Individually Wrapped Horrors

by Eric Joel Kleinschmidt, Sr.

  “Something went horribly, horribly wrong…” he began.

  (Part Two: The Message)

  Donovan James ran through the trees as the ground shook violently beneath him. At one point, it shook so violently that it threw him off balance and he went head first into a very tall and very solid pine. He hit the ground hard and for a brief time, there was nothing. When he awoke, the pale light coming through the trees let him know that some time had passed and he needed to get up and get moving. His head ached ferociously and swam in and out of a dense fog. He rubbed at the spot with a sensitive knot where he had head-butted the tree. Trying hard to keep his balance as the roaring thundered and echoed through the nearby valley, he clutched tight at the bag he carried and staggered up the small hill. He was well away from the city, but knew that he still wasn’t safe. He was just going to have to keep going until he couldn’t go anymore, that was all. His long, shaggy brown hair was dirty and matted with some of his blood and some of someone else’s blood, too. It kept falling into his blue eyes and they were already sensitive enough. The hair was one thing too much. He vowed to find something sharp and cut that shit off. Now that he wasn’t just some stoned guy working in a computer shop anymore, he’d have to make a great deal of changes. No more lattes and hot pockets. He was a well-built man of 26 for working in a computer repair shop. He liked—or had liked—to work out at the all-night gym four blocks down on Grand with his girlfriend Sheila three nights a week before all of this shit hit the fan. Now, here he was, running through the countryside, bleeding from a head wound, God knows what chasing him, no idea where the hell he even was. What a mess! He found some bushes, thick and lush with plenty of shade, and crouched down beneath them to catch his breath. He had a few bottles of water in his bag and grabbed one out now. He twisted off the cap and drank half of the bottle down in a draft. He put the rest of the bottle back away for later. Had to save what he could. Back to his feet and more running.

  Later that night, he found himself in front of the opening of a large cave. At least, it looked large from the outside. Hopefully there were no bears or mountain lions or whatever in there. He glanced back over his shoulder. A dark, winged thing flew high up into the night sky and gave out a tremendous screech. That was enough for him. Bear or no bear, he was getting the hell out of the open. He crouched down and duck walked in. The coolness inside the cave was the first thing that grabbed his attention. It had to be a hundred and five outside and he was soaked through with sweat, both from the heat and from the running. The cave was like a welcoming shelter complete with central air. He laid his pack against the wall and curled up, using it as a pillow. Not a very comfortable pillow, but it would do. In the morning, he would see what he could see and try getting far away from here. He thought about checking his cell phone and thought better. He was bone-weary and needed to get some shut eye. The world would still be there in the morning, he could check how bad things were then. For now, sleep.

  He awoke a short time later with a start and clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle the scream. A creature, a demonic foxlike beast had crept into the cave where he slept and was a few feet away, sniffing at something in the moonlight. Tears of fear streamed down his cheeks as he thought about this girlfriend and his mom and dad and this thing moving closer to him. It continued sniffing around, but it must’ve had a very poor sense of smell. He sat only a few feet away and it hadn’t pick up on him yet. It snorted as it tried to sniff him out and pawed angrily at its own nose. Something was wrong with it, well, besides the obvious. Then, just like that, it had him. Picking up Donovan’s scent, the beast looked at him and growled, assuming an attack posture at once. Donovan’s full body tensed up in anticipation of the kill, just as the ground shook mightily and a tremendous set of fangs came down from the darkness just outside the mouth of the cave and clamped down on the demonic fox-thing. The demonic fox-thing gave out a tremendous yelp and began to bite desperately at the fangs. The ground trembled with a footstep of something too large to fathom and another yelp as the demonic fox-thing was bitten in half. Blood showered down just outside the cave opening and one half of the fox-thing hit the ground hard. It was the head half. Blood and entrails leaked out the bitten end as it still seemed to be trying to get to its feet and crawl back into the cave to get him. He watched this whole scene, paralyzed with fear, as the mighty jaws of whatever was out there came back down and picked up the rest of the fox-thing. A loud wet crunching sound and the intense yelping sounds stopped. A portion of the huge beast’s face came into view of the cave’s opening, again just mere feet away from Donovan. He was in a curled up hiding position against the cave’s wall and was completely still. The monstrous face looked much like a t-rex if he was covered with blood-matted fur. Barney, was all he could think. That stupid old dinosaur kid’s show from a million years ago. He had to stifle a giggle, a mad giggle he was almost sure. The thing out there couldn’t get his scent either, due to all the blood the fox-thing had sprayed everywhere. Finding nothing further to eat, the beast thing rose and the ground rocked and shook as it left. The roaring becoming a distant whisper, then gone entirely. Donovan lay silent and still in shocked fear. He seemed to be concreted to the spot where he sat. After a while, he slept, more out of exhaustive fear than actually being tired. His dreams were terrible and daylight could not come fast enough.

  That next morning, he had gotten up slowly, so very slowly and gone to the mouth of the cave to see what he could see. He was in the hills in the countryside not far outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was in one piece and unhurt, except for the large swelled up knot on his forehead, and Pittsburgh had been burned to the ground.

  He looked out across the hills and valleys to where Pittsburgh had been the night before. Huge pillars of smoke rose up into the breezy morning air. It occurred to him, there were no birds singing this morning, no sign of any either. No sign of any wildlife. There were certainly mosquitoes out and spiders and other bug life. No wildlife though. Likewise, he heard none of the roaring from the beasts or any other such creatures that he encountered last night. He did his morning business in a fast and nervous fashion, then went back into his cave. Already he was thinking of it as his cave. He got out his cell phone and went to the news feed. He sighed in bitter acceptance as he got the answer he feared most. Worldwide. It was worldwide. Japan was gone. Paris, France, destroyed. All the major cities were either gone or going up. The town and little cities were a toss-up. Some were there, some were gone. He tried calling his parents’ house. Nothing. No lines available. Tried calling Sheila. Same thing. Nothing. No calls, but the internet was still up for now. Time to do a bit more research. He went to work.

  By the third day in his cave, the internet went dead. He had used his cell phone sparingly and had still burned through both of the battery packs he had brought along and his battery in the phone was nearly dead, too. Oh well, no calls, no internet. Might as well be dead, he thought. With that thought, he wondered if he still meant the phone.

  He got to his feet and walked past the circle of rocks he had made for a fire pit. One thing he had researched online before losing the net was making a spit and using it. He had caught a few rabbits that were still in the process of trying to get out of the area. He had seen no other wildlife before or since. Those three rabbits had gone a long way toward helping him through this situation. Now they were nothing but bones tossed aside and a memory. He thought he might be like that someday soon. He dug in his bag and brought out his video camera. It was all digital, but also made the DVD copy while you filmed. He set it up on a rock and hit the record button. In the past few days, he had had a few run-ins with some other things that were not wildlife. They were like wildlife gone demonic. Scaly creatures, always with the claws. Always fanged. Always hungry. He was bruised and still a little bloody from that morning’s previous scuffle with a snake that had three heads and could wrap around your arm like a braid, each head working independently of the other two. He had fought it off ev
entually, but it left him even more tired and feeling more hopeless than before. It was all gone or going and now he had to tell whoever found this DVD as much as he knew. And who the hell was going to believe this wicked shit? He smiled weakly as he thought that to himself, then the smile faded into a ghost on his face and he hung his head and said:

  “Something went horribly, horribly wrong. There was this whole thing about meteorites falling to begin with. Two of them. The first one gave this guy an incredible gift to draw and a massive creative drive. It also apparently gave him the ability or the antidote germ to a harmful germ that would fall with another meteorite later in life. He had this antidote in his skin the entire span of his adult life and never knew it. The whole world was disrupted for months over the ordeal, but the second meteorite that had driven people crazy and cost so many lives had been covered with a germ or bacteria that the government was very interested in. They harvested some of it for later research. That was one part of the story the guy Michaels never knew about. Never actually heard what became of him and his family. No one ever saw them again. The rest of us were just crazy about going to see him and once we had, the antidote that he wore on his skin freed us all of that maddening drive to get to him. OK, so then we fast forward a few months into the future and we find the government working with the samples in Baltimore, Maryland. If you’re still alive and if you find this, I guess that’s where the real answers lie. That’s kinda where it all began. Oh, my name’s Donovan Theodore James. I am a computer tech over here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Or, well, at least I was until, you know, all of this shit out there.” He sighed heavily, not wanting to continue. Not wanting to go through the whole unbelievable mess. He went on anyway.

  “So awhile back, in February I think, there was a lab in Baltimore, Maryland, government research, military applications, that sort of thing. So this lab is mixing up some genetic samples and some chemical compounds, found in part on the meteorite, for strengthening up G.I. Joe. Give him more stamina, faster ability to heal, a fiercer nature in general, right?” He coughs lightly. “The genetic research has been going on for a long time, decades at least, but this new discovery gives it a real boost. Kind of picking up where Hitler’s boys left off, but a few clear advantages. It gets a bit muddled here and of course there is no real time frame. They tried to keep this stuff all hush-hush until it got out to the public in a big way. Someone did something. I’m sorry that’s very vague, but it’s all I could find before the net went dark. Someone did something and one of the patients got the wrong serum. He forever went down in the history books as patient zero. From there, it sorta played out like every zombie film you have ever seen. He busts out of the science lab department, he has like this super strength, right? He claws and fights and bites his way through guards and orderlies and scientists. He shatters a window and jumps forty-five feet straight down to his death. Apparently, the serum wasn’t that good that he could make a jump like that. Now, where it went wrong was that the people that he attacked, bit, and clawed all became the infected. Zombie movie shit, right? They spread out into the night in Baltimore and brought Hell to those streets. The Baltimore Death Trip it was called. It came in fast and mean. Not very many people died initially, because this shit that was in their veins spread so fast that it cured them immediately of any superficial wounds. So these zombie people were packs, like of stray wild dogs, they were everywhere. The next thing were the fire brigades. They had soldiers out in the streets of downtown Baltimore with flamethrowers and machine guns killing these zombies. The only thing was, man, those weren’t zombies. Not really, man. Zombies are like the dead coming back. These were real people, you know? Like, real people with jobs and families and their whole entire lives ahead of them. They just got sick for a while. But the government’s solution to everything is kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. So they did.

  “The fire brigades went on searching for weeks until they felt like they had the problem under control. It was nearly contained to Baltimore. A few got past the perimeter and ended up out in the country, but they tracked them all down and murdered them all. By this time, word had gotten out worldwide that our government was doing that type of research and experimentation, as if everyone didn’t already know, but it was like the fact that they got it to work was what made the world so nervous. World war broke out in a hurry. Up to this point, nobody had begun using the nukes yet, but it was bloodshed in all of the major city streets around the world. Everyone everywhere had sleeper cells that went off. Buildings began coming down, crime and looting and violence began going up and all of the religious zealots came out of the woodwork like roaches. It was the end of days. The same things we’ve been hearing for centuries. Only it was starting to look like they were right. They always told us we had enough nukes on this planet to destroy the damn thing 9 times over. Well, it looked as if we were about to find out. Everyone was at war and every type of weapon was in play at this point but the nukes! The craziest shit was still to come though. This is the part where you might have trouble believing me so I prepared a little something to prove what I’m about to say.” Donovan stands up and approaches the camera. He grabs it and the video goes shaky. It pans across the cavern he is holed up in and comes to an abrupt stop on the mangled remains of something indescribably hideous and bloody. He sets the camera down, still trained on the lump of meat with fangs and claws, and kneels down beside it.

  “The Satanists determined this to be the right time for their rising. The whole world was busy destroying itself anyway, might as well have a little fun. They used every book, every spell, every talisman and charm, every goddamned thing they could use, virgin sacrifice, infant sacrifice, the works, until they finally summoned demons to Earth. Up until that point, we as a people had always thought they were just a bullshit thing churches told us about to behave ourselves. We were wrong about that. I still don’t know about Satan or God or even angels because none of them have shown up to this particular fight. But demons? Or at least demonic creatures? Oh yes. Yes, those definitely showed up. From the day they showed up, the remaining government and military personnel decided it was time to up the ante and they broke out the chemical and germ warfare that was still in trials and had results that had not yet been clarified. We found out what they did. Some of the chemicals used, both on the demons and the enemies, turned people inside out. It dissolved their skin and made their eyeballs pop. It did a great many despicable things before dissipating into the dwindling atmosphere. The demons remained unaffected and unchecked. They rampaged the streets and the countryside. Anywhere they could go, they would go. Only one thing matched them. Werewolves.

  “Again, I know what you’re thinking at this point. Werewolves? What are we living in some poor desperate writer’s novel here? No, this is the real world. Again, I make reference to my friend here.” He gestured down to the mangled creature by his feet. “It appears that we had been fooled about werewolves to add to everything else. There were few of them, but they do exist. Or did. I think they were all wiped out later. They turned out also to all be she-wolves, every single one of them. A mother and daughter she-wolf combo went up against one of the largest and most vicious demons I have seen yet. They mortally wounded it, but it got them in the end. They tried so hard fighting for us and for themselves, too. But yes, fighting for us. Trying to rid the world of man’s stupid, self-destructive whims. Goddamn it.” He said with a heavy sigh. He was hanging his head down again. “We really thought we had a chance while they were fighting the good fight. So the military is in charge at that point, the government is pretty well toast by then, and the military goes, ‘ok, no more werewolves, it’s nuking time.’ Cities on fire and burnt to rubble, the dead…the dead lay everywhere. The first nuke was sent by the U.S. at one of the larger demons. It struck, but had no lasting effect on the creature.” Harder coughing now. “More and more nukes, now from all sides were tried. The demons breathed soot. What the hell did they expect they were going to do? Despera
te times and desperate measures. One of the nukes was supposed to come up from out of the ocean. It malfunctioned. It detonated just over the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The trench ripped open wide and even deeper within lay the stuff of nightmares. We had thought world war and demons were bad. H.P. Lovecraft was more right than he could have ever known, or maybe he did know how right he was…Cthulhu rose! Up from the depths with his indescribable minions of the deep. From blackest murk water they rose and began to devour all that lay in their path, humans and demons alike. Dagon, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth to name a few. They all rose up from the depths of the Pacific. I had always thought of them in conjunction with the Atlantic when I read him in high school, but all oceans are connected in one way or another when you think about it. Anyway, they came. Destruction of the foulest grand kind. Opening portals in the world and in space to bring in more of their wretched kind to the ghastly awe of a planet of non-believers. We had to escape. Or, some thought they had to escape is more aptly put. Thought they could escape.

  “In the underground caverns of Missouri, there was a shuttle built and designed especially for that purpose. It had been designed and built many years ago and the conspiracy theorists went on endlessly about it and weren’t they right? The rest of us have egg on our face over most of this shit. The shuttle was loaded by the few select who were still alive and deemed worthy of saving and in no time flat, it was blasting off, burning anyone or anything who got in too close proximity of the launch site. They made a critical error when punching in their projected coordinates. They struck the moon, nearly dead on, detonating the thing. We all watched in horror and a touch of fascination as our moon popped in the sky and rained down chunks of flaming meteorites on us all. The rest of the world’s nukes went off. Every last-ditch effort we had left went unmatched. The Cthulhu reign went indefinitely and supreme. He or it spawned more and more of its kind. They were overrunning the planet. The weather had grown to catastrophic levels and now, we have a dying planet outside that makes it hurt to breathe. The air is beginning to turn yellow and unfortunately, I seem to be stuck up here in this cavern with no breathing apparatus. So unless something changes soon, I guess this will be it for me. You know what really pisses me off? I had been to see a shrink to tell him that I had dreamed something horrible like this was coming. He worked with me and talked me through it, making me believe it was all just bad dreams and paranoia. Aw, fuck man, this sucks!” He said pulling at his own hair and coughing more into the camera.