The young man pushed himself up onto one elbow, groaned, and fell back to the floor. He couldn’t quite move his body the way he wanted to. It sounded as if there was a dull pounding somewhere, but he couldn’t tell if it was the pounding in his head or if it was outside of… wherever he was. He pushed himself back onto his elbows, first the left, then the right. He looked around the room, it was a wide open space with a bar to his right lined with stools and booths with tables to his left. The young man grabbed one of the stools and used it as a crutch as he stood. He knew this place, but he didn’t know how. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t really know anything. His name, where he was, where everyone else was…nothing. It was like he had gotten hit in the head with a metal bat. He was in a dusty white coat with a nametag that had been scratched out. He reached into the pockets of his mud-ridden jeans and found a piece of leather that had been hanging together with some kind of silver tape. Inside it was nothing besides a license with a name. “Wilson Mathers…” the young man said relatively confused. Then it was as if a light switch inside his head had been flipped on. He was Wilson Mathers. How could I forget my own name? He thought, relatively disturbed by this discovery. The diner was empty and extremely dirty. Wilson ran his finger along the counter, leaving a long streak upon it. The amount of dust that is on the counter is absurd. It was as if the diner hadn’t been touched in years.

Wilson limped toward the door to the street, the pain in his leg was intense but he needed to find someone to help him. As Wilson opened the door, light quickly poured through blinding him. The street was usually busy at all times of day, but now it was devoid of life. Cars were crashed at the stop light, yet there was no one there. “What is going on here…?” Wilson mumbled to himself. This was extremely unusual. Cars wrecked, the streets empty, and this incessant pounding within my head… Did I sleep through a war? With a sigh, he turned to walk down the street towards the crashed cars. There has to be a sign of someone, somewhere right? The town was covered in dirt and dust, as if a large dust devil had rolled through the town. The silence of the town was deafening. There was no sound whatsoever from the once bustling cityscape.  The more that Wilson considered it, the more it seemed as if a bomb had dropped upon the city. Once again, another switch turned on. There was an older man, maybe in his late 60’s, at a computer typing franticly.  All of a sudden someone is there, throwing him to the ground. He doesn’t get back up.  They go to his computer and type in some lines of code that I don’t understand anymore. The computer clicks off and the screen goes black. The only thing that remains is the face of a man grinning. The face of a mad man. My face.
Wilson drops to his knees gasping for air. What exactly is going on here?! Suddenly, a tin can in a nearby alley falls over. The sudden sound is both frightening and reassuring. Life! Someone else must be near! A little too quickly perhaps, as he stumbled to his feet which immediately fell from underneath him, causing him to fall onto his face. The impact caused his thoughts to blur but he was on a mission now. Wilson scrambled to his feet and took off as fast as his newly acquired limp would allow. Down the alley were multiple fires: trash cans, crashed cars, and garbage all lit ablaze. Wilson stumbled from side to side, using the walls of the now decrepit buildings as trampolines to keep himself from following over. Wilson rounds a corner, only to be faced with what could be considered his worst fear in this situation: a dead end. There was no person, no animal, not a living soul. The only thing that faced back at him was his own shadow and the red brick wall. With a sigh, Wilson turned and headed back down the alley. At this point, he was quite defeated. It was as if the earth itself had turned against the creatures upon it. There was nothing left anywhere that he could see.
Wilson wondered up and down the streets of a city he couldn’t even remember the name of. Buildings looked abandoned and the trees and bushes all dead. The more he walked around the more he was confused. There must be something here… Something to jog my memory! He thought. He took out his wallet from his back pocket once again. His license, some credit cards, a few single dollar bills, nothing that seemed to help his head. He threw the old wallet onto the ground. It’s not like he was going to need to buy a soda anytime soon. He unclipped the name tag from the lab coat. His face was on it, but the name was scratched out. It did say the name “League of Biodiversity and Biochemical Administration” on the top. Did I work there? Must have. Only thing that makes sense. Also the only lead I’ve got. With a sigh, Wilson clipped the name tag back on and decided to head back towards the diner. Suddenly, a flash of genius hit him. He rushed into a nearby phone booth, and scrambled for the phone book. “Come on! It’s got to be in here somewhere!” He shouted at the book. He flipped page after page, tearing some pages in half as he did so. “God dammit! Where is it?!” He had seen countless homes and business’s yet none with as strange a name as “League of Biodiversity and Biochemical Administration”. Finally, he found it. After spending what had felt as if it was a millennium, he found it. “407 North Broker Street…” He tore out the address, just in case his head failed him and he needed a refresher. “First things first… Where the hell am I?” He jogged up to the corner right before the diner in search of a street sign. “Broker Street… Well. I’m already halfway there.” He glanced to his left and looked at an old computer store. “392… So it should just be a block or two down, right?” He let out a deep sigh. “Who the hell am I talking too? I’m going crazy out here…”
Wilson took off down the street. He jogged at a light pace, the best he could do considering his leg still felt messed up and numb.  He passed multiple buildings, none of which were the one he needed. “404... 405…406… 40…8? 408?! WHERE THE HELL IS 7?!” Wilson shouted at the buildings. The two buildings seemed to mesh into one as it went from a small bakery on 406 to a large housing apartment on 408. The only thing that was between the two was a cramped looking alleyway that appeared to end at a brick wall. Frustrated, Wilson paced back and forth on the sidewalk mumbling incoherently to himself. In a final, desperate, act of anger, Wilson kicked a trash can fire over. The fire illuminated the dark alley revealing something Wilson hadn’t noticed before. A door knob of shining silver was on the wall at the end of the alley. Amazed, he pushed forward through the cramp alley grasping for the knob. He gave it a twist and it didn’t budge. “No… NO NO NO!” he shouted at the door. He pushed against it, again and again. The door must have been made of the brick surrounding the door since it did not budge. In an act of desperation Wilson shouted his name. “I’m Wilson Mathers! I work here, don’t I?!” From nowhere Wilson could identify, a robotic female voice responded. “Wilson Mathers. ID Accepted. Please step away from the door.” The knob shifted and turned, it rotated in and out as if the knob itself were some kind of complex locking mechanism. After several seconds of twisting and turning the knob came to a rest. Wilson slowly pulled on the knob and the door followed after.
He entered a small brightly lit white room. On the wall to his left was a bright red button that said “Decontamination” just underneath it. This all seemed so familiar to Wilson. Almost like it was part of an old routine… Slowly, Wilson pushed the button. The door behind him slammed shut and then made a dramatic sound as the air seemed to get sucked out. The air suddenly felt dense and hard to breath. Gas was sprayed into the room from vents in the ceiling. As soon as it had started, it was over. The air was easy to breath and the robotic woman spoke again. “Decontamination, complete.” A door that was originally invisible to the untrained eye, opened up across the room. It led into a long illuminated hallway. Slowly, Wilson limped to the other end of the hall. The hall itself was blindingly white, only being lit by artificial lighting from both above and below. The door at the end of the hall shares a door knob similar to the one that had been outside, the striking sterling silver.  Wilson pushed on the door and it opened slowly. The scent that assaulted Wilson’s nose was appalling. It was nothing like he had ever smelt before. It smelled of death and blood. The room he was in now was rather large and sophisticated filled to the brim of complex looking computers and whizzing monitors filled with pictures from all over the globe. The smell was stronger now, so much so that Wilson covered his nose with his shirt. He walked forward a bit looking around and noticed a man on the ground to his right, just past some of the computers. The whole scene seemed eerily familiar. Like déjà vu but tenfold. He looked at the man with such a sense of disgust. He was dead. As far as Wilson knew, he had never seen a dead body. It was horrifying, yet intriguing. The dead man seemed so alive… yet it was clear he wasn’t. The lack of color in his face, the lack of air flowing, the lack of movement…fascinating. Wilson sat in the chair to get a better look at the man. He must have been doing something with the computer before he was assaulted… He looked over at the dark screen to only to see his reflection. Then it happened again. The switch in his head came on. The dead man, the dark screen, the laboratory, what Wilson was hoping to accomplish… It all came flooding back to him.
  Suddenly, there was a light chuckle that quickly grew into a loud laugh that turned more and more sinister as the seconds past. Wilson looked back at the computer and realized something. It was him. He was laughing. “I-I did it… I DID IT!” he screeched. “There all dead…I killed them all! The bomb…It went off! There all dead! YES!” Wilson screamed at the top of his lungs. They called him crazy… They said he couldn’t do it. That creating a biological bomb of such a massive scale couldn’t be done… Years of hard work all came to fruition in one moment. Wilson Mathers had done it. He had killed everyone that had laughed at him. They weren’t laughing anymore. “One left… Only one more left…” he giggled to himself. He looked down at his inanimate coworker. “You laughed with them Dave… you believed in me… Then you tried to stop it when you realized I wasn’t crazy… Well you can’t stop me now Dave…” Wilson reached into Dave’s pocket and pulled out the black handgun that had resided with him as protection. Wilson looked the gun over: It was a midnight black and fit nicely in the hand. Wilson raised the gun and looked down the barrel. “One more… Only one more…” Wilson cackled manically one last time. Everyone that had ever doubted him was dead. Friends, coworkers, family… Everyone besides himself. And Wilson had to change that.