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

I punched her in the face and broke her nose, releasing a heavy flow of blood and snot. When the parasites really dig in and start reproducing in a human body a lot of snot and saliva is produced, a healthy medium for the transmission of the parasites from host to host.

I turned to run, and immediately tripped and fell, forgetting that my pants were still around my ankles.

I rolled onto my back as Jillian lunged on top of me, one hand grabbing my prick and one clawing at my face. How many times had she climbed on top of me before, gently touching my face and my cock as she prepared to ride me? It was a position favored by both of us.

I shoved her head back with one hand, avoiding those snapping teeth. I knew I was immune, but she could tear my throat out, or chew off my fingers, and I still had plans for them. With my other hand I slashed at her throat with the steel edge of the clipboard. The edge wasn’t sharp, but her throat was soft. I should know, I kissed it often enough. The clipboard cut her, a small cut.

She lunged again and I slashed at her again, and then I rolled on top of her, my still hard cock pressed between us, how many times had we laid like that before, and then I raised the clipboard, gripped it with both hands, and used it to hack off my lovely Jilly’s head.

I was cold, shivering so violently I could hardly hold the clipboard. I ejaculated as I was beheading my wife. I pulled up my pants, sat beside her, and cried.

Most people would say I killed a thing, a dangerous, mindless thing. In my mind, I had murdered my wife, and that was the moment things changed for me. I was the same after the parasitic outbreak as I was before it began wiping out humanity. I wanted to hide in quiet and comfort. I hid from the world in my stories before the outbreak and afterward I hid in the Palace from the mindless, hungry grins wandering the streets.

When I cut off Jillian’s head, when I murdered her, I changed. I no longer wanted to hide. Now I wanted to fight back, to destroy every one of those smiling grins out there. I wanted a war and I had nothing to lose— except Jillian’s legacy, her kindness, everything she had worked so hard to preserve.

I didn’t want to take charge. It was thrust upon me. People saw Jillian and I as the leaders of our group of survivors, then depended on us for the final word despite a number of committees Jilly had been creating to get feedback from everyone on everything we proposed so our every action was supported by the majority.

But they looked to me to lead them…

What we have learned, firsthand and through radio reports from other survivors is this—

There are three ways one can contract the smiler sickness. Grin attacks are the primary mode of transmission, accidental contact with any body fluids constitute secondary transmission, and tertiary transmission is catching the disease from flies.

The bug, giardia motivus, is a parasite. It isn’t anything made by man or mutated by some freakish whim of nature. It is a living thing that very well may have been around for millions of years before its path crossed with ours.

With Dr. Anders’ help we learned almost all bodily fluids could transmit the disease. The parasite can survive in any liquid medium in the human body, except urine. We began saving piss in large containers, and used it to wash down anything a grin came in contact with. It was too late to save Jillian, but that knowledge would save others. I tried to take some comfort in that.

Once parasites enter the skin it takes them only a few minutes to reach the brain, where they begin interfering with motor functions and take over a body that becomes nothing but a breeding ground and a delivery system to nurture the parasites and spread them to other hosts.

The parasite multiplies, and drives the host to bite or tear at the skin of other suitable hosts. Then the grin bleeds, vomits or spits into wounds to pass on the parasite. Unlike the zombies or scary movies grins do not eat the living, they just… ravage them. An open wound is a better medium for transmission, of the parasites, the closer to the brain the better, so grins will tear at faces and throats.

A telltale sign of infection is a rictus smile. The disease is called the happy bug or smiling sickness. The life span of the infected is unknown, but it is thought the parasites feed on their hosts slowly, creating a desiccated corpse-like creature that can still be mobile and dangerous for a time depending on the physical fitness of the grin at the time of infection.

The infected are not zombies in the traditional sense. They are deranged, their higher brain functions destroyed by the parasites that guide them. The parasites also carry unidentified bacteria that cause a host of diseases, including something similar to leprosy, killing the nerves and making the grins nearly invulnerable to pain. Real zombies, if they existed, would decay after a month and be no threat. The grins are alive and hungry. They are not immortal, but while they live, they are a constant danger.

The parasites were first transmitted by the common housefly. The flies are immune because they build immunity as larvae.

Renfield ate maggots. I was eaten by them, or at least the diseased and possibly gangrenous flesh of my facial wound was after I was attacked by the grin on the Golden Gate Bridge. Both of us were immune.

What our group needed now was a doctor or a biologist, anyone who could help us work on a cure, because there was one waiting to be discovered.

I took Jillian’s body down Market Street and across Justin Herman Plaza to the Ferry Building. She was wrapped in plastic, and a clean white sheet. I slipped her into the bay and a current carried her away from me. I wanted to do it alone. Benjamin and Randall came with me.

We killed two grins on the way there and five on the way back. Most of them were older, and in bad health, even for the infected. One was a child, a little boy of about ten years old. His upper lip was crusted with snot and the mange-like itch had driven him to rub a raw red hole through his t shirt and the flesh over his collarbone. His hands were bigger than they should have been, and his fingernails were hard claws.

When he saw our obvious distress Randall said, “I’ve got this one.” We walked past the thing that was once a little boy and heard Randall behind us, beating it to death with a steel pry bar.

When we got back to the Palace Hotel, Kalife Montagne was standing in the lobby and screaming at Rose Lubisch, a slender brunette who was hugely pregnant. He was a huge black guy with a gold grill, and he towered over her.

“You stupit fuckin bitch, how could you go and get knocked up? You know how much trade I’m gonna lose when that pussy’s out of commission? I got a good mind to slap the—”

He didn’t get to finish. I slammed the flat on my sword into the back of his head and he went down. While people I knew and many I’d not yet gotten to know stood and watched, I grabbed one of Montagne’s wrists and dragged him out onto the street. He didn’t fight back; he only recoiled in horror as I shoved him outside. My face had that effect on a lot of people. I came back into the hotel and locked the door.

“That man doesn’t come back in here,” I said, to anyone listening.

Rose looked terrified.

“Everything is going to be fine,” I said.

The next day we heard a commotion in the street outside the barricaded doors. Certain rooms and suites had been designated lookouts. I went up to a first floor room with Benjamin and looked down into the street. Montagne was there, with a group of people who looked like the troublesome rabble you only see in bad movies. These people were filthy, some injured, some deranged, some angry, angry at us, safe inside the Palace, or angry at the world in general. The crowd was only about thirty people, but they looked like hard cases, people who had been surviving all this time under conditions far rougher than life inside the hotel.