Brian Steele - 4POCALYPSE - Four Tales of a Dark Future

We waited for Renfield to say more.

“It’s like this,” Renfield said. “The disease began in flies. The parasites came from flies, are carried by flies, but they do not infect flies. Flies are immune. Flies transmitted the parasite to man. Now man transmits it to man, but the disease, the bug, thrives in men. The bug is a parasite. It’s thought that it immediately seeks out the brain, carrying a host of other lesser maladies within it, such as the skin condition you’ve all seen. The bug, the parasite, takes over the brain. Did you know it has a name? It is called giardia motivus and—”

“Mind control?”

I looked at Randall. He looked down at his clasped hands, and his voice was a whisper.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if this bug was created by the military. They’ll fuck with a soldier’s head any way they can.”

I didn’t want the conversation going off on a crazy conspiracy tangent, so I gave Randall a nod and asked Renfield, “How could a parasite control a human being?”

“There are fungi that can control insects,” Renfield said, “Disgusting things. Remember, I’m an exterminator and I don’t disgust easily, but some of these fungi… they will take over an ant, for example, and make it climb a tree, perhaps simply triggering an impulse to seek out direct sunlight in the canopy of a jungle. When the ant reaches the highest point it latches onto a branch or leaf with a literal death grip and dies. Then the fungus erupts from the ant’s body or head, and releases a little cloud of spores that rain down on the jungle, each spore capable of infecting another ant.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Is there any way to fight this bug? Could you somehow muster enough will power to—”

Randall said, “He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.”

That was a line from John fucking Milton. Who the hell was Randall?

“Doubtful,” Renfield said. “I’m only guessing here, but I would say that the parasite either destroys or consumes any parts of the brain that allow higher thought. Consciousness, memory, all of that is wiped out, obliterated with horrifying speed, and what is left is an automaton, a delivery system to help further the spread of the parasite, a—”

“A missile,” Randall said.

Renfield nodded.

“How do you know this?” I had to ask. Maybe Renfield was as crazy as Randall.

Renfield shrugged. “Television never really did it for me. I like listening to my radios, chatting on my CB, and monitoring my police scanner. I found some frequencies used by the combined military forces as well. You’d be amazed how easily soldiers can forget spoken word protocols when the shit hits the fan. Code words and acronyms go right out the window. Which brings me to another important point. I’ve worked with a lot of cops. When you’re an exterminator you get called to houses infested with wasps or ants or whatever and often the people in those homes call the police first, in a panic, I suppose. I was in the street near my home in the Castro when Haise came down the road in an SFPD cruiser. I had managed to incapacitate a grin and I was dragging it to my house—”

“Excuse me?” I asked, wondering if Renfield was the crazy one after all.

“I broke its knees using a sledge hammer with a long shaft, and then I shattered all of its leg and arm bones,” he said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world to do. It was quite helpless and hardly a threat under those circumstances. That wasn’t the first grin I studied. I’d done it before, and since I had already begun eating maggots—they are a wonderful source of protein and tasteless if you wash them down with a glass of water—I was almost certain I was immune.

I was dragging that last grin into my house, hoping I could study it as well, when Haise intervened and treated me like a criminal. I told him I may have discovered how to become immune to the disease and we began to argue. He shoved me, I stumbled on the curb, and the incapacitated grin couldn’t resist tucking in to the arm that fell in front of its face. Haise shot the grin in the head, cuffed me in the street, and since then he’s been watching me to see if I am immune. What is worth noting is that I have known a lot of police officers, and Haise does not talk like a cop. Not at all. In fact—”

Renfield was interrupted by a harsh medley of screams drifting down the stairwell.

Most of us ran up the stairs. Benjamin was ahead of me, having recognized the voices of the Morales sisters. I was followed by Renfield. Jillian was behind him, and Conaghan was puffing along behind her. I didn’t notice that Randall and Haise were not following us.

On the seventh floor we saw the Morales sisters standing near the stairs, both appearing to have been startled out of sleep. Benjamin went to them. Further down the hall I saw Isao and a woman in a business suit locked together in a struggle. It didn’t occur to me that it was a grin until they turned around and around like dancers and I saw that horrible rictus. Her jacket, blouse and shirt were streaked with dried vomit that had been mostly blood.

Beyond them near the end of the hall and the room they shared with their father were Haya and Haru. Both children were curled up on the floor. Both were bleeding from bite wounds.

The grin was snapping at Isao’s hands and face, and the older man’s hands were already bloody from bites. Yet he was holding her back from doing any greater injury, and as if in response she let out a frustrated sound, made a choking noise and then regurgitated a syrupy mixture of vomit and dark blood into his face.

Renfield and I stepped forward, and I realized I didn’t have my sword. I turned to Conaghan and pulled a long screwdriver from his tool belt.

The grin bit into Isao’s left hand and tore away a patch of skin. He let out a yell and shoved her away.

Renfield approached them, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he was doing some sort of kooky dance. He was a gangly man with a shaggy head of hair and the sight would have been hysterical if not for the fact that he was playing a deadly game. The grin lashed out at him and he grabbed her arm, swinging her face first into a door.

The Palace is an old and luxurious hotel. The doors to the suites are paneled in mahogany. The doors are solid. So solid that you can use one to kill.

The grin’s face smashed into the door and she recoiled, looking up and down the hall in shock as that too thick and too dark blood oozed from her mouth and nose.

Renfield twisted her arm behind her back, I distinctly heard something break, a muffled snap, and then he slammed her face first into the door again, and again, until her knees buckled and her face was unrecognizable.

I looked at Isao. He was touching his bloody face with his bloody hands, shaking his head, and saying something in Japanese. He took a few steps toward me and then lurched as if he’d slipped on something. Then he began to grin, and I saw the humanity leave his eyes. He had a nasty cut on his upper lip, and his lips parted to reveal red, bloody teeth. As his muscles contracted his grin became so fierce that his upper lip tore apart.

“Careful, Bellemer,” Jillian whispered behind me.

Isao launched himself at me as if thrown by an invisible sling, his arms flailing at me like a man doing a bad imitation of a cat. I leaned out of his way and stuck out a foot, and Isao went sprawling on the thick carpet underfoot. As he struggled to get to his feet I bent down and rammed the screwdriver through his right temple.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping that some part of his humanity remained and understood that I was doing what I had to.