by Cliff Deane
Physical Therapist Warren Douglas became conscious at 0550 hours on 4 April 2118. He had no idea of how he had come to be in this strange enclosure. He felt compelled to find his family, but he first had to discover how to get out of this cave which seemed to have no apparent opening. As he lay in near total darkness upon the floor, Warren began looking warily around his prison, he noticed a faint light coming from under a barrier. Warren realized that this blockage must be removed to allow him to escape his confinement.
Strange, hazy memories flooded his mind. Images that he could not even begin to understand, and as in a dream, these memories and images began to rapidly fade from his conscious mind. Now, only the drive to find others of his kind mattered.
After making sure that he was not, at that exact moment, in any danger from Cave Bears, Warren crawled to the room door. He sniffed the dusty air wafting into this cave through the opening. Faint, but familiar odors of other clansmen greeted his nostrils. The realization that his prison denied him access to others of his clan brought forth a murderous fury as he finally placed his fingers under the door.
He began to jerk and pull at the door, which remained closed, with only a small movement. Warren, in anger and frustration, arose and backed away from the door before throwing his body, with a leading right shoulder, against this strange prison wall. He crashed into the door which withstood his onslaught. Again, he backed away, and on his second attempt, the door came flying open, causing the Mag to stumble and fall to the floor in the hallway.
Quickly rising to his feet, Warren looked at the door hanging limply by one hinge and grunted his victory. Being alone brought an uneasiness which drove him to begin searching for his clansmen. The gloom of almost total darkness of this strange cave made him feel vulnerable and weak. Guided only by his enhanced sense of smell, Warren moved through the maze-like confines of the building.
Warren came upon a room which held a small pool of water. His thirst drove him to drink, but upon tasting this water, he knew from the smell that it was not safe. He realized, without knowing why that he must not drink this water which was heavily chlorinated.
He roared his anger and frustration to the ceiling. His shouts, however, brought results as a few seconds later, he heard a call from one of his own kind. Warren, turning toward the sound, made his way through the darkness, toward that plaintive call for help.
It took only minutes for Warren to discover the source of that cry and placing his shoulder in the same way that led to his escape, he threw himself against the door. For his troubles, Warren received a painful shock to his shoulder as the door withstood his assault.
From inside the room, another Mag, Ken Park, threw himself against the door from the inside, and again, on the second attempt, it was torn from its hinges freeing him from his prison. Unfortunately, the door struck Warren, knocking him to the floor. He roared with pain and an ever-increasing anger.
Ken removed the door from Warren, then the two Mags began sniffing each other and finding the proper pheromones, joined forces to find their way into the light. The two men had worked together for two years, and that association led them to believe that they were from the same clan.
Together the two Mags eventually made their way toward the front entrance of the former medical rehab building.
The exit led into a heavy, wind-blown rain. The open air, however, was warm and comforting to these two Mags. Uncaringly, the two walked into the rain and reveled in the downpour which washed the wet, somewhat sticky slime from their bodies. Both Mags raised their heads and enjoyed their first drink of water in four days.
After being in near darkness, the daylight caused both Warren and Ken to squint momentarily until their vision became focused in the mid-morning light. This visual clarity brought fear as the immediate surroundings gave little in the way of opportunities for concealment.
Again, both Mags felt the disconcerting and hazy remnants of dream-like memories of these surroundings. On some level of fading consciousness, they knew that these strange caves held other creatures that were like, and yet unlike, themselves. Warren roared a challenge to those others who must be destroyed. Neither could fully understand the why of their need to kill the others. That deep seeded need rose from the primal, ancestral memory of available resources. After all, there were only so many Mammoths.
Their Mag nostrils were assaulted with smells that were incomprehensible; the two constants of these odors caused both anger and fear. Passing a small construction site, they found a long wooden 2X4. The strength of the Mag body made it easy to break the board into suitably long clubs. Seeking food and concealment, the two Mags began searching for their clan. This search took them in an easterly direction.
CHAPTER FOUR
SURVIVORS
4 April 2118
Mount Weather
On 4 April 2118, the only survivors in Mount Weather were two Secret Service Officers and ninety-seven Rangers. The highest-ranking surviving member of the military was a Corporal.
In the final analysis, Second Lieutenant Dudley committed what he had hoped to prevent; the mass murder of thousands. Once exposed to this Mag-flu, survivors became immune from reinfection. Surprisingly, they seemed to also feel a renewed vigor and strength.
With thousands dead in Mount Weather, the Senior Secret Service Officer ordered the blast door opened for removal of the dead and burial.
Two members of the Comet Committee survived the flu, and both turned. President Greene and her Chief of Staff were unrecognizable. They would be buried along with the others in a mass grave.
4 April 2118, 0900 hours
St. Michael Hotel
Gurly St., Prescott, AZ
Cindy Sharpe turned on her battery-powered emergency radio in the hope of finding a Conelrad Station that might have some news. Near the mid-range of the FM Band, she found station KFNA broadcasting a news segment. She was stunned to hear a non-Conelrad station on the air.
“This is DJ Foote broadcasting on 99.9 FM. There are only two of us barricaded inside the station. Be alert, those survivors who disappeared four days ago have awakened, and they have turned into Cavemen. We just received notice from the CDC that these monsters are no longer Modern Humans. The Super-Flu has caused them to devolve into our nearest ancestor, Cro-Magnon Man. The Government calls them Mags.
“Please, everyone, arm yourselves. Reports are coming in of roving bands of Mags killing everyone they come across. NO! These are not Zombies, they are not the undead. These creatures are alive, fast, strong, and have only one thing on their mind; killing us. Please, do not hesitate, shoot first. If you don’t act first, you will die.
“These things began to surface all over the world around dawn, local times. I am now going to broadcast the latest from the Cheyenne Mountain Facility.”
A recording of both the American and World situation was then played two times before the station signed off until the top of the next hour.
I don’t know how long we will be able to broadcast, but we will come back on the air at the top of each hour to bring you the latest, at least until we run out of diesel.
Around noon Cindy Sharp began hearing crashing sounds. Sounds that raised the hair on the back of her neck. The sounds were coming closer, and now she began hearing angry sounding grunts as doors were kicked in. She drew her pistol and waited patiently, albeit with no small amount of trepidation. The one thing she was sure of was that if anyone came through her door, that person would have to be carried out, dead.
She was in room 306. Room 307 was directly across the hall. The angry grunts became growling roars that sent images of wild beasts through Cindy’s mind. She heard the door of 308 being kicked open, followed by a woman’s scream. A terrified sound that was cut short and would never be finished.
“Well, screw this,” said Cindy to the door just before it came crashing in. There, before her stood a creature holding a table leg. He should have been a figure in a wax museum of horrors. This monster saw Cindy Shar
p standing her ground only eight feet away. His head cocked slightly to his right side as his face took on a puzzled look as though he was searching for some remote memory that refused to fully surface.
He found himself looking down the barrel of a pistol. His head again cocked slightly to the right side as he seemed to instinctively take on some faint understanding of danger. She said, “Smile, watch for the flash!” as she pulled the trigger two times. Both rounds hit the Mag in the heart, knocking him onto his back, dead well before he hit the ground.
In the enclosed environment of the room, the sharp, staccato sound of pistol fire was deafening as seventeen inches of flame shot out of the barrel. The familiar, strong odor of ozone filled the air which heightened Colonel Sharpe’s senses.
Cindy made her way to the body of the Mag where she spent several moments studying this horror. The Mag was wearing touristy clothes, shorts, printed Tee, and sandals with black socks. The clothes were filthy and tainted with the rancid odor of urine and feces.
Stepping over the body Cindy cautiously investigated the darkened hallway, but there seemed to be no more of these disgusting things, at least not on her floor. Crossing the hallway, she entered Room 307 to see if the woman she heard scream could be helped. There on the floor lay the body of a middle-aged woman wearing an oversized house dress. No close inspection was needed as the woman’s head was split open like a watermelon dropped onto the ground. The smell of death was heavy in this room, and Cindy understood why when she looked at the bed. There lay a man who had been dead for at least a week; killed by the Super-Flu.
She closed the broken door behind her and returned to her room. Cindy began searching her purse for the three additional fifteen round, 9 mm magazines loaded with hollow point ammunition. For just an instant she lamented the fact that her bug-out backpack was in the trunk of her car.
The one thing she was sure of was that she needed to get to her pack which held another two-hundred rounds of 9mm and a one-hundred-year-old Kel-Tec Sub-2000 folding carbine, chambered in 9 mil and using Glock magazines. The lightweight carbine was far from a long gun, but it was deadly out to around one-hundred yards with a very flat trajectory. At two hundred yards, the fall of the round is about six inches, requiring a bit of Kentucky windage, and Tennessee elevation.
Her friends had thought her weapons choices to be odd, and Cindy couldn’t give any particular reason for her antiques other than she just liked twentieth-century firearms. “I carry what I like and take comfort in,” was her usual response.
Before leaving the hotel, Cindy packed her belongings and took the bathroom hygiene products, then emptied the small fridge. Cindy didn’t often drink alcohol, but she took those mini-bottles for trade or use as an antiseptic.
The hallway was dark, and the stink of rotting human flesh had begun to permeate the air. Cindy began breathing through her mouth as she took a small flashlight from her purse to light a path to the stairwell.
4 April 2118
Cheyenne Mountain
Colorado Springs, CO
“Sir,” said Simon Ward, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, “we have just received word, along with a video feed of a Mag attack inside the Mount Weather Facility. The highest-ranking survivor is one, Leland Ball, a member of President Greene’s Secret Service Detail. The highest ranking military person is a Corporal. Mr. Ball has assumed leadership of the survivors until an appropriate Military Command structure can be sent. He has opened Mount Weather to remove and bury the dead. Greene and her COS both turned. They were killed while attacking the surviving Rangers.
“It appears that I am the highest ranking civilian government official authorized to do the honor of swearing you in as President. The off-duty personnel here at Cheyenne Mountain are currently gathering in the theater to attend, and witness, your swearing in as the new President of the United States, whatever is left of it.”
At 0945 hours, everyone with access to a radio heard the new U.S. President Vance Holcomb say, as he became the sixty-third President of the United States, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,"
Following the swearing-in ceremony now President Vance Holcomb was led to a conference room. There he was seated before a computer which replayed the battle between Mags and Man in the Mount Weather Facility.
He stared at the computer screen. His expression of horror left nothing to Simon’s imagination. Holcomb was dumbfounded to the point of near shock. What he saw was violent and savage in the extreme. Just this morning he had learned about the death of President Eileen N. Greene, and his new task of destroying what General Morse called, that damned Mag infestation.
Before seeing the fierce conflict, President Holcomb had been hopeful that the Mags would still retain some semblance of humanity, he had held to the prospect that communication might be established between Mankind and these Mags; after all, they had been fellow human beings just a few days ago. After watching the Mount Weather video, President Holcomb understood that his hope now lay in tatters upon the floor, like the leaves of an elm tree rotting upon winter’s frozen ground.
It took only a few moments to watch the footage from Mount Weather for President Holcomb to realize that General Morse had been absolutely correct in his description of the Mag infestation. This video was the introduction to Vance Holcomb’s initial Presidential Briefing.
Around the table sat President Vance Holcomb, Lt. General Hank Morse, and Holcomb’s Chief of Staff Simon Ward. The CDC, Fort Detrick, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), the Palomar Observatory, and the Naval Academy were represented by holograms via satellite feeds.
These briefers brought the President up-to-speed on current events, both at home and around the world. The sporadic reports from around the country began to paint a grim picture, reminiscent of a painting of Hell by Hieronymus Bosch, as survivors from the varied governmental and military forces came back on-line. Across the board, the tale was identical; a worldwide collapse with a human population now numbering in the millions, rather than the billions of only twenty-eight days earlier.
The initial consensus indicated that North America was also in a state of complete turmoil. Both civil authority and the economy had totally collapsed. The Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona sent in the most detailed report of what could be expected to be the norm across the nation.
The briefer, Dr. Tyler Deen said, via video feed from the CDC in Atlanta. “Mr. President, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale reports that the pandemic has killed 100% of patients over sixty years of age. They believe this will hold true across the U.S. The clinic also reported that anyone with pacemakers, and other specialty life-saving devices, also died. Perhaps, even more tragically, it appears that all children under the age of ten have also succumbed to the Mag-flu. Ultimately, sir, the death toll of hospitalized patients currently sits at around 95%.”
Holcomb said, in an alarmed tone, “and they think this same situation will be countrywide?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dr. Goldman, of the Scottsdale Mayo Campus. “The Clinic has also reported that those Staff Members under the age of sixty survived at a rate of roughly 25%, with half of those survivors becoming Mags.
“In third world countries, the death toll will be much higher than our own 75%. It seems likely that entire ethnic and cultural populations will simply disappear.
“Mr. President, the evidence coming in from our sister organizations around the world make it relatively clear that somewhere near seven-billion human beings lay dead, mostly in their beds. In just a few days the smell of decaying human flesh will become nearly unbearable.
“Soon, pets, rats, mice, well, anything that can feed off the dead will be doing so. With rats, first and foremost, the danger of disease will come into full bloom.
“Sir, I recommend that you remind, via whatever mass communications we have left, everyone to go to the
city water box and turn off the water. Within a week that source will become mixed with sewage, and it will back up into any home with an open connection to city water. Considering the enormity of the death toll, this backup of sewage will create a horrendous opportunity for the rise of hygienic diseases. Mr. President, we must, therefore, make it clear to all survivors that they must take it upon themselves to move through their neighborhoods to shut off the water immediately.
“Survivors must also be warned about sanitation once the water is turned off. Waste must be buried well away from homes. Non-bottled water must be boiled for fifteen minutes before it will be safe to drink. Mr. President, these health concerns are the most pressing issues of our time, even more so than the Mag threat.”
“Thank you, Dr. Deen, please see that your recommendations are forwarded to my Chief of Staff. We will at once place your directives on a repeating loop via Conelrad.” said the President.
“Silas, let’s hear your sad news.” Mr. Silas Creed was the Vice President’s Economic Advisor.
“Yes, sir, the economic portion of the briefing is simple and concise, there is no economy. Mr. President, the economy has completely crashed. Nothing, anywhere, is being transported, by any means. Starvation will soon begin to cause a second die-off beginning in the next few weeks, and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it.”
“But we have warehouses fully capable of feeding the surviving population for some time. Surely, we can feed our citizens until the farm produce comes to harvest. No, wait, sorry, that warehoused food may help local populations but if we can’t transport it…”
“Yes, Mr. President, that is the situation in a nutshell. There are ample foodstuffs, but we have no means to transport them. Even if we had the trucks and drivers, they would be unable to refuel as the electric grid is now a cascading failure, with no coal or oil running the power plants.”