Transcendence

by Benjamin Wilkins

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  TRANSCENDENCE

  CHRONICLES FROM THE

  LONG APOCALYPSE

  BOOK ONE

  BENJAMIN WILKINS

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Wilkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  First Edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  Jacket design by Benjamin Wilkins

  Jacket photo:

  “ID-90609070” by Katalinks

  courtesy of Shutterstock

  ISBN 978-0-9979086-1-9

  Wilson Boulevard Press

  109 Wilson Boulevard

  Fairfield, Iowa 52556

  www.wilsonblvdpress.com

  For Teddy

  May your future be forever and completely devoid of the horrors contained herein.

  And Josephine

  You are the light balancing the scales of my stormy dark.

  Prologue

  The Father in New England

  a Decade before This Story Begins. . .

  NO SWITCH WAS FLIPPED or button pressed. No infection broke out and ran amok, killing the lucky ones and turning the rest of us into zombies. The end of the world as we knew it did not begin with a bang. It happened like most of the endings on our planet—in the dark, behind the scenes and in oblivion, until it reached a critical mass and an invisible countdown began ticking off the time left before everything we knew would blow up in our faces. And yet, for all the chaos and change to come, when it finally took shape enough for us to make it out in the darkness, the apocalypse was not really an end at all.

  It was a beginning.

  Not that anybody cares now.

  Not that it matters anymore.

  But for the record, the world ended back in the seventies and nobody noticed. It crept up on us while folks were disco dancing with John Travolta and watching All in the Family on their new high-tech twenty-inch color televisions. Mankind almost never sees the important things coming. Like Germany electing Hitler after WWI, the consequences of what we started years ago were as unintended as they were awful. If humanity had ever been any good at connecting the dots we might have stopped it, but for all the science and logic most folks swear by, as a species we are simply too swayed by the emotional nature of our own experiences to ever really see things clearly.

  For generation after generation folks just kept their noses to the grindstone, clocked in and out of work, ate frozen pizza and drank light beer like nothing was happening. Emmett Kessler was no exception, though he’d moved on from light beer years ago. Even now, years after the Shibuya Incident, when the news was almost entirely made up of reports of berserker activity, Emmett just plodded along, going to work, drinking after, and disappointing his wife and daughters.

  Folks kept repeating the party line that anybody could be one—your coworker, your neighbor, your friend, your loved one. There was no pattern, vector, or relationship that the big wigs in Washington and Atlanta had been able to figure out. Emmett knew what everybody else did: It wasn’t a virus. It wasn’t bacterial. It wasn’t even a disease in any kind of traditional sense. He constantly heard about how the physical effects of berserking out built upon each other with each episode, eventually leaving those possessed looking like hulking, monstrous giants, which, as far as he was concerned, only seemed fair considering they seemed to have the strength and speed of monsters.

  “Why should they get to look like people?” he remembered once saying to the bartender Jack, as the men around him were discussing the latest revelations and trading theories as to the cause. That was what people did after Shibuya. They theorized. And they drank.

  In Jack’s bar, where Emmett could be found most nights, it was alien DNA that was the most popular theory, though the other day he’d heard a pretty compelling idea that Wi-Fi and cell phone electromagnetic radiation may have been what was causing random folks to go crazy and kill everybody around them. Of course, the theory wasn’t quite compelling enough for him to shut off either his phone or his glasses, nor seek out a Faraday cage. He’d need some actual proof before he took things to the level of being even remotely inconveniencing.

  Emmett remembered the Shibuya Incident like it was yesterday. It was hard not to since every screen on the planet seemed to recast the slaughterfest at least once a day. For him, just like for everybody else, that night had instantaneously opened his eyes to the threat of berserkers, the way 9-11 had opened folks’ eyes to the threat of radical Islamic terrorism decades ago. But just like radical Islamic terrorism didn’t begin with 9-11, Shibuya was just the first time the phenomenon had been captured in broadcast-quality video and recast live with enough clarity to actually make out what was happening. It was not when it began.

  Not that anybody cared about that.

  As Emmett and the rest of the world had watched thousands die in those streets in Japan, the world’s consciousness had shifted. Gone were the days when there could be unexplained episodes of extreme violence. There was no more pretending that it could have been something else at play, no more pockets of plausible deniability, no more turning of blind eyes. Violence, as of that moment, regardless of how it may have been actually propagated, could now only come from one source in most folks’ minds.

  Berserkers. They could be anywhere. They could be anyone.

  In the days when Emmett was still drinking at Jack’s, it all seemed a little too surreal to take in. Like the potential of the car you were riding in getting hacked. Yes, it happened. Yes, it was scary. But at that point it just hadn’t yet happened to enough folks Emmett knew personally for him to change any of his behaviors or routines—though those days were coming fast, even if Emmett and everybody around him were in denial about it. And denial aside, it was a good time to drink yourself stupid. The fact that more people didn’t just kick their meaningless obligations like family and work to the curb sooner was a testament to humanity.

  Sure, it was more of a testament to how slow, complacent, and enslaved to our routines we’d all become than it was to anything else, but it certainly did say something about us as a species. How many other “intelligent” life forms out there would continue paying taxes; posting pictures on Facebook and Instagram; buying iPhones, Glass, and Rift headsets; or lining up to see the next Star Wars movie in the face of an apocalypse? But that was what us human folk did.

  To Emmett’s credit it had been the end of the world that had driven him to take up drinking at the professional level. He had always been a happy drunk. Alcohol loosened the straps on his emotional load. Sometimes it even let him put it down for a bit. Even before Shibuya, though he clung to his routine like a rabid pit bull with lockjaw, somewhere behind the curtain in Emmett’s mind his own theory had been developing. It was the one good theory in the ever-growing haystack of shitty ones. Of course, he didn’t know that yet. The numbers were still lining up and would continue to do so for a long time to come. But Emmett had a strong intuitive muscle, so part of him deep down knew where it was all going. And that was why he’d started drinking in earnest.

  He sat on his barstool and drank like a pro,
half listening to the news on the TV mounted among the liquor bottles in front of him, half smiling at his own dark thoughts, his load significantly loosened by cheap bourbon and Diet Coke.

  While Emmett drank, occasionally commenting on the reports coming out of the tube, the aging bartender, Jack, who could have been Norman Rockwell’s inspiration for Santa Claus minus the red suit and sunny disposition, stared at him disapprovingly as he dried a pint glass. In times like these just about any bartender could get away with being a judgmental prick, as long they kept the inebriating liquids flowing. The era of drinking therapy and barkeeps pulling double duties as reluctant counselors or unsanctioned priests started to fade away after the Shibuya Incident. And while it was a good time to start drinking, keep drinking, or drink more, the actual act of drinking itself for most folks was no longer a good time. Alcohol has always done a long list of wonderful things for those who imbibe: killed the liver, slurred the speech, turned the right foot into the left, filled the heart with confidence neither deserved nor earned, dulled the voices in the head, made bad ideas seem brilliant, and generally always caught up to folks in the end—just to cherry pick—and none of that had changed. It just sort of became less fun. It was like drinking just wasn’t for amateurs anymore. It was serious business. And for some reason that fact really pissed bartenders off.

  But that wasn’t why Jack the bartender was giving Emmett the stink-eye. Jack had decided Emmett had had enough for one night, and while Emmett was a happy drunk most of the time, experience had taught the fat man behind the bar that under certain circumstances that fact just wasn’t true anymore. And he knew those circumstances were about to walk through his front door.

  Emmett looked up at the TV. A reporter stood in front of a squad of soldiers marching on some military base somewhere nearby. He didn’t know or care which one. It probably wasn’t in Maine anyway, since the only military institutions left there were navy and Coast Guard, and these guys looked like regular army—not that he’d be able to tell the difference. The reporter was talking about some law that was just passed—

  “Giving soldiers situational immunity from any charges of brutality or abuse in their response to the berserker threat. . .”

  Emmett laughed to himself at how ridiculously terrifying the world his two little girls were going to grow up in was. Where anyone could suddenly turn into some kind of superpowered raginator and rip them apart. Or, if they got really lucky, they’d just be raped and murdered by soldiers no longer bound by consequences for their actions.

  “Here’s to your future, girls,” he mumbled, before he downed his drink and waved at Jack for another.

  Jack just watched him without moving. Emmett waved louder, but still the large man ignored him. For a second Emmett considered tossing his glass at the man to get his attention, but even as blotto as he was, that seemed like it might not be as effective as it would be satisfying.

  “Jack!” he said instead.

  Before he could get further upset at Jack for ignoring him, something on the TV caught his eye.

  “Shit. . .” he said to himself.

  On the TV there was a photograph of a mother in her forties with her two young boys sitting on the front steps of a somewhat restored colonial farmhouse. He’d missed what the story was about, but all the stories were about the same thing these days, so he felt pretty confident in guessing what had happened. Somebody’d gone berserk. Family was killed. It was always the same—actually, usually it was worse. Just one family being killed was kind of like when the planes hit the World Trade Center: how both buildings didn’t have anywhere close to the number of people in them that they could have had. That day could have been so much worse. Just a mother and her two boys, while tragic, sure, was actually a blessing. Usually it was a whole lot worse. Of course when 9-11 happened folks weren’t feeling lucky that it wasn’t worse. What could have been doesn’t matter much when people are jumping from a hundred stories up to keep from burning to death.

  Something about the woman in the photo on the screen was familiar to Emmett. Had they said her name yet? Probably. But he’d missed that part. A past life maybe? Real life seems like a past life these days, he thought and chuckled.

  “Oh well,” he told himself. And then it hit him, and one of the numbers that would eventually add up to his theory of what had wiped out mankind, of what had killed his own children’s future—the one solid explanation in an ever-growing mountain of shit ones—one of those numbers fell into place. Suddenly Emmett didn’t care about how lucky it was that only one family had been destroyed by the incident.

  “Hey, I know that woman,” he realized out loud. “Susan and I went to the same fertility doctor—”

  “Julianne Barnes,” the reporter on the TV continued.

  But no, that isn’t right, Emmett thought. It was Julie Anne Barnes.

  “Discovered having taken her own life after beating to death her husband and both her young children as a berserker,” the reporter summarized, before passing it off to the cops for a sound bite.

  The cop in this case was a baby-faced Asian guy who thought the world might need another rundown of what folks already knew. Just in case one guy out in Iowa somewhere had missed it the first five thousand times it was reported.

  “Since every time a berserker turns, their physical appearance becomes more and more muscular, it appears that Mrs. Barnes had not yet been experiencing regular episodes,” he explained. “So until we get her HGF levels back from the autopsy, we can’t confirm exactly how far gone Mrs. Barnes was at this time. However, even though she still”—he raised both hands in big air quotes—“appeared human, due to the fact that we did find what we believe to be several of her teeth at the scene, which is a common side effect of this. . . condition—”

  “So, it’s likely that Mrs. Barnes has killed before, then, Officer?” the overeager reporter cut him off.

  “Well, we have no confirmation of that at this time,” the cop answered flatly.

  Emmett looked from the TV to Jack, who still had not brought him a fucking refill. Jesus, what is wrong with this guy! he thought to himself and banged his glass on the bar.

  “Hey!” he teased drunkenly. “You gonna fuck me with your eyes all night or are you going to get me my drink, Jack? I’ve been empty here for like ten minutes, man.”

  A shake of the head, no, was all Jack responded with.

  Really? One syllable is too much to give to a thirsty soul in times like these? Much less a drop of bourbon? Emmett thought—or maybe said out loud, he couldn’t really tell anymore. “Come on, Jack. Don’t be an asshole. Let me drink to my fucking dead, murdering almost-friend.”

  This time he was sure he said it out loud, because Jack actually responded.

  “Last one, Emmett.”

  Man, some folks are pissy tonight, Emmett thought and smiled. But his glee was short-lived.

  The moment Jack had been dreading had arrived. The bar door swung open and along with the cold outside blew in the redheaded, waif-thin, exhausted (but still attractive in that heroin-addict model kind of way) mother to Emmett’s daughters, who, just for the record, didn’t do heroin, or even drink for that matter. But the regulars in the bar still knew who she was and, likewise, knew that tonight, like almost every night, she was here to drag her drunk-ass husband home before he got into trouble. A few of the bar patrons who had witnessed the lengths Emmett would go to to continue drinking if left to his own devices, and who had more manners than empathy, actually greeted her by name.

  “Hey, Susan,” one said.

  “My heart goes out to you,” another said.

  My heart goes out to you? Emmett thought, as he turned on his barstool with a squeak to face his wife. What the fuck does that mean?

  “So I guess you’re not going to pour me that drink, then, eh, Jack?” he said over his shoulder as he slid off this perch.

  “I’ll pour it for you tomorrow, Emmett. You’re done for tonight.”

  Susan touc
hed Emmett on his shoulder when she got to him. To her it was a gesture of love, a signal that she still cared for him, even though he’d been lost inside a tumbler for a while now. But drunk or sober, Emmett had been for a long time unable to take in how much she still loved him in spite of the drinking. Instead he just felt his own shame reflected back to him in everything she did and said.

  When she reached the counter, Susan gave a Thank you for your help look to Jack, but that gesture too went misinterpreted and all Jack saw in her eyes was his own inadequacies as a friend. But what the hell was he supposed to do? God, he hated this. Why couldn’t Emmett just be trusted to get his own ass home?

  But he knew the answer to that already. Left to his own devices Emmett wouldn’t go home. He’d just find somewhere else to drink, and when that bar, or the one after, finally closed, he’d break into the closest house and look for booze there. The man had proven himself a resourceful, if not particularly law-abiding, professional alcoholic enough times already. And in this new world, that would only end with him poking some unsuspecting berserker bear with a short, sharp stick, getting him and God knows who else killed. So sharing in Susan’s misery each night as she took him home was better than sharing in her panic the next morning when she showed up looking for him because he hadn’t made it back there at all.

  Besides, as he watched them leave, Jack didn’t think the world was actually ending. He’d have laughed in your face if you suggested the apocalypse was already in full swing.

  * * *

  As they walked, or more precisely as Susan walked and Emmett stumbled, out the exit and into the cold white, snow-covered New England night, Emmett looked at his wife and said, “Fucking Julie B. berserked out and killed her whole goddamn family. Probably a bunch of other folks too. You see that?”

  She had.

  “And you’re worried about your husband doing a little after-work drinking?” he tried to joke, but failed.