After the Pandemic: Genocide (1): The Variants (1113 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesLabels: After_the_Pandemic
Rating: 2 on 19 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2005-11-28 11:18:17 EST
Jack McCallum's Introduction - http://www.ubersite.com/m/61238
I've been reading the After the Pandemic series by Jack McCallum and TheCaes, and been trying to start one of my own. While waiting to be able to restart my Exodus Chronicles series, I'm going to be doing ATP for a while, this being the introduction to what will hopefully be at least twelve or so installments.
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PART ONE - The Variants
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From the Diary of Adam Livingstone
August 30th, 1903
To-day we moved further down into the native village. The Hottentots were much eager to trade with us, and our party exchanged guns and coins with them, while they gave us food and shelter for the night. Our expedition to Lake Victoria is drawing to a close, as our Afric interpreters tell us that the glorious Lake is within twenty miles. What joy rises in my bosom as I imagine gazing on that wondrous sight!
In the village, upon further notice, were several Negroes afflicted with the most terrifying of maladies, a strange disease borne by rats, it would seem. They are called zombi, which means that they have no souls, in the Hottentot tongue. They sit staring blankly at the walls of their huts, tongues lolling, and occasionally blinking. No stimulus can awake them from their unnatural slumber, and their families weep interminably for their loved ones now incapable of thought.
Their eyes have turned a most fearsome crimson colour, and a feeling of malice is apparent in their company. The tribal witch-doctors are at their wits' end, for none of their spells or potions will awake these pour souls. I can only hope that these wretches might one day by the grace of God...
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Dear Mam,
Things are going well out here, still hot as all hell though. Not much contact with the boche the last few days, which suits us well. Sandstorm today, couldn't see an inch in front of my face. We're stuck in a village called (censored by High Command) near el-Alamein, where the fighting is going on hard.
Yesterday the Tigers poured over Company A's line, trying to reach brig. Hq, but A and B together held them back, at the cost of (censored by High Command). This bloody war (censored by High Command) excuse my language, Mam, but (censored by High Command). (censored by High Command).
After (censored by High Command) we found a German man shot through the stomach, but some of the other prisoners had seen one of his own comrades do it. This puzzled us, and we tried to find the perpetrator. The German who had done his own pal in looked like a ghost, and frightened us, even though he just sat there staring out into space, not moving against us.
Captain McGarry told Dow to take and bind the German, but when Dow approached, he lost nerve and said that the German scared him too much. The German had a weird smile and twitched slightly, almost like shell-shock. Simpson moved in with the handcuffs, but the German arose like lightning and sunk his teeth into the (censored by High Command). Good God, Mam, the very sight! We had seen some terrible things, but nothing worse than that German almost eating poor Simpson alive. We pounded that boche full of holes through and through, but it was too late. Simpson (censored by High Command) from all the blood he lost.
It was fearful to see the German, almost as though he was possessed, commit such an unnatural act, like he had no soul. I am sick of this war and pray that it is speedily terminated. (censored by High Command) to try and (censored by High Command.) Montgomery has been (censored by High Command) and the letters from the soldiers might not (censored by High Command).
(censored by High Command).
By the time you get this, (censored by High Command). (censored by High Command) and I hope to see you all back home soon. Pray for me, and pray for Simpson and all the rest of us out here. I miss you all terribly.
With greatest love and affection,
Your son, John Darcy
Royal Fusiliers, Company C
October 17th, 1942
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Strange Disease from Africa Threatens Europe
By Julia Rogerson
January 14th, 200X
In a hospital bed in Rome, Mario Firenzo lies prostrate and weakened, quarantined in a separate wing and surrounded by heavily protected and covered nurses and doctors. His caregivers are dressed in plastic smocks, with gas masks that suggest trench warfare, and expose no skin to the air in the closed ward.
After a business trip to Algeria, Mr. Firenzo contracted a disease with flu-like symptoms. Unlike the avian flu or SARS of several years ago, the greatest scientists know nothing of how this illness is transmitted but the rumor of several ancient legends and diaries from Africans. Like AIDS, the disease was first reported in an early form about a hundred years ago in the central Rift Valley, by Adam Livingstone, an explorer, who stated that the natives believed the disease was spread by rats.
All we have to go on from there is rumor says, Frederick von Mauer, a professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology. "While this disease is only now well-known as it reaches endemic proportions," he wrote in a recent paper presented to the UN. "There have been reports of a similar affliction in central Africa for at least sixty years. The symptoms—catatonia, sudden and unprovoked aggression, and schizophrenia—have been recorded by civilians and scholars in Sudan, Chad, Libya and Algeria. The most fearsome part about the disease is the variant strains that are mutating in some of the cases we have observed."
This disease—now known almost universally as Mauer Syndrome after the scientist who isolated the strains—has appeared to have developed three separate strains. Variant A is the original, causing fatal lethargy and convulsions after several weeks of flu-like symptoms. Variant B leaves consciousness within the brain, but the victim is also subject to lethargy coupled with lethal aggression, a description of which is offered in the diaries and correspondence of British and American soldiers in North Africa. The soldiers referred to "Sfax Sickness" and "Desert Death" when talking about German troopers who displayed strange calmness in the heat of battle, and when approached, lashed out in murderous rage, refusing to surrender and not heeding any wounds or pain.
Variant C, however, leaves its victims most lucid, with reports coming out of the middle east of Israeli children in Tel Aviv killing their parents while retaining a calm composure and without any show of remorse or emotion. Sessions with psychologists reveal that the children have perfectly normal brain function, but are inflicted with a psychosis brought on by the sight of blood. Cannibalism is also a particularly horrific consequence to this illness.
Variant C sufferers are infected by fluid transmission, whether it be blood, semen or saliva. They are driven by an urge for blood and human flesh, and when they attack a victim of their own, they can transmit any of the three variants upon him or her. The lucky will get Variant C, although the victim stands a very good chance of death upon the bite of a zombie...
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"Our field correspondent for Eyewitness News reports from New York City's All Saints' Hospital in Brooklyn. Samantha?"
"Well, Tom, here in Brooklyn, we seem to be having a spread of Mauer's Syndrome. Having already claimed the lives of over three hundred and fifty million worldwide, with an estimated nine hundred million living with the infection, its spread to America has been slow. Though the disease has mainly struck in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, with the affected countries quarantined, it seems that order has completely broken down in the countries where the disease has killed the most, and billions of lives have been destroyed."
"Scientists and scholars are showing fear that Mauer's Syndrome, with all its terrifying variants and strains, could become a major problem in the eastern United States this winter. President Robertson has already called for a nationwide lockdown on all ingoing and outgoing travel and commerce. When a person is infected by this body fluid borne disease, they have a fifty-percent chance of death, and an equal chance of developing one of three separate Variants, one which leaves the victim lucid but psychotic, one which leaves the victim with nearly all of his human faculties—"
Tobias Collins angrily turned off the television, cursing the bad news that was all-encompassing in this miserable world that he lived in.
He sat back further in his armchair, massaging his smarting eyeballs. Only when he closed his eyes could all the stress and pain go away, and as he opened his eyes, he saw all that caused his agony. The slums of 124th Street where he lived were visible outside his small apartment window, the pictures of his family back in England, now dead or dying from Mauer's Syndrome, the black tar in the pit of the ashtray that controlled his life...
The apartment was dark and quiet now that the faint blue glow of the old television had been shuttered. Tobias absentmindedly strapped his piece of string around his thin, pale arm. He had a silver spoon on a chain around his neck, which he began to do his work with. Moving his nicotine-stained fingers, he poured his black tar and with a dirty matchbook, prepared his addiction.
As he injected his death into his arms, he thought of his family in his ecstatic high, trapped in Birmingham, unable to escape the threat of Variants B and C. Their final emails to him came last month, when they expressed fear that the infected were living among their neighborhood.
Tobias breathed in deeply, thanking himself and his own luck that he had managed to get the money to leave for America. He did not thank God—God was dead to him. A God who would let hundreds of millions of humans in Africa and Europe perish to the zombies of the Variants. He had all that he needed in his new home in the States, his one-room flat in the Upper East Side.
There was a knocking on his door. Tobias sighed heavily as he pulled the needle from his swollen vein. Standing up shakily, he muttered in a gravelly voice, "I'm coming, I'm coming..."
"What?" said a female voice, muffled from behind the door.
"I said I'm coming! Christ!" Tobias shouted, his voice high and wavering. As he stood up and walked toward his door, his mind exploded in a dizzying burst of blood flow and nausea.
He got to the door and felt for the handle, opening the door and looking out from his sunken eyes at the visitor. He saw stars before him, obscuring her face, but he could hear her voice as she pushed into the room.
"I've seen you before..." she said. "I need help."
"Who are you?" Tobias said in a grunt, holding his aching head.
"The zombies are in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg," she said. "They've got my..."
"Don't bloody care," wheezed Tobias. His vision was clearing now, and he looked up at a skinny white woman, needle marks all over her arms, and lips almost blue with lack of oxygen. Her eyes were pink, and her filthy once-blond hair hung limply down her shoulders. She smiled at him kindly, a fellow soul.
"What the hell do you want me to do? Give you money?" Tobias said, annoyed.
"Money?" the woman said, furrowing her light eyebrows. "I just want to talk to somebody. I can't be alone here...I'm Angel."
Tobias stared at her, mind still not comprehending why she had come. He stood stock-still as Angel came closer to him, looking at him.
Tobias was of average height, with a hooked nose and a sallow face. He had ear-length jet black hair, and was once a handsome man. The crisis of the pandemic coupled with his own addiction and neglect for his appearance had turned the face of a shy, sweet boy into a mask of despair and death. His eyes were blurry and somewhat sunken into his head; his lips were the same shade as the rest of his skin, and his t-shirt had been worn now for several days.
Angel smiled at the ghastly appearance of Tobias, and drew even closer to him, so that their bodies were almost touching. She ran a long, scrawny finger down his caved chest.
"What are you..." Tobias began.
"You let me in...thank you..."
"And I'll let you out," replied Tobias, not wishing to prolong human contact.
"You let me in...I don't need money," Angel said sweetly, her eyes flashing scarlet. "I need you."
"I've given up on women," Tobias answered in a softer tone, looking away from the woman. "I know in this world it's lonely, especially with all this death, but I can't...not..."
Angel was still smiling, her face hungry and blanch. Tobias' blood ran cold.
"Silly...I don't want your love, I want you!"
"No...no..." moaned Tobias, backing away from the woman, stumbling into his armchair in the darkness. She came closer, her bare feet causing the bare hard wood floors to squeak. "No...not me...someone else, please, for the love of god, I'm no good...my blood's bad...not me...not me..."
"Come on, honey," Angel said, coming closer. She put her arms around the weakened Tobias, grinding against him and showing him her blood-stained teeth. "It only hurts for a second. I just...I promise not to kill you by eating too much...maybe just a little blood..."
"No...no..." sobbed Tobias, pushing her away and falling back across the arm of the chair. "Why...not me..." He lay prostrate on the floor, kicking with his legs to push away from his attacker.
"Stop it," said Angel in a snappish tone, stepping on his stomach and leaning down to him. "Come, now...open up to me...I was infected like this just like you, and I didn't die...bear it like a man, you..."
"I won't let you," Tobias hissed, using both hands to push Angel away, but she merely brushed his arms out of her way and licked her lips, eyeing his smooth flesh.
Tobias screamed as the woman swooped down on him, sinking powerful jaws through his thin shirt into the muscle of his chest, ripping out a chunk of flesh. Thoughts raced through his mind...let him not be infected by one of the three variants, let him not live out his life as a mindless being, or as a murderous killer.
She moved up to his neck, her teeth tearing off strips of skin and muscle from his collarbone. Tobias convulsed on the floor, feeling the immediate effects of her saliva in his bloodstream. It felt as though every capillary in his body was about to burst, and as she toyed with his trembling hand, he wished beyond all hope to be dead.
Raising Tobias' hand to her mouth, Angel placed her teeth around his pinky finger and bit hard. Tobias could no longer feel, he was beyond pain. The torturous feeding continued, the woman generously staying away from the major veins and whetting her appetite on blood from his hand and chest. Tobias had fainted, his mind having given up on his body.
"Thank you," Angel whispered to him, coyly nibbling his ear. She got up, leaving Tobias drenched in a pool of his own blood on the floor, eyes blank, but chest still rising and untouched heart still beating.
"I'll leave something for you to watch," Angel said, turning on the television and watching for a few moments.
"...the final newscast for this evening. We have received recent news that the victims of Mauer's Syndrome have spread beyond Brooklyn. If you suspect a loved one of having been infected, do not call the police, but evacuate immediately. When infected by a sufferer, the victim will either die or develop one of the three strains of the virus. 911 is not advised, just leave for a safer place. This will be this channel's final broadcast. We warn everyone to flee the city. Move into the countryside, escape to where there are fewer people. This is a national disaster, a global pandemic. We repeat, no one is safe from—"
Angel clicked the channel off, and looked at the blank television screen for a few seconds, ignoring the panting and weeping of the semi-conscious Tobias dying on the floor.
"Nothing good on, anyway," she said, and with that, she left the room.
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-03-28 16:00:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yeah, I feel that the (censored by High Command) markings make that entry.
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:16:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by awesome_face (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:06:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Superb. I liked the entry from the soldier at El Alamein.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-01-16 00:07:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'll start this back up soon.
Submitted by Jimmo (user info) at 2005-12-05 12:02:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Enjoyed.
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2005-12-05 09:14:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What Tim said.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-12-01 02:19:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting and well written.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-11-30 14:30:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i really expected this to suck after finishing caes's..but i was pleasantly surprised that it didn't
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-29 13:27:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yes, the zombies in NY will be mostly Variant C.
Variant C is the most conscious and human of the three.
Variant B is the wandering, muddling, psychotic zombies of horror movies
Variant A are vegetables and will only lash out if approached
Submitted by hcp28 (user info) at 2005-11-29 12:54:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Very nice work. I wonder if his drug addiction will alter his transformation in any way. Is this thread going to stay true to the other threads about NYC turning mostly variant c?
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-29 07:53:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
1. The description of Tobias mirrors some of the lyrics in "Nobody's Home", ie. the nicotine-stained fingers, silver spoon on a chain.
2. Obscure, but according to The Wall, Pink's father served and died in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, Company C.
3. And I thought I had put the phrase "any colour you like" into the first diary entry, but on second glance, I didn't. Two, though.
Submitted by Fabit (user info) at 2005-11-29 03:57:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
He saw stars before him, obscuring her face
Is that a pink floyd ref?
Excellent - i will be watching this thread.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-11-28 19:00:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting take on it. Nice job so far!
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-28 15:38:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I see marching hammers
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-28 12:17:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
less than 60 posts until 80,000
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2005-11-28 11:53:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
woot. I love pandemic stories.
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2005-11-28 11:41:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
All of the installations of this series should be put into one big work.
Submitted by HadToBeDone (user info) at 2005-11-28 11:31:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Alright, alright....I'll add you to my list of "must-check" authors...as if your Michael Higgins story shouldn't have put you there by itself.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-28 11:18:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I put some Pink Floyd references into this, having watched The Wall last Friday. +2s to anyone who spots them.