Background: “John Killed Everyone” came about as the result of plotting for another story I’ve been working on for about five years now, “Soundless.” In that world, 97% of humans speak telepathically as the result of a manufactured virus that killed everyone on the planet who didn’t have a certain set of genes that predisposed one to having telepathy.

Eventually, I started wondering how the the whole “mass murder” thing happened and lit on the idea that it wasn’t actually a concerted effort by a series of eugenics-obsessed governments, but rather a single terrorist trying to take out the United States.

Unfortunately for the world, that terrorist, infected with her own virus, encounters the unluckiest man to have ever lived.

Enjoy.

— Mike

P.S.

This is my story and isn’t being given away; i.e. all ideas are mine unless otherwise noted. See my copyright page for details.

Featured Image source can be found here.

John Washington didn’t mean to kill 97% of the
population.

It just kind of happened, which is really the
story of his life.

In 2052, the man who would eventually murder 9.8
billion people was born in the new Automated Pediatrics wing of Crouse Memorial
Hospital in Syracuse, New York. By all accounts, John was a perfect little
cherub, with ten tiny tan toes and ten chubby fingers that liked to grasp at
things like infants do.

That’s how, at the age of eight months, John
killed both his parents.

During a long, cross-country road trip in their
newly purchased auto-driving car, John’s parents—Jesal and Deborah
Washington—were napping when infant John fell out of his improperly installed
baby seat, proceeded to crawl atop his until-twenty-minutes-ago sleep-deprived
parents to grab hold of the shifter and drop the brand new Safety-is-Our-Motto
family car into park.

Jesal and Deborah died on impact. John’s fleshy
little baby body bounced around like a rubber ball, but he survived with a
broken toe that would keep him from playing sports for the rest of his life,
which, in and of itself, was a shame. He’d have been a fantastic JV soccer
player otherwise. As it was, John focused on his studies and, surprising
everyone but him, did very, very poorly.

His time in ASHS—or Automated Social Handling
Services (the ‘H’ was added after a failed marketing blitz in the early 60s)—was
just as riddled with bad luck. At the age of ten, John, who by now had grown
into a somewhat rotund and, even he’d admit, quite ugly boy, managed to kill
his best friend, Dale, during a game of Hide and Go Seek. As Dale ran back to
Safe, John squealing with laughter as he huffed behind, Dale took a step too
far to the left to avoid John’s grasping hand, located an unmapped well from
the 19th century, and plummeted to his immediate death.

John wasn’t invited to the funeral.

After that, John didn’t have many friends, though
in the 10th grade he did manage to save a kitten during the Storm of
the Century—the hurricane of ’68. It was by all accounts only the sixth
hurricane to make it up the eastern seaboard and hit Central New York, but this
one was the first to bring true hurricane force winds to bear on the aging
infrastructure of the area, resulting in a power outage that lasted seven days.

John, huddled in his otherwise empty bunk area
and surviving on old crackers and water bottles he found in the empty cafeteria
fridge, nursed the small tabby back to life after he found it struggling in a
rushing stream running down Brighton Avenue. He named the little monster
Hercules.

After the storm, when the power came back on and
the automated caretakers resumed their rounds, Hercules disappeared. John would
always tell himself the little guy managed to get out of his bunk, though in
his heart he knew what happened. The automated caretakers threw tiny Hercules
into the incinerator along with the cardboard box and old blanket John kept him
in.

Eventually, John stopped making friends or
interacting with anyone at all. This was an incredibly smart choice on his part
and for years no one died because of him.

After seventeen years in ASHS, John reintegrated
into society as an in-person delivery agent for Universal Shipping and
Receiving Services. Most deliveries were done by automated services, but for a
small upcharge, people could get a real live person to deliver their packages
and mail to their door. As this type of interaction was the most face time
anyone got at this time thanks to the invention of full-immersion virtual
reality, it was surprisingly popular.

Also, international law required all medical
deliveries be done by a person rather than automaton. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t
a logical law, but then again, that was the problem. Automatons constantly
changed delivery destinations for organs mid-flight based on standard
prioritization rather than who paid the most for their new liver and that was
not acceptable to shareholders.

Eight years later, and a spotless record for
making sure rich patients receive the organs they paid for, John had finally
let go of his guilt of killing his parents, best friend, and maybe Hercules,
and fully embraced his job as a delivery person. In his mind, he did more than
drop off packages to lonely people and organs to the rich: he made lives
better. Human connection was, in his uneducated opinion, the best medicine.

It was with that newfound hope he scheduled his
first trip out of the United States. The tickets and accommodations took every
last cent of his savings, but, weighing in at two weeks and seventeen stops,
both in the US and abroad, he’d finally get to see what the world had to offer.
He’d immerse himself in humanity and, he hoped, be better for it.

He’d be the last person to make such a trip for
a hundred years.

On one summer day in July, John pulled up in
front of Crouse Memorial Hospital. There was a bounce in his step he hadn’t had
since before his parents died, which means he had no idea he’d ever felt this
cheerful. This was his last job before hopping on the puddle-jumper out of
Hancock international to JFK airport, then on to San Francisco for a two-day layover.
After that, John would be on his way to Hiroshima, then Hong Kong, New Delhi,
Cairo, and a rapid-fire tour of Europe before finally ending with a tour of
Mayan and Incan ruins in and around Brazil.

Perhaps if he’d known that happiness before,
he’d have stopped rushing the paperwork. He’d have paid more attention to the
flashing quarantine signs as he wheeled a set of lungs in a glorified cooler
down a long, pastel-painted hallway with LED room signs. Maybe he’d even have
noticed the “DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT HAZMAT PRECAUTIONS” signs plastered
around the doors he roughly shouldered through while nurses and security were
responding to a series of alarms around the corner.

Maybe he’d have heard the police screaming from
around that same corner as they tackled a bioterrorist trying to get in to see
the patient that required such precautions, or seen the gaggle of doctors and
nurses standing, hands to mouths, watching the events, backs turned to him.
After all, it’s not every day a woman infected with a contagious virus arrives
in Syracuse and tries to murder an entire population. Hell, the most exciting
thing to happen around the hospital at that time was the Neu-MeatTM
Taco Truck that served manufactured protein meals that almost tasted like beef.

Maybe if the intern that’d been left guarding
the only entrance into the quarantine area hadn’t tried a Neu-MeatTM
taco earlier in the day, he wouldn’t have run to the bathroom moments before
John entered the building.

And maybe, maybe, if any of that hadn’t been
happening, or John had paid more attention, everyone would’ve been fine.

But he didn’t. John made his way through the
strangely empty hospital hallways, whistling tunelessly as he thought about
getting seafood in San Francisco the next day, until he arrived at room
thirteen.

It was at this point John finally saw something
that gave him pause. As he’d been doing this for eight, going on nine, years
now, John had delivered several organs to patients with MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, as he took the time to learn. As such, the presence
of gloves and masks on the door gave him a solid heads-up, so he wheeled his
cart to a stop, put the gloves on—the masks were always an unnecessary
precaution, as many a doctor had told him over the years—and gave the door a
knock.

“Hello?” A weak voice answered.

John, still smiling his full smile—he took his
job of making people happy very
seriously—pushed into the room. “Hello, Francine!” He hoped that was
her name, anyway, since that’s what was on the PO. “I’ve come bringing a
gift for you.”

Hospitals always smelled weird. A mix of human
waste, sweat, and astringent cleaner.

This was worse.

John froze as he entered. The harshness of
chemicals he couldn’t identify made his eyes water. The sheer number of
machines caught him off guard and, for barely a moment, his smile slipped.
There were the usual heartrate monitors and IVs and such, but there was
something with a series of pumps, some sort of crazy mad scientist setup in the
corner, and, to his left, a long, wall-length mirror.

“Well, that’s new,” John mumbled as he
rolled the cart in.

“It’s so they can watch,” a heavily
accented voice replied.

John was drawn to the voice. On the hospital
bed, covered in white sheets spotted with flecks of red and sitting up through
the grace of the bed alone was a skeleton with some skin on it. The hairless
skull swiveled toward him, bright, clear blue eyes following him like a wolf tracking
prey.

Now, seven, even six years ago, John might’ve
screamed, but this wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew people in this situation
just wanted some dignity and respect, so he swallowed down the bile and smiled
wide. “That’s not very polite of them. Are you Francine?”

The figure on the bed cocked its head to the
side. “Yes.” Was it an Irish accent? Scottish? John had never been
very good at identifying those sorts of things.

John smiled his big smile and pretended he
wasn’t about to vomit. “I brought you a new set of lungs. Fresh from the
factory.” John slapped the cooler in front of him. It gave out a dull
thud.

Francine stared at him for a long moment,
something approaching a smile twitching across thin, chapped lips. “That’s
funny.”

John let out a breath he didn’t know he was
holding. “I figure humor is the best medicine.”

Francine made a noncommittal sound deep in her
throat. It sounded like grating sand.

“So,” John said, rubbing the back of
his neck. “Any idea when your doctor will be back so they can sign for
this?”

The suddenness of Francine’s laugh caught him
off guard. “I’m my own doctor,” Francine’s eyes narrowed to a point
on his chest, “John.”

John craned his neck awkwardly until he saw his
nametag. Right.

On another day, John might’ve gone back out and
talked to the front desk. He probably would’ve asked to see a supervisor. But
today, today he was leaving for a trip. Today, he absolutely needed to be at
Hancock by 4:15pm or he’d miss his flight and then the entire complicated
itinerary he’d spent the last year fretting over would be ruined. And, after
all, the only name on the PO was Francine Waters. Who was he to decide she
couldn’t accept delivery of her own organs?

John smiled and wheeled the cooler to the corner
of the room, next to the chemistry equipment. “Then I guess you’re who I
need to sign this delivery sheet.”

“I guess I am,” Francine said, eyes
boring into his forehead.

John took a deep breath. He grabbed his tablet
and sidled up next to Francine. Despite the heavy stink of the room, the odor
of rot and blood filled his nose as he approached. John desperately tried not
to wrinkle his nose or look too closely at the bed sheets. He didn’t want to
consider the red spots he saw weren’t polka-dots. He held out the tablet,
disappointed it was shaking lightly in the air. “I just need you to sign
right here.”

Francine’s lips twitched again, then she drew a
hand from beneath the covers.

John recoiled.

Her hand resembled her face—bones covered with
skin, blue veins straining, any musculature she once had gone—with one main
exception. It was covered with dozens of tiny, oozing sores.

He averted his gaze so quickly, he didn’t notice
the handcuffs securing her other arm to the bed.

“Okay there, John?” Francine asked,
breathing out into his face, hand out for the stylus. “Need some
air?”

Her breath smelled like roadkill. No wonder she
needed new lungs.

Man, I should’ve worn the facemask, he
thought.

John sucked in a deep, stale breath, then handed
her the stylus. Francine’s fingers brushed the blue latex of his gloves as she
did. Small brown streaks discolored the plastic.

Francine grimaced as she signed the tablet, then
slid the stylus back into the tablet instead of handing it to him directly.
“Thank you, ever so much, John.”

John grunted some sort of assent, then hastily
retreated. “My pleasure, Francine. Best of luck on your surgery!”

John left to the sound of Francine’s choking
laughter.

Objectively, the entire situation was creepy and
no one in their right mind would blame John for running from the hospital as
quickly as he could. Even the intern who’d just gotten back from a very rough
bathroom visit forgave the man who took off in a hurry. After all, the intern
had other problems to consider in that moment.

What few people in their right mind would
forgive him for was not reading the symptom charts plastered on all the exits. Or
the warnings to avoid travel if you entered the quarantine area with Doctor
Francine Waters, the woman who gene-edited the Ebola virus into a delayed
reaction pathogen. Even fewer would take a blood-covered object from the dear
doctor who, after her research was discovered, had fled the Irish Confederacy
with the intention to infect the entire eastern seaboard of the United States
with a virus that had a 97% fatality rate. She was a firm believer in the
theory that the only way to save the Earth, and thus, humanity, was through a
culling, you see.

He never meant for any of it to happen. Not his
parents, not Dale; certainly not Hercules.

Definitely not the deaths of 9.8 billion people.

But, as was mentioned at the beginning of John
Washinton’s tale, all of it just kind of happened.

It was, after all, the story of his life.

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