[ENG] What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
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What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
Genre : Apocalypse, Fantasy, Superpower, Action
Tag : Misunderstanding, Secret Organization, Wolrd-Freezing, Super power
Chapter 20 : The Black Snow
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[Time remaining until The Great Freeze: 13 Days]
[Status: POST-IMPACT DEEP FREEZE]
[Location: Arlen's Apartment, 4th Floor - West Jakarta]
Time lost all meaning in the absolute dark. It's like the sun never rose.
The sky outside the taped-up window remained a solid block of impenetrable, suffocating blackness. Arlen measured the passing hours entirely by the battery life of his laptop and the gnawing, hollow ache in his stomach.
The silence inside his barricaded room amplified his isolation. The screams of the dying humans had faded. The howls of the mutant dog packs echoed distantly from other streets. Arlen sat completely alone in the center of his concrete tomb.
To maintain his grip on reality and document his existence, he booted up his laptop. He dimmed the screen brightness to its absolute lowest setting to conserve the power bank. He opened a blank text file. He began to type, turning his terrifying reality into a rigid, emotionless diary.
Log Entry: Day 1 - 09:00 AM
"I woke up shivering on the concrete floor. The ambient temperature inside the room has dropped to -15°C. The cold is a physical weight pressing against my chest. "
Arlen pulled his fingers away from the keyboard. He wore the heavy tactical gloves Viper had provided, but his joints still ached fiercely. The cold radiated upward from the ceramic floor tiles, piercing the thick wool of his socks. Every breath he took inside the P-100 gas mask felt heavy and sluggish.
He pushed himself up from the floor. His muscles screamed in protest, stiff and locked from the freezing temperature. He performed a slow, agonizing stretching routine for twenty minutes. He rolled his shoulders, touched his toes, and forced the thick, sluggish blood to circulate through his freezing limbs.
The Kevlar weave of his tactical bodysuit felt rigid, resisting his movements. He pushed through the pain, generating a tiny, fragile cocoon of body heat beneath his heavy down parka. If he stopped moving completely, the muscle cramps would paralyze him.
He sat back down, pulling the laptop closer to his chest.
Log Entry: Day 1 - 12:00 PM
"I unscrewed the lid of a peanut butter jar. The paste has hardened into a dense, clay-like block. I used the pommel of my tactical knife to chip away small, frozen chunks."
Arlen set the laptop aside. He reached into his disorganized pile of supplies and grabbed a plastic jar of peanut butter. The plastic was brittle from the cold. He unscrewed the blue lid with stiff, clumsy fingers. He looked inside. The oily, creamy spread he remembered had solidified completely.
He drew his tactical hatchet. He flipped it around, gripping the blade carefully, and drove the heavy, flat steel pommel into the jar.
Crack. A small, frozen chunk of peanut butter broke loose. Arlen picked it up. He pulled the bottom edge of his gas mask away from his chin, holding his breath to avoid inhaling any lingering volcanic ash in the room. He popped the frozen chunk into his mouth and immediately snapped the rubber seal of the mask back into place.
The peanut butter tasted like flavored ice. He let it sit on his tongue, waiting patiently for his core body temperature to melt the dense chunk of calories. He swallowed the thick, sticky paste. His stomach cramped immediately, demanding real, warm food.
He grabbed one of the 1.5-liter water bottles from his stack. The clear plastic crinkled loudly in the quiet room. The water inside was slushing, on the verge of freezing solid. He wrapped his arms around the bottle, pressing it against his chest to transfer his precious body heat into the liquid.
Log Entry: Day 1 - 12:05 PM
"I let the food melt slowly on my tongue before swallowing. I drank exactly three sips of water from the plastic bottle. The freezing liquid burns my throat like swallowed glass."
Arlen gasped softly as the frigid water hit his stomach. It lowered his core temperature instantly, inducing a violent, uncontrollable shivering fit. He hugged his knees to his chest, waiting for the shivering to subside.
He closed the laptop to save power. He spent the next few hours sitting in the pitch-black corner, clutching his hatchet, listening to the creaking of the freezing concrete around him.
Log Entry: Day 1 - 04:00 PM
"Perimeter check. I pressed my gloved hands against the Gorilla Tape sealing the doorframe. The adhesive remains solid against the contracting wood."
Arlen clicked on his tactical flashlight. The narrow beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the heavy oak desk shoved against his front door. He crawled over to the barricade. The extreme drop in temperature caused the wood of the doorframe to warp and contract, threatening to break the airtight seal he had created.
He ran his thumb firmly over the black Gorilla Tape, pressing the adhesive deep into the cracks. The tape held. He pressed his ear against the cold wood of the door.
The hallway outside remained completely silent today. The mutant cats had finished their grisly feast on Pak Ujang the previous night and moved on. The metallic smell of frozen blood still lingered faintly in the air, but the immediate threat had passed.
Log Entry: Day 1 - 04:15 PM
"I checked the P-100 filters on my gas mask. I tapped the plastic casing against my palm to clear the accumulated dust."
Arlen unclipped the round, purple filters from the cheeks of his mask. He tapped them gently against his knee. A small pile of fine, grey volcanic dust fell out onto the floor tiles. The air inside the room was still toxic. The microscopic silicate shards leaking through the building's ventilation would shred his lungs if he breathed unprotected. He reattached the filters, securing the locking mechanism tightly.
He returned to his corner, burying himself under the fleece blankets. Sleep offered no escape. His dreams were filled with the sound of crunching bones and falling rubble.
***
[Time remaining until The Great Freeze: 12 Days]
The temperature of the room continued to drop, slowly turning his remaining water supply into slush.
He needed to generate artificial heat to boil water and cook his canned food. He possessed the fire-starter rod from Viper's Type-A case, a handful of matches, and a stack of printed manuscript pages ready to burn.
He held the fire-starter in his gloved hand, staring into the dark room. Paranoia paralyzed him.
The mutant animals packs roamed the streets below. They possessed hyper-accelerated metabolisms.
They tracked their prey through acute thermal detection and the scent of blood. Igniting an open fire in the middle of his living room would create a massive thermal bloom. The heat and the smell of cooking meat would leak through the microscopic cracks in the taped-up window, drawing every apex predator in the sector straight to his fourth-floor tomb.
He needed to cook, but he needed to trap the heat entirely.
Log Entry: Day 2 - 02:00 PM
"Its A Thermal concealment protocol. I must generate a localized heat source without venting the thermal signature to the outside environment. I spent the morning constructing an insulated micro-tent."
Arlen dragged his overturned wooden bookshelf into the corner of the room, positioning it parallel to the solid concrete wall. He gathered his remaining heavy fleece blankets, unused winter coats, and a large sheet of thick construction plastic. He draped the heavy fabrics over the bookshelf, creating a small, cramped enclosure. He used his roll of Gorilla Tape to secure the edges of the blankets directly to the floor tiles, sealing the bottom completely.
He crawled into the dark, claustrophobic space. He dragged his small metal trash can, a can of beef stew, a bottle of slushy water, and a handful of crumpled notebook pages inside with him. He sealed the entrance flap shut.
He struck the fire-starter rod. Bright sparks showered over the crumpled paper. A small, weak flame flickered inside the metal bin.
The temperature inside the micro-tent spiked almost immediately. The heavy layers of fleece and plastic successfully trapped the rising heat. Arlen placed the tin can directly into the small fire.
The stew boiled. The rich, heavy scent of cooked meat filled the cramped space. Simultaneously, the smoke from the burning paper accumulated rapidly. The tent filled with a suffocating, grey haze. Arlen coughed violently, tears streaming down his face from the carbon build-up. He refused to open the flap. He endured the burning in his lungs and the stinging in his eyes, absolutely terrified that releasing a single wisp of smoke or heat into the main room would alert the monsters outside.
He ate the boiling stew quickly in the dark, smoky enclosure. He held his frozen water bottle over the dying embers, melting the slush back into a drinkable liquid. He waited for the metal bin to cool completely before finally breaking the tape seal and crawling out, gasping for the freezing, clean air of his living room.
He survived another day by manipulating his environment.
***
[Time remaining until The Great Freeze: 11 Days]
[Time: Day 3 - 06:00 AM]
On the morning of the third day, the auditory landscape of the apocalypse shifted abruptly.
The relentless, maddening hiss of the dry ash grinding against the glass stopped. A heavy, profound silence fell over the ruined city. The shrieks of the mutants faded. The distant explosions ceased. For a long, terrifying moment, Arlen heard absolutely nothing except the ragged, labored sound of his own breathing echoing inside his gas mask.
Then, a new sound began.
Thud. Splat. Thud.
Heavy, wet projectiles began striking the exterior glass. The rhythm accelerated rapidly, building into a continuous, muffled drumming against the boarded-up window.
Arlen uncurled from his corner sanctuary. His joints popped and ached in the freezing air. He gripped his flashlight, crawling slowly across the concrete floor toward the window. He reached the heavy mattress taped against the glass.
He used his tactical knife to carefully slice through a section of the black Gorilla Tape in the upper right corner. He peeled the thick fabric back, exposing a small, triangular patch of the cracked window pane.
He pressed the lens of his flashlight against the glass and clicked the beam on. He pressed his face close to the cold pane, peering out into the void.
Arlen gasped, his breath fogging the inside of his respirator.
A massive, unprecedented meteorological anomaly consumed the whole Indonesia skyline. The tropical humidity of the old world had finally reacted to the extreme deep freeze. The millions of tons of trapped water vapor suspended in the atmosphere froze instantaneously, bonding directly with the falling volcanic silicate from the Megaplume.
Black snow fell across the whole South East Asia, not just Indonesia.
Before the meteor impact, South East Asia had suffocated under a 40°C heatwave with eighty-five percent humidity. Every city's atmosphere held millions of tons of trapped water vapor. When the tectonic breach plunged the surface temperature to -15°C in a matter of hours, that massive blanket of tropical humidity froze instantaneously.
The microscopic ice crystals bonded immediately with the falling volcanic silicate from the Megaplume.
This reaction created a heavy, toxic precipitation. The sleet was dense, sticky, and incredibly heavy.
The flakes were massive, dense, and terrifyingly heavy. The sleet fell in thick, clumping clusters of deep charcoal and bruised grey. The continuous barrage of dark ice slammed into the unstable mountain of concrete rubble pressing against Arlen's building.
The frozen sludge filled the gaps between the twisted rebar and the shattered masonry, acting as a grotesque, dark cement.
Arlen stared at the descending curtain of black ice. A profound sense of awe pierced through his exhaustion and terror. The chaotic, burning ruins of the city were being systematically buried, smoothed over, and erased by the heavy, dark precipitation. The black snow smothered the remaining fires. It covered the abandoned cars and the mutilated corpses littering the toll roads. It transformed the familiar tropical metropolis into a frozen wasteland of absolute monochrome.
He watched the heavy flakes stick to the glass, freezing instantly upon contact. The visual confirmation triggered a sudden, critical realization.
The black snow was a violent atmospheric scrubber. The heavy, wet precipitation actively dragged the lethal, microscopic volcanic dust straight out of the troposphere, slamming it into the ground. The constant barrage of dark ice successfully washed the lower atmosphere. The air outside was clearing. The toxic, glass-like ash begin to vanished from the wind, replaced by a dry, razor-sharp gale carrying the stable, deadly temperature of -15°C.
Arlen pressed his gloved hand against the freezing glass. He looked down at the massive, rising dunes of black ice swallowing the lower floors of his building. The sheer scale of the destruction finally broke through his adrenaline.
"The world ...." Arlen whispered, his voice cracking, echoing hollowly inside his gas mask. "It's being buried alive."
›› To Be Continue ‹‹
—KS