One week ago, I found an old phone in the field of a nuclear fallout. I decided to watch the videos on the phone two days ago, 1/30/2050, and it depicts the event of a biohazard outbreak in that same area where a city used to reside.
I am Anna Likhaya and I am 20 years old as of writing this. I was out with my friends looking for something to do in town, when Sofia decided to go to a field neighboring our city. It never occurred to me, or any of us, how large this field actually was. It felt like at least ten or more full farms could have been out there, but alas, it was empty. The breeze hit me softly in the midnight warmth, and as the grass danced around us four we saw remnants of collapsed structures.
Personally, I loved adventuring in ruined buildings. I had been since sophomore year, and haven't stopped. The things you see in abandoned buildings are mostly the same, but the experiences and the atmospheres of each always feel a little different. Nothing really compares, but going to one out in the day is a bit of a bore. The eerie chill they give off at night doesn't really come off in the day, but I wasn't going to say no now.
Dimitri brandished his hand-held metal detector and began waving it around the piles of rubble.
"Dimitri you aren't going to find anything besides scrap metal or coins, you don't need to keep bringing that around," I chimed in, "-nothing ever turns up."
He shook his head at me, but kept his head down as he said,
"I don't think you have the same persistence as I do, but whatever I find you can keep."
One building after another, nothing turned anything up. The last building we went to seemed to be a small scale shed, sitting alone in the field, and Dimitri had his break. Inside of a freezer, under a pile of rotten clothes, a single dirty phone laid. It looked to be an android, but still produced a low battery screen. Dimitri lit up,
"This still works! I can hack it and see what's downloaded. Maybe I can look for send any cool photos or videos."
"I guess so, I didn't expect you to actually find anything, but I'm happy with that."
Lying in my apartment, the night casting only shade from behind my curtains, my laptop pinged as a message was sent to me. Dimitri sent me only two videos, and each had different times but all were over 10 minutes. The dates were from 2027, 23 years ago. I was instantly bought in and uncovered to watch these at my wood desk.
The creek of the desk as I placed my laptop down echoed through my bedroom, the sound dying quickly as I went to click on the first video.
Upon starting, a man swung the phone to show his face; he had a gruff about him that made him seem tough but sweet, a rough cut that implied he never cared about his hair, and a collared blue shirt with a leather overcoat. He was in obvious distress, and seemed frantic as he peeped through the blinds of a window. The man was engulfed in shadows, a kitchen lit by an open window behind him, but he never spoke. Only nerve induced breaths escaped him, and soon his situation became apparent. In one swing the video showed news clippings referring to a biological outbreak in the city of Vorkuta, presumably the one he was in. One piece read, "Hundreds infected from unknown virus, growths of indescribable magnitude and violent behavior induced from said virus. Citizens are advised to hide underground, or evacuate to the city provided helipad." But next to that article, another read, "Helipad evacuation method cancelled as infected take control of helipad and surrounding city. Citizens are advised to hide underground until sirens sound." The rest read of similar buildings and back-up evacuation methods being overrun with infected citizens, but the man still had no words. He turned the camera back on himself and walked to his kitchen window, his face filling with light as he once again turned the camera. What was shown was somewhat obscured bars protecting the window, but was still clear. Streets stained with blood and bodily fluids, destroyed off-roaders and bikes, and a single infected person. The woman had what looked like gigantism swells covering her body; the largest tumor meeting at her head, but between her lumps two bloodshot eyes peered through without sockets to lie in. Her hair thinly covering her blobby head, but the most concerning part was her disfigured extra sockets. From within the sockets, a long, raw limb shot out like a bullet and left a door shattered. The camera swung back when the woman obliterated the door, and cut off. The worst part was an arm on the sidewalk, it seemed to writhe. Breaths never quite escaping the arm as the skin tightened like when someone breathes into a latex glove.
I didn't really know how to react, it seemed like a horror film. The news clippings were of an old discontinued news company originating from the town, and the infected woman. From any other source I might have thought it was fake, but from Dimitri off of a phone we found from an abandoned shed. I had to believe it. Who would fake this, why fake something like this?
Nonetheless, I went to the next video. It began on the man caught in a sprint, pieces of loose gravel catching under each step as he escaped a groveling mass of skin behind him. The infected person raced at him like a gorilla, but the noises that came from it sounded more of a cat drowning in thick tar. Gurgles and spurts came from it, and just when the man had lost his pace, another infected human charged it and a fight broke out for who's to share the meal. Luckily for the camera man he found an empty home, he checked the area with a flashlight to reveal any stragglers inside. There was no door, and the room had caved in in a way that only allowed him to catch his breath on the wall next to the door. His hair had gone wild, his coat had been lost in a frenzy, and his shirt had grass like stains that seeped deeper and more vividly than grass stains normally would. He took a moment to relax himself, the outside fight between the inhuman people continued but began to drag further away. Because of this, what sounded like two more infected came to find the source of the noise just to end up joining the encounter. Then, he spoke.
"My name is Luka Angelov. My town has been overrun with a virus… biohazard-I'm not sure. It has been spreading quickly and as moments turned to days I felt completely isolated, but there is a way that I can stop this. Our city runs on nuclear energy, so I can overload the energy and blow up the city. I know this is a devastating decision, but this is the only correct choice for such a rapidly spreading disease."
He pauses, creeping further from the doorway as the creature's brawl spills closer. Their bodies obscuring the light of the doorway in favor of shadows, but he continues quieter.
"I am aware that this all sounds obscene but I am in my right mind. I have no idea if anybody else has not been infected but I'm willing to make that sacrifice."
The man reaches into the pile of rubble behind the camera and brandishes a sizeable piece of concrete, and in a quick swing backwards it hits the street outside. In a moment the infected go quiet and look to the rubble, then drown out a hiss at each other and seem to leave. As the sound of sloshing bile and skin on concrete grows more quiet the man gains confidence and leaves into the light of the streets. The mood of the night mixed with the few street lights invokes a feeling of apprehension, but nonetheless the man escapes. He moves quickly, ignoring the large stains of blood and something else as he rushes through town. In the midst of running he pauses, not quite shocked but more intrigued. The camera flips to show a writhing small mass of flesh, and poking out of the mass are two long ears. It squelches in a pained sort of way, a puss liquid streaming down a surface. He moves past it though, eventually stumbling onto the steps of city hall. The steps are stained with a yellow-red glue mixture and chunks of rotted skin. A screech fills the night, and he rushes towards the shattered door of city hall. In the midst of the adrenaline rush, the man folds over in a stabbing pain, before kicking a bloated head. He stomps it into the carpet, a spongy squelch coming from each stomp, a thick liquid coating his shoe and wound.
"What a shitty mayor," the man whispers, "-look now what has come of your city. I hope you won't miss it."
He extracts a master key from a desk, and checks a map. For the next few minutes the video documents passages and dusty hallways underground, and throughout the entire journey hundreds of sounds of pained citizens rush overhead, and for at least a mile, are continuous. By the end of the journey the camera is shaking much more than before, but it was both surprising and not when he found himself at a shed. It had that same small, unassuming stature that the one we found had. The wood splintering from years of Russian winters and snowstorms, the door crying out each time it swings.
The rustling of the map is heard as he flips it, and then moves multiple crates and a hatch with a padlock to reveal the city's energy control. Why a city had this in a small shed was a question for later. The man recites a prayer and cuts the video short. There was nothing else in the video.
Dimitri never responded to my hundreds of messages, and never ended up responding to anybody else either. His parents had no idea what happened so we ended up calling in a missing persons report for him. Five weeks have gone by, and nothing. Our group stopped seeing each other after this, but it all seemed so odd. What kind of coincidence was it that Dimitri went missing after we found that phone in the shed, and what did that mean for me? I decided to send the videos to the authorities after his missing persons report is dropped. Without anybody close to talk about this I've been thinking over the videos a lot, and nothing good has come from it. I've been home almost all the time, my suspicions of what happened to Dimitri happening to me got a hold of my mind. I only leave home on bright days when everybody else is in the streets, and today as of writing this there were two things that happened to me.
First, I noticed a weed in my lawn I never had before. Its leaves were thick and dripped a strong smelling liquid that seeped deep into the dirt. I called a gardener and they will see me tomorrow about it. Second, I went back to the field. After those videos I couldn't actually bring myself to go onto the grass field where that all happened decades ago. Nothing changed there, but I did notice small details of the same discolored blood and bile from the videos on ruined structures.
The final thing that caught my eye was a deer grazing in the open field. It had a growth on its neck.