Read Decay (Book 1): Civilization for Free Online

and he could spend years trying with brute force. Pacing back and forth across the bamboo flooring he was suddenly bothered once again by the misquote he found earlier. His father was too smart to let that slip by. He went back to the netbook and typed in the name from the quote, but that also failed.  He stared at the sticky note and felt that the name was familiar somehow. His father had told him before about this man discovering an anomaly in text. He exerted every ounce of brain power he could to focus on what he knew about Kruskal. And then it came to him.
    The Kruskal Count was a strange property where written text is taken, one of the first ten words is picked and the following words are counted by how many letters were in the word picked. From there the letters in the word that is landed on would be counted, and the process repeats until a word is landed on that won’t allow for anymore counting without going over the word count. No matter what word is used to start the same word will always be the end.
    He felt thankful for all the ridiculous math assignments his father made him work on. Jonathan decided to start with the first word in the quote. Counting 2 words from “in” he landed on “struggle”. Eight more words put him at “the”. Three more words to “their”, “in”, and finally “themselves”. He couldn’t go any further, so he decided that this would have to be the password. Hitting enter after typing it in he found relief when the screen flashed and brought up the desktop.
    There were only a few programs and folders on the desktop. Solitaire was pinned to the taskbar along the bottom leaving Jonathan to believe his father played it quite a bit and wanted quick access to it. He was able to locate a series of journals written in Microsoft Word that Jonathan found to be more shocking as he read on. Many emotions rushed through his body as he continued to read and piece together the story of what had happened. Filled with rage and disbelief, Jonathan continued to read about the events that led up to the attack.
     
    The warm sun sank into the earth miles away. The dead roamed the streets without meaning or purpose. Although death was a release from the horrors of what had happened, pain still lingered on their faces, and sorrow settled into their gray eyes. Perhaps there was still a trace of the people that once inhabited the bodies of these monsters. Perhaps their last moments alive were just so cruel that their bodies will carry that forever.
    The man watching these monsters had remained alert for several days. The gunshot sounded like it came from the hills just across town. A single shot that sounded like an explosion rocked the town, perhaps a signal to any survivors. This man wasn’t sure what is was, but he wasn’t going to let a chance of escaping this hell slip by again.

 
    Chapter 3
    Piecing the story together from the journals stored on his father’s computer, Jonathan found what he discovered to be disturbing. After digging further into the computer’s files he also was able to uncover a series of security footage that his father must have downloaded before leaving from work the day of the attack. Combining the journals and security footage Jonathan had his explanation:
    “Just the other day Greg came in rather hurriedly,” Brian writes in the journal, and this was confirmed in the security footage. “He was pushing a cart with a blanket draped over it. Greg would not speak to any of us that day, so the rest of us went about the work we were doing. This was odd behavior for Greg, as the head of research for our floor he was always right there with us as we worked.
    “This lasted for the 2 days following. Finally I found myself in his office staring into the face of this disheveled man. Greg looked as though he had not eaten or even slept in days. I was worried for the welfare of my good friend, and wanted nothing more than to help him through this tough