There are about forty and three psychrows that manage to penetrate the District one. They are chasing the people around. I see a psychrow eating a woman's arm while the body is drench in her own blood lying on the street. I want to help the woman, but it is too late to make a move. The memories of my Father chowing on an officer's arm suddenly fill my mind; struck with horror, I freeze in this familiar scene.
Brent drags me on my collar. "Snap out of it!" He shouts on my face.
The psychrow is after us. I manage to regain my awareness and get myself to run. It runs very fast that it almost outruns us. I get the gun inside my bag and shoot the disgusting creature; the bullet knocks it back and slows it down for a moment. We escape from the psychrow.
"Mister District One, do you know a safe place for us?" Brent asks me as he catches his breath.
"We could go to the northern tower." I point my finger to the highest tower in the District.
"Then let us go now. Take the lead District One guy."
"Just call me Marcus. Marcus Jensen."
"Okay Marcus." Brent replies and nods his head.
I look at the tower's highest spire; the red light is on. If the red light is on, the District Council is inside. If it turns blue, the District Security Force is on the top for security surveillance.
"Brent, the red light is on. The Council is inside.".
"Let us hide somewhere else. Under the sewer, or wherever." Brent replies as he opens his bottle of water and sips from it.
The crowded street becomes empty. It is like a labyrinth, a maze where the best thing you can do is to run for your life. The bakery is open, and I see a figure of a man enters the door.
"Brent, did you see that?" I turn to him.
"Yeah, that is strange."
"Let us check it out."
We walk inside the bakery and find no one. There is someone singing behind the door of the storage room. It sounds soft but creepy at the same time.
"...rain falls and blood spills, I see you with a noose up on the hill. Calling little Jane, driving her insane. One, two, three..." The singing inside continues.
Brent knocks on the door three times. "Hello? Is anyone in there?"
No one answers the call. Brent tries to open it, but the door is locked from the inside. Suddenly, someone shouts; it is a woman's voice.
"Help! Somebody! Please, help me!" The voice says.
"Open the door. We cannot get you out if you do not open it." Brent replies while pushing his boy against the door.
"I cannot reach the doorknob. She is pulling me away from it. Help me!" Her screaming intensifies.
I look around inside the shop; there is an axe together with an antelope's head displayed on the wall. I use the chair on the counter to reach and get the axe.
"Brent, get out of my way." I hew the door with a great force.
After several successions of chopping, we manage to get to the woman inside. She is very terrified; her whole body is covered with blood. We get her outside the storage rom.
"What happened to you? Why are you drenched in blood?" Brent asks while patting her cheeks.
"She wants to kill me." She replies with a stuttered voice.
"Who? Who wants to kill you?" I ask.
"Governor Dulcinea. She killed my family." She cries as she hits the wooden floor with her fist.
"Why would she do that? Where is your family?"
"In the storage room. They are all dead. Governor Dulcinea killed them."
Brent and I walk inside the storage room to check if there are corpses inside. The storage room is full of boxes and sacks of flour. We search the whole area; checking every shelf and closet inside.
"Marcus look at this. There is blood dripping on the wall." Brent kicks the wall.
"Brent, kick it gain. Listen to its sound."
Brent, again, kicks against the wall; the sound is hollow. There must be a compartment behind these walls. We check the corners if it could be pried apart; and we are right. There is a slit on one of its corners.
"Try to hit the slit with the axe." Says Brent as he moves backward.
The axe is useless, it does not do any damage. I look closer on the slit, there is a hinge. It might be a door or a vault. My speculation is true, but we do not know how. I get outside the storage room and ask the woman. "Do you know how to open the door inside the storage room?"
The woman looks at me with horrified eyes. "Three-eight-two-five." She whispers.
I get back inside and tell Brent the digits which the woman gave me.
"Three-eight-two-five." I look on the floor to see if there are any switches or keypad. "Could this be a code to open the door?" I added.
Brent sees something on the adjacent wall. "Marcus, take a look at this."
There is a contraption on the wall. Brent presses against it and a switch with five dials spring out. I turn every dial according to the order of digits that were given to me, but nothing happens. Brent and I push against the wall, but it does not move an inch.
"Try the other way around. Five-two-eight-three." Says Brent.
"Okay let us try that one." I turn the dial according to Brent's instruction, but nothing happens.
Brent comes closer to the switch and takes his turn to try. "Marcus, I will try it like three eights and two fives."
There is a clicking sound and the door slowly opens.
"Gross! What is that?" I almost throw-up because of the rotten smell coming from the hidden room.
"I could not smell anything." Brent scratches his nose.
"Wait. Brent, you touched the woman earlier. Didn't you?"
"You are right. I forgot that I belong to a different District." Brent slaps his face twice.
"You have been deprived of your sense of smelling after your skin touched her skin." I speak while covering my nose due to the foul odor.
"No, that woman is a psychrow." He says silently. "But in its earlier stage." He added.
We walk inside the secret room. There are dead bodies inside; some of them are decomposing. Some heads are detached from the bodies; some bodies are ripped open with no insides. Blood is covering the floor.
"I could not hold it anymore." I throw-up.
"Are you good Marcus?" Brent asks.
"You are lucky. You cannot smell what am I smelling right now."
"Yeah, I think this is much better." Brent giggles.
Someone is crawling on the dark corner of the room. We take a step back and I aim the axe to the unknown. As it crawls to the well-lighted spot of the room, we discover that it is a woman. Her face is bleeding; she is very weak.
"Help me. Please." Says the woman as she continues to crawl toward us.
"What happened to you?" I ask.
"Governor Dulcinea. Help..." She breathes out her last breath with her face on the floor.
I poke her dead body with the axe I am holding just to confirm if she is still alive; she is dead.
There is an identification card on the bloody floor. I pick it up.
Brent takes a closer look of the card. "Whose identification card is that?"
I flip the card to see the name of the owner. "Dulcinea, Myrtle."
"I could not believe it. She is a nice and a loving governor. Why would see do this?" I look at Brent with a skeptic face.
"We should get out of here." Brent turns his back.
"Wait. Be careful. The woman outside this room; remember?" I restrain him from walking outside the storage room.
Slowly and silently, we walk outside the room. The woman is sitting on the floor and rocking herself. She looks more pathetic and unable than earlier. Her fear is discernable just by looking in her eyes. The creepy song she is singing gives us this uncomfortable feeling.
"...rain falls and blood spills, I see you with a noose up on the hill. Calling little Jane, driving her insane. One, two, three..." She sings as she continues to rock herself.
Despite of our fear of being deprived, we try not to kill the woman since she means no harm to us.
The clock strikes at three in the afternoon; the bell inside the clock rings three times. The sound is depressing. The psychrow woman sitting on the floor starts to laugh sinisterly and screams so loud. The psychrow crawls like a spider with just a pair of arms and a pair of legs. It wants to kill and eat us.
"Marcus! Kill it!" Brent screams.
"I cannot do it!" my hands are shaking. I do not want to kill anyone.
The psychrow woman crawls faster and faster. Brent grabs the axe on my hands and smashes the head of the psychrow. A lot of blood splatters on the floor and its brain is mashed all over the spot. Very disgusting, I consider it. I could not move a muscle because of the awfulness and horrible scene in front of me.
"Marcus, snap out of it. Let us get out of here." Brent drags me on my sleeves out of the door.
We sit for a while in the alley behind the bakery until my awareness totally returns. I see Brent sniffing the garbage bags in the bin beside us.
"What are you doing?" I ask him with my eyebrows arching.
"I am just trying to smell this garbage. I could not believe it; my sense of smelling is gone." He continues to sniff the garbage.
I stand up and breathe some air. I get the identification card of Governor Dulcinea in my pocket.
"I do not understand why would Governor Dulcinea do that. She is the Governor since I was born. The people in our District love her and admire her. All the efforts and projects she made just to protect us, were some of the best things that I have ever seen in my whole life." I tell Brent while walking back and forth.
"Maybe, you do not really know her. Everyone has their own evil side. Who knows? Governor Dulcinea is a member of the Resistance? No one could tell"
"Yes, the Resistance. I got a feeling that they kidnapped my brother." Tears want to fall from my eyes, but I am trying to hold it.
"What? Your brother is kidnapped?" Brent could not believe it.
I wipe some tears on my eyes. "That is the reason why I am here. My mother left me just to find my little brother. I want to help her, but I got no clue where I should start from."
"I am sorry Marcus. We will figure that out. There must be some clues in my District; besides, it is not safe anymore for you to stay here. The psychrows are all over this place and your Governor is killing people." He speaks in a persuasive voice.
I feel pumped up. Brent's words give me hopes. I never thought that my journey would go like this. I am stuck with another friend from District Two. What else could happen?
"Marcus, we got to get through the Firewall." Brent activates his Geo Locator or the GL.
The map of the entire continent under the system is displayed thru holographic projection. The orange glowing lines are the Firewall division; the blue dots are the System's Armed Force headquarters; and the red rippling waves are the infected places.
"But how could we pass through the Firewall? It will detect me once I cross on it." I point to the orange line on the GL.
Brent laughs. "Just do what I usually do."
"What is it?"
Brent pulls out a bottle of lotion from his bag. "This is an SPF-90 formulated lotion. It blocks the ultraviolet rays coming from the sun. The Firewall's light detecting fields are modified ultraviolet rays. Do you get it now?"
I am very amazed. "You are a genius." I just give Brent a round of applause.
We get out of the alley. About seven meters away, there is a little boy, about six, sitting on the ground and he is crying. His nose is bleeding. We approach him, but do not lay our hands on him because of the hazards it may cause us.
"What happened to you little fella?" I ask the little boy.
He looks at me but does not give a single word and continues to cry. Another boy, as old as Adam, appears randomly. The boy has incredible lustrous red eyes.
"What's wrong Cornelius?" The red-eyed boy asks his friend.
"I could not find my mother; I bumped to a post and my nose is bleeding now. It really hurts." The other boy replies as he wipes off his tear. "Where are your gloves Owen?" He added.
"I lost it. The psychrow pulled them off my hands." The red-eyed boy giggles.
Brent pulls my bag and drags me off the scene. I see how serious and cautious his look is.
"Marcus." He walks slowly.
"What is it? Why are you acting strange like that?" I ask.
"Look at his eyes Marcus. They are red."
I glance on the other boy. "Yeah, and I think those are amazing. I have never seen like those before."
"That little boy is an inborn carrier of DPV-20. No one must touch him."
"Wait. What? We should get the other boy." I am about to go to them, but Brent restrains me.
"No, you would put yourself in danger. Look." Brent directs my attention to the two boys.
The red-eyed boy wipes off the blood on his friend's nose with just his bare hands.
"You are going to be fine now Cornelius." Then he hugs his friend.
Just then, the boy named Cornelius shakes violently before falling to the ground. I see how his skin turns pale. It reminds me of the tragic fate of Father; this is the exact thing that happened to him. The other boy freaks out. He looks at us with a terrified countenance and comes to us. We make sure that he will not touch us, so we keep a distance.
"Sir, I am begging you. Please help my friend." He asks of us. His hands are behind his back, he realizes that it was him who did that to his friend.
I look at Brent with compassionate eyes hoping that he would help. But Brent is stiff, he does not want to, so I decided to do it by myself despite of his precautions. As I come nearer to the boy lying on the ground, he stands up. His eyes are all white; I see his veins protruding on his skin. This could not be! He is a psychrow now.
"Marcus, run!" Brent shouts at me from the near distance.
The little psychrow starts to salivate and walks in an imbalance manner. The red-eyed boy is terrified, he is not able to move. I grab him and off we run. The psychrow boy, gradually, increases its speed trying to chase us. It uses his feet and hands; he runs like a mad dog. Brent is ahead of us.
"Marcus, shoot it." Says Brent while catching his breath.
"No! He is just a little kid." I insist.
"He's already dead now Marcus. There is no cure for that."
As we cross the intersection road, there are eleven psychrows wandering around the street. They hear us running as we come closer to their position. We cannot go back or make a turn for the little psychrow is behind us. Are we going to make it through the Firewall or through death?