MicroHorror

Rob’s metal bleacher for the Yankees game was on the top row, with the Jumbotron directly over his head. He could only see the score through the thin readouts between mezzanine decks, but that was no matter since Rob had his radio. It gave the score every couple of minutes along with the play by play. He listened for two innings, but then the batteries died. Perfect. Wait, he was sitting under eight zillion volts. Rob had come straight from work, and still had some electrician’s tools in his belt. An electrical cable for the Jumbotron ran along the bleacher wall at his heels. Rob nonchalantly felt with his hands while facing forward. He made a small incision in the plastic and rubber insulation, and stuck a pair of insulated wires in. Rob threaded the other ends of the wires to his radio, and it screamed back to life. Rob enjoyed two more innings like this, afraid to move and jerk a wire out. He stayed still when some overweight guy tried to inch past with $30 in food, which caused the guy to lose his balance. He spilled a huge cup of soda on Rob’s bleacher, which splashed down on the insulation cut. The entire metal bleacher seared with electricity, snapping Rob’s muscles so he was stiff as an ironing board. The soda washed down to the second row of bleachers, electrocuting everyone on them too. This caused more spilled drinks, and the electricity spread across the entire bleachers. Rob smelled his own charring flesh as he heard the announcers remark on some commotion in the cheap seats, like the wave, but in reverse.

The Base Realignment and Closing Commission had recommended that the New London Naval Submarine Base be shuttered–but changed its mind a few weeks later. BRAC members were given a top-secret presentation on why this base needed to stay open, by both American and Russian naval officers. A small Russian trawler had a weekly deployment from New London, traveling due east 56 nautical miles to a designated spot. A watertight container–containing oxygen tanks, food, medicine, classic Russian novels and several gallons of vodka–was lowered down from the trawler. On the ocean bottom was a Delta IV-class nuclear submarine, with 23 men aboard. An electrical accident in 1986 had left its propellers frozen and its ballast tanks permanently flooded. The 135-member crew was alive, though, and the Soviets began making regular oxygen and food deliveries. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Americans had allowed the deliveries from its more convenient port. The sub’s only news came from the surface, and a decision had long ago been made to keep the men under the impression the USSR was still going strong. This was a fiercely patriotic group of Soviets, the American and Russian officials argued, who might react terribly against either or both superpowers if they heard their beloved social experiment had being cancelled. And this small group of men had 16 functioning SS-N-23 missiles, which could reach New York in four minutes.

One day, the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas turned to stone. Men in loincloths began going from room to room, cutting the eyes out of those who dared look at the Pharaoh’s chambers. Up the strip at Excalibur, sword-wielding men on horseback began robbing all passersby, in tribute to the king. The Rio became swamped with starving children, begging in Portuguese. New York New York began smelling like urine. The cast of the Treasure Island pirate show grabbed woman from the street and hauled them below decks. Fascist troops stormed from the Venetian, and quickly took over Paris Las Vegas. The Mirage simply disappeared. Caesar’s Palace threw tourists down into its amphitheater, where hungry white tigers waited. And it all began sinking in quicksand, freshly made from the sandstorm furiously firing out from the Sahara to the northeast, and the rising floodwaters of Orleans to the southwest.

Julius had a strong mind, and so wasn’t going to have the personality change when he got his serum injections. The army would increase his stamina and muscle mass and eyesight through genetics, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let the “slight cognitive syzygy” affect him. As Julius got used to his new strength, he began picking up traits that weren’t his. He had newborn cravings for pistachio ice cream and abstract sculpture. So did everyone else. The cafeteria perpetually served pistachio ice cream for dessert, and gorgeous welded monoliths were mounted on pedestals between the barracks. As his body changed, it began resembling everyone else: exactly 234 pounds of pure muscle. His platoon members had names, but their personalities were so interchangeable he only knew names when he was staring at their nametags. He was different, though. He didn’t wave his independence around, but he was still his same old self. It was a good thing, too, since he could tell this crew was tough but might be a flock of sheep. They needed a leader. Not just someone to point out the enemy, but someone willing to put his life on the line for the platoon’s safety. He stayed stoically silent about this until they were flown to battle. It was a trench fight, with a 300-yard no man’s land to cross. The machine guns would get 50% of his platoon if they all sprinted toward the enemy at top speed, and 100% if they hesitated at all. He would set the example, and help to save platoon lives. He ran like hell out of the trench. Everyone else was supposed to follow, he figured, but everyone else decided to set the same example at the same time, charging out with him. 

“Tie her wrists to the punishment pole.” Two men secured the struggling slip of a girl to the stake and stepped away. “On this day, the tenth of October, 1692, I, Jonathan Binder, witchfinder, do decree Bethany Pells to be a witch and sentence her to death by stoning.”

The village’s population stood around Bethany in a great circle, afraid to get any closer. Binder walked bravely to the stake and whispered in Bethany’s ear, “You should have given yourself to me when you I requested it; then your painful fate, this witchcraft lie, could have been avoided.”

Bethany looked up at his smug face and spit in it.

Binder stomped away in anger, wiping his face and yelling, “Pass sentence. Stone her!”

Hands picked up stones, rocks and pebbles from the rough ground and flung them with good accuracy at the captive girl. Bethany was bleeding and bruised, hanging now from the leather thong. Her weight was too much for the old thong, cut by stones hitting it as well, and it snapped. Bethany tumbled to the ground, groaning as she fell on the rocks.

Then, miraculously, Bethany struggled to her feet. The village murmured as one, and Binder glared furiously at her. “Finish the sentence!” he roared.

But now Bethany’s hands were free. Crooking her arms, she spread her witching fingers wide and chanted low, summoning an ancient power. The stones all around her began to vibrate, then rose inexplicitly into the air and flew with savage speed and killing force into the astonished villagers.

Many dropped dead outright, while others fell gravely hurt or crippled. A handful hobbled off as fast they could, howling in pain. Bethany faltered, falling against the pole for support. She smiled a bloody smile through cut lips, and using the last of her fading strength and power, hurled a pumpkin-sized rock to cave in Binder’s head.

Then Bethany collapsed dead on the killing field.

Abdurrahman was happy to be in Hell. Islamic custom taught that if you committed suicide, you would relive the method of your death eternally. If you shot yourself, you would continually be shooting yourself for the rest of time. Abdurrahman had indeed killed himself. But he had done so through overindulgence of life’s pleasurable sins. He drank until he couldn’t stand, slept with every girl that would take his money, and used every drug he could get his hands on. He was a gluttonous eater, a late sleeper and an unreliable worker. Abdurrahman came to the realization one morning, after waking up penniless and hung over in a parking lot, that this lifestyle was killing him. He was having too much fun to change anything, though, so he continued his way of life knowing its consequence. Abdurrahman died five years later, of a heart attack brought on by a lifetime of fatty foods and no exercise. It was weighed as a suicide, albeit through the most pleasurable method possible. That same pleasurable way of life became Abdurrahman’s “punishment.” His afterlife was not filled with the 72 virgins promised to the righteous, but Abdurrahman always found less prudish women to be a lot more fun. 

Soldiers patrolled the streets in HAZMAT suits, working their way from door to door, trying to raise a response from anybody who might still be alive. After their third day of finding nothing but death, all sense of purpose had gone, and now they just went through the motions for the sake of thoroughness and the hygienic disposal of the remains–piling the dead into garbage trucks and dumping them in landfills.

At 26 Laburnum Drive, they forced the front door and shot a snarling Alsatian before it could defend the property. They found the man of the house still sitting in an armchair, eyes white, stale bloody tears still streaked, cracked and flaking down his pallid face, lips black, with a beard of dry blood below them, like all the other corpses they found. Even the flies knew better than to feast on this flesh. The bodies didn’t rot or swell like normal cadavers, but the sweet sickly stench they gave off pervaded the n^th-micron filters of the suits, making the men gag and retch. It wasn’t an odor anybody got used to smelling.

The woman of the house lay sprawled on the tiled floor in the kitchen, her hair matted and her face contorted in a dry scream, resting in a congealed pool of her own blood and vomit. A small boy, perhaps four years old, lay huddled beside her, his face buried in the folds of her Arran sweater.

The soldiers placed a gurney on the floor next to her, picked her up by her arms and legs and, as they peeled the woman’s face off the tiles, the child screamed out.

One of the soldiers shouted into his mic, “We’ve got a live one!”

The kid scrambled across the floor and took refuge in a corner, his face covered in angry red lumps, his crimson cheeks streaked with bloody tears.

A medic bustled in and, holding his arms out in front of himself, hands open, he crept towards the boy. “It’s alright kid, we’re here to help you- we’re just men in funny suits. Don’t be afraid. Can you tell me your name? Mine’s Rosco…”

“Henry.” The boy sniffed back tears. “I don’t feel very well.”

“You’re going to be okay now; don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you.” Rosco knelt down in front of the boy.

“Mummy.”

“We’ll take care of Mummy too, Henry, just leave it to us.”

The sound of automatic gunfire reverberated around the streets outside, all around and off in the distance. Screaming came over the radio, mixed commands, confusion, panic.

A soldier tapped the medic on the shoulder. “You okay here, Rosco? We’d better go check that out.”

“It’s all right, man, I’ve got this covered.”

The soldiers hurried out. Rosco opened his case and took out a thermometer.

“Mummy!”

“We’ll take care of Mummy, don’t worry.” Rosco, still rummaging around in his medical kit, didn’t see the kid looking upwards, over his shoulder.

“No, look! Mummy’s awake!”

Henry’s smile turned to a look of puzzlement as Mummy bit through the hood of Rosco’s HAZMAT suit, and through the bone of his skull, into his brain, making his eyeballs roll up in their sockets and his eyelids flutter.

THE BEGINNING