Era - Z

Chapter One: Unthawed and Awake

Subject: LEWIS RUSSO
Days Slept:73,049

"BEEEEEEP!"

    With a sharp exhale, I opened my eyes in sudden shock. My ears were throbbing from the astounding volume of the alarm ringing above my head. I saw a frosted piece of glass in front of me that was taller than me. A faint amber light flashed from behind the glass, but I couldn't see much of anything else. I glanced down to see a solid block of ice encapsulating my whole body. My teeth began to chatter, and a shock of adrenaline began to take over my body. My breath fogged up the glass in front of me even further.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me out there?! Hello? HELLO!?"
No response. The alarm kept ringing, and the amber light flashed rhythmically with it. The stillness was eerie, and it sent shivers down my body (along with the onset of hypothermia that was about to kick in). "CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?? HELP! LET ME OUT!!" I shouted.
Claustrophobia was setting in, and my breathing became more rushed. My heartbeat was pounding quickly, and my fear began to take over my mind. I started wriggling and writhing around to break free but to no avail. Nothing was working. My whole body. Up to my chest. Was encased. Within. An. Ice. Cube. What a cold way to die...
    Suddenly, a cold, wet sensation plopped onto my forehead. It traveled down towards my cheek, and realized it was a water droplet! I glanced upward and saw that the ceiling had condensation forming above me. Then again, another droplet came down, and splashed into my eye! I winced and blinked it out, and saw the view beyond the frosted glass more visibly. Steam built up from within the case, which then fogged up the glass again, but the droplets were gathering into bigger pools below my frozen feet. The ice was melting, and with each drop, I would be closer to getting out of this thing.
    A few moments later, high-powered heaters from above and around my body powered up, and blew hot air onto the ice. I could see my toes now, and there was a drain that covered the whole bottom of the case that I was in.
With a sudden "HISSSSSSSS!" The door opened up slowly and vertically from a Hunger above me. The air from outside the pod hit my frigid, frozen body. It felt warm on my chilled face, and I felt encouraged and motivated to try and break free. A few seconds later, the door halted, and I could see the room where I was being held. The cold light from the LED fixture on the ceiling flickered, and the room had light blue and white walls like a hospital. The amber light flashed with the alarm that seemed to get louder now that the door opened up. There was also a counter with a metal sink and cabinets over the top. However, some of the cabinet doors were either opened or even broken off and lying on the floor, which seemed unusual to me. Medical facilities are fairly tidy and cleaned up. They have to be that way for the various sick patients that come through...
Streams of ice water dribbled and cascaded down from the sides of the casing and my body. I was able to wiggle around, and as I did, the ice shattered around my limbs, and I was free from my possible icy grave!
However, as I tried to step out of the pod, my legs gave out from under me, and I smacked into the floor like a semi-thawed frozen fish. "Oww..." I muttered weakly.
I was still shivering violently, so I coiled up into the fetal position to hopefully warm up. Warmth eventually came to me, and so did my thoughts and senses. I looked down at my body, and I was in some sort of wetsuit. It was a dark gray rubber material with some type of nodes that covered the suit like it was supposed to monitor my bodily functions and condition. I looked over at the pod that I came from and inspected it. It was like a casket that stood up vertically, and the glass door wouldn't click into place, and the door would vacuum seal into place to keep things out, and keep the person inside safe. On the side of this thing was lettering that was stenciled onto the side. It read: CRYOPOD MK I
On that same side was a digital screen that had my name: Lewis Russo, and the days that I slept within the cryopod. "What the hell? That can't be right. Nurse! Nurse! Can anyone hear me!?"
I also could see that four other pods circled a cylindrical tube that must've been a power supply for these machines. The LED lights within this room flickered faintly, but I also saw light fixtures that were either shattered or not working at all. From where I was laying, it seemed like this place is more unkempt than it should be. Something was amiss.
I put my hands on the ground and forced myself to sit up. I still felt weak, and my stomach rumbled. I was starving and needed to eat something. Maybe my strength will return once I eat something. I got myself into a kneeling position, and then I rose steadily. As I did, dizziness came over me, so I took a few steps over to the countertop and held onto it for a few seconds. I had to breathe slowly and steadily, and after I did that, the dizziness left me. I inspected the cabinets above the counter, and the ones that had doors torn off had nothing inside, but as I slid towards the last cabinet, I opened it up and found a granola bar. The instinct came over me, and I grabbed it from the counter, tore open the plastic, and began eating it. The crunchiness of the granola was amazing, and the sweet taste of the fruit in it was satisfactory. It felt like I hadn't eaten for days, and everything tasted amazing, so I continued eating the granola bar ravenously.
As I did this, memories were coming to me like ripples from a rock that was skipped into the sea. I remembered bits of my childhood and a little bit of my past. One memory, in particular, was when I was a younger kid, like seven years old, my dad and I played pretend together. We were running around our backyard with toy swords, fighting armies of evil orcs and dragons, and saving the kingdoms that we created in our minds.
His name was Jonathan James Russo. He was a single dad that bore the responsibility of raising me, which was tough because I was a cracked-out child. My mother died from giving birth to me, so I never got to meet her. Nevertheless, my dad still raised me. I also remembered him being a scientist that was a part of many projects. I think these cryopods were one of the projects that he was a part of.
I then snapped back into reality and saw a full-body mirror on the opposite side of the room. There I was, all lanky, with short brown hair, and a clean-cut face, with blue eyes. "I lost some weight there," I murmured.
I looked to the opposite side of the mirror (the left of my pod) and saw a wall of five lockers. These lockers held our items before we entered the cryopods. I hope my stuff is still inside my locker.
They were tall, skinny lockers with a brushed metal finish and an eye scanner in the middle of the door that acted as a lock. The odd thing though was that one of these lockers had the door opened, but it was hanging from one hinge like it was pulled off. There was also a slight indent on the front of the door too, and a heavy-duty microscope lying on the ground below it. I scanned the names on the front of the lockers, which were: L. Jenkins, E. Makarov, M. Oxlong, J. Russo, and L. Russo. Once I found my name, I looked into the scanner to get it unlocked. No response. I inspected the scanner further and found the power button, however, even though I tried to turn it on and off, it still didn't work. "Looks like I'll have to resort to violence towards this door," I muttered.
I picked up the microscope, but the weight of the thing almost sent me off balance. My strength wasn't at one hundred percent already, but that thing was heavy! I held it with both hands and got myself in a better stance for slamming the thing into the locker door. I reared back and began slamming the locker with the weighted end of the microscope like a battering ram.
"WHACK.....WHACK.....WHACK.....WHACK!"
With that last resounding smash, the scanner broke off, and the door cracked ajar. I set the microscope down, and I opened the locker to find my locker undisturbed, and nothing stolen inside. There was my black leather jacket hanging on a hanger inside, with my blue and white sneakers, some black socks, dark blue jeans, a gray T-shirt, and my wallet, keys, and my pocket knife. "Now that is a layer of dust... This is going to suck shaking out. Well, here goes nothing." I muttered begrudgingly.
The whole room was enveloped with a great big ole dust cloud. I just about choked to death from the immense volume of dust that came off of everything I had in that locker! After a few minutes of suffocating, coughing, and sneezing, the cloud dissipated, and my clothes looked cleaner than they were.
I took off the wetsuit and began putting on my clothing. Why was there so much dust? Was I actually out that long? Am I dreaming this all up? A few minutes later, I was clothed and ready to go. It was time to get out of this place and figure out what has been happening in this place.
I turned to head towards the doorway out of the room, however, I also knew that my dad might be in one of these pods. So before I left, I decided to check the pods for any signs of my father. I walked towards the cryopods facing the door and stopped in my tracks at a disturbing sight. It was a vacant pod that had its glass door shattered, revealing nothing but cobwebs, dust, and a rustic brown substance that dried onto the jagged edges of the broken glass. There were glass shards littering the ground below it, and a trail of the brown substance splattered and dribbled towards the door out of the room. The screen on this pod was faded, but I could make out the last name as Jenkins. I checked the other pod next to it, and I gasped in terror at what I saw inside.
A frozen body, with decayed, sunken skin, with their mouth wide open as if they were screaming out in excruciating pain. Tubes and pipes that held the nitrogen busted and pointed out toward this person. The nitrogen and other gasses must have suffocated and frozen them to death. The screen below was faded too, but I made out the name Michelle Oxlong on the panel.
I walked around the other pods, and they were vacant. The glass doors were opened up, and I looked down to see the panels that had the names Edwin Makarov, and Jonathan Russo.
My muscles relaxed slightly because he didn't suffer a fate like the other two people in our pod room, but there was still one question left unanswered. Where did my father go? I took a second to breathe and calm myself because I felt my anxiety rise again as I approached the door. "Alrighty, let's see if I can find my dad or any other clues as to what's happened here in this place," I said to myself.
The doorway was like a semi-circle, with double doors that met in the middle, with a panel off to the right with buttons like an elevator door. The panel itself had two buttons with the symbols for open and close. There was a smudged handprint below the panel, but one of the fingertips smudged over the button to open the door. Upon seeing this, I realized that this substance is blood, and the dribbled trail is also blood. Chills ran down my spine at my sudden, yet delayed revelation. I exhaled and pushed the dirty button. The doors parted away with a soft "HISS!" And a harsh blast of cold air wafted onto me. The doorway revealed only darkness, with a couple of faint, flickering lights emitting from the distance down the hallway to the right.
I stepped out into the darkness slowly and began my journey to figure out what was going on and also to find a way out of this place. When I stepped into the hall, the scene was strange, and beyond unnerving. The walls and ceiling of the ten-foot wide by ten-foot-tall hallway were covered in sheets of ice. Huge icicles formed into thick stalactites from the ceiling, and stalagmites were formed from the drippings above, covering the floor in most places in ice. The lights flickered faintly down the hall, giving me only glimpses of the path ahead. The darkness of the hall was more constant, and the cold was exceedingly more intense. My breath was fogging up in front of me, and I was shivering again.
The blood trail continued down the hall, but it vanished into the heavy shadows farther down. I gulped down my fear, and crept down the hall with great prudence, following the dried-up bloody trail.
I was intrigued by all of the ice formations, but it also made traveling more difficult because of the icy daggers and lances sticking out from the ground and up above me on the ceiling. Cautiously, I crept forward and stuck my hand out in front of me to feel about any obstacles in my way. When the lights danced on the walls, I also saw what seemed to be dark splatters of blood that horrifically painted them. There were hospital beds overturned and papers that were crumpled and dropped everywhere. I was nearing the turn in the hall where the blood trailed off, which was cascaded in the flickering lights above. As I passed under the light, I felt a welcoming warmth emitting from the light, and it filled me with a little bit of hope as I kept going down the next hall. And then, I stopped in my tracks at the sight of a dead body sitting, and hunched over on the right side of the hall.
His hands and feet were frozen in ice, and his head leaned off to the side. His eye sockets were exposed, and the skin around his face hung loosely. The unnerving thing about him was that not only was his skin decayed and peeling, but at the same time, it looked as if this man had parts of his skin peeled off in places like his arms and parts of his legs. Worst of all, his whole stomach was just a gaping, empty hole. It looked like his insides were cleaned out like a jack-o-lantern on Halloween. His ribs near his chest were pulled apart, sticking out like bone claws reaching out to me. The blood trail stopped at his body, and it pooled from around him. It looked like this happened years ago, because the stench of death was weak, but the scene of this still made me nauseous. It was Jenkins, and it looked like he didn't make it out like I had hoped.