The Last 100 – Ch.7

“Chat!” She said the words, her swollen and puffy eyes shut tightly. Please god work, I’ll go mad if I stay alone any longer. When she tentatively prized apart her eye lids she was met with a window that read, World Chat, Jamila didn’t think, she didn’t even register what had just happened before a message had been typed and sent. Hello? What followed next was a swarm of ellipses coming into existence below her message. She was elated, she jumped up from the desk she had been sitting on and began to jump around the room. Her fists were silently punching the filtered air of her subterranean bunker.

When the messages finally arrived they did so in every language known to man, she saw Cyrillic, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and even a light smattering of vulgar English. Her father had ensured she had a good understanding of language. He wanted them to be prepared for any eventuality. And so she waited, and she read. Reading the pleas of nearly one hundred petitioners. When the time came she eventually joined the English chat group along with fourteen others.

Jamila had always found her confidence online, where in the real world she struggled painfully to interact she had found solace and companionship in the form of message boards. This was no different, except now she had been starved of human interaction for the past two days. She exploded into a flurry of messaging, asking about the state of other parts of the country. A man named Robert Carter, responded to her. He informed her that she wasn’t alone in the USA, he was from Texas it would appear. Two more people spoke up after that, one from California and the other from Virginia. She responded, informing them she was from Montana, her father had forced them to move up here.

Jamila kicked her leg’s idly under her chair, she had sat down once more, and asked more questions, attacking them with a full broadside of inquiries that ranged between asking about the general state of their mental well-being to the foot-ball teams they supported. She had never been good at focusing.

She was on her way to the refrigerator to grab another square of chocolate when she heard the alarm, the timer had hit zero. Jamila got her chocolate, sat down and continued to bombard the message boards.

When she went to re-open them she found that people were far less talkative than before. In fact of the three Americans, barring her, only Robert Carter, was still active.

Jamila Deanglisa: Hey Rob, can I call you Rob? What’s going on?

Robert Carter: We’re being attacked, didn’t you get the message?!

Jamila Deanglisa: Yeah, didn’t really think it was real though.

She turned her head to the ceiling, staring at the concrete roof with its painted-on stars. She strained her ears, trying to hear something, anything. Silence.

Jamila Deanglisa: Nope, nothing here.

Rob didn’t respond, she waited nearly ten minutes before asking the chat again. After that she waited another ten minutes before spamming his name until he responded, finally he did.

Robert Carter: They got in through the rafters. Fucking rats, jumping down from above, knocked my gun away. Don’t know how I got out.

Jamila Deanglisa: Are you okay?

Her eyes were wide with curiosity as she asked, this was the longest she had ever spoken to someone who wasn’t her father in her entire life. That she could remember at least. She was tentative to call him a friend but hoped with time he would get there.

He didn’t respond, she waited for thirty minutes and still Rob didn’t answer her. She looked at the second number at the top of her vision. 71/100, it was dropping every time she looked away from it. She returned to the fridge, this time she took out the entire block and sat back down at her chair. 69/100.

Jamila pouted her lips, blowing up her cheeks and then letting out the air in one long burst. She twiddled her thumbs in her lap, alternating between fiddling and eating. Ugh, she groaned loudly as she through her head back over her chair, dread locks swinging and slapping against the wooden back support.

Jamila was bored, more so than before she had found the chat. Because now she had tasted freedom from the grip of monotony and was reluctant to go back to it. 62/100

Jamila stood from where she was sitting at the dinning table and walked to the television her father had set up in the living room. Turning it on at the wall outlet she booted up her PlayStation, a luxury afforded to her by the solar panels on the roof of both the bunker and the house. Sliding the chrome disc of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, she loaded up her account and began to play. She sat cross-legged before the TV, like a dedicated worshipper at the altar of their chosen god, she immersed herself in the swirling steel and silver that was Geralt. Jamila was a one hundred percenter and had already finished this specific game over five times. When she finally looked up from the screen, 3 hours had passed and from the reckoning of the clock on the wall it was morning. The sun would, about now be rising above the hill that scarred the horizon. She smiled, she loved that sunrise.

She looked at the number of people who were still alive 23/100. She raised her eyebrows slightly in surprise and did her routine check of the bunker’s systems. She checked that the power was still coming in at a reasonable amount, she checked on the air filter, making sure that it was still operational and that none of the vents were blocked. After crawling through the dusty boiler room and vents she stripped of her hoodie and jeans and jumped into a steaming hot shower, burning away the dirt and grime from her dark skin. When she excited the marble alcove that was her shower and into the cloud of steam that filled her bathroom she dragged a closed fist across the mirror. It opened up a brief space of reflection, she stared into her own eyes. I hope Rob’s still alive, he seemed nice. Jamila stood in the steam, feeling its warmth for a long time. She was in no hurry, she had all the time in the world.