"Ah shit, my head hurts, what the hell?" I groaned as I lay on my back. Looking around slightly I winced at the brightness that was unexpected considering the last thing I remembered was laying in bed in my dark room, but somehow I was now outside, and it was the middle of the day. 'But wasn't it close to midnight just now? Did I fall asleep?' I thought to myself.
My name is I Black. I am a bit overweight, not to the point where most people would be disgusted, but people who say that nobody is disgusted due to others weight are lying or naïve. While I am overweight I am also fairly strong, considering that I have spent the last four years, my high school years, doing two classes of weight training. While I focused more on muscular strength, I also did train my endurance, even though my physical appearance wouldn't make that obvious.
After finishing high school I kind of stopped going to the gym as much as I would like to, but Coivd-19 definitely didn't help with that. I still did some basic workouts that I could do at home without equipment such as squats, pushups, and situps. Since I was taking a break before starting college I had lost track of time, and I even started doing whatever I wanted at home, whenever I wanted, therefore I was usually awake at night, and slept through the day, which is why I was confused that it was around noon. Also the fact that I was outside was disconcerting.
I groaned again and rubbed my head as my eyes adjusted to the light, the only reason I could tell I was outside was due to the familiar, distinct feeling of grass beneath him. When my eyes finally adjusted to the light I looked around and was shocked and fairly disgusted. I had felt that the grass was wet, and had assumed that there was still some dew on the grass, however when I looked at the grass it was red, and the coppery scent of blood filled my nostrils. Seeing the blood that coated all of the grass, and was now coating my clothing and skin that touched the grass, I shuddered slightly before forcing my mind to adjust to my new surroundings. If it was a dream I would wake up soon, and if it wasn't then I needed a clear mind.
Looking around again I realized that there were others here, and still more appearing with a faint, and quickly becoming annoying, popping noise. I got up and walked to the nearest person who looked like their headache was also fading before asking, "Excuse me, but do you know what is happening?" I was frustrated and confused, but I had always been a calm person, even when I was beaten to the point where I had to go to the hospital so seeing the blood was concerning but not enough to stop me from functioning.
The person I had spoken to was a woman who was sitting up and now had a thoroughly disgusted look on her face, as if she was about to puke, but she seemed to be glad to have a distraction from the amount of blood around her, so she looked up at me for a moment before looking around and frowning and saying, "I'm not sure, there are no landmarks, no trees, just hills as far as the eye can see, it's hard to tell but they could be anywhere that has a lot of open fields."
Jason frowned but nodded, I had come to the same conclusion but was hoping that someone would see something that I had missed. At that moment I had a weird feeling that a lot of people were looking at them so Ilooked around and everyone nearby was staring at them and nodded in agreement with what the woman had said, even a couple people who looked like they were still shaking off the headaches that seemingly everyone had experienced. A couple people then noticed the blood and quite a few even emptied their stomachs onto the floor as well.
After about nine or ten minutes people stopped appearing and the sound of people puking could be heard from every direction. I could understand that most people weren't used to seeing large amounts of blood, but I had personally seen his own beaten and bloodied body, as well as two fresh corpses in his life, so I was a bit less affected than even some of the older adults. I wanted to do something but I wasn't sure what to do, there was nothing in every direction but there had to be something if they walked far enough.
Jason looked at the people around him who seemed to be the first people who had appeared here, and were the first people recovering from the scenery around them and I had an idea, but I wasn't sure if it would work so I decided to ask the others, "Alright, as far as I can tell people have been appearing at roughly a rate of ten people per second for the past ten minutes but suddenly it just… stopped. So there SHOULD be around six thousand people here, if I did my math right, ten minutes, so sixty times ten for ten minutes is six hundred seconds, times ten people per second, is six thousand people. I'm not sure if there is a certain area for people to appear in, or if there were only supposed to be six thousand of us, but they should gather groups of ten to fifteen people and have them travel in each direction and then turn back in an hour, so that at most they are gone for two hours. If they find a city or some sort of civilization that would be amazing, if they find a wooded area that would be better than nothing or maybe a river. Anyway all four groups will be back in 2 hours, if they find nothing then they go out for longer and longer each time, with larger groups, so that they can eventually find something."
Jason had seemingly started ranting, but the woman I had originally talked to and a couple of the more clear headed people were able to keep up and nodded in agreement. I had originally thought that it was around noon, but it was actually earlier than that, it was around 7 a.m. but really bright. The woman spoke up saying, "Each group should have at least two people with some form of watch or phone so that they can keep track of the time, that way they know when to get back." A couple people were confused when she said at least two, but I nodded.
It seemed like this woman had the same concern that I did. 'If they don't know where they are, they don't know what types of animals are out here, or poisonous plants, there could be dangers they don't know to expect' I thought to himself and smiled grimly before saying, "I have my phone, so I could go with a group, however my phone will not last forever so I hope it doesn't take long to find civilization." The people around I nodded and they started splitting up into groups of ten for our first outing. It was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be to find forty out of the six thousand people that were willing to go on the first trip.
Finally, after about six minutes they had forty people, split into four groups of ten, and they set off on our ways. Jason's group consisted of three women and seven men, including Jason. I had his phone, and a younger man, around 16, had a watch on so they decided to head out. They went west, away from the sun, because I was more accustomed to being in the dark lately. While they walked they saw nothing but more grass, and more blood covering it, strangely the blood never coagulated and it stayed slightly warm and wet, so the dirt was actually slightly muddy making it easy enough for them to find their way back to camp after the first hour was over.
Jason's team arrived at almost the exact same time as two of the other groups but there was no sign of the last group that had set off to the east. After about five minutes of waiting everyone was a bit nervous and a couple of people seemed absolutely terrified that something had happened to the people who had left. They decided that they would talk about what they saw and wait a couple more minutes just in case they had slowed down on their way back because they were tired.
When I mentioned that the blood was still wet some people relaxed and someone said that it couldn't be blood then, because blood would coagulate after a while, but someone licked the blood off of their hand and immediately said, "Nope, that's definitely blood." I was a bit confused and thought, 'Haven't they smelled blood before? Is it not obvious that this is blood?' but I never actually said anything.
After another couple minutes, three minutes and twenty seven seconds, according to the 16 year old who now followed me everywhere, the team that went to the east finally returned and, while they seemed tired, they seemed more disgusted than anything. One of their people came forward and said, "At the very end of the hour, when we were about to turn around, we started hearing rushing water. Of course, we were excited, we had finally found something besides these gods forsaken hills, so we kept going until they found it. There was a river, and it was rushing fast, but it seemed… off, somehow, almost too thick. Oh this river was also the same red as the grass around us, and one of our group tasted it and said it tasted just like blood. Even the damn water around us is replaced with blood, how are they supposed to survive here? Where is here anyway!?"
Nobody had an answer as to where "here" was so they all stayed silent. The person who had just spoken said, "If this follows the same rules as normal rivers, then all that blood has to come from somewhere, and I don't want to see a creature that can produce that much blood, much less what can make it bleed that much. I suggest they go the other directions and ignore the east." Of course, everybody agreed. I had to admit that I was curious about what could cause a "river of blood" but not enough to put his life on the line to find out.
I wanted to keep going out on expeditions, rotating slightly so we could see more of the surroundings, but before we left I stepped forward and said, "Hey, before we head out, no matter how thirsty you get, and no matter how tired you are, don't drink the blood. We don't know what type of blood it is, but certain animal bloods can make you sick, and if you drink enough of any type of blood you will eventually get sick if you don't process it properly, and I don't think we have the means to do so right now. Those of you who have already drank or even tasted the blood, if you start feeling sick please let someone know, and if anyone has water bottles on them, we should probably give those to the people going on expeditions since they are the ones who are going to save us if anyone does."
We went on expeditions until the sun was setting, switching out people who were going out with those who hadn't except for me and a couple other people who didn't feel like sitting around, which included the woman I had originally talked to. When we came back as the sun was setting we hadn't found anything too important. At this time the two people who had drank the blood had mentioned they weren't feeling too well, and had even started vomiting up either the blood they had drank, or their own blood, it was hard to tell.
Since it was night now, and people were tired from their expeditions, they started to group up and lay down to go to sleep. Apparently the people who had gone on expeditions were too tired to care that there was blood all over the floor. That wasn't the case for the people who hadn't gone on expeditions, as some of them were still highly uncomfortable and squeamish around this much blood.
When most of the people who had gone on expeditions were asleep, I noticed that the woman who I had first spoken to was still awake and was watching the surroundings, which just meant that she was definitely thinking the same thing as me. This was an unknown location, with unknown threats, so we should have people keeping watch. I approached her and said, "Hey, you get some rest, I'll keep watch. I'll have a couple other people keep watch with me. In a couple hours, I will wake you up so you can take watch and I can get some rest."
She hesitated for a moment, but I saw the exhaustion in her eyes, and eventually she sighed and nodded before taking off her jacket and bunching it up to use as a pillow and falling asleep. I walked over to a couple of the people who were still too grossed out to sleep in blood, but didn't seem as afraid as some of the others, and said, "Hey, we're going to take shifts watching so people can get some rest. I have volunteered to take the first shift, but since there are so many of us, I can't watch over everyone by myself, especially if there is a threat out there. Since you guys don't seem able to fall asleep, can you spread out around the outside of the group? If you see anything, then quietly wake up the people near you and start moving away while waking people up as you go. Of course, we haven't seen anything all day, so the likelihood of us seeing anything is pretty low, but it's better to be safe than sorry."
They nodded and started spreading out. Like I had expected, we didn't see anything for the next three hours, so I went and woke up a couple of people from the expeditions, however I did let the woman stay asleep since she had been one of the people to take charge, and we would need her to be well rested since I had stayed up all even another couple hours after her. Nobody besides the two of us had even tried to take charge, although there were a couple people, mostly men, who weren't happy having a woman tell them what to do.
When I woke up, I had only slept for about four hours, and it was currently four AM, and the sun wasn't up yet. Almost everyone was still asleep, so I sent one of the most exhausted looking people who was on watch back to sleep and took their place on watch. When the sun started coming up, around five thirty, everyone started waking up. I noticed that the two people who had drunk the blood weren't breathing anymore. When nobody was paying attention I dragged them off to the side a bit and went back to just watching the surroundings. I did notice that the woman gave me an exasperated look when she saw me on watch, which to her would seem like I hadn't slept at all.
I had about a hundred people gather around and said, "Alright, there is some information that we need to spread to everyone. Yesterday two people drank the blood that is all over the place before I gave the warning to not drink any of it. Both of them started puking up blood last night before we went to sleep, and neither of them woke up this morning. This is confirmation that the blood is in fact, not edible. Just remind everyone not to drink the blood, and if they ask why, then tell them that it's toxic as that is the only explanation that we have at the moment."
At this point people wanted to be in as big of a group as possible so we all grouped up and went in the same direction. We went northwest hoping that we had missed something because it was between the two directions that we had searched, but alas even after walking for two hours there was nothing. I was a bit concerned that some people would collapse from exhaustion if they kept pushing it so they put it to a vote, and only one person wanted to rest, and seeing that, even they decided that they didn't want to hold everyone back and kept walking.
At some point we stopped paying attention to how long we were walking, and we just walked. Eventually we reached an area that was foggy, not enough to make it impossible to see, but enough for it to get confusing, so everyone around the outside of the group grasped arms and continued forward. This way the people inside the encirclement wouldn't accidentally leave, and the people on the outside wouldn't get lost in the fog, and it also made it harder for one person to accidentally turn around in the fog.
After walking through the fog for an undetermined amount of time, there was a weird feeling like they had walked through some sort of membrane and they all felt an extreme wave of exhaustion, and they began to pass out. At first it was one by one, then groups, then it was a wave of people collapsing until just a few were struggling to keep their consciousness. I was one of these few, therefore I was one of the nine that heard a deep, but comforting, voice say, "Congratulations on passing the first trial, now rest, you deserve it."