Word Count

Word Count
Part One

Survival.
Silence.
Bitterness.

I wrote this stack of nouns which filled my days for five years. I knew of some of them, and became lost in the winding confusion of the others. I didn’t think of them as being every-day, because I thought I was living a better life every day than I really was. I was really killing myself. Not in the way where every item would stack up to break me, until  I would electrocute myself in my bathroom because of the weight of it all. The words were instead disjointed and telling in themselves. It was impossible to perceive them all at once.

Anger.
Strangeness.
Arguments.

There is one word for every year of my life before it was taken from me. If I would continue the list for every year since then, I would add only five words. Those first 18 years stacked up ostensibly in a healthy fashion, and it might be shocking what a change has overcome me. Yet only because I regretted change did I foster each of these individual nouns, until my demise, almost four days ago. I couldn’t see the road.

Driving.
Drinking.
Cigarettes.

It didn’t matter because I was going to pick up my friend just a few blocks away. I was leaning under the dashboard to see beneath the fog on my window in the car. I thought I was in the middle of the road, and edged closer to the right side where I met a stop sign, rolled down the windows, and checked both ways. Jeez, it was cold.

Socklessness.
Coughing.
Fear.

The people that lived in Little River with us were like obstacles or trash on the side of the road. Janus and I could drive around them or over them, but each person would send us off course a little more. We were crashing down the hill, trying not to kill somebody else or ourselves. The trash had really been piling up. When we landed, what would happen? Would we find ourselves in a bustle of fast food packaging and roadkill? Or could keep up our momentum forever?

God.
Loathing.
Microphones.

It was from the moment I tried to lie to them that I had been hooked, and then sunk. I’m going to my home, sir. I twitched when I said it. I knew I had lost. The cell phone was in my jacket pocket. I couldn’t use it anyway, but they asked me to remove my jacket for the handcuffs, and that was the last chance I had of talking to anyone I loved before the interrogation.

Flashlights.
Cops.

I palmed the drive until at the very last moment it was found.

Inevitability.

Part Two

At his job, earlier that day, we felt a little overwhelmed by the situation. We didn’t know it would escalate to this. We saw the customers come in to buy beer, and leave to pump their tanks with gasoline, and even purchase lotto tickets. By then we knew the truth. Janus was insane behind the counter.  In the times when it was just us, we stole short conversations.

“Do you know who I work for?” he said. “Literally no one. They’ve all—“

Someone pulled to the gas pump which made an alarm sound that he switched off. He lowered his voice and told me his boss had been taken by the cops in the 90s. I had already begun to grasp the enormity of the situation in the town. I urged him again to leave with me tonight.

“I’ve done this before. We might have to in order to survive, Janus,” I said. “I’m thinking about our safety.”

“As pathetic as this sounds, I can’t leave the place,” he said. “I have a feeling the whole town will shut down if I leave. It’s not like I run the place—we both know who does that. But it would be absolute chaos if I left my shift. We’d probably be chased down by the feds or something.”

Janus had a history of acting out. It hadn’t been good for the project. He had explained to me the last time it happened that he had no choice in the matter. The residents of Little River were abominable fiends. He was just the unfortunate dealer of karmic punishment for them. He held the door open with his arm, outstretched and shaking, for his most recent customer who was leaving to pump his car. We would smoke a cigarette and, he had agreed, I would go home to begin packing our tools.

I would put all the files on two micro cards, and reduce our computer equipment to the barest minimum: a tablet, which would serve as a monitor; his desktop with audio and video; none of the musical stuff; just about half a pint of vaporizer liquid (this would save us hundreds of dollars on cigarettes); the nootropics, and the extra drives. When he got off work, I had the feeling it didn’t matter. There was no leaving the town without being stopped by the police. We were a target due to our style of journalism, and a priority on this particular night due to uploading certain documents to current.com which ripped apart any defense the local industry could possibly have regarding the safety of the residents of Little River.

Our fate was with the people of Little River. The evidence was the people themselves.

Part 3

I wouldn’t see his face for over 3 days. After five years, we had been busted. We hadn’t planned for the authorities to keep us apart when it finally happened, though it seemed painfully obvious we should have. He and I didn’t think we would be busted. I thought we could survive.

The overall plan, which we had discussed briefly in the past, was to remain as silent as possible and let the journalism speak for itself.  The police interrogations could take place when we were in our cell or when we were in the interrogation room. We were being watched for any sign of weakness at all times. I refused to sign any papers except the one stating that I could be released if bail was paid. I could only imagine what Janus was doing, although we were most likely identical in our solving the situation. The local jail was new to us.

If the news of our capture hit the media group we were communicating with, we would most likely be freed. The group would be obliged to pay our bail when they received our full documentation of the crimes committed in Little River. But what would happen to the general population of just under 3 thousand?

The citizen with their destroyed minds, from the drinking supply, and the disfigured children: would they be taken to a prison? Would they get a settlement? What could people in that state do with any money? The mutagens had taken over a large portion of local the population’s brains. Would those people be killed?

I didn’t know when to tell the police of what was contained in our files. I was afraid Janus wouldn’t know whether or not to confirm my claim or deny it.  Ultimately I decided after the third night to make my statement. The files contain a program for synthesizing a virus which can reverse the annihilation of the people who had, on most accounts, devolved into pathological mental states. I warned the police that they must expose the victims of Little River’s industrial crimes to the file to just a few people at a time, in secret, in order for the leader to not discover them. He was most likely capable of taking down forty armed men unscathed.

Janus and I had been camping on the edge of a virtual battleground for over five years, and finally had the proof that Little River was home to 2,598 zombified humans. We had only survived by listening to music which we created to combat regular hypnosis attacks. The police were completely inept at recognizing or solving the problem. We had nearly died on several occasions, or worse: become one of them.

When Janus and I were finally back together, we were given five minutes to show the authorities our files.  I approached the desktop, and my drives and other items, and laughed out loud. “Janus. I can type 120 words per minute. Can you write something in less than 600 words that proves we’re heroes? They’ll need us to quarantine the people of Little River properly. That’s what we need to do—not give up the files.”

He said yes, and did it in less than 600 words. He did it in eighteen. I added five:
THERE’S NO GOING BACK NOW.