Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Whatever it Takes ❯ An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Trulyours 
Miscellaneous: Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Post-apocalyptic | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.08.2009 | Pages: 1 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 120 | Status: Work In Progress
Miscellaneous: Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Post-apocalyptic | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.08.2009 | Pages: 1 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 120 | Status: Work In Progress
An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.
In the original Night of the living Dead movie, radiation causes an outburst of mutation, resulting in Zombies. Due to this and the inability to kill them, an apocalypse was create. George Ramiro wasn’t that far off…
I n the year 2093 the Alger power plant’s nuclear power generators blew. No one expected a chain reaction of such intensity. It seemed like it was going to simply be Another Chernobyl, until the mutations accrued. It started out as nothing more then small changes in the pigments of skin, hair and eyes… Then time passed.
Soon the reaction grew to become outrageous, as if someone had taken the affects right out of a science fiction movie. Human and animal genetics merged on a sub atomic level, odd changes in brain activities began to appear, and much more. These mutations caused huge panic. For 10 years civilization suffered a slow and painful death. Those of us who are left, us Freaks are trying to rebuild life as we can.
My name is Ollie, I run a pound. A pound, that’s what we call these safe houses for us freaks among the Freaks. Our Pound is located in a major Hive. These hives are where those who managed to survive the great Alger Disaster gather, forming communities. Some parts are actually really nice, like cities used to be. Unfortunately, only the rich and the important, or people with connections can afford to get put in a part like that. Normaly, those were people that were able to avoid most of the after math of the Disaster. Most of those people, the lucky ones, only have green hair, crazy eyes, or maybe they didn‘t even have a mutation. Those of us who have to suffer with the really messed up stuff have to wonder why the rich ones got out of this hell.
We, on the other hand, live in the slums. Some in half hearted shacks of houses, others in old run down buildings. My pound, Howl’s Castle, is in an old department store. At first, I thought the find was too perfect, that maybe it was claimed already, but it was a miracle in this hell hole. A free building. It had everything I needed to open my pound. Generators, TV’s, beds, clothes, everything. I just couldn’t believe my luck. Me, and the small group I had with me, quickly stacked our claim.
The four founders…
The first is Gadget, a 18 year old wiz with electronics, old and new. Within days he had us hooked up to the main frame computer network of the Hive, not a simple task I might add. Most of the Freaks in the slums don’t know how to turn on a blender any more. The fact that he could hack a computer network was a brilliant task, even if it was just an unsecured network.
Kimmi, 17 but wise beyond her years. At times she was the reason that kept all of us from loosing our minds. When that girl talks anything she says makes sense. She could tell use to stand in front of a moving truck and give us a reason that makes it sound like a good idea. Before any of us thought we’d be hood ornaments on some road pirates machine.
Gabe, 24 and an expert fix it man. He could fix a fridge that had a piano dropped on it, and you‘d be playing Mozart while sipping on a cold cola before you were able to realize that the piano had been nothing but splinters and the fridge you got your cola out of was as crumpled as a tin can after a bruiser got done with it.
As for me? Well, where do I start. My name is Ollie, you’re guide and leader to the great underground world of the slums. I’m 19 but I feel like I should be hitting metapause in a week or so. It’s like that for all of us who grew up in the Disaster, we feel like we lost so much of our life, and we’re all just old geezers roaming around the retirement homes of life. This chaos is all we’ve known, we accept out disabilities and use them as strengths. Me though, I’m different from the others, I’m special. For this reason, I thought that I would never be able to be around any of the other survivors, but for some reason, our pack elected me leader. I have no idea why. Not like I have any leadership qualities, but yet I have to make the decisions and all. I joke around and say that the only reason I am in charge is because they want to wave around my mutation class to keep the bruisers away.
Now our pack of 4 has grown to 10. Not much, but that’s six kids we were able to save. That’s one of the things that is special about our pound, we only take in kids. Most of them were born to parents that were killed by the radiation. Our oldest is only 11. Most other pounds refuse to take kids It’s not uncommon. Kids are loud annoying, and need someone to take care of them. Well, what sets us apart from the rest of those mush brains. We recognize the advantages in kids . It’s going to sound cruel an jaded but we want the ones that aren’t going to argue with us about our rules and try to change them. So many pounds have collapsed because no person decided to try and over rule the pack leader, officially called the Alpha. What we have works, and we don’t need anyone changing that, and nothing is going to change, not if I have a say in it.
I have to take trips to the center of the Hive a lot, to meet with the ‘Queen Bee’. I really don’t mind the talks, it’s the test that bug me. I was my radiation level is more then the normal Freak. I don’t know why, and I really don’t care. I refuse to use my curse for anything big, so it doesn’t matter. What’s my curse? Well there is a big fancy medical term that the doctors so lovingly gave it but personally, I’m not smart, so I don’t remember it. I can, on the other hand, tell you what it means. My curse is the ability to move things with my mind. Cool huh? No… It’s the worst curse I could have. It happened because unnatural parts of my brain are working, and a lot of the time, I can’t control it. Due to it‘s ‘destructive capabilities’, I have to see the doctors at the Alger research facility. The name look familiar? Yeah both the power planet and medical research group were founded by the same man, who tried to use Radiation for both cures and power.
It’s on one of these trips to the center of the Hive that this story begins.
I was walking down the narrow streets of the Hive. Tall buildings rose around me, as we got closer to the gleaming glass and steel research building that was the center of the Hive. Gadget was with me. He was always convinced I was going to get jumped, though no one would dare jump me. I was pretty well known in the slums. I grew up there, the streets were my home. Unfortunately Gadget was convinced, and once he had his mind set on something, a raging red zoner couldn‘t stop him.
So, there we were, walking towards the center of the Hive. The dirty little kids playing in the street turned to clean men in crisp suits rushing around trying to get where they needed to be. Slowly run down buildings turned to tall sky scrapers that seemed to touch the clouds.
“You nervous?” Gadget asked me. I stifled a laugh.
“Psh, nah. It’ll probably just be the usual. Some idiot in a lab coat psycho analyzes me, I get poked with a few needles, and I get to move a foam ball from one end of the room to the other. Real scary,” I said, walking with my hands behind my head.
We passed one of the many suits. He gave Gadget and I a nasty look. Gadget the dirty little code monkey in his no sleeved T-shirt that was probably once white and his jeans, real jeans, like the heavy duty ones that the workers wore. I, the confused young woman with the black men’s shirt and guys jean shorts that had once belonged to Gabe. Both of us had on combat boots. It was no wonder the guys gave as that look.
I grinned, laughing. Gadget ran his hand through his glowing red hair, and I mean really glowing. In the dark his head was a natural flash light. He was a hoot at parties.
The man glared at us over his shoulder. I giggled. “It’s your hair, jivved him off,” I said, grinning. Gadget rolled his eyes. “Bah, at least I’m original, Miss boring brunette,” he retaliated, pulling my loose braid. I slapped his hand away, sticking my tongue out at him, like I was a kid again. I don’t get to act childish at Howl’s Castle. With six kids running around they didn‘t need the person they looked up to acting like a weeb. They were lost and needed a leader, not another kid.
Gadget laughed at me. We continued to walk towards the building, chit chatting about random things. That’s why Gadget was my Best friend. We could talk about anything. Sometimes it was deep, like how we were going to eat for the next week, but most of the time it was as insignificant as arguing about what color a blue hologram would bleed. We took the moment by the rains and rode it full out. Both of us accepted that in a life like this, whether we liked it or not. It was best to enjoy every moment since you didn‘t know when you‘d get your head bashed in by a bruiser or if the radiation would take a turn for the worst.
I hopped as I walked, jumping in between the cracks in the old side walk. Gadget laughed at me. “Sometimes…” He started but didn’t finish his sentence. He just stared at me. I stopped walking, staring back at him. “Yes?” I asked raising an eye brow. He shook his head, opening the door to the research facility and holding it open for me. I just gave him a weird look, walking into the lobby. I wasn’t very surprised though, Gadget always lost his train of thought, and my lost I mean it derailed, rolled down a hill and crashed into some small creak at the bottom. Whatever he was thinking about, was never coming back
I looked around the lobby. I had been here tons of times, but it was still a shock each time I came in. The ceiling rose into the air as level upon level of workers in lab coats scurried around to various places.
There in the middle of the giant lobby stood a silver statue of James Alger, founder of both Alger power and Alger labs. I never quite understood why they still praised him after the Disaster. I never knew him, so I don’t know if he truly was a good man. What I do know is that he was tinkering with stuff he shouldn’t of been messing with, and that this world was his fault.
As we passed the statue, on our way to the reception desk, I stared at the ground. I really didn’t feel like looking at a statue of a man that had cause the apocalypse.
I stopped in front of the large circular desk that sat before the entrance to the actual labs. A woman that looked like her whole body was covered in third degree burns was seated at the desk. Her eyes were pure white, like the retinas had melted out. She was blind. She was a really nice girl, I had talked to her a few times before. Her head had perked when she heard us approach, and I smiled at her, even with knowing she couldn’t see me.
“Welcome to Alger Labs. How may I help you?” she asked. Her words sounded as if they should have been cheery like all receptionist but, her voice held a tinge of sadness. Poor girl, probably one of Alger’s thrown away experiments. At least they had given her a job…
I shook my head, coming out of my thoughts. “Yeah…um, Ollie Calcifer and guest. I have an appointment with Dr. Hunt,” I said leaning on the edge of the desk. Gadget took that as a sign that he could us me was an arm rest. I nudged him off. “Ollie Calcifer, 1:30,” she said into a mike. There was a pause as the computer thought. “Confirmed,” It said in it’s mechanized, overly perky voice. The receptionist pushed a button and one of the doors behind her swung open. “Proceed through security,” she said. I began to walk to the door, Gadget in tow behind me.
I had actually picked the name Calcifer when I first registered in the city with Gabe. I didn’t remember my real last name and I had to pick something to put on the form. I had seen only one movie at the time. Howl’s Moving Castle . It was an old animated film from 2001. Calcifer was a little ball of enchanted fire, and my favorite character. So I chose his name as my last. I was an interesting child…sue me.
I walked into the security room, Gadget on my heels like a good little guard dog. There was a small sitting area in the plain white room. The sitting area was full of white plastic chairs. The only color seemed to come from a few old news pads. Gadget took his normal seat in the chair closets to the security line. He picked up one of the news pads and put it in his media comp. A small screen popped up, print scrolling across it. He waved at me as I walked into the security line. Small lights glowed under the tips of his fingers. I wondered what it like to have pure electrical plasma flowing through his veins, instead of blood, would be like.
I walked up to a small metal arch. It looked like one of those old time metal detectors. The second I stepped under it though, a small bit of electricity shot from it, sending a jolt through my body. I cringed slightly. If I had had any weapons on me, that shock would’ve fried their circuitry.
I proceeded through the hall to the next place. Small mechanical arms reached from the walls. “Please hold out your left arm,” a computerized voice said to me. I sighed. I hated this one.
I held out my arm. One of the arms grabbed my wrist. The other injected a needle into me. I barely felt it, I just hated needles. “Identity confirmed. Ollie Calcifer. level of mutation, Class A,” the computerized voice said. Another door opened in front of me. I waved over my shoulder at Gadget as I walked through the next door. I stood in a large, bare shower room.
“Please remove your clothing,” the same voice said to me. The camera on the wall turned, it’s lens fixing on me. I knew it was to make sure that I hadn’t smuggled a weapon past the first security check but it still made me uncomfortable. I never what kind of freak was getting his kicks on the other side of that camera.
As soon as I took off the last article of clothing the showers switched on. Hot water poured from the shower heads above me. The water stung and always left my skin red and irritated, but that was because there was a chemical in it that would kill off any and all germs, at least that’s what Dr. Hunt said.
The showers cut off. I sighed, walking over to a white cabinet on the other side of the room. Opening the small plywood box I pulled out the small paper robe inside. I got ‘dressed’ quickly, though I really wouldn’t consider the napkin I was wearing cover. I walked up to the corner the camera was mounted on. “Done,” I said looking up at it. Part of the wall swung open, reviling a small hall way.
I slowly walked down the white hall. Above me the blinding white lights hummed. The tiles on the ground were cold against my bear feet.
In old movies, when a person was going to heaven, it was always portrayed by a long white hall way with a blinding light at the end. That’s what it looked like to me. I laughed slightly when I thought about it. What was at the end of the hall was far from a heaven.
In the original Night of the living Dead movie, radiation causes an outburst of mutation, resulting in Zombies. Due to this and the inability to kill them, an apocalypse was create. George Ramiro wasn’t that far off…
I n the year 2093 the Alger power plant’s nuclear power generators blew. No one expected a chain reaction of such intensity. It seemed like it was going to simply be Another Chernobyl, until the mutations accrued. It started out as nothing more then small changes in the pigments of skin, hair and eyes… Then time passed.
Soon the reaction grew to become outrageous, as if someone had taken the affects right out of a science fiction movie. Human and animal genetics merged on a sub atomic level, odd changes in brain activities began to appear, and much more. These mutations caused huge panic. For 10 years civilization suffered a slow and painful death. Those of us who are left, us Freaks are trying to rebuild life as we can.
My name is Ollie, I run a pound. A pound, that’s what we call these safe houses for us freaks among the Freaks. Our Pound is located in a major Hive. These hives are where those who managed to survive the great Alger Disaster gather, forming communities. Some parts are actually really nice, like cities used to be. Unfortunately, only the rich and the important, or people with connections can afford to get put in a part like that. Normaly, those were people that were able to avoid most of the after math of the Disaster. Most of those people, the lucky ones, only have green hair, crazy eyes, or maybe they didn‘t even have a mutation. Those of us who have to suffer with the really messed up stuff have to wonder why the rich ones got out of this hell.
We, on the other hand, live in the slums. Some in half hearted shacks of houses, others in old run down buildings. My pound, Howl’s Castle, is in an old department store. At first, I thought the find was too perfect, that maybe it was claimed already, but it was a miracle in this hell hole. A free building. It had everything I needed to open my pound. Generators, TV’s, beds, clothes, everything. I just couldn’t believe my luck. Me, and the small group I had with me, quickly stacked our claim.
The four founders…
The first is Gadget, a 18 year old wiz with electronics, old and new. Within days he had us hooked up to the main frame computer network of the Hive, not a simple task I might add. Most of the Freaks in the slums don’t know how to turn on a blender any more. The fact that he could hack a computer network was a brilliant task, even if it was just an unsecured network.
Kimmi, 17 but wise beyond her years. At times she was the reason that kept all of us from loosing our minds. When that girl talks anything she says makes sense. She could tell use to stand in front of a moving truck and give us a reason that makes it sound like a good idea. Before any of us thought we’d be hood ornaments on some road pirates machine.
Gabe, 24 and an expert fix it man. He could fix a fridge that had a piano dropped on it, and you‘d be playing Mozart while sipping on a cold cola before you were able to realize that the piano had been nothing but splinters and the fridge you got your cola out of was as crumpled as a tin can after a bruiser got done with it.
As for me? Well, where do I start. My name is Ollie, you’re guide and leader to the great underground world of the slums. I’m 19 but I feel like I should be hitting metapause in a week or so. It’s like that for all of us who grew up in the Disaster, we feel like we lost so much of our life, and we’re all just old geezers roaming around the retirement homes of life. This chaos is all we’ve known, we accept out disabilities and use them as strengths. Me though, I’m different from the others, I’m special. For this reason, I thought that I would never be able to be around any of the other survivors, but for some reason, our pack elected me leader. I have no idea why. Not like I have any leadership qualities, but yet I have to make the decisions and all. I joke around and say that the only reason I am in charge is because they want to wave around my mutation class to keep the bruisers away.
Now our pack of 4 has grown to 10. Not much, but that’s six kids we were able to save. That’s one of the things that is special about our pound, we only take in kids. Most of them were born to parents that were killed by the radiation. Our oldest is only 11. Most other pounds refuse to take kids It’s not uncommon. Kids are loud annoying, and need someone to take care of them. Well, what sets us apart from the rest of those mush brains. We recognize the advantages in kids . It’s going to sound cruel an jaded but we want the ones that aren’t going to argue with us about our rules and try to change them. So many pounds have collapsed because no person decided to try and over rule the pack leader, officially called the Alpha. What we have works, and we don’t need anyone changing that, and nothing is going to change, not if I have a say in it.
I have to take trips to the center of the Hive a lot, to meet with the ‘Queen Bee’. I really don’t mind the talks, it’s the test that bug me. I was my radiation level is more then the normal Freak. I don’t know why, and I really don’t care. I refuse to use my curse for anything big, so it doesn’t matter. What’s my curse? Well there is a big fancy medical term that the doctors so lovingly gave it but personally, I’m not smart, so I don’t remember it. I can, on the other hand, tell you what it means. My curse is the ability to move things with my mind. Cool huh? No… It’s the worst curse I could have. It happened because unnatural parts of my brain are working, and a lot of the time, I can’t control it. Due to it‘s ‘destructive capabilities’, I have to see the doctors at the Alger research facility. The name look familiar? Yeah both the power planet and medical research group were founded by the same man, who tried to use Radiation for both cures and power.
It’s on one of these trips to the center of the Hive that this story begins.
I was walking down the narrow streets of the Hive. Tall buildings rose around me, as we got closer to the gleaming glass and steel research building that was the center of the Hive. Gadget was with me. He was always convinced I was going to get jumped, though no one would dare jump me. I was pretty well known in the slums. I grew up there, the streets were my home. Unfortunately Gadget was convinced, and once he had his mind set on something, a raging red zoner couldn‘t stop him.
So, there we were, walking towards the center of the Hive. The dirty little kids playing in the street turned to clean men in crisp suits rushing around trying to get where they needed to be. Slowly run down buildings turned to tall sky scrapers that seemed to touch the clouds.
“You nervous?” Gadget asked me. I stifled a laugh.
“Psh, nah. It’ll probably just be the usual. Some idiot in a lab coat psycho analyzes me, I get poked with a few needles, and I get to move a foam ball from one end of the room to the other. Real scary,” I said, walking with my hands behind my head.
We passed one of the many suits. He gave Gadget and I a nasty look. Gadget the dirty little code monkey in his no sleeved T-shirt that was probably once white and his jeans, real jeans, like the heavy duty ones that the workers wore. I, the confused young woman with the black men’s shirt and guys jean shorts that had once belonged to Gabe. Both of us had on combat boots. It was no wonder the guys gave as that look.
I grinned, laughing. Gadget ran his hand through his glowing red hair, and I mean really glowing. In the dark his head was a natural flash light. He was a hoot at parties.
The man glared at us over his shoulder. I giggled. “It’s your hair, jivved him off,” I said, grinning. Gadget rolled his eyes. “Bah, at least I’m original, Miss boring brunette,” he retaliated, pulling my loose braid. I slapped his hand away, sticking my tongue out at him, like I was a kid again. I don’t get to act childish at Howl’s Castle. With six kids running around they didn‘t need the person they looked up to acting like a weeb. They were lost and needed a leader, not another kid.
Gadget laughed at me. We continued to walk towards the building, chit chatting about random things. That’s why Gadget was my Best friend. We could talk about anything. Sometimes it was deep, like how we were going to eat for the next week, but most of the time it was as insignificant as arguing about what color a blue hologram would bleed. We took the moment by the rains and rode it full out. Both of us accepted that in a life like this, whether we liked it or not. It was best to enjoy every moment since you didn‘t know when you‘d get your head bashed in by a bruiser or if the radiation would take a turn for the worst.
I hopped as I walked, jumping in between the cracks in the old side walk. Gadget laughed at me. “Sometimes…” He started but didn’t finish his sentence. He just stared at me. I stopped walking, staring back at him. “Yes?” I asked raising an eye brow. He shook his head, opening the door to the research facility and holding it open for me. I just gave him a weird look, walking into the lobby. I wasn’t very surprised though, Gadget always lost his train of thought, and my lost I mean it derailed, rolled down a hill and crashed into some small creak at the bottom. Whatever he was thinking about, was never coming back
I looked around the lobby. I had been here tons of times, but it was still a shock each time I came in. The ceiling rose into the air as level upon level of workers in lab coats scurried around to various places.
There in the middle of the giant lobby stood a silver statue of James Alger, founder of both Alger power and Alger labs. I never quite understood why they still praised him after the Disaster. I never knew him, so I don’t know if he truly was a good man. What I do know is that he was tinkering with stuff he shouldn’t of been messing with, and that this world was his fault.
As we passed the statue, on our way to the reception desk, I stared at the ground. I really didn’t feel like looking at a statue of a man that had cause the apocalypse.
I stopped in front of the large circular desk that sat before the entrance to the actual labs. A woman that looked like her whole body was covered in third degree burns was seated at the desk. Her eyes were pure white, like the retinas had melted out. She was blind. She was a really nice girl, I had talked to her a few times before. Her head had perked when she heard us approach, and I smiled at her, even with knowing she couldn’t see me.
“Welcome to Alger Labs. How may I help you?” she asked. Her words sounded as if they should have been cheery like all receptionist but, her voice held a tinge of sadness. Poor girl, probably one of Alger’s thrown away experiments. At least they had given her a job…
I shook my head, coming out of my thoughts. “Yeah…um, Ollie Calcifer and guest. I have an appointment with Dr. Hunt,” I said leaning on the edge of the desk. Gadget took that as a sign that he could us me was an arm rest. I nudged him off. “Ollie Calcifer, 1:30,” she said into a mike. There was a pause as the computer thought. “Confirmed,” It said in it’s mechanized, overly perky voice. The receptionist pushed a button and one of the doors behind her swung open. “Proceed through security,” she said. I began to walk to the door, Gadget in tow behind me.
I had actually picked the name Calcifer when I first registered in the city with Gabe. I didn’t remember my real last name and I had to pick something to put on the form. I had seen only one movie at the time. Howl’s Moving Castle . It was an old animated film from 2001. Calcifer was a little ball of enchanted fire, and my favorite character. So I chose his name as my last. I was an interesting child…sue me.
I walked into the security room, Gadget on my heels like a good little guard dog. There was a small sitting area in the plain white room. The sitting area was full of white plastic chairs. The only color seemed to come from a few old news pads. Gadget took his normal seat in the chair closets to the security line. He picked up one of the news pads and put it in his media comp. A small screen popped up, print scrolling across it. He waved at me as I walked into the security line. Small lights glowed under the tips of his fingers. I wondered what it like to have pure electrical plasma flowing through his veins, instead of blood, would be like.
I walked up to a small metal arch. It looked like one of those old time metal detectors. The second I stepped under it though, a small bit of electricity shot from it, sending a jolt through my body. I cringed slightly. If I had had any weapons on me, that shock would’ve fried their circuitry.
I proceeded through the hall to the next place. Small mechanical arms reached from the walls. “Please hold out your left arm,” a computerized voice said to me. I sighed. I hated this one.
I held out my arm. One of the arms grabbed my wrist. The other injected a needle into me. I barely felt it, I just hated needles. “Identity confirmed. Ollie Calcifer. level of mutation, Class A,” the computerized voice said. Another door opened in front of me. I waved over my shoulder at Gadget as I walked through the next door. I stood in a large, bare shower room.
“Please remove your clothing,” the same voice said to me. The camera on the wall turned, it’s lens fixing on me. I knew it was to make sure that I hadn’t smuggled a weapon past the first security check but it still made me uncomfortable. I never what kind of freak was getting his kicks on the other side of that camera.
As soon as I took off the last article of clothing the showers switched on. Hot water poured from the shower heads above me. The water stung and always left my skin red and irritated, but that was because there was a chemical in it that would kill off any and all germs, at least that’s what Dr. Hunt said.
The showers cut off. I sighed, walking over to a white cabinet on the other side of the room. Opening the small plywood box I pulled out the small paper robe inside. I got ‘dressed’ quickly, though I really wouldn’t consider the napkin I was wearing cover. I walked up to the corner the camera was mounted on. “Done,” I said looking up at it. Part of the wall swung open, reviling a small hall way.
I slowly walked down the white hall. Above me the blinding white lights hummed. The tiles on the ground were cold against my bear feet.
In old movies, when a person was going to heaven, it was always portrayed by a long white hall way with a blinding light at the end. That’s what it looked like to me. I laughed slightly when I thought about it. What was at the end of the hall was far from a heaven.