don’t worry Alex, she is safe. And she will remain so as long as you promise to cooperate with us. You see, last night when you overheard my colleagues and me talking, you may have overheard some extremely delicate information. If anything that you heard were to get out to the public before our ceremony tonight, everything would be ruined. I MUST know what you heard last night Alex! I MUST know what you know.” Those last two sentences were particularly stressed sounding. I could tell that Payton was serious about it, but I didn’t want to give in to any of his demands.
         “I’m not going to tell you anything, SIR." I made sure that ‘Sir’ sounded particularly rude. “Once you show me that my mother is safe, I will tell you everything I know.”          
         Payton started to turn red, but he held in his anger. “You are NOT the one giving orders around here young man. You are the one tied to a table, and I am the one with your mother’s life in my hands! Tell me everything you heard or your mother will be killed!” Payton was getting more and more worked up as he talked, and I really wanted my mother to come out of this safely so I decided to talk.
         “Fine, just don’t hurt my mother you scum. I heard something about a Coming of some sort. I don’t know what you guys were talking about, but I assume it’s illegal and I assume it is bad because I also overheard you saying that five billion people were going to die because of it. You will never succeed Doctor.”
         “Thank you, Alex. You may leave, but only after I do this.” I thought I saw a grin on Payton’s face as he took a large needle and stabbed it into my right bicep.
         “AHH!! What---are you doing?!” I managed to get out between gasps of pain.
         “Just a little experiment Alex. Everything will feel better tomorrow morning.” He spoke in a tone of defiance as he finished draining the fluid into my arm.



Chapter 5

         “Whaa?? Where am I?” This whole waking up and not knowing where I am thing was getting kind of old. My mother was standing over my bed staring down with a look of concern on her face.
         “You’re at home honey,” she said, patting my head. “Everything is fine, you were screaming in your sleep. You had me so worried.” She kissed me on the forehead as I tried to sit up.
         “What did they do to you mom? Did they hurt you? I promise you I am going to kill them! When did they---“ my mom cut me off before I could finish.
         “What did who do? Who are you going to kill? What are you talking about Alex? Are you sick?” her hand was pushing the hair off of my forehead as she felt for any sign of a fever.
         “Doctor Payton, Mom! He told me he held a gun to your head and made you call in sick for me!” At this point I was really confused. Had it all just been a dream? If so it was an extremely vivid dream.
         “Sweetheart, nobody has been in our house in the last two days. You have been sleeping since Monday morning. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think I’m going to take you to the doctor.” My mom sounded genuinely concerned as she took my hand in her own and kissed it.