Read Online Honey to Soothe the Itch by Kris Austen Radcliffe - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kris Austen Radcliffe
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infrared eyes to gaze upon its dead spaces.
Then the million-dollar IV ran out and my senses snapped back to Earth and the cyber screams of the others like myself.
There are fifteen of us left. The zombies got everyone else.
We tried to warn the world. We sent out a glaring cacophony that should have stopped all the information and industry in its tracks, but it didn’t. The seamless invisible tech of the world “fixed” the problem we created before either humans or machines knew anything was wrong.
No diagnostics r an. No one blinked. Nothing burned. Sometimes I wonder if the zombies even realize they’re zombies.
Though, honestly, we’re not sure if they’re zombies. I suppose it depends on which definition of “zombie” you use. They somehow manage to operate in the solidified ruins of the world even though we struggle to find what little food’s left. And they do have a single-minded determination to kill.
I think the free humans roaming the hidden spaces of the cities add too many eddies to the new order. We’re little points of chaos and change. Free humans need to eat and sleep and take a crap. We need to pet our dogs and touch each other and sometimes die.
Like me. Like I’m dying. Every moment I stand up and stick my brain into where they don’t want me anymore I bring some of that dying with me. And it makes me itch.
Not the tingly itch I used to get after turning my face to the sun or my sculpted and well-tanned boyfriend tickled the nape of my neck with his stubble. No, this is a deep itch, the kind that starts in the bones where my cancer pounds on shields with swords and spears.
My nerves load a trebuchet with boiling oil and fling it toward my skin, just to make sure I’m paying attention.
A lesion appeared on my wrist yesterday. It will fester soon. I curl my fingers and pull back my hand when I realize my body wants to do something about it. If I rake my nails over the weld, the itch will stop for a brief, brilliant moment. I’ll breathe as calm hits my blood. The world will gain color again and for that one shining second, I’ll swear white sandy beaches and sea breezes still exist.
They don’t. Nothing exists but efficient fractals and the solidified currents of what used to be a living planet. Cities still stand, but nothing grows. Nothing decays. It’s like the game’s been paused.
We don’t have monitoring equipment—not the old-school stuff with screens or displays. I’m the only one who can see the nets.
Which is why I’m still special. I used to be important, a sweet example of what you could be if you stayed in school but did your own thing, because that’s what true pioneers did. Now I’m special because I’m the only one who can see where the food is, or if the zombies are getting close, or if there’s a group of free humans who need to be brought in.
I’ve become functional, even if it’s eating me from the inside out and making my skin crawl like a full colony of ants is tunneling toward my bones. And I’ll be damned if my last breath leaves me before I serve my function.
Two hours ago, there were sixteen of us special ones. Sixteen free humans with full implants scattered across the globe, until we lost Jefferies when zombies overran the St. Petersburg enclave. He’d broadcast one final message: Thirty-six people out. They were running—he took them west toward the Baltic and was asking for help from the London group to get them across to Britain. Then he vanished. Gone, no ghost, no signal, not even a hole. Nothing of his sensations—no haptic moments of cold Artic air or increased adrenalin flow because he ran. The world swallowed his soul and now only fifteen of us implanted remain.
Fifteen who felt each other every moment of every second, sleeping, awake, fucking, eat ing, or dying. Our itches are surprisingly similar.
I wait for a spy satellite
Then the million-dollar IV ran out and my senses snapped back to Earth and the cyber screams of the others like myself.
There are fifteen of us left. The zombies got everyone else.
We tried to warn the world. We sent out a glaring cacophony that should have stopped all the information and industry in its tracks, but it didn’t. The seamless invisible tech of the world “fixed” the problem we created before either humans or machines knew anything was wrong.
No diagnostics r an. No one blinked. Nothing burned. Sometimes I wonder if the zombies even realize they’re zombies.
Though, honestly, we’re not sure if they’re zombies. I suppose it depends on which definition of “zombie” you use. They somehow manage to operate in the solidified ruins of the world even though we struggle to find what little food’s left. And they do have a single-minded determination to kill.
I think the free humans roaming the hidden spaces of the cities add too many eddies to the new order. We’re little points of chaos and change. Free humans need to eat and sleep and take a crap. We need to pet our dogs and touch each other and sometimes die.
Like me. Like I’m dying. Every moment I stand up and stick my brain into where they don’t want me anymore I bring some of that dying with me. And it makes me itch.
Not the tingly itch I used to get after turning my face to the sun or my sculpted and well-tanned boyfriend tickled the nape of my neck with his stubble. No, this is a deep itch, the kind that starts in the bones where my cancer pounds on shields with swords and spears.
My nerves load a trebuchet with boiling oil and fling it toward my skin, just to make sure I’m paying attention.
A lesion appeared on my wrist yesterday. It will fester soon. I curl my fingers and pull back my hand when I realize my body wants to do something about it. If I rake my nails over the weld, the itch will stop for a brief, brilliant moment. I’ll breathe as calm hits my blood. The world will gain color again and for that one shining second, I’ll swear white sandy beaches and sea breezes still exist.
They don’t. Nothing exists but efficient fractals and the solidified currents of what used to be a living planet. Cities still stand, but nothing grows. Nothing decays. It’s like the game’s been paused.
We don’t have monitoring equipment—not the old-school stuff with screens or displays. I’m the only one who can see the nets.
Which is why I’m still special. I used to be important, a sweet example of what you could be if you stayed in school but did your own thing, because that’s what true pioneers did. Now I’m special because I’m the only one who can see where the food is, or if the zombies are getting close, or if there’s a group of free humans who need to be brought in.
I’ve become functional, even if it’s eating me from the inside out and making my skin crawl like a full colony of ants is tunneling toward my bones. And I’ll be damned if my last breath leaves me before I serve my function.
Two hours ago, there were sixteen of us special ones. Sixteen free humans with full implants scattered across the globe, until we lost Jefferies when zombies overran the St. Petersburg enclave. He’d broadcast one final message: Thirty-six people out. They were running—he took them west toward the Baltic and was asking for help from the London group to get them across to Britain. Then he vanished. Gone, no ghost, no signal, not even a hole. Nothing of his sensations—no haptic moments of cold Artic air or increased adrenalin flow because he ran. The world swallowed his soul and now only fifteen of us implanted remain.
Fifteen who felt each other every moment of every second, sleeping, awake, fucking, eat ing, or dying. Our itches are surprisingly similar.
I wait for a spy satellite
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