Apocalyptic Beginnings Box Set

by M. D. Massey

  On the night of the next full moon, I felt off. My skin itched like crazy. I found it impossible to fight against being moody, erratic, like my body was on some kind of biological roller-coaster I couldn’t control.

  Chibueze and I agreed to keep an eye on each other, as we both felt seriously ill.

  Then it happened. Moonlight flooded in through the glass wall directly across from the prison cells. I watched Chibueze closely. Her appearance started to change. Sheets of skin fell off her cheeks and forehead. Her arms became pocked with sores and bloody lesions.

  I jumped with fright as all our prison cells spontaneously unlocked. I looked down at my own hands and arms. They were covered with bleeding sores. I swore to myself that no matter how horrifying, I would make my conscious mind remember everything that happened throughout that night.

  As I became increasingly impaired, survival instinct took over. I had trouble walking. I could only move by dragging my feet, which suddenly felt heavy and cumbersome. I forced my mind to analyze my physical sensations. It was how I imagined a person would experience a partial stroke. Encumbered by my own struggle to move my body through space, I wanted nothing more than to lean on other people…not emotionally, but physically. I wanted to be part of a group, a team, a horde. I started fantasizing about herds of elephants, swarms of bees, animal groups traveling together to protect each other.

  The other prisoners must have felt the same way. Chibueze, Akachi, Akachi’s mother and fifteen or so other prisoners—all now with weeping, bloody sores and bones becoming visible where sheets of skin were shedding off—shuffled toward me and toward each other. We all moved together as one unit, dragging our clumsy feet out the back prison door.

  The grounds were bathed in harsh moonlight. I could see the entire treatment camp from the top of the hill where the prison was located, but we were prohibited from reaching it. A wall encircled the camp, separate from the wall that encircled our prison. Gates had been opened in the prison wall on the opposite side from the treatment camp. As we shuffled along, we spilled out into the Liberian jungle.

  I dragged my feet. I moaned from the struggle and the discomfort. My feet were raw pain.

  We sloshed through a muddy road leading away from the prison. It was bracketed by walls of leafy green trees on either side.

  We all saw it at the same time: a baby monkey all alone by the side of the road, clinging to a wet vine.

  I moved without concern for anything else. Saliva pooled on my tongue and leaked out over my lips which seemed to no longer touch, as though skin had rotted away at the edges. I shuffled along with the rest of the horde, although I managed to move two steps ahead of everyone else.

  I focused my vision. When we reached the monkey, I grabbed it by its tail. It was surprisingly easy to catch, obviously separated from its mother and paralyzed with fear. I grasped its neck and twisted. As its head went lolling back, I bit off its face, removing all its facial features. Slamming the baby primate against a tree, I managed to break open its skull. Pulling the plates apart like a cracked lobster tail, I extracted the brain. Sucking and chewing the delicious meat, I felt as though fulfilling an important primal duty.

  Hands covered in blood, I ambled back to my human mob. I could sense other life forms moving throughout the jungle. Although my hunger had been partially sated by the monkey, the baby was small and I had become ravenous. I wanted something else, something more satisfying. The monkey had been an appetizer, a prelude to something more substantial.

  Chapter 4

  Journalist Hunter Morgan: Trouble Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

  Taking an evening flight from JFK to Houston Airport, I tried to sleep. I ordered a double gin and tonic. After tossing that down, I threw a travel blanket over myself, tucked one of those bendable travel pillows around the back of my neck and fell fast asleep for most of the flight.

  By the time we landed at Houston, it was close to midnight. The full moon had risen to conquer the sky, illuminating the clouds and bathing everything on the ground in silver light.

  Walking briskly through the airport, scanning the stores for stuffed animal souvenirs to purchase for Sophie on my return trip, I headed for the rental cars. Then I drove out into the Houston night.

  Once I had finally arrived at my hotel room, exhausted, I flipped on cable news. The weirdest story was coming out of McAllen, Texas, a dusty border town where illegal immigrants lived among the shadows. Bodies had been found eviscerated along two dirt roads and in a few backyards of homes that were little more than shacks.

  A reporter held a microphone in front of the anxious face of a Latino woman standing in a shack doorway, two young children clutching her skirt, other family members walking back and forth inside the room behind her. The woman said, “Yes, I know him. He’s my oldest son’s friend.” She looked disturbed, fear shining in her brown eyes as brilliantly as the glimmerings of moonlight.

  The reporter—a middle-aged man, skin prematurely wrinkled and hair sun-bleached white, wearing dirty jeans and a T-shirt—asked her, “How old is your son?”

  The woman looked desperately into the reporter’s eyes, as though somehow he could help her, could save the rest of her family. “Alejandro’s seventeen.”

  The reporter followed up: “Alejandro? And what’s his last name?”

  Emerging from the shadows inside the shack, a man stepped into the doorframe. A Latino with rough, weathered skin parched by desert drought and sandblasted into an array of wrinkles and lines, he waved his hand at the reporter. He said, “That’s enough. I’m sorry. My family needs to deal with this in privacy.” He guided the woman inside by her arm and shut the door.

  The reporter stood in a pool of artificial light provided by the news crew’s HMI lamp. Turning to the camera and speaking directly to the audience, he said, “So we just finished talking to a woman who lives in the house where the first body was found in the backyard. We don’t know the victim’s name and, even if we did, we couldn’t release it yet, not until we’re sure the family of the deceased has been notified. However, she did tell us the victim was a friend of her teenaged son, Alejandro.”

  The viewpoint changed to that of news anchor, Ashley Sims, back in the studio. Blond, blue-eyed, eyebrows arched in concern, she said to the reporter, “Oh, how terrible! My heart goes out to her son and to the family of his murdered friend.” After pausing for a split second to breathe, she continued, “Ryan, are drug gangs suspected? Or illegal aliens who secretly crossed the border into Texas? Governor Strickland’s saying he suspects it’s an illegal immigrant who’s gone on a rampage, maybe jacked up on cocaine.”

  I thought to myself: Ashley, you bitch, looks to me like the nice people Ryan interviewed are illegals. Fear-mongering really is your specialty.

  TV graphics underlined the scene in several layers: BREAKING NEWS…MASSACRE RENEWS IMMIGRATION REFORM BATTLE…Reporter Ryan Shaw at scene of horrific murder in McAllen, Texas. Underneath that, in a plain white band, an unrelated story: Stock Market once again hits record high.

  Then the screen split, predictably, into multiple panels to accommodate the anchor and three experts, the incident officially becoming part of the 24-hour news cycle.

  Ashley Sims asked Texas Governor Owen Strickland whose name was now another graphic, blue letters against a white background directly below him, “Has your state ever experienced this before?”

  Wearing a cowboy hat, the Governor answered, “No, ma’am, nothin’ this bad. But let me tell you, lots of other things have happened in our border towns that are pretty darn frightening. Anyone not living down here has no idea. Absolutely no idea. Drugs come into our town all the time from Mexico, ruining the lives of our teenagers. Crime rates have soared. Drug dealers roam our streets, even in broad daylight, without fear of being captured. The illegals coming into our state include people who are mentally ill. Mexico doesn’t want ’em, so they send ’em on over the border to us. Why, I’ve heard that our enemies are planning to send terro
rists infected with Ebola over our borders. I think these dead bodies are just a warning, something to scare the living daylights out of us. Well, we’re not going to be intimidated. We’re going to stand up and fight.”

  The TV brought another expert into focus, with the graphic Roy Weber, McAllen Police Department emblazoned on the TV screen beneath him—this time, in red letters against a white background—as Ashley inquired, “So, Police Officer Weber, do you think citizens of your town should arm themselves right now?”

  The police officer responded, “I think it’s necessary right now. I’m sorry it’s gotten to this point, but the President keeps letting all kinds of illegals into our country and people just aren’t safe here anymore. Our citizens have a Second Amendment right to bear arms. Everyone living along our border should have the means to protect themselves.”

  I switched off the television. I called Alice to see about going to McAllen before interviewing Congressman Fuller about his connections to Chen-Zamora. I didn’t need to ask. Alice was already awake, strategizing. She said, “Hunter, get down to McAllen right away. Chen-Zamora and the Congressman can wait. They’re not going anywhere. This story is going to be huge. See what you can find out before the bodies are cleaned up and the story turns into just another 24-hour news advertisement for the NRA. Find some new angle to give us an edge on this, OK?”

  Chapter 5

  Emma Johnson: The Liberia Treatment and Research Camp, West Africa

  After feasting on baby monkey, my appetite had been whetted. Although my skin continued to deteriorate, my senses for fulfilling hunger had sharpened. The intensity of it surprised me. Not only had the sounds of night birds been amplified, I could also smell them and see their movements more clearly through the foliage than before I had become whatever I was. My conscience, much of my rational thought and most of my fear had disappeared. In what was left of my imagination, I felt that I was now a combination of mythical creatures: zombie, vampire and werewolf. I knew none of that made sense. But I couldn’t focus on analyzing it. In the moment, I was consumed by hunger and bloodlust.

  Chibueze bumped into me as we shuffled along the muddy road. The jungle was too dense for us to enter. I leaned against her to steady myself. Together, we moved with the horde, aimless except to fulfill our incredible need for flesh and viscera.

  Suddenly, I smelled blood. I also felt a sensation akin to ESP, picking up on electrochemical signals flashing through a living brain. It wasn’t anyone in our group. Our brains weren’t that alive anymore and our blood didn’t have the same pungent scent.

  We tottered on. My hiking boots got stuck in the mud. I tried to pull them out, but didn’t have enough control over my feet or leg muscles. The group closed in on me, rubbing their shoulders against mine, dragging me forward, unconsciously using their combined weight to pull my booted feet out of the brown gelatinous substance. My boots popped out with a sucking sound.

  Once freed, I honed in on the scent of blood. It blended into the burning smell of a recent campfire. Someone had cooked dinner out here in the wild. I realized I didn’t want the dead cooked animal, though. I wanted the human who had cooked it.

  I wanted to tell the group about my discovery, the way a hunter would tell other members of his or her hunting party they had spotted prey. But I couldn’t. I didn’t have enough control over my hands or fingers to alert them by nonverbal signals the way a hunter might. And I couldn’t pronounce words. Had I wanted to say, “I think I sense prey nearby,” I couldn’t. Instead, I moaned and sloppily shuffled along in the general direction of the campfire.

  We all groaned. It was a terrifying sound, at once both mindless and bestial.

  I realized the entire mob must have detected the same thing because we moved as one entity toward the source of blood and campfire.

  A few more minutes and we came upon an opening in the jungle, a narrow dirt path carved into the primeval growth. Protected by the broad, wet leaves, the ground there was packed hard and dry. We couldn’t all fit through the opening in our current formation, so we just kind of squished together, forcing those hit by tree branches to fall behind. Our group’s shape changed as though made of Silly Putty, squeezed and smooshed until it became something else.

  We marched, a phalanx of the semi-dead, toward something wholly dead and something else that was wholly alive. We desired that which still pulsed with blood.

  Then I saw it in all its rapturous beauty: four humans sleeping around the burning embers of an old campfire. Red points glittered and crackled in the charcoal dust. A man snored. A woman rolled over.

  I honed in on something tiny: an infant swaddled in blankets. A dinner napkin wrapped around dinner, I thought.

  We moved as one. At least until we reached the living group. Then it was every man and woman for themselves.

  I sensed the sleepers breathing. I felt the push and pull of their exhalation and inhalation. I felt the moist steam of their breath even against the warm night air of the jungle.

  We fell in like a pack of wild chimpanzees, moaning rather than screaming. We attacked and clawed open the warm fleshy carcasses that held the most delectable parts: the brains, the entrails and organs. We chewed and swallowed, blood dripping down our chins, as we fed our insatiable hunger.

  When we were done, we ambled back toward the main road. We blindly shuffled along, sniffing the air for whatever might next incite our appetites.

  As the first feeble rays of morning filtered through the canopy, a group of strong living men, muscles bulging through their military uniforms, charged at us. They shot us with darts of some kind. That’s all I remember.

  I woke up in the middle of the afternoon. I was washed, dressed in a clean nightgown, tucked into bed under warm blankets, my skin completely intact.

  I knew then why I still had no memory of the night during the previous month’s full moon when I had been released from prison for the first time. The reality of what I had temporarily become last night, during the second full moon, and the atrocities I had committed were too much to bear. It seemed like a bad dream, a hellish nightmare, something my conscious mind didn’t fully recognize as real. But this time I felt it in my muscle memory: I knew I had performed actions too horrific to ever accept. I had done things I ached to undo. Things my entire being wished had never happened.

  The night of the first full moon must have been such a shock to my system, my mind obliterated the memory. This time, it registered it. Although what if I didn’t remember everything? I shuddered to think I might have been even more monstrous.

  I pushed the buzzer on the guardrail of my bed for one of the prison guards doubling as nurse. A deep, gruff voice responded: “Yes, Ms. Johnson, what is it?”

  I shoved down the urge to heave and vomit. I tried not to think about what might be roiling around in my stomach. I said, “I need a tranquilizer. Something’s wrong. My whole body’s shaking. I’m losing my mind.”

  He chuckled a bit. “Sure, sure, we get a lot of that in here. I’ll send someone over.”

  About half an hour later, Dr. Tovar and his team, all dressed in white jackets, entered my prison cell after a guard unlocked it.

  Dr. Tovar smiled, an eerie gesture because it didn’t match the predatory look in his eyes. He said to me, “Emma, we were alerted by the prison staff that you’d like a tranquilizer. I’m here to help you with that. At the same time, we’re going to administer a brand new drug. You’re one of the lucky few approved for a new and improved version of Mutation Z. Mutation Z-2 is showing improved efficacy in combating the Ebola virus.”

  What choice did I have? I was too infectious to leave, travel back home, see my regular General Practitioner. I rolled up my sleeve, let Dr. Tovar inject me with Mutation Z-2. I felt afraid, desperately panicked over what might actually be entering my body. I hoped it was the cure for everything that was wrong with me.

  After administering the first shot, Dr. Tovar stuck me with another hypodermic needle, that one filled with a wa
lloping dose of tranquilizer. I relaxed. I accepted my fate. I drifted off into a dream where I saw my immune system destroying strands of Ebola virus throughout my bloodstream and in all my juicy organs.

  Chapter 6

  Journalist Hunter Morgan: Trouble Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

  Thankful that I had managed to sleep on my flight into Houston, I decided to head right on down to McAllen. It’d be unlikely that I’d be able to get a last-minute flight and it always took forever to get through airport security lines, so I decided to just drive the five-and-a-half hours to get there. I grabbed my suitcase and headed back out my hotel room door.

  At the front desk, I talked to the twenty-something woman running night shift. The plastic tag on her shirt told me her name was Trudy. I had to pay for one night at the hotel, even though I wouldn’t be staying there. I told her I’d be back; something had come up. She looked at me suspiciously, as if to say: Weirdo. I bet something’s come up. She tapped a bunch of computer keys with long fingernails painted black-and-purple striped. Clack…Clack…Clack. The purple matched streaks of purple in her otherwise blond hair. Reaching out and taking back the key card for my room, she said, “’K. No problem. We’re only charging you for one night. I canceled the rest of your reservation. You can call ahead when you want to check back in.” Her comment was laced through and through with boredom.

  That’s the thing about undercover reporters. We don’t dress up, unless it’s part of our camouflage for sneaking into an event we’re covering. We catch airplanes and drive at odd hours. A lot of us look tired and scruffy when we’re chasing a story. And we can never say that we’re chasing a story, even if it’s the hottest thing on TV, because we can’t blow our cover. So we get that look more times than I can count: Weirdo.

  Whenever we’re in front of the camera, however, we get a completely different response, more like: Whoa. Rock Star. So be it. The public’s fickle. And 24-hour cable news coverage plus the Internet has made consumers perpetually hungry—hungry for more and more titillating stories and truckloads of eye candy to reanimate their oversaturated brains. It’s harder to impress, but it can still be done, especially when a hot new story’s breaking.