The day was just as busy as usual, two to three customers every half hour, enough to get the day by. My coworkers think I’m a little strange, or even weird, but I don’t like to take their crap. I don’t really understand why they think differently about me, but they like to pick on me. I like to make a mental checklist and check off the things that I’ve accomplished. Checked the fryer and the food won’t be done until another five minutes, done. Checked the order up menu, done. Checking the drive through, no one there, of course, done. Suddenly, this annoying voice decided to interrupt my concentration. 

“Hey, Jackson!” My coworker yelled from the counter. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Why, Spencer.” I muttered monotoned. 

“Because, it smelled you, and you smell like that.” Spencer Holiday pointed out the drive through window across from me, and with minimum effort, I shuffled over to the window, and looked. Across the street, and over a fence, was a dog taking a poop in it’s yard. I just stared at the dog, as it hunched it’s back, and stumbled about, trying to find a good spot to let loose. That’s not what I smell like, I told myself.

“Yeah, you see that!? That’s what you smell like.” Spencer laughed behind me.

“Actually Spencer. I don’t smell like that. Right now, I smell like.” I lifted my arm and sniffed my armpit. “I smell like pickles and burger grease, and last time I checked, pickles and burger grease don’t smell like dog poop, so back off Spencer.” 

Spencer snorted. “Do you even hear yourself sometimes? You sound like an idiot.” Just then, our fat manager, John, rolled out on a wheely chair into the workspace holding a phone with his cheek and shoulder, while chewing food with an open mouth.

“Spencer! The employee's phone is ringing! Get it!” John yelled, and then disappeared into his office as quickly as he appeared. Spencer looked at me, and rolled his eyes and walked around the corner. 

Minutes later, he reemerged and yelled. “Hey, Jackson! It’s for you.” I walked past him towards the back room where the phone was, and as I walked past Spencer he muttered, “I wonder what sore loser is calling you.” I just sighed and continued along my way as he died of laughter in the kitchen. I reached a small, ugly table pushed to the back of the wall, where a telephone sat. I reached for the phone, and held it up to my ear.

“H..hello?”I asked.

“Hello, this is doctor Robets, I’m calling on behalf of patient 3260. Is this you?” Dr. Robets asked.

“No. I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number.”

“Oh, my apologies, sorry for the inconvenience.” Dr. Roberts apologized as he hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Stephanie Harris, the only employee who is nice to me at this place, asked me. She’s the one who makes my work life a little bit more bearable.

“Oh, hey Stephanie.” I smiled quirkily and waved. “Who was what?”

“The phone. Who was on the other end of the phone?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just a wrong number.” I began to approach Stephanie, when the phone rang again. Before I turned to grab the phone, I gave Stephanie a weird look. “Hello?” I asked.

“Hello, this is Dr. Roberts, calling for patient 3260, is this patient 3260?”

I glanced back at Stephanie. “Dr. Roberts, it’s the same numbers as before, you called the wrong number again.”

“No I didn’t. This is the number they gave me.” Dr. Roberts confirmed.

“Well, I’m not patient 3260, and on top of that, I don’t have a doctor, so you have the wrong number.”

“Patient 3260?” Stephanie repeated as she listened to my side of the phone call.

“I’m sorry for the bother.” Roberts hung up.

“What was that about?” Stephanie asked as I walked towards her. Before I was able to open my mouth to respond, the phone rang again. The two of us exchanged looks before I picked the phone back up the phone, again. Before I pressed accept, I turned the phone onto speaker.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Wait!” Roberts repeated.

“Dr. Roberts, stop calling this number, if you call this number again, I’ll call the police!”

“Jackson! Wait, don’t hang up the phone!” Roberts pleaded through the speaker. A wave of shock and fear crashed through my body, how does he know my name? I glanced over my shoulder at Stephanie, who clearly was wondering the same thing.

“How do you know my name?” I sheepishly asked, creeping closer to the table.

“I don’t have much time to explain Jackson, listen to me carefully. They only give us doctors ten minutes of unsupervised time a day to do whatever we want. All 30 of us decided to use those ten minutes to contact all of our patients and inform them of the foreseen wrongdoings that’s about to unravel. Listen, if you don’t do as I say, you will die.”

A wave of pure anger rushed through my body, I don’t know why this made me angry, but it did. “What is this? Blackmail!?” I yelled through the speaker.

“No, Jackson, this isn’t blackmail, this is a warning. And if you don’t heith my warnings, everyone you know and love will be murdered.”

“What the hell! I’m hanging up and calling the police you sick bastard!” I reached for the phone prepared to hang up on him.

“Wait! You’re birthday is July 25th, 1998! You work at Carmen’s Burgers and Fries. Right now you’re wearing a light blue polo shirt with a nametag and a burger styled hat!” Roberts screamed desperately. I was stunned, and mortified because all of these things he’s said were true. 

“What, so you’re a stalker?” I asked in disgust.

“Not necessarily. I’m a doctor, a doctor whose job is to know everything about my patients. And right now, I’m trying to save my patient. Listen, I know that this may come off as weird, or scary, but this is the truth. I know things, too much to be just some kid prank calling you. You’re friends are Jasmine and Stephanie.” Stephanie looked surprised, and looked at me with an expression I’ve never seen from her before. “You’re favorite color is Orange, you’re favorite fruit is an orange, and you’re favorite scent is orange. You’re very original. When people sneeze, you don’t say bless you, you say kootenburg, when that’s not even the right word. Your parents' names are Sherman and Heather Buntley, your mom’s maiden name is Gallimore. Before you were born, your mother had a miscarrage, she was going to name her Elizabeth. During the christmas of 05’, the christmas tree fell on top of you and you broke your elbow. When you were 15, you went on a date with Katlyn, and you wiped your forehead, and accidently popped a pimple, which landed in her food. She ate it, and you never told her. You stopped seeing her because you couldn’t imagine kissing her after that. I’m telling you, if these examples aren’t good enough proof, then I don’t know what is.”

“What do you want from me then?” I asked.

“I can’t get into too much detail, I’m running out of time. Basically, the Cooperative is a secret organization. It’s a secret 16th tear in The Cabinet that controls the population. Listen, they’ll start to supervise us again, just please, take my warning, and find the others and warn as many people as you can to get out of those towns!” Roberts pleaded.

“And what if I don’t?” I challenged Roberts.

There was a slight pause. “Then everyone you know and love will be wiped off the face of the planet and will never be missed again. Including you. Now please, find the others, there should be 29 others, you are the 30th. Just please, save as many people as possible.” Dr. Roberts then finally hung up leaving me the decision whether to believe him or not. 

“Jackson..” Stephanie gently propped her hand onto my shoulder and spoke with a soft voice, but I was in so much shock that I didn’t even react. “Are the things that man said about you true?” 

I barely nodded. “There’s no way he’s a prank caller. He described things in my life that I haven’t even told my parents.” I looked back at Stephanie. “Everything he said about me, is true.”

“There’s no way what he said is real though. A secret government teare? That’s impossible, the government doesn’t hide things from us. They don’t, he has to be someone who knows you well.” Stephanie said indisbelife.

“Steph. He could have been an old friend, but even my old friends I’ve never told them about Katlyn.”

“Well maybe you told them and don’t remember, but they do.”

“No Steph, that one little detail is something that I know I’ve never said before. To anyone. On top of that, he even described the clothes that I am wearing, right now.” I attempted to convince Stephanie. 

“You’re right. That was weird.”

“So what should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

That night, after work, I got onto my phone, and began to scroll through instagram in hopes that someone else got the same call that I did and posted about it. Sadly, no one did. So I went over to Snapchat, Line, Twitter, nothing. At this point I was so invested that I was ready to give a kidney and lung just to find something! When at last, Facebook gave me just what I wanted. Ashley Ruprik posted over 3 hours ago. “I just got the worst prank call ever. Some kid was threatening my family and telling me stupid stuff about the government. Millennials these days, can you believe them?” My heart was pounding. I flew to her account and read her bio. “Ashley Ruprik. 32. Single mother of 1.” I immediately attacked the message button.

CHANGE OF POINT OF VIEW FROM PERSON TO PHONE

“Hey Ashley, my name’s Jackson Buntley. I saw your recent post, and I wanted to tell you that I got the same call! I got a call from a guy named Dr. Roberts. I don’t know if you got a call from him too, or if you got a call from some else. Either way, I just wanted to tell you that I got the same call too.” I pressed send and put my phone down, ready to take a shower.

Half an hour later, I got back to my phone to be surprised with dozens of notifications from a group chat in facebook titled, “Patients.” Instantly, I opened to the group chat and read all of the existing messages. At first the chat was mainly full of people saying hey and hi, but then it started to get juicy.

“So I got a call from a woman named Dr. Brookes. She addressed me as patient 1140, whatever that means. Anyway, she was telling me something about how I need to warn everyone in my town before the 3rd of May. I don’t know what she meant by warning them though.” Said Samantha Conway.

“Wow, that’s crazy! I got a message from somebody named Dr. Zintowee, he called me patient 5690, and he was telling me about the struggles that the doctors there face everyday.” Said Terrance Afton.

“I don’t know what this all means, but I was told that I should use my speaking ability, I’m a motivational speaker, to warn everyone about something, but Dr. Chan never told me what to do, all she said was that everyone I know was going to get killed!” Said Ashley Ruprik.’

Everything that everyone was saying was pretty basic, it seemed like they weren’t given a lot of information. Then again, neither was I, but I feel like the little information given to me, is a huge one.

“Same here. Dr. Roberts named me patient 3260, and he told me about a secret government tear that was in charge of the population, called the Cooperative.” Said Jackson Buntley. I knew what I said left an impact because people didn’t respond too nicely.

“Who invited this inbred into the chat? He’s just making crap up!” Said Clay Brown.

“A secret government system! Do you guys understand how large this is?!” Said Charlotte Johnson. 

“Ok, everyone calm down, I’m the one who invited Jackson into this chat, he came to me about his call, and we were all told to find each other, so I did what I had to do and put him into this chat. Also, it seems that we were all told different things, maybe they all line up?” Said Ashley.

“Are you telling me that the doctors all told us a different story? But why would they do that?” Said Trevor Salsbury.

“Don’t you remember? Dr. Shell told me that they only have 10 minutes of being unsupervised a day. That means 23 hours and 50 minutes a day, they are being watched. How else could they share their story and give instructions within 10 minutes to 30 people? They can’t, so they broke up their story and shared it among all of their patients. It’s smart, and efficient.” Said Christopher Smith.

“It’s stupid because now they put the fate of their story in the hands of common folk. If you haven’t noticed, WE DON’T EVEN HAVE ALL 30 PEOPLE YET! How can we piece this story together if we don’t even have all the pieces?” Said Clay.

“It’s not hard, we use what we have now. And try to make sense of this seemingly inescapable terror.” Said Suise Williams.

“Ok, so what do we have so far?” Said Samantha.

“Well. According to what everyone has been saying thus far, it seems like 30 different doctors are working for a secret government tear called the Cooperative. The Cooperative seems to be in charge of population control. They said that we have to warn people about something that’s going to happen on the 3rd of May. We’ve also been told that the doctors there are struggling at the Cooperative everyday, but we don’t know how. We also don’t know what we need to warn people about, and why the doctors are retaliating from the government. Wow, I really went off into the deep end. So whoever hasn’t shared their story please do.” Said Ashley.

“Alright, well here’s my warning, what I was told is insanely dark. I was told by Dr. Shoomer that I have to warn everybody because the Cooperative secretly massacres multiple towns and turns them into ghost towns to control overpopulation.” Said Trevor. 

Everyone responded with an “OMG.”

“Wow.. this is dark..” Said Terrance. 

“So our town has been selected for a massacre?” Said Charlotte Johnson.

“Not town.. An entire county. Dr. Jones told me that 1 county out of the entire United States will be randomly selected for the massacre. We are all strangers to one another, but we are all from the same county.” Said Suise Williams.

“How in the world are we able to convince an entire county to abandon their homes, jobs, and belongings? We’ll be lucky to convince a single person.” Said Jackson.

“I don’t know if my info is important or not, but I was also told by my doctor that the other doctors got mistreated and were tricked into joining the Cooperative. Once they joined, they were forced to stay hush hush about the secret branch and were also forced to spy on hundreds of people.” Said Clay.

“Spy on hundreds of people.. So you mean the doctors are spies and us patients are being watched?” Said Terrance.

“Basically.” Said Clay.

“My doctor told me about how these secret massacres have happened numerous times. The most well known ghost town that they’ve created is Silent Hill.” Said Charlotte. 

“Nah, that sounds like a lie, Silent Hill is a movie about a ghost town, no way you’re telling the truth.” Said Clay.

“No, she is telling the truth, SIlent Hill is a real abandoned town.” Said Ashley.

“She’s still lying though, because we were told counties get massacred, Silent Hill is one town.” Said Christopher.

“OOOOH! Silent Hill was Project A!” Said Ang Wong.

“What?” Said Jackson.

“My doctor name is Dr. Miller. Dr. Miller try to explain to me what Project A was. She tell me about their very first attempt at massacre a single town to see if plan work. It did. They manage to make fake rumor about what happen to town and that is why it become abandon, and everybody believe it. And no one question it.” Said Ang.

“So this is a real thing isn’t it. There really will be a massacre in our county. Everyone we know will be murdered. And there’s nothing that we can do about it.” Said Samantha.

“Yeah, I think so. This all seems pretty legit. The best we can do is survive this, and spread our word in the best way we can. The 3rd of May is in three days, there is no way we can get everyone out at once. Not everyone.” Said Christopher.

“At least we can save 30 people..” Said Terrance.

“No we can’t, there’s only 10 people in this chat.” We can’t even save 30 people.” Said Jackson.

“Who here is not an adult and can’t drive?” Said Ashley.

“Me.” Said half of everybody.

“Alright. On May 3rd, I’m going to pick you all up, and we’re leaving this county. We’re going to where it is safe. Make it happen. Make sure you’re not home on the 3rd ok? Tell your parents that you want to spend the night at a friends house, or even sneak out, I don’t care, just give me your addresses, and be outside your house so I can pick you up.” Said Ashley.

“Guys, I think I know how to get everyone out of the county, and not just us.” Said Jackson.

“How?” Said nearly everyone back.

“It’s a long shot, but it’ll be the best and worst shot we have against the government. Nearly all of us are from different towns inside this county. Right?” Said Jackson.

“Yeah.” Said nearly everyone.

“We need to find a way to start a mass fire in each of our towns, try to spread this fire around as much as possible. It’ll force people to flee the town, and if it’s big enough, flee the county.” Said Jackson. 

“Are you crazy? Because that would never work!” Said Terrance.

“No. He crazy, but he crazy smart. People run from fire, which mean, people run from government during massacre. If we start fire during massacre, we save more people by force them out, rather than warn them.” Said Ang.

“It’s not a bad idea, but there’s still an issue. PEOPLE CAN STILL DIE IN THIS FIRE!” Said Clay.

“Sure people can still die, but the odds of people dying in the fire is slim. The chances of people dying during a government controlled massacre, is 100% if they stay.” Said Jackson. 

“So if we get them out of their towns before the massacre begins, we can save a lot more people than just 10!” Said Samantha.

“Tell me if I’m wrong but… Our entire lives, we’ve been watched by spies, who were tricked into spying on us, and were forced to call us our doctors because they are actually working for a secret government corporation called the Cooperative that is also government operated. This secret corporation will then start a secret massacre in our county in 3 days because the Earth’s population is getting too high so secretly killing all of us will solve that problem. But our doctors didn’t like the idea of all of us dying so they contacted all of us to warn us ahead of time, and that if we don’t warn enough people about the massacre, then everyone we know and love will all die and will never be remembered. And I’m hearing all of this from multiple people on the internet that I’ve never met before just because we all got a prank call at the same time. Is this right?” Said Charlotte. 

“Well if you put it that way..” Said Clay.

“I know how it sounds, but it’s easy to forget that the phone calls that we all got described the actions that we were doing at that very moment. That’s proof right there that we were being watched!” Said Jackson.

“And how do I know that you didn’t get the same call as me? How do I know whether or not you’re making crap up along the way because you’re just some dumb 12 year old?” Said Charlotte.

“You don’t know. But listen, believe this or not, we should all leave the county before the 3rd. If this is all fake, then perfect, we can go back home, but if it’s not, then at least we got out with our lives because we were fortunate enough to know ahead of time.” Said Jackson.

“Is your insane ass still going to start a fire!? Because last time I checked that’s illegal! Burning down hundreds of peoples homes and businesses just because of a hunch is pretty ignorant!” Said Charolate. 

Charlotte Johnson left the chat.

“I hate to admit it but, she’s right. This is all just too far out there to be real.” Said Clay.

“You guys don’t get it! Dr. Roberts said things about my life that I’ve never spoken to anyone about! He knew what I was wearing, my mom’s maiden name! He is the only proof that I have that all of this is real!” Said Jackson.

“When Charlotte said it the way she did, I realized how unrealistic this whole scheme is. I’m sorry, but I’m not telling a random adult my address, nor am I starting a town fire.” Said Clay.

Clay Brown left the Chat.

“Please guys! You have to understand! This has to be real! It can’t be coincidence that all of our stories match up! Ashley, think of your kid!” Said Jackson.

“Don’t you dare bring Diana into this! Her name will stay out of your mouth you psychopath! Listen here you little rat, I thought this all was real at first, but all I needed was a realistic reminder that this is all crazy and that I’m listening to a kid who suggested we burn down our houses to flee from the government!” Said Ashley.

Ashley Ruprik left the chat.

“Damn it guys! Please tell me that you’re all in on this still! We don’t have to start any fires! Just leave the county before the 3rd!” Said Jackson.

Susie Williams left the chat.

“Yeah, sorry Jackson, but the last adult left the chat, even if I wanted to leave, there’s no way I can.” Said Terrance.

Terrance Afton left the chat.

Christopher Smith left the chat.

“Please, Samantha, will you at least leave on the 3rd? Please?” Said Jackson.

“Maybe. I might just because this stuff was pretty convincing, but at this point, it’s all fallen apart, and there is nothing we can do about it. I’m sorry Jackson, but maybe we will see each other outside of this. Goodbye.” Said Samantha.

“No! Wait!” Said Jackson.

Samantha Conway left the chat.

“I suppose you don’t want to leave during the 3rd either, Ang?” Said Jackson.

“I hardly speak English! I did not understand what you talk about. Something about fire? And something about Project A? Now everyone get mad and leave. But why?” Said Ang.

“Because they're all stupid, but you’re not, promise me you will leave on May 3rd? That’s in three days!” Said Jackson.

“Now I know why they all leave! You a asshole! I might not speak much English, but I know a asshole when see one! Call stupid again, I hit you, asshole!” Said Ang.

Ang Wong left the chat.

“So this is it? Everyone gave up?” Said Jackson.

“They all really forgot the signs, and how undeniable this all was?” Said Jackson.

“Thanks Charlotte for ruining all of this for us. Who knows if this was all even real or not.” Said Jackson.

Jackson Buntley left the chat.