Black Box: Book Three

56 ~ Infected Town (Part Ten)

Clayton,

They deserve to know. Post these entries when you get a chance and tell them what you told me. Don't leave anything out.

It's my last request. You owe me.

Username: vainercupid

Password: *********** [Omitted for privacy]

Thanks. See you on the other side.

Claire

April 12 2014

No more electronics. Sorry nosleep. My phone's charger cable is rotted through, plastic withered away, wires frayed. I found it like that. Just woke up and it was like that. So my phone is dead, and my laptop is all fucked up.

This whole room feels like it's rotting. I feel like I'm rotting. Just withering up to die. I look at my hands and legs and they look normal, like nothing's changed. It's from the inside out. I feel crawling inside me, more than skin deep, like a trillion parasites wriggling through my muscles, my bone. I look close at my fingers and see along the nail beds the brown edges of decay and a thousand cigarettes.

The Voyager (his real name is Clayton), that fucker, took Elizabeth Hadwell's laptop. He said it would be more useful to him than to me. He said he could maybe fix this. I'm waiting for him to come back.

[A note from Clayton: I used the alias "Voyager" when I first started my correspondence with Claire, not wanting to reveal my identity. It is a remnant from my gaming days, and part of my email address. It was also a nickname from high school, what Alan and Lisa called me, later picked up by Jessica and Elizabeth.]

Time seems scattered, nonlinear. Of course I can't remember chunks of it, and I'm not sure how events are spaced, or which one came after the others. So I'll start with what I know came first.

Clayton and I talked a lot after his email. Texts, calls. I really had to be sure, or as sure as possible, that he wasn't trying to fuck us over. He said again and again he wanted to help, to stop this, that he'd do whatever possible. He said he knew Elizabeth, Jess, Lisa, Alan, Alex all of them. He promised to tell me his story when we met in person. He didn't.

I think it's clear Clayton is a liar, but he might be the only person who can end this. He said he could crack the password on the laptop and give me answers.

So we met up with him. Me, Blake and Heather. He told us to meet him on the bridge into town. We showed up and waited half an hour. Nothing. It started to get dark, I think. Then something started shuffling under the bridge, like scraping and moving around. We could hear it making its way closer. Heather freaked out and wanted to leave. But I refused. I was getting desperate. I already knew I was fucked and if he had a way out of this, I was going to listen.

The shuffling turned out to belong to Clayton, who was climbing up from his under-bridge encampment. I recognized his leather jacket immediately - he'd been with that girl in the dress when we'd driven through the town the very first time Blake and Heather were with me. He'd run and hidden from us.

He was an average guy. There was nothing about his physical appearance to suggest someone special. Young, about my age, tall with dark hair and a scraggly beard. He was filthy though, dirt encrusted, and he stunk. Like he'd been homeless for months. The voice I'd heard on the phone had been refined, precise in diction, so this surprised me. He clambered over the railing on the other end of the bridge from us and brushed himself off.

Not sure what exactly happened next. He didn't even say a word to us. I called his name and he nodded, keeping his distance, and flicked on a flashlight. He shone it on each of us in turn.