by Alana Greig
By the time Mike contracted THUMBELINA and it mixed with his own DNA, the mutations the virus had already undertaken when combined with the bufotoxin were so extreme that Mike’s body treated this new unity like a cancer. It sat in his body multiply‐ ing, convincing healthy cells it was meant to be there.
The other horrific outcome to this new and tragic development was that THUMBELINA was now airborne. Tests on Mike’s blood revealed that he was growing tumors at an alarming rate in all areas of his body, but especially around his vital organs. It also became clear that human to human infection was through microfluid contamination. At the time of his exposure, Mike also had a harmless strain of the common cold. He had been too embarrassed to tell the team of his mishap in both the aviary and the amphibian biodomes, and he became symptomatic, unintentionally spreading this new strain of THUMBELINA to his colleague Matilda.
As soon as the professors realised that there was a real chance they could all be infected, they set about the grim task of killing every creature and all vegetation within the biodomes and the storage centres. It was to them a great failure to know that they would never survive this outbreak. To have witnessed such an aggressive, highly contagious, and extremely adaptable virus such as this. It completely crippled their facility in a matter of weeks; it was truly on an apocalyptic scale.
The only silver lining, if you can call it that, was that each habitat and lab was fitted with the latest and very efficient doomsday kit. This kit was effectively napalm in a vacuum. Once the kill codes were entered into the computer, each area would be instantly incinerated to the point of dust. It was Prof. Jarvis’ hope, a relatively quick and painless death. She knew that once the codes were set it had a domino effect, and there would be no escape for her or her colleagues.
They spent forty-eight hours observing Mike and Matilda before calling it. Within that time, Prof. Nugent made an unimaginable discovery. Unbeknownst to Prof.‐ Jarvis, Nugent, had given both Mike and Matilda another weaponised idea. Namely influenza. The results varied greatly between the patients. Mike began to secret albumin from his pores, and huge blisters began to appear on his extremities. He had a mutated version of bullous pemphigoid, an autoimmune skin disease. He was also dehydrating rapidly. However, Matilda, by some miracle, seemed to be stabilizing; the tumors, though wide‐spread, were not as aggressive or as large as Mike’s. This could have been for several reasons, but the outlook was encouraging. Her DNA had caused THUMBELINA to mutate again, and with the introduction of the flu virus, it seemed to have caused THUMBELINA to enter a form of stasis. This gave the professors hope, and they decided to extend their observation period of both patients to see if anything changed.
Within fourteen hours, Mike was dead. He had suffered catastrophic dehydration and loss of vital proteins. His heart had failed. Matilda, on the other hand, was still stable and Prof. Nugent had decided to try and synthesise an antiviral from her blood. Their first few attempts were unsuccessful. THUMBELINA was hardy and very much wanting to continue inhabiting the host. They had extended their window by seven days, and there was still no sign of an antiviral.
Prof. Jarvis was losing all hope and decided that is was time to end this for all their sakes. Hope was only useful for so long, and they were running out of water and food. Soon they wouldn’t have to worry about THUMBELINA; it would be the slow painful death of dehydration and starvation.
She headed for the mainframe computer to enter the kill codes and end this failed attempt to control this outbreak and find the cure. It was then that Prof. Nugent came running through to find her. He was elated; Matilda’s tumors were shrinking! She was fighting the virus without medical intervention. He had already taken more blood and was sure, this time, he could make a rudimentary vaccine so they could all leave this facility.
It took a moment for it to sink in, they could leave? She couldn’t believe it. Prof. Nugent asked for forty-eight hours to get something together. It wasn’t standard to work so fast; in fact it was miles too short a window, however, this was a do or die situation.
Two days later . . .
The three biologists left the facility and put it on lockdown. They had survived THUMBELINA, and now they carried the possible cure for the illness, should it ever break out.
Exactly six weeks and five days after leaving the hell that THUMBELINA had wreaked over their lives, Prof. Nugent and Prof. Jarvis were struck down by an unknown virus. The symptoms were similar to Ebola but highly accelerated. Both were taken to their local hospitals and treatment in quarantine began. Matilda recovered, and thankfully there were no lasting signs of her encounter with THUMBELINA.
Two weeks after the professors were admitted to different hospitals, both were moved to a special unit in the south of England. Sadly, they died within hours of arriving. Due to the nature of their illness and subsequent deaths, they had left a trail of blood, body secretions, hair, and DNA across three counties. The vaccine that they had taken to prevent THUMBELINA had not worked, and unbeknown to them, they had both contracted the virus. The vaccine had caused THUMBELINA to mutate further. It was now active within highly populated areas. The end of the modern word as we know it had finally arrived.
The most disturbing part? A government scientist who knew where the professors had been working had managed to obtain a vial of Prof. Nugent’s blood and a vial of the contagion, THUMBELINA. The most dangerous super virus was now in the hands of one of the superpowers of Earth.
This is all conjecture, however, what if this actually happened? Something as tiny as THUMBELINA, a microscopic organism, could wipe us off the planet in a matter of months.
TROUGH
BASED ON THE THREE LITTLE PIGS
Hannah Frankle had been obsessed with pigs all her life. It was a deep-rooted love that had grown from living on her grandmother’s farm as a child. Granny Bess had always kept a sow, and once a year a neighbour’s boar was brought in for mating. There were always new piglets the following year, and Hannah loved them all. She taught them tricks and fed them treats. In one of the last litters, Granny Bess’s sow had produced a runt. Hannah fell hopelessly in love with the tiny piglet; it was constantly bullied by its bigger siblings and had to fight for his share of the mother’s milk and later for his place at the trough. Hannah called the tiny pig Rodney, and for that whole summer they were inseparable.
Rodney only grew to double his birth weight, but his hearty appetite for life matched the one he had for food. It was this that gave Hannah a sense of comfort; she knew full well that the bigger hogs were going to the slaughter, and that thought made her sick. But that is what happens on a farm, and Granny Bess was not one to suffer the tears of a child over an animal.
“When I die, you can do with the farm as you want, Hannah. But until that day, the pigs make money, and they are going to slaughter.”
Hannah nodded, hating her Grandmother in that moment. She held Rodney close, knowing that he would never go to slaughter. No one would pay for a runty little scrap of nothing.
Granny Bess lived a long life and loved her farm. She taught Hannah all she could and left more and more of the management to her as she grew. It was fifteen years after that day beside the trough discussing the fate of the hogs, that Granny Bess died. Being a strong country woman, she hadn’t died in her bed; she was out at the age of eighty-nine, milking her cows by hand as she always had. She was found about an hour or so after death, her grey head leaning against the cow she had been milking.
Hannah had been devastated. She had loved her Grandmother; there was no other family for her now, and she realised that she was alone in the world. Even Rodney was getting old in years. She hoped he would not leave her yet; she needed her little pig more than ever.
In the year that followed, Hannah made the farm into a sanctuary; not a single animal was killed for food, and over time they all lost their fear and relaxed when they realised that the slaughter house truck was never returning to the farm. Hannah and Rodney, who by then was twen
ty years old, loved their life on the land and thought nothing would ever steal their happiness.
Life, as everyone knows, has a beginning and an end; at twenty-two and a half, Rodney died in his sleep. Hannah mourned him deeply. She had loved him almost her whole life, and now he wasn’t going to be there to greet her every morning with his pink tail wagging, making his adorable squeal of delight. Rodney knew that when Hannah was awake that the day’s adventure could begin, and Hannah loved how happy he was to just be alive.
One of the old farm hands had spotted poachers along the tree line of the far field. They had wolfhounds with them. He was concerned for the livestock, especially the pigs as they had just welcomed new piglets the day before.
He was right to worry; three nights later, Hannah was woken by the most terrible screaming. The poachers had sent their hounds onto her land, and they had let them into her pig pen. Hannah had only a few pigs, and the sound of their screaming ripped her from sleep and out into the night, rifle in hand.
The poachers were still there, along with two wolfhounds that were ripping her piglets apart. One of the poachers was busy gutting one of the older pigs. Hannah had intended to fire warning shots, but after the sight of her pigs being mauled and gutted on her land . . . she fired.
The poacher with the knife went down, blood trickling from his now smashed eye socket. The other had ran when hearing the shots; she aimed and fired again, taking out his left knee. His scream drowned out the sound of her dying pets, but her rage had not yet been calmed. She didn’t kill the hounds; they had been trained to kill by the scum, now dead or dying.
As soon as she had scared the dogs off, she went to check on her pigs. She saw the sow was badly hurt, and three of her piglets were dead. She looked everywhere for the three unaccounted piglets; she couldn’t look at the body of her other piglet yet, the one that was half butchered with its snout cut off and its throat slit. After searching fruitlessly for over an hour in the dark, she had to admit she was never going to find them. Hannah needed to focus on her sow; she was losing blood fast. She needed a vet.
The two poachers were another matter; Hannah was not one for killing, but she had the right to shoot anyone on her land, and she needed to protect what was hers. David, her farm hand, was all for calling the police, which is what they should have done. But in the end, it was decided that the dead man would be fed to the remaining pigs, and the other who was unable to walk due to a shattered kneecap, would have his tongue cut out and dumped in the trees at the back of the far field beyond her fences. That was where the wild boar lived, and she was sure they would take care of the rest of him.
It was a full month before the wolfhounds were back; this time there were four of them, and the poachers were armed. Word was out that two of their community were missing, and the last farm they had planned to rob was the Frankle estate.
Hannah had been afraid this would happen. She had just finished dissolving the bones of the last poachers in hydrochloric acid; the wild boars and her pigs had picked the bodies clean in little over three days. But now she was faced with more than before, and these guys had rifles as well as hunting knives. David and Jerry, his apprentice, had taken up posts in the barn loft and the disused dairy. They were armed and ready to take down anyone who got within range.
Hannah could feel the tension building in her; she would not lose more animals. Gertie, her sow, had survived the last attack— just barely. There was no way she could be put through that again. As the hounds got closer, the pigs began to squeal. Hannah was watching from the upstairs window, rifle loaded at her side. The window was open, but she couldn’t be seen; the night was ink black, and the windows were ebony against the it. As long as they didn’t shine their torches up at the windows, she would be safe—until she started firing.
David had bought them all night vision goggles; seemed extreme to her, but as she slipped them on and could see the men approaching from the direction of the far field, she was grateful he had thought of them.
The pigs’ squealing crescendoed as the hounds reached the sty, and the poachers approached on the wet grass behind them. Hannah raised her rifle and took aim. The killing was over quickly; Hannah took down two of the four, and Jerry and David cleaned up the other two. This time, one of the hounds was shot; it had broken into the sty, and David made the call. Hannah was upset by its death but understood that it was to save her pigs.
The next morning, the bodies were hidden, and the hound was skinned; its pelt was hung on the spot where the poachers entered. On his return, David splayed a little body on the lawn. Hannah watched from the kitchen window. She was sharpening her butcher knives in readiness. She intended to dismember the poachers and store them in her chest freezer, then bring them out when the pigs had finished the first lot. Putting down her weapon of choice, she left the kitchen and went to stand with David over the small form. She already knew what it would be.
“I found her up by the fence line, right where the poachers break in.”
“It’s okay. I knew this was likely.” “Want me to bury her with the others?”
“Yes, please, I just hope this is the last one we ever find.”
TWO YEARS LATER . . .
Hannah woke up on a crisp February morning to a blood bath. All her pigs, apart from Gertie who was once again badly hurt, were dead. This time there had been no hounds to warn the pigs. They had all been shot in the head. They must have used a silencer because she hadn’t heard a thing all night. As if it wasn’t enough to just kill them, they had then broken in and cut the animals to ribbons. It was all just for sport.
More bodies were buried, and Hannah was ready to give up and move on. So much death, both by her own hand and by the poachers and hounds. This was not how she imagined it would be.
Deep in the woods beyond the boundary line, another family was beginning to make its way to the fence of the far field. Pigs are clever animals, and these three pigs were on their way home.
The original piglets that had escaped by some miracle the night of the first break in, when the hounds had killed so many of their siblings, had fled from the farm and headed into the woods. They had managed to remain hidden, and eventually, mated with some wild boar that had been roaming the area. The three pigs that headed back to the farm were the descendants of the union. Their curved tusks and muscular bodies made them hardier than their domesticated parents. With the rough coats and swiftness that comes naturally to wild boar, these little pigs were hard to see and even harder to catch.
They knew the dangers of the woods, the hounds that roamed with poachers and the owls who would carry off a newborn hog if given the chance. However, these boars were different; they felt a deep yearning to be close to the farm. So, on a cold spring morning, six years after their parents fled the farm, they headed home.
“Hannah, bloody hell, you won’t believe what I have just seen in the far field!”
Hannah watched as Jerry dashed about the office, looking for his key to the ammo safe. Her blood ran cold, not more hounds or dead pigs. It had been relentless the last six years; she couldn’t take anymore.
“If it’s more dead animals then I am done. I will sell up; I can’t take any more of this.”
“It’s animals all right, but they aren’t dead—yet.” “What the hell do you mean yet? Are they in pain?”
Hannah was out of her chair and heading for the jeep outside. Jumping in, she gunned the engine, and before Jerry could stop her, headed for the far field.
What she saw was three beautiful boars. There was something a little off about them; their ears were overly large, and they were a wee bit too pinkish about the snout, but they were adorable. There was no way she was going to let Jerry kill them or call animal control. These creatures were killed just for being what they were, and she would be no party to that. There was enough blood on her hands.
The three animals observed her as she looked down at them. They didn’t charge when she jumped from the jeep. They didn’t move
at all. They simply stood and watched her with their dark intelligent eyes. After a while, the biggest of the three took a few steps towards Hannah, pawed at the soft earth, and then with a final look, turned and headed back into the forest. Its companions followed close behind.
“What in heavens name was that all about?” Jerry had arrived but had hung back to watch. He had his gun but had a feeling that had he taken a shot he would be the next one fed to the pigs down the hill.
“I think it’s time I got some more piglets, Jerry.” Hannah was good as her word; three tiny piglets came and joined her on the farm. They were perfectly pink and happy. Hannah felt the hole that had been left in her heart since the loss of her last sounder begin to mend. This time she felt these little, perfect piglets would live to see old age.
A week and a half after their arrival, the boars came back to visit the new additions to the farm. Jerry, of course, overreacted.
“The heck are you doing letting them near the babies; they will eat them!”
Hannah just shook her head and left them be, they were, after all, distant cousins, and she was sure no harm would come to them. It had taken her a while to work out that these boars were the descendants of her lost three little pigs. It was touching that they had come back to the farm, and there was no way she was going to discourage them. She truly believed no harm would befall them in regard to the boars.
That night when she visited her new additions before turning in, she noticed the boars were still milling about the fence. This was curious behaviour; they were not in any way domesticated, and boars by nature tend to keep as far from humans as they could get. So, to find the three of them rooting through the grass made her wonder what was going on.
“Well, my little boars, I don’t know why you are here, but you are very welcome. If you are still here in the morning, I’ll get you a nice chunk of poacher from the freezer.” She thought for a moment. “I’ll have Jerry drag the old trough out for you too. Goodnight.”