MicroHorror

When the plague came I rounded up everyone who could fit on my yacht and sailed down the coast to the Isle of Capri off southern Italy. It was a place I remembered fondly from my youth, a tourist island full of scenic vistas and, more importantly, soaring cliffs. The island would be impossible for the slow and clumsy dead to traverse in any real numbers. It would be simple to fortify a location and pick off the walking dead, if the surviving inhabitants hadn’t simply done so for us.

The island held one major disappointment for many of us. The cliffs had not saved the island’s population, as both signals and later scouting forays found not a single soul alive. The dead remained equally quiet. In fact, most of the bodies were picked so clean that they couldn’t have moved even if they were imbued with that horrible second life. So we settled in on the island and began clearing abandoned houses and setting up food stores.

It was in our second month there that the boat arrived. One of the ferries from the mainland, it drove full speed into the rocky shore in the middle of the night. Ten of us went to inspect it. It contained either survivors or the undead, and we could afford to ignore neither. We expected a dozen or so civilians or their unearthly remains, but not what we found.

I suspect that the boat was never meant to reach Capri. That it was sent into the ocean to drift forever or sink. Someone had somehow gathered hundreds of zombies into its hold and rigged the boat to drive straight out to sea. It’s amazing what your mind has time to consider when you’ve run yourself into a corner and death is slow to keep up.

I’d bolted along the beach when they’d come pouring out of the hold, but I’d run blindly into an alcove in the cliffs. About thirty of them followed me. They’re slow on the rocks, but the shore is so narrow I’d never duck through them all. The cliffs in the alcove are near vertical with few hand holds, and the surf is pounding against the sharp, stony shore. The chances of my surviving by any escape route are low. I press back into a corner, but I know that just because they can’t see me doesn’t mean they’ll go away. If only those damned gulls would stop screaming so I could think.

I looked back from the cliff face to see the sky dotted with thousands of white bodies, gulls from all over Capri. They descend over the cliffs, screaming and wheeling as they descend on the zombies. Soon the zombies are encased in screaming masses of wings as the gulls swarm them, clawing and fighting each other for position. The zombies slow and stumble as massing gulls block my scent. They start to circle and trip as the gulls rip out their eyes. Within minutes the zombies were feebly squirming shapes buried under battling gulls.

It made sense, I thought as I stumbled back toward the houses. Gulls at a tourist island wouldn’t fear humans, and the undead didn’t react to animals, nor to pain. It wouldn’t take them long to realize that they could simply feed on them without any reaction. And with no humans, no fishermen, the city gulls would be getting hungry having to hunt their own food again.

A small flock hovers over me as I stumble and rise again, my own white-winged honor guard. I could tell the others that the wound on my leg is from the rocks. They might believe me. I might get another day or two. But the gulls can tell. Their little pirates’ eyes miss nothing. I don’t even feel them starting to land on me. The smell of my friends in the houses ahead entirely fills my mind.

The Doctor was well pleased with himself. They’d not only successfully found a new subject, but an extremely unusual one. It had been alone and naked in the woods, covered in blood. Samples taken scrubbed from its skin suggested several domestic fowl and at least one other human. It had been in an extremely agitated state, and had responded unusually slowly to the pacification frequency in the live-capture apparatus. In fact, it had quite nearly thrashed free of the live-capture beam.

He had not yet decided whether to request an extended captive study, or tag and release it as soon as possible to watch its movements.

The human was now strapped to the biopsy table. They didn’t normally use physical restraints, but this amazing subject still wasn’t reacting fully to hypnosis or sedation. It had seemed prudent, though it looked horrendously unprofessional.

It wrenched at the restraints and made a peculiar whining noise he hadn’t before attributed to humans when one of the students burned the tracking device into its arm.

As the standard biopsy got underway the vessel passed Earth’s moon, reflected light filling the operating theater as it aligned with the window. The silver light caused a reaction in the human as even relatively invasive procedures had failed to so far.

“The subject’s heart rate is accelerating rapidly,” one of the students said as several instruments started to react.

“We’re seeing unprecedented hair growth,” another recorded clinically. Then with more concern, “And its muscles seem to be expanding.”

The Doctor leaned close over the subject, examining its heaving chest, which was indeed stretching with increased musculature and developing a dense fur. “Just what is happening to this human?”

The restraints snapped.

The research vessel was found adrift two days later. In the carnage on board, they found only one survivor. A naked human, covered in blood.

You all know the story of the town of Hamelin. The mayor stiffs the magic rat catcher, so he spirits away the children and leads them into the Weser River. It’s become a parable about not breaking deals, which I suppose is as good a lesson as any to take from it.

Of course, the piper actually meant to ransom us. He was just a conman after all; he wanted nothing more than money and to scare the townsfolk a bit. But after he led us away, the pastor declared him a witch and follower of the devil, and the townsfolk set out armed with crossbows instead of their savings.

So he did what any petty conman would do when armed people start scouring the countryside for him. He panicked. He knew he had to get rid of a lot of children very fast indeed in order to lay low. He couldn’t get us to the river, despite what the fairytale suggests, so he used what he had. And he had nothing but a flute and a horde of rats.

He made us all lie still with the power of the flute, and he ordered the rats to eat us. And we were still. We lay still as death while hundreds of rats gnawed us apart. Rats will eat anything–if I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that–but they eat meat the same way they eat everything else. Slow, laborious perforation with sewing-needle incisors, unstitching flesh a bit at a time.

He couldn’t have known that souls under the power of the flute can’t escape. We twisted, distorted, writhed, and finally settled back into flesh.

I’m twenty-six now. Not years; I’ve seen carts become carriages become cars since that night. I’m twenty-six fat, scurrying rodents sharing the mind of a child their ancestors ate generations ago. We became the rats that night. We became the Children of Hamelin.

We still do the piper bit. It’s very hard to get rid of veteran rats with years and years of experience. Only one man can do it. He just has to wear heavy clothes so that no one can see the rats controlling his ancient, well gnawed bones like a marionette.

I stand outside a hotel’s double doors. Not the Ritz, but someplace with a reputation to uphold. Two exterminators have failed to quell an infestation of rats. I leave our card on the door.

“Children of Hamelin Pest Control. We solve all your problems, for a price.”

Wispy clouds flowed over a full moon, reflecting brightly on the pale walls of the ancient granite castle in the forest. A burly man dressed in tough woodsman’s clothing waited in the courtyard, smoking an old tobacco pipe. A second man, thin and pale, dressed in black finery and a cape, appeared from the shadows of the forest and approached the smoking man.

“I have won our wager,” declared the man in black. “I have killed the greatest slayer!” He held up a necklace strung with four human canine teeth, the traditional trophy taken from an enemy of his kind. “You will relinquish the disputed village. It shall be our hunting ground now.”

The mountain man calmly puffed at his pipe. “You bring me the teeth of some doddering old sod and claim victory? Anyone who can figger out you sleep all day and sharpen a stick to do you in is the ‘greatest slayer’ now?” He held up a femur, saved from being gnawed away by respect for its former owner. “This is from a real man. Tracked each other for three days in dense cover, and he took a claw to the throat and still had the strength to pull a silver knife,” he said, pulling back his collar to show the burnt-black scar of silver cut on his shoulder.

“You call some bumpkin the greatest? I clearly came out the best in this wager; now give up the territory you agreed to,” the pale man shrieked.

“If the best you can beat is an old priest, I think I could just take the territory anyway,” the bigger man growled.

The pale man shot forward with inhuman speed and landed half a dozen quick punches before his opponent finished speaking. The woodsman shrugged off the blows and threw the lighter man several yards with an uppercut from his suddenly furry arm. He leapt upon his fallen enemy, but lupine teeth sank into only air as the pale man shrank and slipped out of his grasp.

The beast looked up to see bat wings billow out into a cape as the pale man dropped from the sky. A loud crunch echoed in the courtyard as a powerful kick snapped the werewolf’s shoulder blade. The vampire landed and slid fluidly into a fighting stance. The wolfman turned slowly toward him, audible grinding and popping coming from his shoulder as the bones regenerated and set. They stared each other down and prepared for another round.

“Do you have any idea what time it is? Get out of my courtyard!” a voice bellowed from the castle’s entrance. Fire exploded between the combatants. The wolf yipped and nimbly leapt the wall and disappeared into the forest. The vampire’s cape formed into wings even as he shielded his eyes with it, and he fell over before he remembered which form he was in and flitted off toward the rising moon. The two beasts of the night were gone without a trace before the light of the fire had begun to fade.

The master of the castle stopped in the hall on the way back to his lair. He ran a scaled talon over an ancient suit of armor, displayed prominently in the foyer. It was charred black in places and the helmet was fused to the breastplate from excessive heat. “They just don’t make slayers like they did in the old days,” he said wistfully to no one in particular.

There were a lot of them milling about on the other side of the counter at this point. The mob filled the whole floor and spilled out the windows into the parking lot. They were still too stupid to make it over the counter into the kitchen, though. If one of them had complained about getting diet soda I would’ve believed they were normal customers.

My old manager fell onto the counter and began to flounder his way past the registers back to where I rested among the cookware. I scooped up some boiling grease from the deep fryer and splashed it over him. He started tearing into his arm where the splash of grease had started to cook him. Several others made their “food moan,” just like customers that had been in line too long, and dragged him back over the counter and began to tear into his freshly cooked back with their teeth. The food moan traveled outward through the crowd in waves, and all of them tried to pack closer to the feeding frenzy.

My down-home, deep-fried zombie recipe had attracted every rotting carcass in the shopping center to the restaurant. I’d heard some cars start up and squeal out to the parking lot since my customers got thick. People were escaping while the horde gathered here. I felt vaguely heroic.

I felt an odd sensation in my arm, and looked down to see the boiling oil from the fryer splashing my arm. It didn’t really hurt. In fact, I wasn’t feeling anything except a dull ache from the bite on my ankle. It smelled kind of nice. My thoughts were coming slower, but a brilliant idea came to me.

I lowered the biggest pot in the kitchen into the fryer, filling it with the boiling, delicious fat. My hands felt tingly in the fryer and smelled mouthwatering as I pulled them out. I nibbled on my thumb. We should definitely add thumbs to the menu after this is over.

I climbed onto the counter and flung the oil out over the crowd. Then I dove into the frenzy as the feasting started.

They’d laid off our entire division. All at once, no warning, no apologies. Word was a loophole had given the higher-ups a golden opportunity to line their own pockets if they got rid of us. So now all forty-something employees from that section were out on the streets. So we’d come together at a local bar, supposedly to say goodbye to one another, but mostly to get drunk and bitch about the fat cats.

At one point the bartender joined in. They were refusing to renew her lease on the property. In a few months her bar would be a strip mall. So she gave us all a free round. Some specialty of the house she called “The Ghul’s Nocturne.” Whatever it was, it turned the night around. Before long we were all laughing and having a great time. After a while, we all got up to leave together. One great madly laughing mob.

We stepped out of the bar into the savanna. The setting sun shone blood red through tall grass as we laughed together and began to run. Swift shapes bounded out of the path of our uproarious pack, but they weren’t our prey tonight. We ran wild through the tall grass, crossing back and forth, snapping at the fleeing things in the night, but always moving toward one destination. My spotted brothers and sisters all shared one goal: the lair of the big cats.

Finally, we were upon them. The big cats were taken by surprise. They roared and blustered, but there were so many of us our laughter drowned out the greatest roars. They tried to flee, but we surrounded them. They tried to fight, but we were many. The sound of our laughter rose over the massacre.

I awoke the next morning to the news on my radio at home. A party at one of the mansions in the rich part of town had been attacked by a pack of wild animals. A few survivors were claiming it had been hyenas.

I got to the bathroom and looked at my blood-covered face in the mirror. Hyenas? Here? The thought was so absurd I began to chuckle, then laugh loudly. I stepped out of the bathroom into the tall grass beyond.

I sat dejectedly on a rock outside the tent. I had expected this trip to be paradise. Two months alone in the jungles of New Guinea sharing a tent with my beautiful idol, Dr. Henrietta. Just walking behind her through the brush had been a treat.

But only a few days in there’d been an accident. A sharp branch had left a gash along her right thigh. Granted, I’d enjoyed dressing it, but I was very worried it would turn septic in the living damp of the rainforest. I’d radioed for an emergency pickup, but they’d have to take the same trails we did, and it had already been a day and a half since I’d called them.

Dr. Henrietta hadn’t been out of the tent since the day before, and would no longer let me check the wound. I was wondering how far off the rescue might be when I heard her come out of the tent behind me.

I turned to see the Dr. Henrietta standing outside the tent. Her eyes were downcast and she wore nothing but her sleeping bag.

“You’ve been dreaming of seeing this, haven’t you?” she purred, letting the covering slip from her naked form. I gasped.

Her body was covered in a madman’s calligraphy of moving lines. As she began to stride toward me, I saw that it was thousands of nematode worms dancing through the upper layers of her skin. The cut on her thigh was nothing but a mass of writhing–

She touched her hand to my cheek–God, I could feel them–and pressed her body against me. My skin crawled in a pale imitation of hers. She looked up at me with eyes that were pools of squirming hell. My throat worked frantically, but made no intelligible sound. She pressed a finger to my lips to silence me. My eyes focused horribly on a shape pushing her fingernail up and down from underneath.

“I know what you’ve been wishing for,” she said sensually, then kissed me deeply. There was no tongue.

Prof. William slid under the door and pulled himself to his feet. He looked up and down the huge hallway, wondering which was the best way to go for help. The complex would be practically deserted this time of the night, but if he could find his way to the guard station he might be okay.

He walked for a long time through the gray twilight of the halls. Windows far above his reach let in moonlight that made alternating squares of light and darkness on the tiles. He’d walked these halls a thousand times, but they seemed forbidding now. Despite the desertion of the building he felt as if he were being watched. A sudden realization sent a shiver down his spine. He knew what he would see before he ever turned around.

It was only feet behind him. Despite its size he’d never heard it following him. Gigantic green eyes stared down at him. Familiar eyes. The held no recognition for him now, only the interest of a predator. The beast sprang. Massive paws flattened him into the tile. The giant stared at him, then backed off and let him get up. William turned to run but a paw caught him across the back, knocking him down and sending him spinning across the polished tile. Claws tore his lab coat as the caught him again.

And again it backed away.

The eyes never once left him as he staggered to his feet. His left arm was broken, and one eye was swelling shut. He began to run again, but an instant later was high above the ground in the creature’s jaws. Sharp fangs tore his skin, but it didn’t bite down. The wind was knocked out of him as he fell to the floor. He flailed for a few moments, but couldn’t get himself to his feet. The creature’s paw struck him again, and he slid across the floor like a hockey puck. Another paw caught him in mid-slide, a crushing blow to his ribs sending him back in the other direction. He realized, through the haze of pain and dizziness, what the beast was doing.

Mr. Higgs dropped his kill outside the one door in the building that still had light streaming from beneath it and meowed loudly. He had to show someone the strange thing he’d caught, right away. When no response came from the room labeled “Shrinking Technology Testing,” he became bored and began to eat the strange little thing. He was disappointed. It hadn’t played nearly as long as mice did.

It was just after lunch on Easter Sunday and Jenny and I were sitting in the kitchen, relaxing after the tiring task of setting up the neighborhood egg hunt earlier that morning. Our twin boys had donned their swimming trunks and gone back out to get a “giant secret egg” that they’d seen in the marsh at the edge of the park during the hunt. Of course none of the parents had hidden anything in the marsh, but we figured there was no point in telling them that if they wanted to go play for the afternoon.

Suddenly, Terry raced into the house covered in sludge and marsh plants, and clutching a cantaloupe-sized green and yellow egg. He was white as a sheet and breathing raggedly.

“What have you got there, and where’s your brother?” I said, cutting off Jenny before she could yell about the tracked-in swamp muck. The boy looked panicked, and I worried that his brother might have become somehow stuck in the marsh.

He looked at me wildly, then noticed the egg as if he’d had no idea he was holding it and flung it away from himself as if burned. It cracked against the wall and then splattered on the floor with a sickening wet crunching sound. A fetal green something kicked and gurgled hideously in the ruined mess of egg before making a wet screeching sound and lying still.

Jenny had started to make a stuttering gulping sound, as if she couldn’t decide whether to speak or gag. Terry had fallen to his knees and was sobbing uncontrollably. I was trying to gather myself to do… something, when an object smashed through the living room window and came to rest just outside the kitchen. It was a long object, mostly obscured by a covering of stringy water weeds. One end of it was ragged red and slowly dripping crimson liquid, on the other end, just visible under the obscuring scum, was a red children’s sneaker.

The implications of that sunk in gradually. Everything had taken on a very surreal aspect and seemed to be moving slowly. Idly, I realized that I could hear wet footsteps slapping across the carpet as something moved toward the kitchen out of my sight. I was vaguely aware of Jenny screaming and Terry scrambling behind the counter in a panic. The whole house was filled with the scent of wet and plants and decay. The smell of the marsh. And mixing with that was the rising coppery odor of blood, from a source that was moving closer.

The first zombie apocalypse fizzled pretty quickly. Major cities were hit pretty hard, but once people organized and figured out the symptoms, things got wrapped up before the military even got to there to help.

Humans just aren’t meant to be effective zombies, you see. We’re almost entirely reliant on higher thought that is lost upon zombification, giving normal humans an absurd advantage over zombies. Also, as bipeds we require more balance and motor control in order to run than a zombie is left with. The zombie menace had only confusion on its side, and when that wore off they were wiped out.

Zombie animals, on the other hand, are a special kind of hell. While not quite as agile as healthy animals, they retain enough motor ability to run, and their instincts are not as badly impaired as humans. During the first outbreak only a few animals were ever turned, but those that were posed a massive threat. Stories of zombie dogs were famous, as well as the infamous killer sheep of Scotland. But human zombies could almost never catch animals.

After it was all over, though, someone got the clever idea to try and cure the virus. Started infecting mice for test subjects. No one will ever know how they got out; we lost contact with that entire city in one night. Rodents outnumber people eight to one in the city, and once the infected mice started biting other rats and mice in those dark places in the cracks of the city, there was no hope of containment.

Not that any of that really matters now. I can hear the zombies pounding on the front door downstairs. Much closer, I can’t hear the constant, inexorable gnawing. They’re slowly bringing the room down around me, with a mindless determination that only zombie rodents could possess. Somewhere outside, a long moaning yowl rises from an undead cat. An old enemy recruited by the rodent hordes.

The room that I’m now sure will be my grave is starting to fill with the stench of mice and rotting flesh. They’ll open a hole into the room soon, there’s no avoiding it. I resignedly reach for the can of gasoline I’d brought with me. At least I can know that mine will be a quiet corpse.