Short Story: The Shade by Samuel L Bryant

Last night Scared Sheetless brought you Ruins by Eric Key, a post apocalyptic thriller. This time the setting is the same, but how it came about is a little different. This story is brought to you by Samuel L Bryant, the very one who gave us The Last Patient. Enjoy!

Rated T for Teen

Got a story? Send it to me at scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com and remember to put "Short Story" as the title.

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The Shade

Hello, my name is Jesse Stout, the year is 2093. The world ended twenty years ago, I turn twenty the same day as the worlds end. Twenty years ago a disease known as The Shade killed nearly half of the world’s population, and almost all of the super metropolis known once as New York city. This is where I spent my entire life. To be specific, I lived in an old CIA compound that my parents commandeered days after the birth of me, and The Shade.

My parents died six days ago, and they never talked much about the shade. After mourning their death for two days I decided that I wanted to leave the safety of the compound and see the world that I had only heard stories of.

I expected my eyes would have to adjust to the light but that was not the case. All around me, as far up as my eyes could see were huge rundown buildings, yet they still stood hundreds of stories high, blocking out the sun. Every several feet stood a dim street light, flickering under the power of story old generators running on fumes. I'm horrified when I see the skeletons scattered along the pot-hole infested road, and in crashed cars. I didn't think I could be any more shocked when I realized that they had been picked clean of skin, muscle, and tendon, not even a speck of blood remaining on them.

After spending nearly an hour teaching myself to put the horrible sights out of my mind. Once I had done so successfully I began my search for any living person I could find. I spent the rest of that day alone.. Roughly three hours after working the next morning I found what would become one of the most disturbing things that I will ever see.

An old man, at least seventy, sitting against a post, rocking back and forth. I walked up to him tentatively, “Excuse me sir,” I waited a moment, “Could I ask you a few questions?”

“What? Are you real? I can tell the Shades gonna get to me soon enough. Heck, even if you're not real I supposes I could answer your questions.”

“Thank ya sir. Please tell me everything you know about the Shade.”

He chuckled a little “well mister imagination. The shade isn’t really a disease, it more like a sickness that gets into your head, and makes you do stuff. I still remember the day it all went down. I was walking to work, when a car veered straight off the street into a small store. People were screaming so much, that damned screaming. I couldn't take it; I know pathetic, blacking out right in the middle of the apocalypse. When I woke up everyone was dead, the only sound I could discern among the alarms was a baby crying. Now I'm gonna tell you what I think caused all this...” At that moment his hand jerked to his side shaking violently, he withdrew a bowie knife from a pocket I hadn't seen, and all the while crying and blubbering, before he got another word out his hand shoved the knife upwards through his mouth pinning his tongue to the roof of his mouth and penetrating his brain. I threw up.

After working up enough courage to scour his body for anything I could use, I found a small note with directions to a clinic, with a name I knew my parents had said before on it. It took me nearly nine hours to find the building thanks to the unnavigable streets. I slept, because I wanted to be awake for whatever was inside. I open the door slowly. On the floor lies a man, with blood all over him, and I think he's dead. I kneel down to check his pulse when he jolts up. He says to me in the most relieved voice I can imagine anyone in this world having, “Thank God you’re here. I don't care who you are, but you have to preserve the knowledge in this lab. Here’s the code to the computer over there. A.F.S.l.3.4.3.” before I could ask him anything else his body began violently convulsing, and like that he was dead.

I walk into the dark room, with one LED light overhead still working, and a computer monitor on the other side of the room. I walk up to it nervously, for reasons I did not yet know. I pushed the on button, and a screen requesting a password shown into the dark room. I slowly pressed the keys A.F.S.L.3.4.3. At that point the screen lit up to reveal a journal kept by that poor man in the first room.

It read, 'I think I finally figured it out. Those Stouts are at the center of this. That kid of theirs was born at the exact moment the first Shade incident occurred. It’s the only explanation, those cursed geniuses were always fringe, between the experiments, and the 'worship' something was definitely going to go wrong.'

I was taken back a moment, I went to click on the next page, but my arm wouldn't do what I told it too. It reached into a desk drawer and found a razor, weird place to keep a razor I know, then slit my opposite hand off, clean through the bone.

Upon awakening I looked around to see that, there was blood splattered all over the room I was in, but I could feel my arm. I figured it was just a stress attack making me think it was gone, but when I looked down at my arm, in place of flesh was a black ethereal shape resembling my arm perfectly. Just as I began to freak out at this development my mind started to slide back, that’s when you said, “It’s my turn to lead Jesse-boy...”

By: Samuel L Bryant