I walked through the halls of the hundred-year-old house, a living photograph of an era long since passed. I breathed in the dusty air, smelling the aroma of a century of life. Gran had lived in this house for all of her life, being born in a bedroom upstairs. I stepped into that very same room, coated in a film of neglect and dust. For the past several years, only the bottom level was inhabited.
Now, all life had been erased from its frames. I closed the door to a forgotten time and continued inspecting the house. The moving truck revved its engine and pulled out of the drive. I stared through the reading nook’s window tinted by the scum of time. Boxes filled the lawn, awaiting a clean house before finding their new home. I’d thought it would be an easy task, taking over the house. Gran instructed in her will that I take care of the estate: a gift for my future.
But it now seemed like a burden, even with the half a million dollars appended to the stipulation of caring for the home. Looking around, it became more evident that it would take a large sum to repair the building, but what could I do? I didn’t have access to the money otherwise. Even a hundred thousand would be a fair sum, so I couldn’t get too upset over it.
I trudged down the stairs, already exhausted by the sheer volume of pending work that is increases with each step through the ancient structure. I turned into the kitchen and stepped through the back door. The wilted yard mourned its existence, neglected to be overtaken by the foul hands of weeds and rust from lawn chairs barely visible through the foliage.
A faint thump drew me to the wine cellar buried beneath a rotting table. Pulling out the set of keys to the house, I fumbled through about thirty attempts until the padlock finally opened. I pulled open the doors, overwhelmed by the putrid smell that assaulted me. Immediately, my lunch spewed out into the rose bush.
I wiped my mouth and pulled my shirt over my face, using the flashlight from my phone to guide me into the depths of the hell I had begun to perceive myself entering. A bloodstained table sat rusted in the middle of the cellar, covered in grime. The light from my phone glanced off the far wall where a corkboard was plastered with photographs. Faces of various people ranging in different ages, genders, and ethnicity. Judging my the fashion trends of some of them, several of the photographs were taken over a span of a couple of generations.
My heart stopped when I came closer, revealing a second corkboard with deceased bodies opened up like an autopsy. Horrified, I turned away and bolted for the door. My stride felt it easy to take four steps at a time up the stairs until a rustling behind me jarred me to a halt.
With my hand on the edge of the support rail, I turned around to face a robotic form with dried blood splattered across its chest and face. Almost human, I thought I was staring into the eyes of a deranged man until those eyes flickered like camera lenses.
“Please, do not fear. I am WMT-1282. You’re grandmother has recorded a message for you. She wanted her words to be the first you hear when I scanned your presence in this room. Please do not finish that emergency call. You are not in danger. Follow me, and I will explain everything.”
Despite the very automated voice, there was a tone that drove me to shove the half-dialed phone into my pocket and follow the robot further into the room. It led me through a hall of small rooms which explained the stench: Skeletons laid piled in several heaps, some half decomposed.
The voice of my grandmother pulled me away from the carnage. I crossed the hall in a leap and entered a library where video footage of my grandmother, several years younger, dressed in a doctor’s gown. “--wondering why you are here in the midst of such disturbing scenes. The world is about to be attacked. I intercepted a satellite emergency beacons a couple decades ago warning of an impending bio-warfare from a neighboring galaxy. The bodies you have undoubtedly seen are the laboratory offspring of DNA extracted from those waging war against Earth. In order to create a vaccine to the virus set to spread across the world, we needed the natural antibodies of the immunity found in the lifeforms of our attackers.”
The robot stepped away as my grandmother continued to speak, which caused me to focus less on her and more on it as it opened a medical fridge.
“--will be providing you with several vials of the antiviral dose. Time is very short. I am unsure of when you will be seeing this, and that only means the threat will be all the closer by the time you do. I have created this vaccine to act like a virus, spreading from person to person with an infection of the cure to the bio-attack. The robot will instruct you on how to infect the world with this cure, but you need to commit to this or the fate of all humanity will be destruction and submission to an invading army. You can be the savior of the world. Use the funds I have left you to disperse the cure. I believe in you.”
The footage cut out, leaving the room in a silence fit for a morgue. I looked that the robot which extended out the case of vials. Twelve in all, each labeled with a targeted city. I looked back towards the cellar doors, contemplating the best way to escape the madness of this underground death lab without being seized by the murderous robot.
Before I could take a step in any direction, another video feed began to screen across the wall. A distorted video of a strange person veiled with a dark robe flashed against my eyes. A voice struggled to find the right language to use, switching between several unknown languages as well as a handful of languages from around the world until it settled upon English.
“I am a rogue scientist from the Andromeda Galaxy.” This video blurred into static for a moment before returning mid-sentence, “--soon and will wipe out much of the life on Earth. We have sent teams over the past few decades, researching the DNA structure of the human creatures of your planet. Our attack is imminent. Be prepared. I have disclosed a couple of my trusted colleagues who will aid you in saving your planet. Please hurry.”
A gunshot echoed through the cellar as the body of the scientist on camera slumped at the desk before the feed was canceled. I looked back at the case of vials and up at the camera eyes of the robot holding them.
I don’t know when I had decided, but I took the case from the robot and accepted my fate as humanity’s savior. I returned the cure into the medical fridge and sat at the desk, staring at nothing in particular as I searched for the words to say.
“Let’s infect the world, WMT-1282.”
- (c) 2020 Kevin Barrick
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Spooky. I loved it😃😲!!!
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