[ENG] What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
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What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
Genre : Apocalypse, Fantasy, Superpower, Action
Tag : Misunderstanding, Secret Organization, Wolrd-Freezing, Super power
Chapter 22 : The Moths and The Flame
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[Time remaining until The Great Freeze: 7 Days]
[Status: POST-IMPACT DEEP FREEZE]
[Location: Arlen's Apartment, 4th Floor - West Jakarta]
[Time: Day 7 - 02:00 AM]
Exactly one week had passed since that eternal night began, one hundred and sixty-eight hours of absolute, uninterrupted darkness without a single sliver of sunlight managing to pierce through the atmosphere. The world seemed to have ground to a halt, leaving behind the shattered remnants of human civilization trapped in an unforgiving, merciless freeze.
Arlen slowly unbuckled the thick rubber straps of his P-100 gas mask, allowing the airtight seal to pull away and expose his face, which was now marked with painful, bruised red welts from the pressure of the mask over the past several days. He dropped the heavy respirator onto the freezing concrete floor, creating a hollow, metallic clatter that echoed through the deathly silent room.
He drew a long, deep breath, attempting to inhale the outside air for the first time in a week.
The freezing air struck the back of his throat like a handful of crushed ice being forced down his windpipe, the lethal -15°C temperature burned his nostrils and stung his lungs with a sharp, stabbing sensation.
However, the air felt remarkably pure and clean. The black snow that had fallen over the last few days had performed its duty as a brutal atmospheric scrubber, dragging every toxic particle of volcanic silicate down to the earth.
For the first time in seven days, he could breathe oxygen directly without the terrifying fear of his lungs being shredded and destroyed by razor-sharp glass dust.
Arlen's body had been forced to adapt to this trauma in an agonizingly efficient manner. Severe sleep deprivation combined with a massive caloric deficit had caused his face to hollow out, creating deep, dark circles beneath his eyes that reflected an immense, bone-deep exhaustion. He moved his body with calculated slowness to preserve the dwindling sparks of energy still stored within his cells.
To stay alive, he had localized his entire world into a tiny two-by-two-meter corner. The micro-tent he had constructed from an overturned wooden bookshelf and lined with three layers of thick construction plastic was his final bastion against death. Stacks of wool blankets and every winter jacket he owned were draped over the plastic frame, with every edge bonded tightly to the floor tiles using heavy-duty Gorilla Tape to ensure that not a single joule of warmth could escape.
His supply of water in plastic gallons had long since turned into solid blocks of ice that were entirely useless in their current state. Arlen was forced to use his tactical hatchet to smash the plastic containers, extracting sharp, frozen shards of ice which he would then melt inside a small metal pot under the protection of his tent.
The space inside the tent was cramped and suffocating. He dragged the pot along with a stack of printed manuscript pages into the enclosure and sealed the entrance flap shut to prevent the biting cold from sneaking inside.
These papers were the original manuscript of his novel, The Frozen Era.
"The sum of my hard work over the last year," Arlen thought as he stared at the rows of black ink in the dim light.
Bright orange sparks showered over the crumpled pages of Chapter Three as he struck his fire-starter rod with force. A weak flame flickered to life inside a metal bin, immediately spiking the temperature within the plastic walls of the tent. He began to melt the ice and warm a tin of corned beef near the heat, trying to ignore the hunger gnawing at his stomach.
The scent of cooked meat soon filled the cramped space, but it was quickly followed by a thick, suffocating cloud of grey smoke.
The smoke from the burning manuscript accumulated into a dense haze that filled the tent. Arlen coughed violently, burying his face in the crook of his elbow as tears streamed down his cheeks from the intense carbon buildup stinging his eyes. His lungs screamed for fresh oxygen, but he remained stubborn, refusing to open the tent flap even a fraction.
If the air spread through the ventilation and the heat leaked out into the hallway, it would be no better than a death sentence for him. Because that temperature would act as a dinner bell that would invite every predator in the closest area to come and tear his door off its hinges. He was forced to endure the torture of the smoke until the embers finally died into cold ash. Only then did he dare to break the seal of the tent to breathe the freezing air of his living room.
At two in the morning, his nightly ritual began. Arlen crawled with absolute silence across the cold ceramic tiles toward the main window. He peeled back a small section of the tape holding the mattress against the frame, exposing the cracked, frozen glass.
The sky outside was an absolute void, a total darkness that swallowed everything. High in the stratosphere, the Megaplume had erased the stars and the moon from human sight. Below, the district of West Jakarta lay buried under a monolithic black glacier. The mountain of debris pressing against his building had frozen into a stable rampart of ice and concrete, turning his fourth-floor window into a vantage point level with the new ground.
Tiny, flickering pinpoints of orange light pierced the darkness in the distance. One glow emanated from a shattered office tower, while others blinked deep within a residential complex.
They were survivors still trying to fight back.
"Do they really think they're safe just because they're sitting around a fire?" Arlen whispered, his gloved fingers gripping the cold window frame.
In the old world, fire was a symbol of hope and safety. But now, in this era of eternal darkness, an open flame was a violent siren of death that called out to the hunters. The radiation had shifted the apex. The new predators' sensory systems entirely circle towards thermal tracking. They didn't see with only their eyes anymore.
The people huddling around those fires were nothing more than moths voluntarily lighting the flame that would eventually consume them.
Through the clear air, Arlen saw shadows moving in the distant office window. Massive shapes, moving with terrifying speed, surged toward the light. The orange glow flickered violently, casting monstrous, elongated shadows against the interior walls. The delayed echo of the massacre reached Arlen's ears seconds later.
The high-pitched screams of human desperation quickly smothered by the guttural roars of bloodthirsty beasts.
The fire was knocked over and went out. The light briefly illuminated a horrifying scene of torn limbs before the fuel was buried under falling debris. The building returned to absolute silence and darkness.
Arlen closed his eyes, his hands trembling violently against the glass. He knew the rules that were killing them all. He knew how to evade them. Yet he could only sit here in the dark, entirely unable to do anything to warn them.
The "Architect" worshipped by so many was now just a silent witness to the systematic extinction of his neighbors.
He sealed the window gap once more and began to crawl back toward his tent.
Suddenly, he froze. A new sound pierced the silence of the room. It didn't come from the street or the distant buildings. It came from the hallway, right on the other side of the front door he had barricaded with a heavy desk.
Click. Scrape. Click.
The sound of sharp claws tapping against the floor tiles behind the wooden door was unmistakable.
Arlen immediately stopped breathing. He dropped his body until he was completely flat against the concrete floor and gripped the cold rubber handle of his tactical hatchet.
The footsteps stopped right in front of Room 404. A heavy, wet snuffling sound vibrated through the door frame. A mutant scout.
Fortunately, his plastic tent had successfully trapped all the body heat and cooking smoke from earlier. The temperature in his living room was currently identical to the freezing temperature in the hallway. To the creature's heat sensors, this apartment was just a dead, frozen hole.
A low, vibrating growl rumbled through the heavy oak desk. The extreme body heat of the hyper-metabolic beast radiated through the wood, instantly melting a thin layer of frost on the metal door hinges. Beads of water began to drip onto the floor. The creature pressed its weight against the door, making the wood groan and the desk squeak softly.
Arlen tightened his grip on the axe, eyes staring through the dark at the door. He had already visualized the swing, a direct strike into the mutant's spinal cord if that door shattered.
The tension felt like a frozen eternity. Then, the pressure against the door vanished. The sound of claws tapping against the floor returned, moving away toward the emergency stairs. Arlen remained flat on the floor for ten full minutes before he dared to exhale. His muscles twitched from the sudden adrenaline crash.
This brief encounter shattered his entire illusion of safety. The mutant scouts were now actively sweeping through the buildings.
A single wooden door and an old desk were not really a defense he could trust, they were just a temporary delay. A coordinated pack could've turn that barricade into splinters in seconds.
Arlen forced himself up and retreated into his micro-tent. He booted up his laptop, ignoring his survival diary to immediately open the digital blueprints of the apartment complex. His eyes locked onto the structural layout of the fourth floor.
"Staying still and doing nothing like this is like waiting for my own death slowly," he analyzed, his jaw tightening.
He opened a new, encrypted document and began drafting a serious contingency plan. He mapped the adjacent units and the structural load-bearing walls. He recorded all the mutant patrol timings he had observed over the past week.
He needed an exit that didn't involve the main hallway if things got worse.
The role of the frightened writer cowering in a dark room was over. To survive this long night, he had to stop being a victim and start being doing his best on his own to survive.
›› To Be Continue ‹‹
—KS