by Nunn, Alexis
Animalistic
Alexis Nunn
Copyright © 2015 Alexis Nunn
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 150783490X
ISBN-13: 978-1507834909
To Derek, my cousin.
To Peanut, my puppy.
(2003-2015)
Anything
Not
Intentionally
Made
Alters
Life.
I
Struggle
To
Initiate
Change.
Dear reader:
There are a few things I want to say before you go on and read this book. My name is Alexis. Even though I finished this book in my junior year at the age of sixteen, I began writing up the plan for this book following my fourteenth birthday. In eighth grade, I started jotting down a prologue. I had the prologue written up in a composition notebook in pencil. I was determined to get this show on the road. The summer before freshman year, I made the move to type it up on Google Docs because I write faster and easier on a computer. Typing it up was the big rush. Once I had that written, I kept writing until the prologue was finished. I barely knew my characters at that point. The main lead, the sister, Darylene, went through about three name changes. I knew I wanted a name that started with D for some reason I have forgotten in the past three years. In the very first idea, her name was Daisy Stern. And then it was Darla Stern. And then Darrylene Stern until I dropped one R and kept Darylene. Feliks was always Feliks. It’s a neat name.
I put a lot of stress into their names. Darylene meant nothing to me, but Olyver did. My mother admitted to me she was thinking of naming me Olivia before Alexis. So I changed it up just a bit to fit the character. It might not have actually meant anything since it was a passing comment to me as a kid. Feliks’s middle names mean more. Kristoph is homage to my late uncle’s name, Christopher. Dalton was the name I was going to have if I had turned out to be a boy. Thankfully, I was a girl! Their last name is a different type of relevance. Star is Stern in German. Now, I had a weird German kick earlier where I tried to learn the language. I love it still (see Feliks), as I’m looking to take it in college. So, Mae and Nikolai, Darylene and Feliks’s mother and grandfather are German immigrants living in America. Their father, Ulf Svensson, was a Swedish immigrant. That’s as far as I had planned while writing the first half, the rest just developed as I wrote.
After careful character planning, I left the story alone for a very long time. Most of the beginning was written by a young teen who had no idea what she was doing so I got frustrated easily. Halfway into freshman year, I started writing a few ideas into the first chapters. It wasn’t until my sophomore year did I ever put my foot down and say “Lexi, you are writing this thing! Get serious!” So, I did NaNoWriMo. I got a good 30,000 words done by the end of November 2014 and I got the rest through both camps.
Now, I had a few problems with my initial creation. Firstly, I had no idea what I wanted in my book. The only thing I had planned out was my ending. It was funny how that happened. I was washing dishes and I heard the sound of wind and suddenly I had this vivid image in my head, but no spoilers. It made me step back and think about what just happened. I searched all over the internet for something similar, but I thankfully found nothing. My idea was as good as it was going to get. So, I made a plan. As I wrote this, my outline was vague as hell. After writing and developing my characters out of these convenient plot pawns, I realized my original climax was no longer going to work, but my ending would. My second problem is probably more obvious. I am an only child. I was raised by a single mother and I had no siblings at all. With that issue at hand, I didn’t know how siblings worked! Feliks and Darylene were close, so I relied on the stories I heard from my mother about her brothers. I did not try to model any of my characters after anyone alive or dead.
My only experience with a ‘sibling’ was my cousin, Derek. We were as good as siblings. So, he was the original inspiration for a brother character. He was only eighteen days younger than me so we grew up close. Now the sibling dynamic was difficult for me to write. I kept going to my mother and asking ‘Is this how siblings are?’ or ‘Does this sound realistic?’ for a while. Finally, I gave up and decided whatever relationship Darylene and Feliks came out with was their sibling relationship.
A lot of Feliks’s descriptions were taken from my model, Peanut. Whenever I needed to see what a pose looked like, I waltzed over to my dog and tested it out. She never cared. Yet, just the summer after my sophomore year, Peanut got very sick. Earlier in November of 2014, she was diagnosed with cancer but we decided to keep her alive and as comfortable as we could. She was lively until that June. It was until she fell and hurt herself that we made the difficult decision. On June 22, 2015, my childhood friend was put to sleep. It made writing difficult. Every time I saw the word dog, I thought of her and it brought tears to my eyes. I felt like I betrayed her. After that, this book was no longer solely dedicated to my cousin, but instead to Peanut. I thought to myself, I will always remember my dog in my character of Feliks. Without her, I would probably have ruined the idea. She will never die because her memory will live for a long time. Every time someone reads this book, they’ll read this and read my dedication and they too will know of a brave little mutt that stayed true to her family until the end came. So I dedicate this book to the dog that cuddled up to me during tornadoes and stayed by my side through sickness.
Please do not read this book for me, but for the memory of the best dog I have ever had the privilege to love. To Peanut, my beagle mutt, my darling, until we meet again.
Love,
Alexis K. Nunn
Prologue
The first winter Feliks and I spent alone without our family was when our uprooted lives became even worse. I had left Feliks in charge of setting up our camp fire; our camp now consisted of a stolen tent and a single blanket. Together, we had found a moderately tall hill to reside on. We could see a wide view of the surrounding woods from the flattened peak. This was to our advantage, of course. It allowed us to keep an eye out for werebies. Feliks and I encountered the creatures enough yet never had a conclusive name for them, just a self-created slang. The general public had lacked one as well. They were zombies, but not the average Hollywood brand. No, not exactly…
See, to clarify, I must start from the top.
It all began in August of this year. One town near Austin, Texas reported outbreaks in animals. Symptoms of the syndrome included violent displays, loss of obedience and affection, most importantly, cannibalism. Scientists suspected it had been a related disorder to canine distemperment, but the theory undermined the severity of it. The virus was found to have mutated from rabies with cell replication like cancer on hyper speed. The disease became known as the ‘Animal Wendigo Virus.’ A vaccine had arose; it appeared at first to be a savior to the problem. The medicine, however, had a terrible outcome in the situation. The virus mutated and became ferocious. The animals affected now had flesh rotting off their bodies and were the living embodiment of a nightmare. The labs tried to keep it a hush-hush accident but reporters everywhere had broadcasted the new mutation. I remember seeing headlines every day. Finally, the incidents seemed to die out. The Animal Wendigo Virus was still appearing place to place, now all cases had rotting flesh, but the animals were euthanized on the spot. Everybody thought the horror was over.
However, it was only the beginning of the catastrophe. September had rolled around, and during the very first week an infected animal bit a human. A caged pit-bull in an advanced state of the virus had bitten a scientist whose arm had wandered too close to a cage while trying to take blood samples. The event was breaking news; a news station aired the entire thing.
At
home, I watched a terrified woman crunch up into herself, crying out in pain. Her body rocked and her head and limbs jerked about wildly. Her body convulsed as onlookers stayed a great distance away. Then something frightening happened to top it all off; short bristly fur sprouted out of her skin at the same time her arms and legs began to shorten. The woman’s jaw appeared as if it disconnected and elongated with her nose to form a blunt snout. Her reddish hair fell out, replaced by the tan animal fur. Her cries echoed the silent room. Next came the noise.
Her cries were muffled by a deafening continuous cracking. It was as if every bone in her body was been compacted together. Her back arched up and her hind legs curved out. Out of her nose and mouth was a torrent of blackish-crimson blood and bits of what I could only think were teeth. The screen had cut to black and the news was put on hiatus, leaving the world in a suspended state of shock.
I was crying, afraid to move. Our mother, Mae, stood in the doorway, frozen mid step while staring at the screen and our grandfather on our mother’s side, Nikolai, furiously shut the television off. Feliks huddled up beside me on the couch, his long brown hair brushing against my cheek while I subconsciously tried to hide away into it. The moment he moved, I flinched and tried to slink away but was transfixed, still staring at the blank screen. The entire concept of the newly mutated virus affecting humans and the unbelievable idea I had just witnessed it took away my shallow breath. Had I truly just watched a woman turn into a dog? That was impossible!
The horror was not over. Similar cases appeared on a continental level. The Animal Wendigo Virus had spread as far as Vancouver, Washington, and even Central America. Even here in Indiana, people were now being bitten by the animals and changing. It was close to impossible to find a non-infected animal out in the wild. A noticeable trend surfaced: whatever animal you were bitten by became the infected’s appearance.
As the cases became worse and worse, we as a nation realized the stages. First an animal bit the human and they changed. It was a swift paced stage and without interference, it was a permanent affliction. The only cure was to prevent the bad blood from spreading into the DNA; this had to be done as soon as bitten. Next the second stage was when the human was fully an animal. The now-animal soon lost the ability to speak and comprehend human speech. They began to lose fur and patches of blisters and sores grew upon the skin as the stage progressed.
The beginning of the third step was when their eyes changed into cloudy orbs that were void of life. All remaining memories and compassion was lost. This final stage was cemented when the animal ate human and animal flesh; then they lost patches of skin and tissue. Some rotted down to was seemed like a soggy corpse once bacteria began to break down the muscle.
Mother and Grandpa tried to take us away as fast as they could. The four of us Sterns packed up and piled anxiously into our car, leaving Feliks’s truck behind. We managed to escape into Canada, where they thought it would be safer. We ventured into the forests of Canada months after the Broadcast, seeing no alternative for safety. Our family depended upon Feliks to lighten the mood but there was no avail. The atmosphere was always an oppressive cloud of lingering doom that dangled above us, trying to pull us closer to our demises. Feliks had always possessed the talent of misplaced humor, but under the circumstances it felt like it was lost forever.
The last weeks of October passed. A tragedy struck us the day Mother and Grandpa searched for a new place to stay. I knew something had been off. Feliks insisted I stayed home with him that day. I could not place it, but there was an urgency in his voice that pleaded with me to stay. He stated once we were alone he had a premonition about Mother and Grandpa abandoning us and he did not want them to leave me alone out there. In the following silence, he looked up into my eyes with a marrow chilling stare.
“They aren’t coming back,” My older brother whispered without hesitation. I choked back oncoming tears.
“You don’t know that Feliks! If that or all this is a joke… I swear it isn’t funny,” I started to cry. They’ll come back… It was just a dream.
Feliks swallowed and sighed, “Lene… Darylene… I’m being serious. I cannot explain it. I-” He cut himself off at the cry of howl off in the distance. He quickly finished his sentence, “I truly and honestly believe they are not coming back. Now get back in the car and lock the doors,” He ordered.
I had not believed him at all. It was too implausible to me. We stayed inside the locked car for weeks at my request. Our supplies of food began to dwindle to the point Feliks packed up our tiny camp and drove off in search of somewhere better. For the first time in what seemed like ages, I witnessed my brother acting his age. People used to assume I was the eldest. I was usually more mature, I was taller by almost an entire head’s length, and made major decisions for us. Meanwhile in this state of disorder, my reflex was to shut down and to compensate, Feliks took responsibility. I wished neither of us had to take responsibility, but Mother and Grandpa had left us. Or possibly they had died, maybe gotten lost. We did not have any proof they were dead after all. What if they were alive and wandering lost in the forest having to fend off werebies all by themselves? If they actually had left us, they deserved being attacked, but if not, then they were innocent lives lost forever. It was a bittersweet battle in my heart on what to believe.
Feliks tried to watch for danger from inside the car. I sat next to him, turning my head around to watch snowfall but kept my body snuggled into the cloth seats.
“If this wasn’t so depressing, I think this would be a beautiful experience,” Feliks thought aloud.
“What? How is this beautiful?” I asked.
“I think I can actually see the frost spread across the glass. And each snowflake that lands just sticks. It’s a rare experience. Being close to alone with someone you appreciate and just enjoy nature doing its thing.”
“It is cold as hell,” I complained, sitting up, “I don’t think this is very enjoyable.”
“You are a critic.”
I chuckled, pulling the blanket more over to me, “I am!”
He pulled back but I fought him. He let go and let me fall back into the plush of the car door. The window fogged up from the heat of my hair and head. I glared back to him and he laid the blanket even overtop of me. Feliks leaned over just far enough to kiss my cheek, his moustache tickled my nose, and told me goodnight. He stretched out at the end of the seat and used just a bit of the remaining blanket. I waited for him to get comfortable and sleep before giving him his fair share of our blanket.
Feliks and I rested in our car for a while until we began seeing werebies at our car side, or stalking through the forest. Neither of us could bring ourselves to kill the creatures, seeing as we shared the mutual fear of them being our guardians. By mid-November, our car became useless to us. It was out of fuel and a window had been shattered by an attack by a cougar werebie. I did not kill it, a shard of glass from the window severed the ligaments in its neck. The mummy-like bag of bones fell apart, making the cougar literally lose its head. It died beside the car. It was no longer safe to stay there.
The last day we stayed in the car, Feliks was sitting in the driver seat, hands on the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat. Our supplies were packed in the back and we were only reminiscing. He frowned, staring into the dash. This was Nikolai’s car, not ours. It felt like abandoning the last thread connecting us to home. I opened the glove box and made a happy discovery. Inside there was a chocolate bar. I reached into the glovebox and took the discovery out. I waved it in the air and thought Feliks would break his neck whipping around to look at it. He took it from my hands and looked it all over. It was still good too, expiration date away by a week. There was no tear in the packaging and was all well to eat.
If there was anything I could certainly bet my life on, it was that Feliks loved chocolate. We split it, eager to eat it all in one bite but knew it was a good chance this was our last. I chewed it slowly, by force more than choice. The chocolate was hard fro
m the cold. When it was gone, we both just sat in silence.
Our perishable food supply was finally caput, leaving just a bag of a few assorted canned food. As much as both of us detested the idea of leaving the car for good, we had to. Snow piled up around our vehicle, creating a virtual Ice Age inside. Before taking off, we grabbed the blankets and a tent we had snatched from our neighbors garage when we initially left our home. The decision to leave our car may not have been the best, considering it was our only source of shelter against werebie attacks. A tent can only do so much. A few days after hiking out in the forest, I found a hollow ravine shielded by tree roots and vines that formed a roof. The roof kept snow off the ground, but the soil was still pure ice. We couldn’t start a fire that would last long enough before the frigid air snuffed it out. Feliks and I nearly froze every night inside the tent. Brother and sister clung to each other for dear life. Our combined body heat was captured by our thick wool blanket. Feliks offered the opinion that the blanket was the only thing that kept us both alive.
One day I found a berry bush. The bush was thorny and pricked at my fingers when I tried to pluck away at the clustered berries. The berries were preserved in frost and I took my chances with eating them. They looked highly similar to blackberries and tasted like nothing but cold. Death from poison or starving to death would not matter at this point anyway. We were desperate.
Deep in the solemn night, I shot up in terror, cursing Mother and Grandpa for leaving us. I screamed that I was going to kill myself before I let hunger or the cold take me. Apparently I leaped up from our bed with the intent of running into the forest. Feliks had to drag me back into the ravine. I cried for a while as the tears froze onto my face then blacked out from exhaustion safely in his arms. The very next day the berries were gone. Feliks left, even though he did not want to, so he could search for a better place or at least food. He came back hours later to find me holding a rusted knife that I discovered outside the ravine, buried under dead plants. I rocked in my place.