Read Online Rising Fears by Michaelbrent Collings - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michaelbrent Collings
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knew it didn't help the process any if the email was perceived as coming from some yokel out in the sticks.
Soon, he was almost finished, and was about to click "Send" when the computer suddenly hissed. There was a faint whiff of ozone.
"What the-" began Jason, and then a large spark leapt from the computer. The email flickered, unsent. "Oh, no, don't you dare!" he hollered.
A popup appeared: "Connection failure. No such domain."
"No such domain ?! It's the flippin' FBI!" Jason pounded on the side of the computer, but to no avail: the email disappeared, replaced by a random swirling of dots and colors. Then the screen went completely dark.
But only for a moment.
In the next instant, the screen began flashing with different websites and images. Faster and faster, too fast to make much sense of, but then Jason began to notice: all the sites, all the images, all the videos that were coming through were about one thing.
Death.
Pictures of car-wrecks.
Images of fire, burning people.
Faster they came.
Streaming images of people falling to their death, leaping from a fiery high-rise.
A close-up of a leprosy victim.
Faster, faster.
Shots of a trauma ward, patients frozen in pain.
Faster.
And now it wasn't just images. Sounds started coming from the small computer speakers. Faraway screams, shrieks, and howls. The sounds of the doomed and dying.
Faster, faster.
Images of wars. Video of gunfire.
And now words began to flash between the images, broken letters that swirled around the edges of the computer screen in random patterns before coming together to form words.
Harappan.
Hoer-Verde.
Destruction, death, pictures of diseased limbs falling from bodies, cancerous sores on the faces of third-world mothers.
Chinese Army.
Roanoke .
Death, death, death.
Jason grabbed a felt-tip pen and wrote quickly, noting the strange words he had seen as quickly as he could, before they were lost to his memory. Harappan, Hoer-Verde, Chinese army, Roanoke.
And then the images and the words came too fast to see, a tumbling collage of horror and pain. Jason blinked, his eyes tearing, managing only with difficulty to look away from the computer screen, focusing on the one thing that could give him comfort after such a barrage of mayhem: the picture of his family.
But when he looked, there was no comfort to be had. He did not feel the familiar melancholy of love and sadness, did not feel even the familiar pain that usually gripped him when he thought of them.
Because they were gone.
The photo was still there, the background untouched. But his loved ones had been wiped away from the picture as though they never were. At first he thought it must be some kind of joke in extremely poor taste; that Hatty had somehow Photoshopped the picture. But he dismissed that idea in the same instant that it occurred to him: Hatty, though a woman of consummate skill in many areas, bordered on computer-illiterate. Besides, she would never do such a thing as this.
So what the hell happened to them?
He kept peering at the photo, as though by looking he could draw his family's image back into the frame; could save them from exile into nothingness as he had not saved them from the bullets of a sociopath.
Then something new caught his attention. The computer screen suddenly dissolved into random-pattern flickers of pixilated confusion. Jason tore his eyes from the hideous emptiness of the photo and stared at his computer screen, trying to find something else, something less horrifying than the specter of losing his family yet again, and this time in an even more disturbing way.
He leaned in as the computer picture utterly disintegrated. The screen was just a random mass of colors now, but even so, he thought he could almost make something out. As though there was something behind the meaningless mass of confusion, something struggling to come out; to be born.
He leaned in even closer, almost touching the screen with his nose. Then gasped suddenly
Soon, he was almost finished, and was about to click "Send" when the computer suddenly hissed. There was a faint whiff of ozone.
"What the-" began Jason, and then a large spark leapt from the computer. The email flickered, unsent. "Oh, no, don't you dare!" he hollered.
A popup appeared: "Connection failure. No such domain."
"No such domain ?! It's the flippin' FBI!" Jason pounded on the side of the computer, but to no avail: the email disappeared, replaced by a random swirling of dots and colors. Then the screen went completely dark.
But only for a moment.
In the next instant, the screen began flashing with different websites and images. Faster and faster, too fast to make much sense of, but then Jason began to notice: all the sites, all the images, all the videos that were coming through were about one thing.
Death.
Pictures of car-wrecks.
Images of fire, burning people.
Faster they came.
Streaming images of people falling to their death, leaping from a fiery high-rise.
A close-up of a leprosy victim.
Faster, faster.
Shots of a trauma ward, patients frozen in pain.
Faster.
And now it wasn't just images. Sounds started coming from the small computer speakers. Faraway screams, shrieks, and howls. The sounds of the doomed and dying.
Faster, faster.
Images of wars. Video of gunfire.
And now words began to flash between the images, broken letters that swirled around the edges of the computer screen in random patterns before coming together to form words.
Harappan.
Hoer-Verde.
Destruction, death, pictures of diseased limbs falling from bodies, cancerous sores on the faces of third-world mothers.
Chinese Army.
Roanoke .
Death, death, death.
Jason grabbed a felt-tip pen and wrote quickly, noting the strange words he had seen as quickly as he could, before they were lost to his memory. Harappan, Hoer-Verde, Chinese army, Roanoke.
And then the images and the words came too fast to see, a tumbling collage of horror and pain. Jason blinked, his eyes tearing, managing only with difficulty to look away from the computer screen, focusing on the one thing that could give him comfort after such a barrage of mayhem: the picture of his family.
But when he looked, there was no comfort to be had. He did not feel the familiar melancholy of love and sadness, did not feel even the familiar pain that usually gripped him when he thought of them.
Because they were gone.
The photo was still there, the background untouched. But his loved ones had been wiped away from the picture as though they never were. At first he thought it must be some kind of joke in extremely poor taste; that Hatty had somehow Photoshopped the picture. But he dismissed that idea in the same instant that it occurred to him: Hatty, though a woman of consummate skill in many areas, bordered on computer-illiterate. Besides, she would never do such a thing as this.
So what the hell happened to them?
He kept peering at the photo, as though by looking he could draw his family's image back into the frame; could save them from exile into nothingness as he had not saved them from the bullets of a sociopath.
Then something new caught his attention. The computer screen suddenly dissolved into random-pattern flickers of pixilated confusion. Jason tore his eyes from the hideous emptiness of the photo and stared at his computer screen, trying to find something else, something less horrifying than the specter of losing his family yet again, and this time in an even more disturbing way.
He leaned in as the computer picture utterly disintegrated. The screen was just a random mass of colors now, but even so, he thought he could almost make something out. As though there was something behind the meaningless mass of confusion, something struggling to come out; to be born.
He leaned in even closer, almost touching the screen with his nose. Then gasped suddenly
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