Wasted World | Episode 2

 
WASTED
WORLD
EPISODE 2
Geoff North
Copyright © 2020 by Geoff North
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Live Again (Out of Time Book 1)
Last Contact (Out of Time Book 2)
Lost Playground (Out of Time Book 3)
All Inclusive (Out of Time Book 4)
Ambition (The Long Haul Book 1)
Retribution (The Long Haul Book 2)
Annihilation (The Long Haul Book 3)
Thaw (CRYERS Book 1)
Burn (CRYERS Book 2)
Twisted Tales (Volume 1)
Twisted Tales (Volume 2)
Twisted Tales (Volume 3)
Wasted World (Episode 1)


Chapter 1
 
“I had a dream about the dead babies again.”
“All the babies are dead now. They can’t hurt you. They’re inside your head.”
Amanda crawled out of the cardboard box so she could hear her brother better. “What did you say?”
“I said all the babies are dead, and even if there are any left, they’ll be dead soon enough.” Michael didn’t take any pleasure frightening his twin sister, but he knew the days of pampering her were over. “You should start having dreams about how to get out of this place.”
Amanda reached back into the overturned box and pulled her stuffed animals out. “I’m not leaving this room, no way, not for a kajillion dollars.”
“What would you need money for? We can just take whatever we want now.”
“You know what I mean. I’m not leaving this room until he’s gone.” Amanda Fulger stared at her brother with intense brown eyes until the boy looked away.”
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere for awhile.” Michael went to the refrigerator and took a half loaf of white bread out. He paused while shutting the door and decided the dry bread would need some margarine to soften it up some. “I’m going to have a piece of bread. You want one?”
“I’m not hungry. I want you to call Dad.”
“Phone’s don’t work.”
“Can’t you get that computer to work? Can’t we email him?”
Michael glanced over at the big black box on the desk. The fifteen-inch monitor sitting next to it was just as black, the screen coated over with a fine layer of dust. “There isn’t any power in the building, it won’t turn on.” He doubted the office computer would work even if the power hadn’t been cut. By the looks of it, nobody had used the thing for months.
“There’s power,” Amanda argued. “That music hasn’t stopped playing for days.”
She was right. The music was still playing—that one terrifying instrumental piece without any singing was starting over again for about the thousandth time. They didn’t know what it was called; ten-year olds knew practically nothing about classical violin. If their father was there, he might be able to tell them it was Canon in D. But he wasn’t with them, and he never would be again.
“He’s using something with batteries, wired it into the main speaker system. That’s probably running on batteries, too. There’s no electricity anywhere.”
Amanda placed the big teddy-bear and stuffed lion on the floor. She took the candle her brother had used and poked it inside the dark fridge. There was a tub of sealed yogurt, warm to the touch, and swollen almost to the point of bursting. She should’ve opened it on day one; it might not have made her sick then. She pushed it off to the side and rummaged through the rest of the food—as they had both done dozens of times in the last forty-eight hours—looking for something sweet. There wasn’t much to choose from; the bloated yogurt container, a milk carton one-quarter filled with chunky stuff, the dry bread and margarine Michael was now using, a cardboard box containing four doughnuts as hard as rocks, and a jar of raspberry jam with maybe a teaspoon’s worth of goo stuck up along the inside of the glass. She settled for the jam, scraping out what she could with her finger.
“You should put that on some of this bread,” Michael said, offering the plastic bag out to her. “It’ll taste better.”
She scowled and sucked the jam dry from her finger. “I want chocolate.”
“You can’t have chocolate.”
“Yes I can. There’s a coffee store right around the corner from here. I saw tons of chocolates in there. You could tip-toe all the way there and all the way back. He’ll never hear you.”
Michael shook his head. “We agreed. We can’t leave. You saw what he did to all them people... what he did to Mom.”
Amanda picked the lion back up and squeezed it against her chest. The teddy-bear was for comfort, the lion protected her. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore.”
Michael swallowed down the last of his crust and margarine. “Then don’t go thinking stupid things. He’ll shoot us dead, too, if we leave this place.”
She leaned up against the wall, her shoulder rubbing against the side of the refrigerator. Amanda slid down until she was sitting on the cold floor. That horrible morning came back to her. It hadn’t started horribly—it began like most other Saturday mornings. Their mom wanted to go to the mall. Dad wanted to stay home. The three went without him. Amanda and Michael fought, but it wasn’t about anything serious, it never was.
Things didn’t get serious until they heard Roy speak for the first time.
His voice had interrupted the soft music playing throughout the shopping center, warning all patrons to take cover. A war has started, he’d stated. All shoppers please remain calm, and stay out of confined areas. Helen Fulger had laughed it off—she told her kids that some jackass had found an intercom station and was shooting his dumb mouth off. When the floor started shaking and people started screaming, Amanda’s mother didn’t find it funny. When the big glass