Chapter 26.

Two discoveries. Sarah Reyes.

Time/Area: Somewhere in Paris. July 14, 2013.

“Keep those feet moving Sarah!” Doc yelled ahead of me.

I groaned as I increased my pace, cursing underneath my breath. When I said we were halfway there yesterday, that was assuming we would’ve found a car by now. It was daytime in Paris, and the streets that we were on were completely bare. Shops we passed by had broken glass all over the place, and some had rotting corpses behind counters. It was all very sickening and I wanted nothing more than to leave.

“Do you see a car?” I asked, no hope in my voice.

Doc paused for a minute, as if looking around would actually do any-

“Yep, over there.” She pointed at a white convertible a block away.

It was actually in an okay-ish condition.

I stared at her, bewildered, “Have you seen that the whole time?!”

Doc shook her head, “No! I just haven’t looked.”

I groaned again, but I couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

“A break from walking.” I thought, running across the street to the car.

I silently prayed that everything would somehow be in working order in the vehicle.

Doc quickly followed, coming to a stop next to me. The vehicle was ‘parked’ on a sidewalk and was smashed into a street lamp, but otherwise it looked pretty good.

“Finally,” I breathed, doc echoing my sigh of relief.

Since the convertible was...converted, we just jumped inside without having to worry about locked doors. I hopped in on the left side, expecting to be driving, but was dumbfounded when there was no wheel.

I heard doc snicker from my right,

“We’re in Paris, remember?”

I groaned. The truck I had smashed into TF1 was one of Jordan’s imported cars in a nearby parking lot, so I didn’t have to account for opposite driver seats.

“Paris is weird.” I huffed.

Doc bent over, tinkering with wires underneath the dashboard.

The moment of truth caused me to jump as the car suddenly sprung to life in a series of mechanical whirs, my wide eyes tracking the small arrow on the fuel gauge as it slowly drifted to the quarter mark.

“You can hotwire a car?” I asked, faking an accusatory look at Doc.

Doc blinked back at me innocently, “No, I would never learn such a terrible thing.”

I rolled my eyes as she pulled out of the streetlamp, switched gears, and turned onto the road, leaving a mound of shattered glass in her wake.

“Okay, since I’m driving, you tell me where to go.” Doc ordered.

I nodded, taking the map from Doc’s purse, “Okay okay, uhh,” I drew my finger along the map, trying to find where we were.

“Continue down this road and make the first right…” I motioned the direction with my finger, “I uh…think.”

Doc smiled as she hit the gas, “Looks like we’re back in business.”

We got a good amount of miles in before we needed to stop for gas.

It was getting pretty dark outside, but the nearest gas station was apparently not too far from where we stopped. Various street signs we saw while driving told of one named Total Powers that was only a couple of blocks from here.

I got out of the car and stretched my legs a bit, “I can go get a gas can from the station and then bring it back here.” I suggested, taking a minute to observe my surroundings.

This area was no less dead than all the others and, no, my nose still hadn’t escaped the faint but ever present smell of decaying bodies.

“Ignore it,” I kept telling myself, quickly moving on.

For us to be so close to a gas station, I was a little surprised at the lack of cars parked, smashed, or otherwise present on the road. Instead, in front of me lay a blank street lined with a cloud-touching apartment complex, two diners, and a grocery store. The blackout evidently reached here as well, my mind absently getting used to the idea that the only dependable source of illumination would come from the sun or its reflected light on the moon.

I could see the vacant eyes of the dead slumped across the outside sitting area of the two restaurants from where our car was parked, but aside from those, no other horrors could be seen here. The empty street sloped upwards as it went along, imitating a hill where I assumed the Total Powers gas station could be found on top of.

Doc looked at me like I had lost my mind, “It’s night time..and..monsters?”

“Umm,” I started, “Wouldn’t there be the same amount of monsters during the day as the night?”

She thought about this for a moment, gears turning in her brain as she realized this was not a video game, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense…I-I guess I’ll try to find more food in these stores.”

I slowly nodded, forcefully embedding my eyes into the store windows, “Just don’t go too far,” I warned, desperately scanning what little I could see through the glass for any inhuman like movements, “Stay close to the car.”

She groaned and walked away, muttering something about how I still worked for her while copying my gaze.

I shook my head, breaking into a jog towards the direction of the apparent gas station.

Even if it was just for a little bit, splitting up seemed like a terrible idea to me.

“Whatever,” I thought, heading up the slope of a sidewalk while crossing my fingers, “We need food and gas, so this would save time.”

I sighed in relief when I noticed the place. Obviously, gas stations didn’t just get up and walk away, but my luck with life hadn’t been the greatest recently so I’d take whatever I could get.

But common sense kept me from daring another step further; something wasn’t right here.

There was a light on at the gas station.

The usual darkened buildings, corner stores, etc. bordered a sort of enlarged roundabout in front of me. At the center of the ring-like road however, sat a small space of light. Something that would’ve been unseen if just one of the buildings in its area had illumination, but was practically blinding in the country’s newfound black. From my understanding, Parisian gas stations were somewhat of a rarity, some only proving to be simple pumps on sidewalks, but Total Powers was a global chain that I had heard of in the past. It was unsettling though, to see that one brightly illuminating bulb dangling above the trio of machines outside the dark interior of the station. The contrast seemed to represent that one shed or basement in literally every horror movie, and I didn’t like the coincidence.

“It probably just runs on a separate generator outside of the grid.” I reassured myself.

But who was maintaining that generator?

Was it just still running?

I pushed it out of my brain for now. The simple fact that I had not yet heard the piercing screeches of the infected was enough for my legs to move.

I walked past the gas terminals and stopped in front of the actual station facility. The glass door had been shattered so I just stepped through the doorway. Any spare fuel tanks would most likely be in here.

Being so close to the light made me feel like I was on a school stage alone, which was pretty scary. What made it worse was that my audience was most likely a horde of mutated monsters that wanted to impale me with two foot long spikes made from their bones.

Inside the building, it looked no different than the countless other stores I had seen.

Items that were supposed to be on the shelves we strewn across the ground, some of the shelves themselves toppled over onto the tile floor with them. The air smelled of the copper-like scent of blood, evaporated soda, and other things that didn’t go together. The only sound I heard was a strange buzzing further into the place.

I gulped,

“Just find a can..… and then head back to the car.”

The emergency fuel cans were most likely in the back door behind the counter. I had never worked in a gas station before, so I didn’t actually know, but I was just guessing.

I hesitantly walked behind the counter, expecting to find more snacks on the floor.

Instead, I found an employee’s body, along with the source of the buzzing.

Flies were all around it, the stomach appearing to have been ripped open to expose diced vital organs and a shredded digestive system.

My heart skipped a beat, but I went silent.

It didn’t seem incredibly fresh, but it wasn’t like that was some ordinary wound either.

I covered my nose as I stepped around the sight, grabbing the back door handle stained with blood and slowly opening it. It was pitch black inside so, still using one hand to cover my nose, I produced a flashlight from my pocket and turned it on. This was one of the easy things I had fixed at the electric store (It needed batteries).

Inside was a metal rack with emergency fuel cans spaced out evenly on each bar.

I stepped inside the room, beginning to go for the cans in slight relief when I heard a noise.

“GRRRRRR!”

I froze.

The sound came from above.

I found my vision tightening and my blood running cold as I brought my head and flashlight to the ceiling.

Monster.

Its four limbs were stabbed into the roof, the creature making no conscious effort to keep its head upwards as it dropped its eyes down to see me. I had no choice but to stare at it, but as I did, I realized that this perfectly fit the description of the same kind of monster me and doc kept seeing. Thinking was hard when you’re about to die, but I managed to search the recesses of my brain enough to remember what I had written down.

I only needed to look at the creature’s face for a reminder.

“Oh right,” I remembered, “Joy.”

BANG!

I couldn’t help but yelp as the monster let go of its hold on the roof, its huge deformed body spinning halfway through the air before landing on the ground in its adored crawling position.

Each one of the Joy mutant’s limbs were flesh spikes, which led me and doc to believe that they could infect four times. This unfortunate mutation also proved why these were the most common, and why they needed to crawl.

I backed up to one of the fuel racks, the monster stabbing its limbs into the tile as it inched towards me. Even crawling, the height of these monsters seemed to be around eight feet, but even that wasn’t the most disturbed thing about them. What always freaked me out was their faces.

They didn’t have…mouths.

I didn’t know why this was a thing, but the Joy mutant’s inhuman roars only came from the back of their throats.

“GRRRRR!” It rumbled, its dim blue-ish glow increasing ever so slowly as I quietly slumped down on the floor.

I didn’t know what to do. The mutant wasn’t attacking but it was watching my every move. When I first saw their kind, we only knew it was a Joy mutant from its ID tag. These ID tags told us what emotion the volunteers back at TF1 were testing, which meant that the creature we saw with one pinned to its shoulder had to have been one of our volunteers. Imagine our surprise when the tag read ‘Joy’.

Almost directly after though, we realized that the title basically meant nothing when the creature began ripping people into pieces.

I tried to stand, instantly going still again when the monster released another threatening roar.

I froze once more, “Okay okay..” I said nervously, “I’m not moving..”

Speaking was a gut reaction, because I knew full well that monsters probably didn’t understand English.

As I stared into its eyes longer, I began to question what was really happening here.

With every other monster, it had been ‘kill on sight’ , but this one seemed…different.

It blinked twice, then, for some reason, turned around and crawled to the back of the fuel room.

I sat there for a minute, watching it as its back was turned.

The monster was dragging its limbs across whatever was in front of them on the floor,

“Grrrrrr.”

It turned back around, its huge glowing body casting shadows across the room as it did. Using its back limb, the monster suddenly launched some kind of item in my direction.

It sounded frustrated.

My adrenaline was soaring from the anticipation of my death as I hesitantly grabbed whatever item had been given to me. Not once had I ever thought Monsters would be able to do these things. It was almost like it was trying to converse.

“A music pod?” I realized, now getting a good look at it. I looked back up at the Mutant, watching It nod toward the sound player with its head.

It was trying to get me to turn this on?

Why?!

I coughed, realizing that I kind of had no choice in the matter.

“Here goes nothing.” I thought, simply tapping a button on the device.

It wasn’t like this thing had any battery so-

Suddenly, the music pod started blasting Jingle Bells at a low volume, causing the both of us to jump a little.

I felt like screaming at myself. What was I thinking? Why would a monster want to listen to Music!

Then, something happened that I would have never seen coming in a million years.

The mutant’s glow dimmed once more, almost going into a sort of stasis as every movement from the beast ceased to happen.

I let the sound play as I shakily stood up, my eyes widening as the monster in front of me made no aggressive gurgle or noise.

What?

I waited a couple of minutes, my fear slowly shrinking away as the creature remained a statue.

“Don’t question it,” I ordered myself, slowly moving towards the rack and grabbing a fuel can.

I had no idea what was happening, but it would definitely be one for the journal.

I shook it off, exiting the back room and closing the door behind me, the sound of the holiday tune fading away as I hefted the fuel can out of the store. I congratulated myself for immediately running away, but the scientist inside of me was beyond curious.

Outside the store was quiet, but my brain was in an absolute storm.

Did Joy mutants have a weakness to music?

Where was the logic in that?

I had heard some studies were being done about music’s effect on the brain, but total paralysis seemed a bit dramatic.

I started to jog, not daring to test my luck any further by sticking around as I headed back down the sloped sidewalk.

-

Once I made it back to the car, Doc was waiting with an angry expression on her face,

“Sarah, what took you so lon-”

“A joy mutant.” I interrupted, causing her eyes to widen as I set down the fuel tank.

Doc gasped, “I ran into one too!” She informed me, “How did you escape?”

I looked back at the hill, judging whether or not that really happened or if I was going crazy,

“Erm…apparently they really like music?”

Doc squinted at me, “What?”

When I didn’t say anything Doc began to joke, “Did you play it a song or something?”

I nodded again, still contemplating what had happened as I stared into the night sky, “Y-yea… I did.”

Doc stopped laughing,

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She said, “That’s all you had to do?!”

She continued, “What sense does that make?”

I began to laugh nervously, opening the car’s fuel filler and cracking open the canister,

“What did you run into?” I asked, pouring the liquid inside.

Doc groaned, “You’re not the only one who made a discovery today..”

----One Hour ago, Perspective swap: Elizabeth Diamond-------------------

I cursed under my breath as I swatted through store aisles.

I had helped start an apocalypse, helped kill thousands of people, got myself stuck in Paris, and now my only employee who wasn’t even really an employee was bossing me around?

No.

This will not do.

I sighed a breath of relief when I found some food worth salvaging. It was a couple of bags called “Mystery Chips,” and, while it didn’t seem that appealing, I stuffed them in my purse anyway.

Right now, I was in a Supermarket not too far from the gas station Sarah was at. The store’s lights were mostly broken or off, so I was using a flashlight to navigate through sections. This was your pretty average store; There were a bunch of aisles in the back, and the checkout was in the front. The only difference was the bodies and dried blood smeared everywhere. Currently, I was milling through the Tourist Snack section, carefully reading the English translations on price tags.

“Diced peaches huh?” I thought, reading another price tag and stuffing the can in a grocery bag I had liberated from the front of the building. Sarah’s friend, Lorica, always talked about zombie apocalypses like they were going to happen the very next minute, and she always said to never venture into a mall or grocery store unless you had a “death wish”.

She would be so disappointed in me.

But I didn’t mind, as I was sick of eating stale crackers all day anyway.

I gave a quiet cheer to myself when I had filled up the bag, not wanting to be in this dark place any longer than I had to.

ZTTZZ!

Suddenly, as if on cue, each light fixture I previously thought broken went bright with blinding light.

I shielded my eyes from the light, but just as I brought my hands up, all the bulbs popped and I was thrusted back into darkness.

Crash!

I yelped, sliding my bag on my wrist by its handles so I could use both my hands to block the rain of glass from the ceiling.

“Where in the world did that come from?!” I wondered, dropping my arms as my heart hammered from within my chest. Luckily, I hadn’t been hurt.

I raised my flashlight in front of me. At the end of the aisle was the electrical room.

I smiled, an idea coming to me,

“Maybe this place still has some power in it.”

Maybe the power surge just now was just some electrical interference caused by all the monster activity around.

If I could find anything that could power…anything else, I’d count it as a win.

When I reached the door, I thought I heard some sort of sizzle. Light was also flashing from inside the room, and I swear I saw a shadow moving around behind the door.

“Is someone in there?” I thought to myself, grabbing the handle and cracking the door open. Maybe some other survivor was camped out here…

My eyes widened when I saw what was inside.

No, it was not a survivor.

And no, it was not even human.

There, standing on what must've been the store generator, was a Joy mutant. I could tell it was one by its very pretty, very unique face. ‘

By unique, I mean it didn’t have a mouth, and by pretty…well, I just didn’t mean that.

Each of its limbs were flesh spikes, and it was on all fours. Its position caused each limb to dig into the generator, most likely causing the bright flashes of light I had seen from behind the door. I knew monsters ate electricity, but I had never seen a reaction like this before. As each burst of electricity whined and gushed out of the generator and through the monster’s body, the creature’s form began shifting.

It was like it was being supercharged from all the power it was absorbing. My surprise increased when the monster began to grow, electricity crackling around its body while its previous dim blue glow became a bright well of light.

I tried to think back to Sarah’s journal, trying to remember if we had seen anything like this.

My mind came up empty, which meant that this was entirely new.

“GRRRRAAAAAAAHR!”

RIIIIP!

My stomach performed somersaults as the monster’s face appeared to tear and rip under the intense heat growing in the room, my eyes watching in horror as the beast fell off the generator and onto the cold floor. An outrageous amount of fear was constricting my movements.

The mechanical begs from the systems active in the electrical room finally faded as the creature went still on the ground, the only source of light being its glow and the uncontrolled sparks radiating off its body.

Even knocked over the mutant kept growing, its muscles only seeming to stop ripping themselves from the monster’s skin after a couple of minutes.

While the thing still wasn’t pretty, its face no longer bore that creepy, mouthless, blank look that had always been embedded into my mind. Instead, what must’ve been due to all the heat previously emitted, in its place was a savagely torn hole.

I felt my body begin to move again, but unfortunately, something similar appeared to be going on with the creature.

My breath went short as I stumbled out of the closet, my only wish being to make it out of this store alive.

“Food. FOOD NOWAWUHR!” I heard the monster speak from behind me.

Sweat formed on my forehead as I willed my legs to run.

That thing had just spoken basic English.

Was it because it was… supercharged? Could all monsters be supercharged? Is supercharged even a good name?

It was all very disturbing, but not at all helpful.

BANG!

I swung my head around to see that the “Joy” mutant had broken down the door.

It crawled…no, galloped at me with an unfair speed, yelling and screaming about food as its newfound power caused the ground to crack and the shelves to shake.

I was almost at the checkout line when a large shadow suddenly loomed in front of me,

“No…”

I barely had time to dive over the front counter when I realized the creature had jumped to close the distance between us.

I made it just as I felt the ground vibrate from the mutant’s landing, clouds of debris now in the air from broken tile and smashed rebar. This thing was breaking the ground by moving.

Not wasting any time on the floor, I immediately got back up, clutching my grocery store bag as if it was my lifeline whilst bolting past the checkout area.

But for some reason, it was not following me anymore.

I froze for a second, looking back at the mutant. It looked to be in a daze, as if it was listening to something that I could not hear.

Very Disturbing..but very helpful.

I ignored its strange behavior and continued to run away, adrenaline outweighing any possible idea my brain could’ve come up with.

I ran past the entryway, through the smashed doors of the store, and all the way back to the car without stopping.

I leaned against the white convertible as my throat went dry, taking deep breaths of air and relief as I felt my adrenaline rush fade.

I was overcome with fatigue by the time I could think again, now desperately looking around the moonlit common areas of Paris for any other surprises.

Lorica was right.

I was most certainly never going back to a grocery store again.

-----Perspective Swap: Sarah Reyes--------------------------------------------------

“Yeah… I think mine was nicer than yours..” I pointed out, looking out the car window as Doc made a left turn.

She glared at the road, “You think?”

I shook my head and looked at her, moving aside the grocery bag she had collected and placing it under the dashboard, “So, Joy mutants are vulnerable to music, and-”

“Monsters can be supercharged...” Doc finished.

I sighed, “Next thing you know, they’ll start to fly..”

“Don’t give the universe any ideas.” Doc cautioned.

“I’m going to have to edit my journal,” I realized, taking out the leather pad and beginning to write.

Only a couple of hours passed before we arrived at the Private Energis airport. It sounded fancy, but it didn’t look like much.

It was a small white building with a large runway next to it and the word Energis written in blue above the main door. The complex seemed to be placed on a hill and, overall, the area we were in seemed to be pretty remote.

Doc slowed as she pulled into the parking lot. The parking spaces were at the bottom of the impending slope, so we had to climb stairs to actually get to the building.

I was beyond tired from the day’s events, but I was just happy we made it.

After I had stepped out of the car, I realized an important issue,

“Hey,” I turned to Doc, she had just gotten out as well, “Do you know how to fly a jet?”

Doc froze for a second, but then went back to her cool self as she collected the grocery bag, “Oh don’t worry- Jordan fitted his planes with an auto-piloting system.”

I raised my eyebrow, “Must be some Autopilot system.”

She just shrugged as she walked past me to the stairs, “Well, you know rich people.”

I nodded, following her up the steps, “Let’s just hurry up and get out of here.”

I heard her sigh as we reached the top step, “I couldn’t agree more. To be honest, I’m quite shocked we haven’t been infected, killed, or eaten yet.”

I stopped and glared at her, “Don’t say that.”

Doc laughed, “Whatever,” She waved me off, heading around the building to the Runway, “ let’s go check out the jet.”

I sighed, but smiled,

“One step closer to New York.”