A gamer in Solitude

[Wimali]

Please don't respond to this thread until I finished the journal. You're following the adventures of Robert Matheson, who is a fourteen year old survivor in the Apocalypse. He doesn't really take the Apocalypse all that serious, as it never seemed like such a big deal in television series: Everything was alright in the end. But will everything work out the way Rob wants it?

Journal Entry 1- Introduction

I’m Robert Matheson. Currently a survivor of the Apocalypse, as I call it. I don’t know if there’s an official name for what happened or what caused it, heck, if there’s even people alive who have the ability of making a name ‘official’. What I do know is that it happened. A huge disaster struck the Earth. I was in coma while it happened, after... a kind of failed suicide attempt. Yeah, I didn't like the world. God, I was so stupid back then. Tried to kill myself in a beautiful, safe, amazing world. I awoke a day after almost the entire world died, according to my now-dead brother. It was a wonder I had survived the suicide attempt and an even bigger miracle that I survived a damn apocalypse. And I decided to fight.

I was already born at the time it happened, as you might have guessed by what I just said. God, I’m still able to remember the time when ‘safety’ wasn’t an extremely rare, impossible to get luxury. Oh, I still remember when I could just play in the streets with my friends without a single worry in the world. Then the world pretty much ended and nothing was the same anymore.

I used to be a reader before all of this happened, you know. Yeah. I quite enjoyed to read books- Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Tolkien... I’ve read them all. But now? Damn, I don’t even think there are any printed books left in the world. Books are very rare. Hell, if humanity ever manages to restore the world, this will probably be one of the oldest books on the Earth. If this diary and its owner survive. Which I honestly doubt.

You can’t really say I’m a fighter. Before all of this happened, all I was doing was play games on my computer or read some books, watch television. Suuure, a lot of gamers would say they “learn how to handle life-dangering situations because they learn stuff from playing games”, but who should I be fooling here? I’m tired. I might be young, but damn, I’m tired. I know I won’t last long. Sure, I can try. And with my friend Nicholas DeGraeve I think I’ll do pretty good. And if I would be able to get a hold of some other friends, who knows, I might be able to survive th

Shit. I have to stop writing here. My brother, Brandon, heard a sound. We think someone’s nearby, and on their way to our shelter. Probably not with good intentions. I hope those three days of learning how to use a sword actually helped...

 

[Wimali]

Journal Entry 2- Questions

Dear diary,
Oh god. That made me laugh, for the first time in this apocalypse. “Dear diary.” Doesn’t situations like this turn boys into men? Not into girls... “dear diary”, jesus Christ. Anyway, journal entry.

A couple of hours have passed since my last entry. Not a lot has changed. I’ve finally realized why I’m actually writing this journal. Well, one of the reasons is that I just like writing and hey, I might be wasting time by doing this, but it’s something that keeps me sane. An even bigger reason is also... Well, I can’t really explain it. I just feel like... All of this isn’t reall. I feel like, maybe, the world has in fact ended, but only parts of it. And just if I keep walking long enough, I might find civilization. I mean, something caused almost all buildings to disappear and kill 99% of humanity, right? But how could that have affected the entire planet? I asked my brother about it, actually.

“Hey, bro”. I said. Brandon looked up. He was sitting on a wood log in front of our house, reading some kind of manual for... I’m not sure what exactly it was for, but something to do with computers. “Hey Rob. What do you want?” Oh. Great. Apparently people always think you’re talking to them for a reason, not just to kill time or just saying hey. Then again, this is an apocalypse, anyway? “I’ve got a few questions.” I shared with him, but he just kept reading the manual. “And?” His voice didn’t really seem to care or anything. Fine then. “Well, first of all, how did the world practically end? Almost all buildings are just gone, all others are destroyed, most of the people are gone... How? What caused it? And you told me I was still in coma after a suicide attempt, hell, I even still remember that. But why can’t I remember anything from before that? And if I awoke in a hospital after the apocalypse, then how did I survive while in coma without any power or food? I went to the place where the hospital once was, and guess what? It’s disappeared, just like many other buildings. So, you lied to me. And I want to know the truth, Bran. You’re my brother, and I feel like we should be able to trust eachother. I think friends will be hard to make in this area, and you’re one of the only friends I have, currently.” Shit, why did I say ‘currently’. Now it sounded like I was just keeping him as a friend until I found someone else.

“Done raging? The truth is, I have no idea what caused the apocalypse. We don’t know what started the Ash Days. Everything just...” Two words had caught my attention, and I interrupted him. “The what? What did you call it?” I wondered. “Huh? Oh, the Ash Days. I don’t know why we call it that... Just, eh, the adults started saying it and yeah, then everyone was calling it that. I don’t know why. It’s not like the entire world burned down or anything. Then again...”

Right, so my brother obviously didn’t know what happened, what caused the Apocalypse. No one seemed to do. That seemed pretty odd to me. The entire world as you know it comes to an end, and you don’t even notice? Seriously?

But then my brother said something wise, something I hadn’t really thought of at the moment to be honest: “Why does it matter anyway? It happened, no one knows why. Why would you want to know?” He was right, of course. All he wasted was to live, while I was just fascinated by the fact that an apocalypse was actually possible. And, yeah, happened. Well, you always have these kind of people, right? In every post-apocalyptic television series or movie: Some just want to know every single thing about why or how it happened, while others just want to survive.

I can understand why. But I’ve always been a very curious guy, always wanting to know the story behind something, the reason for something to happen, every single detail of anything. I liked solving mysteries. And hell, this was one of the biggest mysteries to solve. I tried to make that clear to my brother. “But isn’t it just so exciting to be able to know what happened? Something really, really bad happened that wiped out almost all of mankind, who thought they were almighty and powerful. Like, did a meteor struck? Some other natural disaster? Or was it, what I think, our own fault? Did we ruin this planet, as predicted by ourselves?” My brother just sighed, stood up, and looked at me right in the eyes. “Of course I’m curious to what happened.”

His voice was very low, I just noticed. It made him sound adult, even though he was only sixteen years old. But then again. Almost all adults died in the apocalypse. I’m not sure why, but it seemed like mostly kids and children survived. “But is thinking about it and pretending to be philosophers going to get us anywhere? No! We need to focus on the important things now. Weapons. Food. Shelter! Do you think we can just go hide in a building? There’s almost no buildings left, so if we find one, we’re bound to stumble across some bandits. Also, have you seen any food around here? A pizza, maybe? Nope. How about weapons? Do you think we’ll be able to survive this without any of these? No. So we better hurry up and make sure we’ll live. Now, shut up and let’s go find some food.”

And with that he walked past me, and went into the direction of where the supermarket was. Jesus. That guy liked to rant about things. But hey, without him, I’d probably already have been death. Still, I didn’t think we’d be able to survive alone. “Wait!” I yelled, and luckily he turned around. He looked at me with his what-do-you-want-now-face. “I’m gonna get Nicholas, and see if I can get Kevin to join us as well.” I saw a little nod, and Brandon sat on the ground again. Alright. So now I had to find Nicholas.

 

[Wimali]

Journal Entry 3- Searching for Companion

Today was a rough day. A day has passed since yesterday (haha, see that attempt at a joke I just made) and since the last time I wrote in this journal. I almost lost it. Don’t know what I would’ve done if it would’ve been stolen or destroyed. Here's what happened this morning, which was pretty good to be honest. It was only after the morning things went bad.

I was just searching through our neighborhood. Which survived the apocalypse pretty well, actually. Alright, if you’d see it that’s definitely not what you’d think, but in comparison with other places? Hell, it’s Paris. There were about six houses left- Mine, the grocery, my uncle’s house, a bookshop and two other houses. Nicholas’ house didn’t quite survive though: It was completely gone. I wondered if he was still alive.

Only one way to find out right? Yeah... I started yelling “Nicholas!” somewhere close to where his house used to be. Probably a very stupid thing to do as bandits would probably be able to hear me, but hey, I was desperate. And without Nicholas we’d probably be dead anyway. Sadly, I couldn’t find him. And Kevin? Yeah. That guy was nowhere to be seen either.

Too bad. We’d have to continue without them then I guessed. “Didn’t find them?” my brother asked when I returned to him. “Nope. They’re not around here anymore.” He nodded and I saw how he was trying to hide his fear. “Well, they’re either dead or realized they should get away from here as fast as possible. Which we should probably do as well, because I just know bandits are going to raid this place.”

Fucking shit. Of course there were going to be bandits trying to murder everyone just for a little bit of flood. Human flesh is the new pizza. Why is it that humans need to go insane when an apocalypse strucks them? In all movies, in all television series, most people just go mad and try to kill everyone for food or things like that. Honestly... Wouldn’t it just be good if humanity would extinct?

Dang. Probably shouldn’t think about thinks like that. I get why I tried to commit suicide now, phaha. “Eh, yeah, we should go.” I told my brother. “But shouldn’t we go with a few more people? I don’t think we’ll be able to survive with just us two.” Bran shrugged, he had no idea what to do. I could imagine what he was thinking. Sure, we could stay here and look for some more survivors to join us, while potentially having them be killers or backstabbers. Or we could continue our journey and hope we just wouldn’t meet anyone.

“No, we just can’t risk it I think. We’ve been hesitating enough already. I say we go to the supermarket and see if we can get some more food before going to...” And there was the flaw in his plan: Brandon had no idea of where to go to. Alright, it was a good idea to grab some food before we went. But where could we even go to? Suddenly a brilliant idea popped into my mind.

“I say we go to Brussels. We got that uncle there, right? And he’s probably some kind of trained ex-soldier who has lots of weapons and beer, right? I mean, it’s always like that in the television series.” That was a joke, obviously. I laughed. But my brother took it seriously. “This isn’t funny, Bran. How are you even able to make jokes? Everyone you know is dead. Mom, dad, Emily... Fuck, even that girl you had a crush on, Bonnie. They’re all dead. And you’re probably going to die as well. How can you still be happy like this? Also, pretty much all of civilization is gone, remember? All that is left is dirt. We’d never be able to find Brussels, let alone find uncle Ben, he’s probably dead anyway.”

Well, what could I say? He had a point. But that was just my problem. Bran always thought he was right. It just annoyed me. So I raged. “Oh, hey, you know what? Pretty much all of civilization is gone, and we can’t go anywhere. Let’s just go to the supermarket, yeah, and then what? Go back home and get killed by bandits? Listen, Bran, I know you don’t know how to handle this situation...”

“Don’t know how the handle this situation? Oh, shut up! I know how to handle this! I’m not the one who is just going to desperately try and find the big guy to help. I’m trying to survive here, not living in a fantasy world in which uncle is going to come and save us! Do you really think..”

“Hey guys. I’ve been searching for you.” A third voice suddenly interrupted my brother’s raging. I looked behind him, as that was where the voice came from. I didn’t want to take a weapon or anything, because I kind of recognized the voice... I didn’t quite know who it was, but knew it was a friend. And then I saw who it was.

“Nicholas!”

 

[Wimali]

Journal Entry 3- Searching for Companion (part 2)

“So how did you get affected by this whole apocalypse thing?” I asked Nick. “Bwah” he answered, shrugging. “Mom and dad died, they didn’t actually just disappear like most people but got killed by I don’t know what. Found their corpses when trying to find some survivors.”

“Oh. Damn. I feel bad for you, dude.” This made him laugh. “Why? We both know my dad was a selfish, drunk asshole. And my mom? She hasn’t cared about me for years, so why should I care about her? I don’t even mind they’re dead, Rob. Just want to move on.”

“Okay, we understand.” Sure Bran, just speak in my place. “Anyway, now that we’re all happily together I think we should stop wasting time talking and get around to the surviving part. Have you seen Kevin?” he directed at Nick. “Umm.. I know he’s alive. But I haven’t seen him since the first day of the Apocalypse. We formed a group, together with two other friends of our school. Then the bandits came...”

Right. One of them probably died. I noticed Nick didn’t want to talk about (I mean, who would?). “How about we go find Kevin? He might still be alive, and an extra member to our group would definitely be welcome.”

“No. As much as I want our group to be bigger and safer, I don’t think we can afford spending time on looking for our buddy. We should rather go to the supermarket and see if we can still snatch some food. I mean, all the ‘real’ food will probably be gone or spoiled, but junk food lasts a very long time. If we manage to get some chips or things like that, we’ll be good for a long time. Yes, it’s unhealthy, but it’s something. At least we won’t starve to death.” Oh yeah, just don’t listen to our plans. Just ignore us, bro. Act like the wise and adult big brother you pretend to be.

“Yeah, sure, sounds like a good idea. I didn’t like Kevin anyway, he’s a nerd. He’d probably be more of a burden anyway.” Then he smiled and looked at me. “Remember how we called such people on the internet, Rob? Noobs!”

That actually managed to put a smile on my face, but it was half-forced. I didn’t like how Kevin was supporting Rob. Rob was very stubborn, and I definitely didn’t want him to think he was the leader of our group. We didn’t need a leader, and definitely not Rob. Maybe uncle Ben, but he’s an adult of course. And adults are cool, right?

Let’s just ignore the millions of people that got killed by adults before the apocalypse happened. Heck, those ‘adults’ probably caused the apocalypse in one of their wars. Sure, children could be mean and psycho, but at least they didn’t kill millions of people, right? But hey, children are stupid. Let’s be honest. I’d rather be with an adult.

“Right, the supermarket it is then?” I asked, but before Bran and Nick could answer I turned around and walked into the direction of the supermarket. Or at least in the direction of where I thought the supermarket would be.

 

[Wimali]

Journal Entry 3- Searching for Companion (part 3)

And that’s where the trouble started. We were walking for about twenty minutes (Honestly, it could have been five, could’ve been an hour… Clocks don’t really work anymore here, so yeah.) and hadn’t found any sign of a housing or survivors. Which we didn’t mind, as most survivors would most likely attempt to kill us or something.

“We should be nearing the supermarket now, I think. About ten minutes at most.” My brother said. Good news, I thought. I hated walking: I was a really, really hardcore gamer, and I only came outside when needed- For school. Even walking for only twenty minutes was tiring, and that really worried me because it wasn’t a good sign for surviving an apocalypse, was it now?

“Great. I’ll be happy to rest, it’s been ages since I walked for this long.” Nick seemed to find this rather funny, as a smile formed on his battered face. “You really gotta do something on your condition, bro. If you wanna survive this, you’ll need to actually be able to stand up for longer than five minutes without feeling dizzy.” Yeah, he was right, but the comment still annoyed me. “Look who’s talking.” I threw back, although we both knew Nick actually came outside from time to time, his situation wasn’t nearly as bad as mine.

“Hey, look!” I yelled. “Seems like most of the school is still there.” I didn’t really care about it, I just wanted to talk about another subject. And there could possibly be food in that school building, right? “We could check it out, I guess.” My brother said. “I don’t really want to, but there might just be some food laying around in the cafeteria or something. But be careful though, as this is one of the only buildings left in the area, there will most likely be some bandits around.”

“How about the children?” I wondered. “What?” Wasn’t that a simple question? “What do you mean?” My brother curiously asked me. “Well. We don’t know when it happened, right? The apocalypse? I mean, I was in coma. You were asleep. And Nick was… Well, having fun with a girl. What if it happened at like, let’s say 1 PM? When most of the children were at school? There could be kids in the school.” My brother nodded slightly. “True. But didn’t the apocalypse happen like… what, one, two days ago? Don’t you think the kids would have left the school and went to their own houses?” Well, again he had a point.

“Alright. I can see what you mean. But how about the teachers? Maybe they told the kids to stay in the school. I don’t know. Let’s just go inside and have a look?” Sound reasonable, huh? Honestly, I just made something up. It’s not like I really wanted to meet any children, they could just be murderous or something. But maybe Sarah was in the building. There was a small chance that she was still alive. My girl. “Alright then.” My brother answer after thinking for a few moments. “We could have a look inside I guess.” Good, so they wanted to come along with me. “Alright then! Let’s look for Sa… err. Food.”