U.G.L.Y

by Rhoades, H. A.

  8.

  -The Second Wave-

  The second wave started with the poor bastards that fell ill from the initial infection. As with any other drug, there was a small percentage of folks who had a reaction to it. But even though the number that had fallen ill was comparatively small, one million people were suffering from an unknown degenerative condition. Although no one was ever sure of the reason, by the time the second wave had begun in earnest, there was some idea that those that had fallen ill had been previously suffering from stomach ailments and the subsequent treatment. Acid reflux medication, another commonly prescribed drug, became a contributing factor to the fungus surviving.

  Reduction of stomach acid in the ill had been enough to facilitate the mutation and adaptation of the fungus to human physiology. Initially, it was quickly absorbed into the body and took hold of the brain rapidly. It, however, did not have a method for propagation across the species.

  Typically, in nature an ant Infected with this fungus would begin acting erratically and find itself unable to find its way back to its nest. Eventually the ant would end up in an isolated location that would be ideal for the fungus to sprout and pass on its spore by killing the ant and growing stalks out of its head.

  The effects on the human brain were much different than in an infected ant. The ant would become lost from its colony and die in a place the fungus could grow and reproduce. In a human infection the cognitive part of the human brain began deteriorating at a rapid pace. The human part of the brain would die first, then more primal functions would take over.

  The brain began to misfire and the person infected would begin acting dangerously erratic. Symptoms of schizophrenia would become more regular. Fear and rage would take over the mind and a primal fear response overtook the host.

  This behavior in humans led to a host violently attacking any living thing in proximity. In a macabre way, the only positive thing about this infection was that the hosts would destroy each other and themselves, insuring a short affliction.

  The government was easily able to put down the remaining infected. They were not stealthy or cunning adversaries, they would run at full sprint towards anyone they saw. The military simply set up barricades, got their attention, then when a group of these monsters would run towards the barricade the soldiers would open fire.

  There was no propagation after the suffering were dead. The fungus could not grow out of the human head like it did with the ants, the skull was too thick. And even if spores could be released, the risk of contamination again was zero. Maybe an ant might pick up a spore and get infected but there was no adapted method to propagate among other humans. This infection was an anomaly it seemed. The processes involved that caused the infection to spread to humans were man made and for the fungus and those infected it was a terminal incident. This terrifying episode ended as abruptly as it had started.

  The second wave was very different. Although human infection occurred in the same manner. The fact that the digestive systems of those that fell ill was not functioning at its full capacity meant that the fungus wasn't absorbed into the body and was able to integrate into the ecosystem of the existing gut bacteria. The fungus adjusted to its host and not only adapted its method of infection, it developed a way to replicate itself and pass to other hosts in the species.

  It mutated to infect the glands of the host, including the saliva gland with a spore that could then be passed onto another host through fluid contact. A bite would provide a path into the blood stream of the new host and the fungus could set up shop. It took months for this mutation to happen in the ill. The symptoms were similar to the stomach flu and medical officials treated people with standard antibiotics which had no effect.

  The degradation of the hosts brain was much slower in this version of the infection. In many cases the hosts were sedated so the progress was much slower than it would have been otherwise. Once they began to turn however, propagation from host to host was fast and it took only minutes to turn.

  Spores would infect a new host through fluid transfer and target a specific part of the brain that caused the host to begin losing coherent thought within minutes of infection, and not long after, begin searching for a new host. A newly infected host would attack and bite another, introducing the spore through saliva into the blood stream of the next host and so on. They were not killing each other anymore, each attack had a specific purpose. Although bloody it would stop as the new victim began to react.

  The second wave began to build as hospitals filled up with patients that had fallen ill during the first wave. Authorities had to begin moving overflow patients into vacant prisons as the number of ill overwhelmed the system set up to support them. All were filled to capacity and in none of these locations was there any thought given to isolation of the patients. There was no reason to isolate them, as far as the authorities could tell they were not contagious. But they were very sick.

  Just prior to the outbreak, all of these victims had been placed in tight quarters and it only took one turned patient in a group to turn them all and everyone would be infected in minutes. Once it started the infection would spread rapidly. Inflicting everyone that was not able to escape.

  My little town got its dose of the second wave one quiet evening. A charter bus on a nearby highway carrying the gravely ill to an overflow facility in the desert crashed and a few patients that had turned in transit survived the crash. They ran into the woods, towards my town, my family, and my home. It only took a few to change everything forever.

  9.

  -Smoke In the Distance-

  In the hills above our little mountain town, the government research facility where I spent my days was perched on a high ridge. I worked there exploring the wonders of the universe, or rather fixing old instruments so others could explore the wonders of the universe. It was a quiet job, I worked alone most of the time, but for the moment it was good. After the turn my life had taken I needed to recover and I needed peace and that is what I had on the mountain.

  If it hadn't been for my breakdown and subsequent move into the hills to get closer to work, my family would have been living in a densely populated city when the first wave broke. We lived in a neighborhood that had fallen. I was positive I would have died, and worst of all my children would have died a horrible death. Fate is a funny thing, what had turned out to be the worst experience of my life absolutely saved the lives of my children. From that perspective, every moment of horror and pain was worth it.

  It had been months since the first wave had settled down. The severely ill were filling makeshift beds in overflowing hospitals and prisons and authorities had begun transporting patients to overflow sites. One of these sites was located in the high dessert past Victorville, California.

  Patients were being moved using every means of travel imaginable. Airlifts were used for the more critically ill, but most were moved using passenger trains where they could and buses in most cases. Massive convoys of buses were traveling daily on what were by now mostly clear freeways. Charter buses, school buses, military transports, ambulances, vans, and large passenger cars and trucks were all being used to move the sick. One of these buses didn't make it to its destination. That bus introduced me and my sleepy little town to the horror of the second wave.

  On a cloudy morning a converted charter bus left a prison near the city of Fontana, California. Converted into a medical transport, the charter bus housed bunks, or racks similar to those used on old naval ships. These racks were mounted three high on each side of the bus with barely enough room to walk between them. They were loaded with critically ill patients.

  As the bus drove towards the I215 freeway, a little girl who had fallen ill a month before was barley conscious and tucked away in the back of the bus on a bottom rack. She was fading quickly and floated in and out of consciousness. Inside her brain, the fungus was nearing its final stages of taking complete control of her mind.

  She turned her head to look out the window an
d watched the mountains pass as the bus headed north. It was a dreary day, and had begun to rain. She liked the rain and the way the dirt smelled after a storm had just passed through. She closed her eyes, imagined playing in the mountains and a sadness overwhelmed her. A tear rolled down her cheek. She saw a bright flash and then darkness. She was gone now, her conscious mind had shut down and a little girl named Megan Davis faded from the earth.

  Now a mindless shell with one desire, to feed, woke. It opened its eyes and was filled with an overwhelming rage and desire to eat. Confused at first, it didn't see the patients close to it, its focus was immediately on the only human it saw. It stared up the narrow isle at the driver, closer still at the drivers neck and it began to drool.

  Dropping out of its rack, it began moving forward towards the driver, slowly at first then faster and faster. It hit the driver with enough force to knock him into the windshield which disoriented him at first. Grabbing his hair, it pushed his head over to the left with enough force to crack his neck.

  Eagerly it sank its teeth into his neck, biting down hard it pulled back, taking a mouthful of skin and muscle with it. Tendons hung from between its teeth and an arch of blood, under some considerable pressure, sprayed across the windshield. Pulsing red fluid sprayed time after time until the driver hunched over the steering wheel.

  By now the bus had left the freeway and had been heading west on a small county highway that took them within five miles of town. When the driver was killed the bus was near the top of a pass and veered sharply across the opposite lane then over the edge of the road, crashing into a ravine.

  I had left work and began the drive down a small single lane road that lead to the research facility from town. In the distance to the east I could see a plume of black smoke rising

  “ Wild Fire” I said out loud. It was the time of year when fires frequented the mountain areas. But this smoke didn't have that familiar gray and black billowing look to it

  “It must be a house or something” I thought, which put me at ease a little. In the distance I could hear sirens from the fire trucks and rescue vehicles on their way to the crash. They would have it under control quickly so there was no reason to worry about a fire spreading into town.

  The fire fighters that were stationed and lived in the surrounding area were some of the best in the state and had shown time and again they really knew what they were doing.

  I finished the short drive into town and pulled into one of my favorite bars to grab some dinner, back to the Ruger for a beer and a burger. I liked this little place, although it was kind of a wanna be biker bar, most of the patrons were locals that hung out there regularly.

  There was already some talk about the accident as I walked in. Common to disasters in the area there were people in the fire department and police department that used amateur radio to communicate, and during the first wave their local communication network was dialed in fairly good. Most restaurants had a portable handset and would listen to emergency traffic regularly. So word was being transmitted that the accident was a charter bus full of sick and there were no survivors of the wreck.

  After a body count of the crash victims, a number of bunks were empty. A manifest of passengers was found in the wreckage and it was confirmed that four bodies were missing.

  “Missing bodies?” Dave, a local that was sitting at the bar said out loud “How the hell are the bodies missing? They must have survived and wondered into the woods.”

  Hours passed and the bar continued to fill with people eager to hear the latest news about the accident. No more news about the missing bodies was passed through the radio and discussion about what might have happened to them faded into the background.

  “Anybody seen anyone from the rescue crew?” Christine, a young forestry volunteer, Walked into the bar and began to order food for the rescue workers. I overheard her talking with the bartender about how a group of county rescue workers was out searching for survivors. They had been out for hours. As the wreck was being winched out of the ravine, radio contact was abruptly cutoff.

  One of the rescuers that was looking for survivors was talking to a command post when he was cut off in mid sentence. A scream was heard across the radios. It was a short, blood curdling scream that lasted only seconds, then static. Everyone got quiet as the exhausted woman continued. When she finished it was silent in the bar and you could hear cars passing on the highway several blocks away. In the distance a lone coyote cried, then faintly a scream. Christine froze.

  “That's it!” she exclaimed, her voice shaking “that's the scream we heard across the radio”.

  She was terrified. We all listened, we heard it again, slightly louder than before, than another overlapping it. Everyone knew what it was, those screams were seared into our memories as the screams of the infected heard over and over in news reports tat aired continuously during the first wave. Somehow it was happening again and coming towards town and there was more than one.

  I stared blankly out the open door of the bar towards the faint screams, then back to Christine. The terrified look on her face as she heard the screams sent a chill through me. I hadn't realized yet that in the woods a growing group of infected were approaching. The sound of that distinctive scream had been locked in a dark corner of my memory and I associated it with a surreal shadowed perception of the world around me. A dark closet full of nightmares.

  It was unreal, in the first wave the infected were miles away and they couldn't get to me. But now they were close, out there in the hills, and they seemed to be growing in number.

  Me and a few others walked outside into what was now a dark parking lot and listened. The screams were growing, overlapping more, it sounded like there were many voices and although still faint, they were getting louder.

  Time passed slowly, agonizingly slow as we waited for the appearance of the infected. like a horror film, an overwhelming feeling of doom grew as the minutes passed.

  From the parking lot I could see the edge of the tree line bordering the town. The woods continued east, in the direction we had heard the screams. It was maybe 100 yards from the bar and dimly lit by a street light that was close by.

  The screams had stopped abruptly only a few minutes before, and the last we heard before the infected appeared was coming from the top of the ridge across town.

  “Shit!” a man next to me whispered loudly. “something is moving in the tree line”.

  I thought to myself that it may be just a coyote or a bobcat. The area was full of wildlife. Often people would run into bobcat, Mt. Lion and even the occasional bear.

  “Look, look, look!” the man said “right there”.

  Then we saw it, stumbling from the shadows. A figure clumsily walked into the dimly lit area under the street light. A man stood there, dressed in a fire fighters uniform with a bright orange vest and ropes slung over his shoulders. It had to be a member of the rescue team that was out looking for the survivors of the crash.

  I squinted as the figure slowly lumbered out of the trees. He was limping and seemed confused and clumsy, like he didn’t have control of his limbs completely.

  I realized almost too late that we were standing in plain site under the outside lamp of the bar. The figure hadn't seen us yet. I hit the man next to me with my left arm.

  “RUN!” I whispered as loudly as I dared.

  I slipped into the parking lot and stepped into the shadows of a large SUV.

  “Screech!” a loud short scream penetrated the dark. The figure was infected, and had spotted the people in the parking lot. The scream was a loud and terrifying scream that summoned other infected out of the woods.

  The tree line erupted with movement as a dozen silhouetted figures came sprinting out of the woods. Some were the search and rescue people judging by their uniforms. I could clearly make out the white smocks of the four missing bodies from the bus crash. But there were others, in regular clothes.

  I assumed this group had been collecting victim's
as they made there way across the five or so miles between the crash and town. The terrain was steep and there were several valleys in between that contained homes. These people were now pouring out of the woods, covered with blood, screaming a hideous scream and heading towards the bar.

  I watched from the shadows as the others in the parking lot were overtaken. They attacked in a bloody frenzy, like sharks feeding. I watched, unable to divert my eyes.

  The man that was standing next to me on the porch of the bar was the first to be attacked. The infected man in the rescue uniform hit him at full sprint, bearing its teeth, and it bit down hard on the mans jaw. As they fell to the ground it pulled back and tore a large piece of bone free from his face. He screamed so loud I shivered. I watched as he convulsed then stopped moving.

  Seconds later the man began to move and his eyes opened wide and let out a long ear splitting screech. He was infected within seconds of being bitten and jumped to his feet, joining the other infected as they rushed through the open door of the bar.

  I was frozen where I had been hiding. I couldn't decide what to do. If I ran they would surely see me and follow. If I stayed they would find me hiding. I ran.

  10.

  -Desperation-

  I ran as fast as I could, I didn't know which direction I was going at first. My only impulse was to run away, away from the screams. Death was behind me and I knew it was faster than I was. After a several hundred yards I realized I was not running in any direction with a destination in mind. I was simply running for my life. I calmed a bit and adjusted so I could run to my house.