Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - 3 Lockdown Horror Stories (Compilation of April 2022)

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

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We can't leave the house. They've boarded up our doors and windows, started shooting people trying to break free. There are things in the streets, tall things. I see their shadows sometimes as they run past the wooden boards. I hear the rumble of their feet. None of us do. They cut our access to television and the internet when the lockdown began.

They even took out the cell tower. Anne says they don't want us communicating with the outside world, telling them about what's going on out here. I think she's right. It's been two weeks since the men in suits came by. They said they worked for government intelligence and that they were looking for a terrorist. They didn't strike me as government types personally.

They looked distracted, spaced out, more like Scientologists than CIA agents. But then again, I've never met a Scientologist or a CIA agent. So who was I to tell the difference? Either way, they said it would be over soon, and they sounded official. We'll need to search every household, they explained. We can't have anybody leaving before we've cleared their property, so we'll have to board you in.

It made sense, I guess, in a twisted, dystopian nightmare sort of way. It made sense all the way up until the end of the fourth night, when the tall things started roaming the streets. They were dressed in long, red raincoats, hooded. The way they moved gave me the chills, all jerky and spastic, so I stayed away from the windows. Anne didn't mind, though, she was fascinated by them. Her and our gun-nut veteran of a neighbor, Old Thai, exchanged theories written on pieces of cardboard, holding them up to the glass of the windows.

Government experiment, she wrote on hers. invasion, he wrote on his. At first, it seemed to just be a bit of innocent, morbid fun, finding some humor in a bizarre situation. Then Anne watched one of the tall things kill somebody, and everything changed. It was an elderly man in our cul-de-sac, Mr. Douglas. Anne watched him open his door and hammer down the boards as one of the tall things walked by. He shouted at it, told it to get over here, so he could see just what kind of unholy bullshit's tax dollars were being used to fund. Next thing you know, there's sirens in the streets, soldiers rushing his home. There's a megaphone shouting at him to get back inside. All of it is useless. All of it

happens far too late. Because the moment Douglas starts yelling at the tall thing, it starts to twitch and jerk like it can't control its own behavior, like a predator, hungry for a meal. It snaps its head toward Douglas, then tears across his lawn and snaps him up in its long spider-like hands. It lifts him off the ground. Then he screams. He screams and he screams until the tall thing lowers the hood of its rain jacket, and then Douglas goes pale as a ghost. Silent. According to Anne, that's when the skin of his face started to bubble and pop. That's when he started hissing out steam, smoking as his flesh sizzled beneath his clothes, as if he were boiling alive from the inside out. Next thing you know, he's dripping onto the pavement,

dripping and dripping until there's nothing left of him but a puddle of flesh and clothes. Nobody tries to step in. Not any of the government suits, not Anne, not even old tie and all his guns. Everybody watches in stunned silence as the tall thing finishes its execution and saunters away. Soldiers roam with them, soldiers and people in long white clothes, and says their lab coats, and the people are researchers studying the tall things as experiments. But I think they look more like robes, like clergymen. All of them wear helmets with tinted visors. It's as though they don't want to get a good look at the things. After Mr. Douglas, more people on the block decided to make a break for it. Maybe they realized this was worse than they thought. Maybe they started wondering what

the point of keeping us locked away like this was. Were we food for these creatures? Were they trying to turn us into them? None of us knew. All we could say for certain is the killing didn't stop with Mr. Douglas. I woke up one morning to see several of my neighbors shot dead. in their yards, their lifeless eyes gazing back at me from the grass. Nobody came to pick them up. They were left there to rot, picked apart by birds and stray dogs. Soon, gunshots were ringing out at all hours of the day. People wanted out, but the soldiers wouldn't let them leave, and so the bodies began to pile up. Eventually, I think Anne and I were the only two left alive in our cul-de-sac. Even Old Ty had seemed to vanish, probably shot dead in his backyard. It was awful.

I'd rarely known death in my life, and the sheer volume of it now seemed to numb me. I couldn't process it. I didn't know how. But then, almost out of the blue, the government had a change of heart. Or maybe they just shifted tactics. Suddenly they began letting people leave. I saw it first with a house at the very end of the road. I watched the woman who lived there break out with a baby tucked in her arm and a grade schooler holding her hand. The three of them darted across their lawn, jumped over their father's corpse and piled into their minivan on the street. The entire time, a soldier and white coat stood only meters away, quietly observing. It didn't take long for the rumbling to begin. That telltale sound of approaching death of one of the tall things coming to

claim its prize. The van started up, backfiring a plume of exhaust into the air. I listened as the woman shrieked for joy, but I knew the joy would be short-lived. See, from my vantage point at the end of the lane, I saw something that she never could. The boot locked around her rear tire. The van rode forward as she pressed the gas and then clunked to a stop. My heart broke, the look on her face, The liberation wasn't for her. It was for her children in the back. The rumble reached a crescendo, and in the blink of an eye, a tall thing crashed into the van and knocked it over like a die-cast toy.

I couldn't make out much beyond that. Nothing but the sound of the monster tearing into the roof of the van and pulling the crying children out one by one, while their mother begged for mercy. If I were a better, stupider man, I may have kicked down my door and tried to save me. door and tried to save them, but I wasn't. I was a coward. Instead, I fell to my living room carpet and cried. I laid there and listened as their flesh popped and sizzled,

as their skin fell to the pavement and long, heavy drips. It's a sound I'll never forget. The next day, things got worse. The soldiers no longer cared about enforcing the lockdown, or even keeping people safely indoors. Now they were breaking them out. Like hungry wolves, they tore down boarded-up doors and kicked in living-room windows, then dragged families out onto their lawns and held them there for slaughter. If the screams were horrible before, now they were unbearable. You couldn't ignore them. Anne and I cranked our sound system to the max, but it only served as background static. The dying cut through everything. That night we barely slept.

Anne tossed and turned beside me, while I stared blankly at the ceiling fan rotating in lazy circles. There was an understanding between us. We had been abandoned. There was nobody coming to help us. Nobody coming to arrest these monsters and save the day.

We were alone. How long until her and I were dragged out of our home? How long until we became the next experiment chained to our fence, waiting to be attacked by one of those creatures. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Neither of us knew. And somehow, that made it all the worse. I woke up to the sunlight peeking through our boarded-up bedroom window. Anne was missing. I looked all over the house for her before I found her note on the kitchen counter, scribbled quickly. I know you're afraid, the note read, but I have to leave. You might think we'll make it through

this, that once they've had their fill of guinea pigs, they'll let the rest of us go free. But I promise you they'll come for us soon. This might be my last chance. Since you won't come with me, I'm going alone. I wish I could have said a proper goodbye, but I know you'd try to stop me. Love always. Annie Bear. She left through the basement hatch. I know this because I spotted her corpse some five feet away through our kitchen window. She gazed back at me. She gazed back at me. a look of shock painted across her pale face, except for the small red dot where the bullet pierced her skull. I couldn't even muster the courage to step out and bury her. Instead, the raccoons and dogs took care of her, one piece at a time. She was right, though. Eventually,

they did come for me. It was over a week later. By then, I didn't have the will to resist. I waited patiently at the kitchen table, drunk with a glass of whiskey, as soldiers and whitecoats dragged me from the house. When I'd seen it happen to other people, it seemed to occur so quickly. Now it happened in slow motion. I heard every word from the soldier's mouth, every command. First, he patted me down and ensured I was disarmed. Then he told me this was all routine and nothing to worry about. Together they took me out to my yard.

The white coat asked me if I had lived a good life. If I had been a man of faith, I didn't know what to say. Maybe I was simply too drunk. Or maybe I truly didn't care anymore. It's not as bad as it looks, the white coat assured me. You'll be at peace once it's over, brother. In the distance came the growing rumble of the monster's feet, of the tall thing coming to claim its bounty.

How many more after this? The soldier asked, the white coat, his hand painfully gripping my shoulder. Sixteen. Then us, sister. Then us. The rumbling deepened. The tall thing was getting closer, and soon my heart was beating in sync with its stampeding footfalls. Memories flashed in my mind.

Memories of Anne, and my dead neighbors, and the mother who lived at the end of the road, of her children that ended up as sizzling puddles of flesh and clothes on the pavement. My hands became fists. Indignation and fury grew inside of me, stoked by whiskey fumes. Why do this? I growled. Why not just put a bullet in my head? Because we love you, brother, said the white coat. You waited patiently. You had faith.

And for that, you will be rewarded with salvation. The tall thing rounded the corner. Its legs slapping against the ground in great strides. Its frame eclipsed the moon, casting a shadow across me and stealing the breath from my lungs. It slowed down as it reached my lawn. Then it sauntered over to me, swaying this way and that. What are they? I whispered.

The ones that made us, the white coat replied. Those that gave us life. I shrank away as the tall thing neared. But the soldier shoved me forward. Be strong, brother. Show it your conviction. We were brought to this planet long ago as an experiment. But now, our time is served and we're finally going home.

Don't you want to go home? The tall thing reached up to its hood. As it did, the soldier's grip loosened, and both he and the white coat stepped to the side, away from the creature's view. I would not scream. I told myself, no matter what, I wouldn't give these monsters the satisfaction of my terror.

It pulled back on its hood, and something grotesque looked down on me. It was as if a hundred different faces had been stitched together, fused into an abomination that seemed to smile from 15 mouths. It said softly. My teeth bit into my cheeks, clenching them closed. A whimper escaped me. A whimper and a groan as my stomach filled with a soup of boiling horror. I would not scream. I would not scream. No matter the pain, I would not scream.

Its long, spindly hands gripped my face. It cocked its head to the side, a hundred different eyes blinking back at me. Then it tugged at the bottom of my mouth. No, I wasn't going to let it have its way. My mouth stayed clenched. It repositioned its grip and then snapped my jaw and have, letting it hang a limp from my face. I roared in agony, tears streaming down my cheeks in a torrent. It whispered, slipping a finger down my throat. I choked and gagged as it fished its finger around, as a hundred different eyes rolled back and 15 mouths began muttering an alien language.

I choked and gagged until a gunshot rang out. Then another. The tall thing wheeled around, dropping me onto my lawn at the soldier. began shouting into his radio. The next second, a bullet found the soldier in the head. The white coat shrieked, fleeing around my fence as a round caught her in the shoulder. The tall thing shot up to its full height, standing level with the street lamps and then sprinted toward the shooter. Toward Old Ty. He'd set up a kill zone on his roof, surrounded by rifles and ammo. He'd waited for a moonless night to do his business, and now he was raining lead onto the creature like a blizzard

of death. What are you waiting for? He bellowed. Get moving, dip shit. I did. I stole away, hiding in shrubs and behind sheds. Watching his tall things came roaring down streets, jumping over houses and knocking over cars as they tried to reach old time. He only lasted a few minutes. That's when the shooting stopped. But it was enough time for me to get away. Maybe enough time for others, too. It took me three hours to hike through Debbie Forrest and make it to the next town. And once I did, I breathed a sigh of relief. There weren't any soldiers, no white coats.

Most importantly, there weren't any tall things melting people in their clothes. Just quiet stillness. The thing early mornings were meant for. I made my way to the sheriff's department to blow the whistle on what was going on, to explain that people were being shot, that tall things were melting people on the street, and that we needed to get our ass in gear, and call in the National Guard.

No, scratch that. We needed to call in Frikin NATO. But as I got to the door to the precinct, I stopped. Something gleamed in the corner of my eye, catching my attention. It was there at the edge of the curb. A puddle. Strange thing is, it hadn't rained in weeks.

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The conditions apply. It started last week. The lockdown, I mean, Before that, things weren't great, but they weren't awful. We weren't the happiest place on Earth, but we weren't jumping off bridges either. We just were. We managed, is what I'm trying to say.

Now years of impoverished alcoholism have reared their ugly head. The lockdown's done its job. It's kept us safe from the devil outside our walls. But sometimes, it's the devil inside that does the most harm. Sometimes it's the thinking. The thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. That's what does you in. My town's main industry has been on the decline for decades.

These days, most of us are on food stamps. We can't afford to live here anymore, but can't afford to move either. Catch 22. A few years back, the government opened up a compound on the hill, a research facility for military types and the superior geniuses you see on TV. A few weeks later, they announced the town would enter lockdown,

something about a radiation leak, something about acid rain. Since it started, there's been one dead and nine missing. How'd the dead guy go? If you're wondering, it wasn't radiation. It was self-loathing. They found Benny West, near the woods with a smoking handgun beside what was left of his head. and a suicide note so wet with blood that nobody could read the damn thing. Famous last words? We never knew them.

But then, I don't think any of us really needed to. You could still smell the booze on Benny's breath, could still see decades of struggle etched into every line of his face. As for the missing, they're a tougher puzzle. Nobody's found them. Nobody's had any contact with them whatsoever. Not a text, not a call, not even a dusty email. It's odd, but maybe they'd just had enough.

Couldn't take this place anymore and finally decided the lockdown was the worst of it. What's the phrase? The last straw. Yeah, that's what the lockdown was for them. The last straw. Since it all started, I've been going stir-crazy, Being cooped up inside with nothing to do but drink and watch TV will do that to a man. I think that's why I did it, you know?

Took a midnight stroll. Loneliness is a strange beast, and it doesn't pick and choose its time of day. But if I had to place it, I'd say it always gets worse at night. There's something about the dark that suffocates, makes you feel vulnerable, singled out. So I went to her cabin. my old high school sweetheart, Fanny Williams. The only girl I've ever met that could shoot a target with her eyes closed and still hit a bullseye.

The girl I called the love of my life, who left me after nine years because I couldn't wake up in the morning without a shot of whiskey. That night, I needed her. Maybe I wanted to make amends, or maybe I just wanted somebody familiar, somebody warm who I could feel a sense of connection with. I don't know. All I really knew is I couldn't last another night alone in my cabin.

Not with the whiskey, not with the 45. So I set off. The government was taking the lockdown seriously. One of my neighbors, Roger Huckbright, got a lashing from the sheriff for trying to break into the boarded-up liquor store after dark. They knocked out three of his teeth and told him next time they'd break his legs. I had a thing for my legs. I liked walking. liked kicking a ball, and most of all, I liked hitting the gas pedal of my truck. I didn't want broken legs, so I stayed off the main roads and stuck to the logging roads. Hell, I didn't even drive. Too conspicuous, I figured.

I walked. To the right of me was the hillside, all brush and boulders with a military facility up top, and to my left was the valley. Charmuth Forest. On the other side of those trees was Vanny Williams. But walking straight through them was a death trap. See, that night it wasn't just dark. It was snowing. And where there was snow, there was ice. And I didn't want to risk a sprained ankle going down that valley slope. Not without cell service. Not when the weather called for a cold snap tonight. So I kept to the side of the road with my eyes and ears on. And as I walked, something caught my attention. It was above me, all the way up on the top of the hill, nestled near the military facility. Headlights. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that those lights

belonged to the sheriff, hold up there in his SUV and looking for cars on the roads. Too bad for him that I was smarter than that. I didn't just leave my truck at home. I made sure to wear my black jacket and keep close to the tree line. There wasn't a chance in hell he was spotting me down here. Even still, his presence made my skin crawl. There's something uncomfortable about being watched, and even though I knew the sheriff couldn't see me, it still felt tense to be breaking the law right under his nose. I decided I wanted to disappear, just until I got myself firmly away from his field of view, so I slipped into the woods, keeping certain not to stray too far from the road, just far enough that I lost sight of the sheriff beyond the canopy of fir trees.

I walked like that for maybe five or ten minutes, kept it up until I rounded the bend in the road, and then I poked my head out and breathed a sigh of relief. The headlights were nowhere to be seen. The sheriff either took off, or I put enough twists and turns between us that the trees were now obscuring his view. Maybe he just figured nobody would break curfew on a night this cold. Either way, it was good news for me. I hiked back up to the road and then froze. Again, I felt that familiar, uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Like there was somebody stalking me in the dark.

I looked around, but I couldn't see a damn thing. Light blinded me. I stumbled backward, slipping on a patch of ice, and falling onto my ass. Ahead of me, near the curve in the road was a pair of headlights. The sheriff must have been scanning the road with a pair of binoculars to spot me all the way down here. Still, there was a pretty good chance he never made out my face. That meant I could still get away. I shot into the woods. I slipped down the valley slope, sliding over dirt and leaves and fresh-fallen snow.

I jumped and dipped, doing the best I could to dodge the onslaught of stray branches and renegade roots. I kept at it until my lungs got hot and I needed to breathe. Then I kept out at it some more until I reached the valley floor. Breathing hard, I looked back at the top of the slope. If I thought it was dark upon the road, then down here, it was practically pitch black. I couldn't even see the ground directly in front of me. But despite it all, I knew one thing for certain. There weren't any headlights.

I took a moment to lean up against a tree. Catch my breath. Get my bearings. I had to figure out which direction Vanny's house was in. Was it to the north? Northeast? The cold nipped at my ears, bit at my nose. It was worse down here.

The fucking sheriff really made a mess of things. I glanced up again, up to where I knew the road was, even if I couldn't see it. There wasn't so much as the background glow of headlights. That meant the canopy of trees must be thick, thick enough that even an SUV's LED lights weren't going to warm their way inside or out. My hands found my phone in my pocket. No service. But that wasn't what I needed it for right now.

Instead, I flicked its flashlight on. Good. That was better. Shivering, I used the dim glow of my phone to navigate as best I could, spotting familiar landmarks that I remembered from playing in the valley as a kid, and using those to plot my course to Vannies. A big boulder here, a broken tree there. It was all coming back to me. I was going to make it out of here with all my fingers and toes intact.

Sheriff be damned. I took a moment to laugh at my situation. Now it seemed absurd. I'd just run into the dark woods, evading police, all so I could spend a few hours with Vanny. She was either going to love that or hate it. I couldn't decide which. Something snapped behind me. A tree branch, maybe?

Something big. I paused, wheeling around, casting my light as far as it could go. I couldn't see anything but the shadow of tree trunks and fresh-fallen snow. I knew for a fact that there were bears in those woods, but surely they'd be hibernating by this time of year. Hello? I whispered.

I didn't think the sheriff had the dexterity to chase me down here on foot. But it was possible he sent his partner after me. Deputy Marigold? No reply. Come to think of it, I couldn't hear any sound at all. Not the pitter-patter of squirrels hoarding winter food, or even the flap of birds flying through the trees.

The forest was still. Silent. Then something else snapped. This time, there was no mistaking how big it was. It rang out like a gunshot, scrambled, running blindly backwards as my ears filled with the sound of rushing branches, ricocheting off timber as a tree plummeted toward the earth. The crash found me before I could fully clear the way. A fir branch whipped across the back of my jacket, smashing me to the ground

and taking the breath out of my lungs. I weased, gasped for breath. I rose onto my hands and knees, trembling with adrenaline. I nearly got flattened just then, and I couldn't even tell where the tree had fallen from or what caused it. I stumbled forward. No time to think about that right now. Not when I was so close to Vannies. Just a little further, and I'd be out of these woods and in front of a warm stove, making those Gioza things she loved so much. It only took a couple minutes for me to calm down. The act of almost dying is enough to throw anybody into a panic. But I'd been around the woods enough to know that they were unpredictable. nature just did as nature did. There wasn't any stopping it. Sometimes trees fell. Sometimes,

if you were unlucky, they fell right on top of you. I carried on for another few minutes when the feeling came back. The feeling from up on the road, the one where I couldn't shake the sensation of being watched. I swallowed. My light painted as much as the wood as I could. And from what I could see there was nobody else down here. No sheriff, no deputy. It was my imagination, I reasoned. A dark forest is the ultimate evolutionary fear, the unknown, the hostility of the environment. As human beings, we aren't meant to be roaming the woods at night, but I wasn't some caveman hunter-gatherer. I was smarter than that. Besides, I could see the other slope now. I could see dim moonlight peeking through the trees, and that meant I was right below Vanny's house.

A low-grown filled the night. I raised my light, doing my best to peer into the wall of trees, but I couldn't make out a damn thing. Hello? I called. Is somebody out there? An awful feeling was growing in my gut, an instinct. No longer did I feel like I was being watched. I felt like I was being hunted. Time to get a move on. I shook my head, muttered a f*** this, and took off toward Vanny's house at a sprint. Snow crunched beneath my boots and my breaths came out in a great white fog. If there was some psychopath in the trees, then I wasn't about to make any of this easy on them. They would have to work for their sick kicks. A screech pierced the forest. In the far distance I heard the beat of wings, of birds

fleeing en masse. Then came the sound of footsteps. They were soft, barely crunching in the blanket of snow, No, but unmistakable, heavy, deliberate, closing in. I wheeled around and ran up the slope, only to slip on a patch of fresh ice and smash my jaw against the ground. Pain flared across my face. I spit a mouthful of blood and at least one of my teeth while my fingernails dug into the bark of a nearby tree, using it as leverage to get back to my feet. Get away from me! I shouted, stay the hell away!

I had my back to the valley's edge, facing the wall of dark trees. facing my stalker in the night. I needed to figure out a way to scramble up the slope without slipping and breaking my neck, but I didn't exactly have boots for winter climbing. I'm armed. I lied, trying to buy time. So if I were you, I'd turn right around and start walking.

Otherwise, you're getting my 45 between the eyes. No answer except the shuffle of feet beyond my vision. Whatever was out there sounded big. A moose, maybe. That would explain the gentle steps and the power to knock over old trees. I racked my mind. What the hell was it you did to scare off moose? Making yourself big was for mountain lions. Loud noises, was it? I said leave! I shouted at the top of my lungs. A deafening

screech met my ears, loud enough that the pressure of it made my eyes feel like they were going to pop in my skull. I clenched my ears and fell to my knees. Tears stained my cheeks, freezing in the air. Light blinded me. I shielded my eyes, Stunned and disoriented as two headlights beamed down at me not ten feet away. I scrambled backward. How the hell had the sheriff made it into the valley with that SUV? I barely made it on foot. The lights vibrated, moving closer to me.

Something wasn't right. They didn't approach with the rolling sound of a car tire, but rather the crunch of a foot in snow. Not only that, but they were doing things I'd never seen headlights do in all of my life. They were blinking. Something reached out. A long, twisted and gnarled arm that looked like it ought to have belonged to a tree, grabbed me by my torso, snapping my ribs like twigs.

I threw back my head and screamed. A voice reached my ears, something deep and cold, colder than winter, it said. This is the part where I tell you I managed to get away, that I kicked the creature in its giant white eyes and made a beeline up the slope, never to see the monster again. I wish I could tell you that. I really do. The truth is much worse.

Vanney Williams saved my life that night. One last time. This time she didn't fish a handgun out of my mouth or spill my whiskey off of the balcony. She saved it in a shower of bullets up there on the valley ridge. She saved it doing what she did best, shooting, hunting. My guess is she heard my screams and came. running, looking to help. She probably didn't even know it was me. Vanny was just that kind of

woman, kind-hearted, warm. I don't know if she knew what that thing was either, but she caught it in the face with at least six separate shots, six bullets to its head, and it still climbed the slope of the valley like an ant-hill, six bullets to the head, and it still took her screaming into the trees to God knows where. Now she's another statistic, one of the missing. The sheriff's calling me crazy for what I saw, telling everybody that I'm a drunk, and Fanny just had enough in skip town like the rest. I know what I saw, though. I know there's a monster roaming these hills.

And I know the sheriff and that military base have something to do with it. I know it stole the only woman I ever loved. And I know damn well, I'll never rest until I get her back. So I think that's why I'm doing it. Going on a little stroll into the woods. Story 3. The Dead World It happened late. I suppose these things always do.

The end of the world isn't exactly a rise and shine operation, you know? It's a big decision, nuclear war. You think you're ready to drop the bombs. But then you figure it's probably best to sleep on it. Then you wake up and think maybe, just maybe. We'll first see how the day plays out. Maybe somebody convinces you not to press the button. Maybe the world gives you a reason it shouldn't go up and smoke like the stock market,

like the riots in the streets, like the futures of an entire generation. Or maybe there are no reasons. Maybe starting fresh as all that's left. Maybe cleaning humanity off of this rock is the only truly moral choice left to make. I don't know. All I know is it's been a week since the blast. A week since I ran to the bunker. alone, forced to leave my family behind. If that sounds callous, then just know it wasn't me who

abandoned them. They were disbelievers, all of them. They called me crazy for building the bunker, called me insane for stockpiling canned rations ten feet under the dirt. I tried to explain to them that we were running out of time, that if they cared enough to open their eyes, there were signs that the end was coming. But to them, that was just noise. more chatter from a lunatic. They stuck their noses up at me all the way to the end. When the air raid siren sounded, my wife grabbed my son and daughter

and screamed at me to leave the house, to never come back. So I did. I left them there. There simply wasn't any time to fight her for the kids, to fight the kids who were wholesale convinced I was a fraud, a liar. The bombs were coming,

and the bunker was a hundred feet away, buried beneath the forest behind our farm. I didn't have a choice, you understand? No choice but to run. So that's just what I did. I ran and ran with tears in my eyes for my family. And just as I closed the heavy steel door of the bunker, I felt the low rumble of the first explosion.

Then the next. Like I said, it's been a week. I figure the worst of the fallout has dissipated by now. It'll be just the fires that are left. the fires that there's nobody left to put out. Soon though, once the flames have exhausted their supply of wooden homes and fuel-laden vehicles, they'll die too. And then the new world will emerge. The dead world.

The dark truth is that the nightmare of nuclear Armageddon takes place in three stages. The first is what people often assume to be the worst. The bombs, the explosions. The mushroom clouds and the scream. and the running and the sirens. Truthfully, though, that's the easy part. At that stage, you're just afraid or dead. That's all.

After that comes the flames and radiation. They do some damage, maybe more than the bombs when you consider the pain inflicted. But even they pale in comparison to the third stage, the dead world. In the dead world, the strings that tie us together are burned away. There are no rules. There are no rules. There are no customs. There is no humanity. It's chaos, unbridled, and hopeless. Raiders roameding smoldering city streets, pillaging and raping and torturing for scraps of food. People are rounded up like cattle, butchered and eaten. That, I think, is the stage we're beginning to enter, the stage of desperation.

Even now, I hear a band of raiders above me. I've made certain my bunker is well hidden, but it's possible that the blasts have swept away the dirt camouflaging my hatch. It's possible I could be found. In moments like these, I'm almost glad my family perished in the blast. I shuddered to think what the monsters above would do to them, to my wife and my daughter. Still, I've covered my bases. The raiders likely arrived to see if there were any animals left alive on the farm, or crops left to reap. They wouldn't be here looking for underground bunkers. Bang, bang, bang! The sound echoes around my bunker like a heart attack.

I freeze. Through inches of steel, I hear the muffled chorus of human shouting, moving. Bang, bang, bang! There's more shouting. I slink to the wall of my bunker. Pick up my rifle and load around into the chamber. I'm panicking for no reason, I tell myself. I'm making much ado about nothing.

Even with a band of raiders, there's simply no way that could break the reinforced steel hatch. not even with a pair of bolt cutters. There's the sound of something clanking. It sounds like metal on metal. Did they attach something to the hatch? Above. An engine roars to life. Something powerful.

A truck, maybe. It screams as its wheels tear into the dirt above, and my pulse races. My hands grip my rifle, raising it toward the hatch, toward the intruders. It shudders. The hatch shudders like it's going to bend,

warp. But instead it snaps clean off. I'm blinded by the afternoon sun. I shield my eyes as best I can. But there's no shielding my lungs from the fallout in the air. I'm armed! I scream, hacking a cough. I'll blow the heads off any of you f*** that wants to try me.

There's a beat of silence. Mr. Fulton. A voice blares over a megaphone. You're under arrest. Come out with your hands up. You think you're going to fool me with that spew? I snarl. I cockle.

the rifle and let off a warning shot through the open hatch. Birds scatter from the trees above. Coming in closer and the next bullets going straight through your head! Something drops from the top of the hatch. It's small, oval-shaped, and it bounces on the steel floor once, twice, before rolling to a stop. It's a metal canister. Smoke, hisses out of it.

I open my eyes and realize I've been abducted, stolen away. The familiar steel walls of my bunker are gone. replaced with cream wallpaper and drab lighting. It's an office building, or at least it was one before the world went tits up. Where am I? I ask, groggy. My head is throbbing. Vision still blurry from the gas. You're at the precinct. I'm Detective Veneer, and I'll be conducting your interview. Interview? The room around me is sparsely furnished.

There's nothing between me and the liar but a wooden table. a cup of coffee and some empty creamer. It's a nice set, but it isn't fooling me. I don't have anything more than what was in the bunker, you hear? So you can call your rating party back and let me go. Why did you do it? He's fishing for answers, fishing for details he can use to find my backup rations,

buried out back behind the barn. I won't say a word, though, no matter how much I'm gaslit. What's the matter? The liar says, standing up and adjusting his tie. Was a week not enough time to dream up an alibi? It occurs to me that he's gone through a lot of effort to put up this ruse. To pretend society isn't a fractured, crumbling memory.

He's even dressed the part. I don't know what you're talking about, I say. The bombs, he snaps. You don't know about the bombs? My mouth twitches. What the hell was his angle? To throw so many competing stories at me that I started questioning my own reality, Of course I know about the bombs.

I spit. I've known about the bombs for a long time. Anybody could have seen this coming. His fist hits the table. There's anger in his eyes. Raged like I've never seen before. His facade is slipping. How long?

Long enough to build a bunker and survive the blast. And your family? My voice dies in my throat. How? I say hoarsely. What the hell gives you the right to talk about my family? Where are they? He's looking for a reaction.

He's trying his best to get me emotional, to get me to let down my guard long enough to spill my secrets and tell them about the cash behind the barn. They're dead, I tell him. They died in the blast. The liar masquerading as a detective leans over the prop table. He taps his finger on the surface. What blast, he says.

My jaw clenches. My hands ball into fists. I want to leap across the table and slug the motherfucker for invoking my loved ones, for cursing me with the pain of their memory. But then he wins. Then he knows he can get me talking with the proper stimulation. I'm not talking, I tell him. No, he says. What blast.

I don't know, I snap. I wasn't standing around to count how many bombs fell, to point out which one killed my family. But you are standing around when we opened your bunker, weren't you? You saw the trees, the birds. How many nukes hit your farm do you think? Must be pretty sturdy bird nests. I open my mouth to speak, but the words aren't there. The liar doesn't seem to mind.

In fact, it seems he realizes he's found my weak point. He knows I'm breakable now. Fuck. He walks around the table, sizes me up, then stalks over to the blinds covering the windows. He gives them a tug. More sunlight. It's blinding again. I hear the sound of a window sliding open, and suddenly my ears are assaulted with lies,

a symphony of deception, cars honking, people yelling in the street, music. Then the world comes into focus, and I see just how deep this act goes. They've set up a projector on the wall. It's a film reel from the old world with its tall buildings, its people walking to and from work, and its cars spitting methane into the air. It took me a week to find your bunker. the liar says, coming back around to his chair. He slips a laptop from a bag beneath the table.

I had to comb through your online activity. Match up receipts. Call the company that installed your tin can. It took some work, but we figured out where you were hiding eventually. I don't speak. Their operation is more sophisticated than I expected. Much more. Let me tell you what happened, Mr. Fulton.

The raider says, You fell down a rabbit hole of online conspiracy. You convinced yourself the world was ending, that there were psychic vampires living among us, infecting our every level of society. You convinced yourself that the only way to stop them was to start from scratch, and that our world leaders knew this

and planned a global nuclear strike for New Year's Day, 2022. My body is shaking. As much as I tried to pretend his lies aren't affecting me, they are. It's poison. to my ears. You're one of them, aren't you? Bitter too, I bet. There won't be enough food for you psychic vampires to sustain yourselves on now that humanity is halfway to extinction. The liar gives me a hard look, then opens his laptop. He clicks around some, types a bit on the keyboard,

then turns the screen around to face me. It's a picture of my house. It's blown to pieces. There's barely anything left but wooden splinters and smoldering. ashes from the blast. See this? He taps something in the bottom corner of the image. It's a mess of colors, of pixels. It's red, pinkish, and scattered in several pieces. That's your daughter, he says. My jaw drops. A sinking feeling grows in the pit of my stomach, unshakable and awful. Still, I knew there would be horror in the aftermath of nuclear war. I knew. I also knew it would be a necessary price to pay. He taps another section of the screen. The picture zooms in. Over here, we think this might be a piece of your wife's skull, though it could also be your

sons. Their corpses are in so many pieces. It's hard to say which hawk of flesh belongs to who. You're sick, I say. I don't want to see this. Put it away. Wait, he tells me. You haven't seen the best part. More tapping. More zooming in. This time. the pixels are dark. There's something 30 feet away from the rubble of the house, something gray and familiar. Stop, I tell him, looking away. What's the matter? You set that speaker up, didn't you? Put it right there in the yard. I don't want to be here. This isn't real. It's a lie. All of this is a lie. A sophisticated sci-op designed to trick me into emotional vulnerability, staged by psychic vampires to feed off of my pain. Yes, that much is clear to me now. This is too sophisticated

for the average raider. Since reality seems to confuse you, Mr. Fulton, let me tell you what happened. The vampire leans back. A smug smirk on his weasel face. You rigged your own house with enough explosives to sink a battleship. Bombs planted everywhere from under the couch to inside the walls. You set it to blow the day the nukes were supposed to fly. Why? That's simple. You didn't want anybody finding any hints about where your bunker was. Just in case the ICBMs missed your rural slice of butt-le-no-where. You didn't want your family above ground, freely able to give away your location to psychic vampires.

This is textbook emotional manipulation, a specialty of his breed. I won't let him gaslight me, though. I won't let him feed off of me. He reaches into his bag and pulls out an old book, My journal. Pick this up in your bunker, Fulton. He flips through the pages, reading through it, you'd almost think you gave a damn about your family. After all, the sirens were for them, weren't they? You set them up to play, hoping it'd convince them at long last that nuclear war was well and truly underway. You hoped it'd convince them to follow you into the bunker,

to bury them underground so their thoughts were safe from attack from, a psychic vampires. Yeah, things like you, I spit. You gave them one last test of faith. One last chance to follow you into your rabbit hole of madness, and they refused. For that, you killed them. Fuck you. I say, my voice quivering.

You're nothing but a lying sack of psychic shit. You think I can't feel you probing my thoughts, gaslighting me? I wish I was lying, Mr. Fulton. I really do. The vampire sighs, packs up his laptop, and rises from the table. I feel bad for you truthfully.

Sooner or later, you're going to realize you were wrong. I don't know if it's going to happen when I leave this room, or when you get to prison, but it will happen. And when it does, it's going to break you. He heads for the door, grabs the handle, and then stops. For what it's worth, I looked into those conspiracies of yours.

Some were pretty convincing. They laid it out and easy to understand. terms, made sensible links between the vampires, the pyramids, and the moon landing. He chuckles to himself. I guess the only problem I had was that at the end of the day, none of their sh** stood up to reality. It only made sense in a vacuum. As soon as you looked outside the conspiracy community, as soon as you realized how many little lies you needed to be fed, to make the big lies seem palatable. Well, that's when the whole facade broke for me. He grips the doorframe, shakes his head and laughs.

It's more exciting than reality, though. I'll give you that. He exits the room, leaving me alone in his elaborate set. I take a moment to admire the detail in the projector screen, the crispness of the sound system, and the smell of fresh coffee. It's impressive. He went to great lengths to pull the wool over my eyes. But unfortunately for him, I'm not a sheep. I know the nukes fell.

I know we beat back the psychic vampires, and I know human civilization is in ashes. I also know it's for the best. The only thing I can't quite explain are the blinds. There's something about the way they dance up and down in front of the projection of the open window. The way I can feel the coolness of a breeze that's hard to explain. Part of me wants to get up and check just to make sure they're fake. But then I think about how pointless that be. I already know the truth after all.

Thank you.