Aurora Wasteland Quarantine Read online

  AURORA WASTELAND QUARANTINE

  Vaughn Ashby

  Copyright © 2021 Vaughn Ashby

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Book Version 1.0

  To My Amazing Trophy Wife

  Well, you’ve had to hang out with me a lot in the past year,

  and you haven’t murdered me yet, so that’s good.

  I Love You

  To Covid

  Fuck Off

  Before You Start

  AURORA WASTELAND QUARANTINE

  WAIT!

  While these are all stand alone stories,

  if you would like to get even more out of them,

  you might want to read

  TETHERED & BRIGHTNESS FALLS

  for FREE.

  Get FREE copies here

  VaughnAshby.com/free

  Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland

  Intro From The Narrator

  Above All Else Spiders Are Really Gross

  Edge of Coherence Day

  Beacon of Empathy

  There is Something Buried Under Grandma’s House

  The Previous Inhabitant Left a Guide

  The Alt C

  Urban Exploring with One Eye Open

  The Threat of Enduring an Eternal Suffering is Entirely Possible

  Close From The Narrator

  Tethered

  Brightness Falls

  The Axe

  Entanglement

  Santa of the Dead

  WELCOME TO THE AURORA WASTELAND

  YOU MIGHT HAVE HEARD ME SAY IT before, but it needs to be said again.

  Let me get this out of the way right now. This isn’t real, none of this happened. The events talked about here are fictional, fake, untrue. Except for the ones that aren’t. Which may… possibly… be all of them. So yeah, to recap, this isn’t real, except for all of the parts that are. Got it? Because I don’t want to hear about this later.

  Anyways… Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland,

  cue The Jurassic Park theme,

  The Twilight Zone door,

  The X-File badge,

  The Lost fade

  or whatever gets you in the fucking mode for the Strange. (Shit, can I say fuck? Oh well.)

  If you are squeamish, this isn’t for you. What I’m about to tell you will nudge you from your comfort zone. It will open your eyes to things you’d wished you kept them closed for. Like knowing that your parents fuck, because they do, a lot.

  Moving on… What is the Aurora Wasteland? Simple. It’s an area that lives beyond man made borders. A place where the strange and weird thrive. A place made up of places you hoped didn’t exist. Hmm… probably shouldn’t have used the word place there twice, frick you’re a writer man, you’re supposed to be better than this. Whatever... A place made up of people you wouldn’t want to meet. People you wouldn’t want to be, because escaping from the nightmare that is the Aurora Wasteland, well, that’s just not possible. That’s pretty heavy. I like it.

  Ok, Listen… I’m going to tell you a story. And it’s going to cross media, mostly YouTube, podcasts & my novels. The Novels are where the heart of the story is going to live.

  But the Strange and the Details live everywhere else.

  This is all going to take a while (shit, that’s kind of a vague timeline, but oh well), but it’s all going to make sense at the end. I promise.

  Aspects may not seem related. They may seem like a monster of the week from time to time, but they aren’t, except for the ones that are. So, pay attention. I’m only going to tell you this story once. I don’t want to repeat myself, and I don’t want to hear your bitching later.

  I should probably point out here that I’m a writer, and my name is Vaughn Ashby.

  Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland.

  INTRO FROM THE NARRATOR

  WE ARE ALONE, ALL OF US. LIFE has a way, even before all of this, to make us feel alone, by ourselves, isolated. Before The Virus, before the lockdowns, before the quarantines, life was deceivably lonely. We got up, went to work, came home, watched tv, and went to bed. All of it alone. We were trapped in patterns that brought us apart. It wasn’t until we were forced to look at our lives, look at ourselves, and reevaluate who we are and who we’ll be on the other side, that we really understood ourselves. Turns out a lot of us were doing the bare minimum whether by choice or necessity.

  Quarantine turned out to be a magnifying glass on us as a culture, society, and species. Humans aren’t that different from a virus. Most importantly, we don’t do well when we’re alone. Quarantine, for all of its downsides, was a blessing, and a curse.

  Being alone with yourself, with your thoughts, it’s hard. But it can allow you to see things you would normally ignore. It can allow you to become a part of something you didn’t know existed.

  It likely doesn’t surprise you that, like many of you, I’m trapped at home. Like many of you, I’ve taken up a new hobby. I’ve discovered that there is more to life than most people are aware of. I stumbled across something that piqued my interest... stories. Stories of people who, like you and me, are experiencing “the new normal” as the media likes to label it. Life inside COVID-19, Covid times, or simply quarantine. Only, they aren’t like you and me at all. These people, in these stories, are dipping their toes into a pool of unrelenting horror. They don’t know it, understand it or want it, but that’s part of the process. You don’t go looking for something like this, well… unless you’re me.

  I’m an Aurora Wasteland researcher, at it less than a year. I picked it up when this all happened, during the very first round of quarantines. Then, like now, I’m trapped at home. I can’t go out. I have my reasons. What I do is somewhere between data scientist, therapist, fake news debunker, and paranormal investigator. My work is done here, sitting at my desk, reading. I dig through all the garbage, the heartbreak, the surreal, for you… and well… myself. I’m looking for something, and I hope with the noise of the world dialed back, I’ll be able to find it.

  Let’s work our way through this somewhat chronologically. Stories often make the most sense when told in order, though that can be the least exciting. I’m going to go with linear, but feel free to hit the random or shuffle button, it’s your experience do so with it as you’d like.

  What I’ve found is fresh, still dripping with slime. These aren’t old cases dug up to tell a story. This is all new, fresh and unspoiled by the words and insights of other Aurora Wasteland researchers and investigators. These are my takes, my research, my findings, my stories.

  Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland Quarantine.

  ABOVE ALL ELSE SPIDERS ARE REALLY GROSS

  INTRO FROM THE NARRATOR

  The first days of all of this, Covid that is, was, to put it mildly, extremely weird. We’d all watched movies, read books, or played video games that covered the topic, but we learned so very quickly how different it all feels to actually live it. Life during The Virus was scary. From here on out I’m just going to refer to it as The Virus, because to all of us who lived through it, or died during it, there was only one virus that we all cared about. It was the focus of every conversation you had, it dominated the news, and altered your life.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s stay at the beginning. We were all afraid. Information was sparse and what information we did get was inconsist
ent. If you were lucky you had a government that took it seriously. Mine didn’t. Mine allowed lies and inaccuracies to spread faster than The Virus could.

  Those early days really were something I'll never forget. We all have our own little stories about it. We all remember the first time we put a mask on. There were a lot of firsts, and a lot of lasts experienced in those days. Which is what this first story is about. I lead off with the police story I stumbled across, it’s the one that got me started down this path that I’m laying out for you.

  Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland Quarantine.

  Police report

  Body Found Eaten by Spiders

  Alberta, Animal Attack, RCMP

  Lethbridge, Alberta – Lethbridge RCMP are seeking the public’s assistance in classifying the species of spider that appears to be the cause of death in one individual. Police were alerted to the body in the AM, where they discovered it had been eaten from what appears to be the inside out. Police are concerned that the spiders could lead to more fatalities, and people being grossed out.

  Ok, I may have added that last part. But who doesn’t think spiders are gross? I mean the legs, the eyes, the… I think I threw up in my mouth just thinking about it.

  The Story

  I took the police report, connected it to other sources, cross referenced it with the Aurora Wasteland website, and well…ran with it. Below is the story I was able to piece together…

  The sun wasn’t even up yet when the door to Ada’s apartment clicked shut, another one night stand, another early morning daring escape. There must be a stupid article somewhere on the internet spreading the highbrow knowledge that you should sneak out before the person wakes up after a one night stand. It was a dumb action that often led to more disappointment and frustration than a simple conversation could have fixed. Why couldn’t grown men communicate? Had he been conditioned out of it from years of watching so called ‘real men’ on TV and in movies? Though to be fair she was mostly dealing with what felt like boys, though their ages begged to differ. How is it that men can be so fundamentally stupid until so late in life?

  With the silence of being alone in the room, Ada grabbed the blankets and curled up into a ball. As much as she hated the whole sneaking out thing, she was used to it, and even now, it barely hurt her, or so she liked to say.

  Less than an hour later Ada’s phone buzzed on her bedside table, and the theme song to Jurassic Park echoed around the room. It had been her favorite movie growing up, now she hated the theme song because it reminded her to get her ass out of bed and get to work. Work, if you could call it that. It was barely a job. She’d grabbed the first thing that paid her money right after high school and had been there since.

  Slowly she crawled out of her bed, with the blanket wrapped around her, and made her way to the bathroom. Where she reluctantly dropped the blanket and climbed into the shower to wash the previous night off of her. By the end of the shower, she was awake, and in dire need of coffee. But coffee was a luxury she didn’t have time nor money for. She sat herself down on the bucket she used as a bathroom stool and leaned into her tiny mirror that sat on the counter. She didn’t put much effort into getting ready for work, but even her not putting much effort in was more than most. She did her lips and eyes. Then highlighted her cheeks. Finally, she put her hair in a ponytail and put deodorant and perfume on. She smiled in the mirror, and the beautiful woman that she was smiled back at her.

  Less than an hour after emerging from her nest of a bed she pulled the door to her apartment building closed and clenched her coat tight. The wind was cold, and every part of her body tightened as she shivered. As she turned to the street and the freshly fallen snow, Ada noticed something. The world sounded different. There were no cars, no people, everything was silent. Normally the street outside her house was filled with chaos and calamity, but not today. Today it was filled with silence.

  She glanced at her phone, had she gotten ready too early? Was there a time change, like daylight savings time, the night before? No, the time she expected to see stared back at her. She glanced down the street in both directions. It reminded her of that time when she was younger that they’d have a snow day because the temperature was too low. Everyone had stayed home because vehicles would freeze in the cold. Her and a few friends had biked through the snow and cold to get a movie from the video store; only to find it was closed like everything else. While they had been disappointed in being unable to rent the latest alien invasion movie, the ride there and back had been something unique. They saw no one, no cars, no people, nothing. They rode their bikes down the center of the road. At times it felt like they were the only ones on the planet. Sure, it was a frozen ice planet, but still, they were alone. Standing on the steps reminded her of that moment, and for a second she felt alone. Like the world was hers only. Then she took a step, and her world changed forever.

  A white spider the size of a quarter, clawed its way across the fresh snow. There are a few things in life that the human race can agree on, spiders are gross to the max. They should all die for their grossness. Ada, like everyone else in the world, agreed, and she quickly brought her foot down on the spider. She pressed down hard as she imagined the snow compressing around the spider, killing it, driving it down to the cold pavement below. But that’s not exactly what happened. Yes, she did manage to kill the spider, but that was only the beginning.

  As Ada raised her foot a clutter of spiders escaped from beneath her boot in every direction. She wanted to scream, her brain told her to scream. But she just stared at what she’d just witnessed. She squished one spider and managed to create dozens more? Had the big spider been pregnant? Was it some sort of spider death cloning thing? Whatever it was, it was fucking gross.

  The longer she stared at them, the more she started to feel bad. She moved her foot and saw the body of the initial large spider. It laid there motionless, dying, its body torn apart from the compression of her foot. Then she noticed something, something that shouldn't have been there, hovering above the body of the spider was a number. ‘233’. She turned her head and swayed from side to side. The number stayed above the spider’s body. Hovering almost like someone had augmented Ada’s reality, like she was looking through a layer of smart glass that for some reason had labeled the spider as 233.

  A car horn broke Ada’s silent thought. She looked up to see her friend, and ride, Neil, smiling back at her from his car which was now parked right in front of her apartment. Respectfully she stepped over the spider’s body and the number, then hurried to Neil and his car.

  As she closed the door, she glanced back. Even from the car, she could see the number, though it remained near the spider's body as if it were attached.

  Before she was even buckled, Neil started talking. He went on and on about how the drive to her house had been so quiet. That he’d passed almost no one on the road. That he’d seen no one walking out in the snow. That he'd seen no one until he saw her. Then without skipping a beat he started talking about the lockdown, and how people are quarantining themselves. Finally, when Neil paused to breathe, Ada told him she had no idea what he was talking about. She didn’t read or watch the news, it was too unsettling. Neil told her all he knew about The Virus. How they currently thought The Virus was spread mainly by droplets from people’s breathing, and how it was deadly to some, while others would only get mild or no symptoms.

  By the time they reached work, Ada’s heart wanted to leap out of her chest. It was all too much. Overwhelmed, she wanted nothing more than to tell Neil to turn the car around and bring her home. But she didn’t.

  Ada thought back to the spider she stepped on, and all those little spiders that had scurried away from her foot. She wished she could go back in time and stay in bed. She wished she could forget what Neil had told her.

  The two of them sat in Neil’s car and stared at the lineup to get into the grocery store where they worked. It led halfway across the parking lot. Both of them stared at it. It was a str
ange sight.

  Neil broke the silence by asking her if she remembered from when they were little, how they would pretend that everyone in the world was gone and how they wanted it to be just the two of them. He said he loved that and that he missed spending time with her. Ada, who had previously been distracted by the lineup of people turned to look at Neil. The number 34 floated above his head. Like the spider, it hovered there, following his head movement. She wanted to reach out and touch it, but the only thing she wondered was if her medication was making her see things. It hadn’t been listed as one of the side effects but as she stared at the number above Neil’s head, she assumed it would be soon.

  Then like most clueless men, who are terrible at reading signals, Neil leaned in to kiss her. Ada's eyes still fixed on the number above his head, she leaned back and away. She reminded him that they tried that already. She’d always fallen for him, but he’d had a hard time being a part of her life. The last time this had happened, they’d agreed to just be friends. They worked together and didn’t want anything to be weird between them, even though both of them knew there was already a sprinkle of it.

  Reluctantly, Neil agreed, and the two of them passed the ever growing lineup of people waiting to get into the store. People muttered at them as they passed. They made comments about how this was all their fault, that it was their stupid rules that were keeping them from getting into the store now.