Undead School

The Last 11237 Words of the Book

"Evelyn, you genius." Charlie murmured as I giggled. "Seriously, you are more cunning and sly than the scientists have told me." I stopped laughing and just shrugged at Charlie's satisfied smile.

"They think pretty highly of me for some reason," I said and rolled my head on the culling device. "And what are you if not a scientist?" I had so much more I wanted to say, but I figured I wouldn't try and throw all of it at him right away.

Charlie shrugged sheepishly as he fiddled with the machine's many buttons and knobs. "I'm technically an intern. Worked part-time since school was easy. I'm supposed to be some sort of nerd prodigy. Anyways, they took me on full time a month ago, and then I learned about all of this." Charlie just gestured everywhere.

"Not a fan...?" I murmured under my breath but Charlie caught it.

"Not a fan, indeed." He said, finishing up with changing the controls. Next, he attached electrodes to my head and made sure everything was secure. "Alright, this is going to be hard, almost harder than a legitimate culling. The device logs every memory I bring to the surface of your mind, so in order to not get caught doing this, I have to get every memory they have locked out and bring it to the surface. You will remember everything from the experiments, but at least you will still be alive."

I just shrugged, unsure of what would be so bad about that. "So I gain some knowledge. I don't see what will be hard about that." Charlie gave me a sympathetic look like I was an innocent puppy that had no idea what was going on.

"I read the files from when you emerged from the test. You were seven and the apocalypse broke your mind. Apparently you handed some to Janice when she woke you up. Almost tore off her face barehanded." I waited for him to smile like he was making a joke, but he didn't. "It's going to be difficult for you to keep your mind. You have bottled up PTSD from the all the shit you saw. Depression from the hopelessness and desolation, as well as bipolarity from the loneliness. You could emerge from this whole process broken. Worse, you get to watch the memories played back on a screen with detail. It's not just a picture in your head. It's what you saw while in the test."

I was dead silent. I wanted to prepare myself for this somehow, but there was no way to prepare for something I didn't know. I gulped and smiled at Charlie. "Bring it on. I want to get this over with. Kind of have some friends to get back to."

Charlie shook his head in disbelief at my attitude and flipped the machine on. My entire head started tingling. Charlie pulled over to the monitor, some elaborate brain map on the screen. "I am going to start. I have to log everything you remember- this is the easy part. Think as hard as you can about the things you already remembered."

And so I did. For half an hour all of the random memories that had come back to me played out on the screen in more detail than my own mind had shown me. I could see Janice and my mother clearly. Charlie sat watching my memories as they played, and I felt almost defensive of them like he was some sort of creep or something. I pushed the feeling down.

Once the retrieved memories stopped playing, Charlie looked back at me. "I never thought I would say this, but I wish you had succeeded in ripping Janice's face off. She lied about her purpose, she manipulated a seven-year-old, and then left you cripplingly broken."

I shrugged. "Once I'm out of here I am adding this little group to my hit list. Already have the Cobra gang on our tail, so what is an entire world destroying company?" Charlie chuckled and turned a couple of settings on the culling device.

"Alright... this is the truly hard part. I have to force these memories from the back of your mind up to the surface. Now the drug that is shielding them from you should react with the waves that the culling device is putting through your head right now. Anytime now you will experience a complete blackout. When you awaken, you will remember everything, and then the memories will play on the screen no matter how much you want them to. Are you ready?"