Bab 8: Chapter 8: The Beginning of the End
"God, they're amazing." Jody had said with wide, excited eyes.
Carmella looked at the gray Blobs and saw only a terrible life form that frightened her.
Even Micah was bouncing with excitement in his father's arms, reaching for the aliens, wanting to go to them.
"Daddy, down!" he demanded, and one of the Blobs seemed to look right at them.
Carmella clutched Jody's arm, her body breaking into a cold sweat. "No."
Jody looked at the cold fear in her eyes, and despite wanting to stay and watch them for hours, he moved them out of the observation area.
In the summer of 2013, only three months after that visit, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a pandemic outbreak of a new virus called H1Z similar to the pandemic outbreak in 2009 of H1N1. Instead of a swine-based virus, it was a strain that had unknown origins and could adapt to the host. As a result, it tricked the body into accepting it and couldn't be combatted by the body's natural defenses or any antiviral medications. Because of that, the H1Z virus caused the death of nearly 70 percent of the world's population. Billions succumbed to it in a matter of months.
Once H1Z appeared, so-called "scientists" committed atrocious crimes against humanity similar to the Nuremburg experiments. People who were resistant to the virus disappeared, imprisoned so scientists could conduct experiments on them, their blood rumored to be sold on the black market to the rich.
And while the virus was taking its first victims, Jody had stood in the front yard begging Carmella not to come out. He had gone missing for a full day and had returned only for Carmella to throw him some clothes so he could go to one of the centers to be treated safely away from her and the baby. Barely able to stand, Jody coughed into a bloodied tissue, his already pale skin ashen.
Only when Carmella carried Micah to the front porch did Jody come into the house. He wouldn't make anyone else sick because their son's pale skin was as white as snow. Micah was too exhausted to cry anymore, staring with cloudy eyes and coughing blood-tinged phlegm across Carmella's shirt before he allowed his curly head to drop listlessly down onto her shoulder. Jody had stared in misery at the sight of his sick son. He walked up to the porch, took him in his arms, and cradled his too warm body.
Jody met her eyes. "There's no hope," his eyes seemed to say. He entered the house and lay down on the couch with Micah in his arms. Carmella covered them with an afghan and then went to the bathroom where she sobbed uncontrollably.
Micah passed away five days later.
Because he was delirious, Jody never knew that Micah had died.
Jody only lived two more days.
Carmella didn't want to wait for a "death wagon" like those used back in the days of the Black Plague. She didn't want Jody's or Micah's bodies tossed into pits where they were later burned. The government advised the living to leave the dead in their houses with red signposts painted on the door with the promise they'd be disposed as soon as possible. In most cases, that didn't happen.
And later, it just didn't matter.
Carmella buried her dead in the back yard, not just Jody and Micah but her mother and brother as well. Carmella stayed in her house, broken and lifeless, for as long as she could. When her neighbors realized that she had survived when everyone else in her family hadn't, Carmella feared she would be taken. She slipped away in the night with a few mementos, mementos she had lost over the years, which she considered both a curse and a blessing.
For years Carmella hoped to die like the others around her. If she caught a cold, she lay in her sickbed until she eventually got better and cursed her resistant genes. How was it that she could keep living amid the sickness and death around her?
II
Carmella pushed the unwelcomed memory back to its neat little niche where she hoped to never open it again. With bitter determination, she hunted the monstrosity that had unleashed its virulent cells upon mankind. Near exhaustion, she thought she saw it slithering in the distance.
Fuck! It had changed colors! Now it was the color of the forest around them. For all she knew, she could have been looking right at it all this time. She thought about shooting it but knew it would be a waste of her bullets. Carmella caught a flash of movement to her left only seconds before a large wolf knocked her to the ground.
With a scream she felt the piercing pain of teeth sinking into her arm. While one wolf circled her, another wolf punctured her breast while another clamped onto her wrist. Carmella screamed in pain as she realized that she was about to be killed with a loaded nine-millimeter in her waistband.
The sound of a tormented howl cut through her own pain-wracked cries, and the wolf clamped at her shoulder went flying through the air as if flung like a doll. Colorful streaks flashed in front her as a tentacle encircled the wolf holding her wrist and then jerked it away. A stinger appeared and pierced the third wolf through the side.
Carmella focused with wide terror-stricken eyes at the Blob as it heaved next to her, fluctuating between the colors of gray, green, and brown. Its inky blood still flowed in a steady stream. Its gelatinous mass quivered and rippled and seemed to form two arms.
The Blob scooped her up and lifted her from the hard ground. Her hand still held one of the kerosene lanterns, and she tried to bring it up to strike the monster, but her wrist flopped uselessly and the lantern dropped to the ground.
The Blob turned black eyes to the lantern and seemed to stare at her before another tentacle appeared from its body. The stinger protruding from it dripped some hideous, foul liquid, and she had only a second to try to scramble away before she was stung in the stomach.
She had no time to register pain as the world instantly darkened around her.
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