PHADE to Black

2007-03-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

The Story So Far:

Episode 1: PHADEed Genes

Episode 2: A Stiff Drink

Episode 3: Outbreak

Episode 4: Room for Two

Episode 4: Room for Two

2006-04-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

Seth hadn't realized how late it was, but when their trucker friend entered again with flesh hanging from his frame and a glassy stare on his slack face, Seth wondered why he ever suggested drinks in the first place. As the man shambled forward and the door to the bar swung shut, blocking the moon rays, Seth saw that the blood wasn't completely prophetic. There was a severe wound on the trucker's arm. Seth stood up to help the poor guy, when a tall, dark-haired man that Seth hadn't noticed until just then, strode to the bleeding man with a shotgun shell in his hand. Tearing it open, the guy said with a gruff voice, "this'll hurt, but it'll stop the bleeding." He then sifted the pellets from the contents of the shell, placed the rest on the man's wound, then lit it.
A bright flash and a shriek of pain followed the man's actions, he shoved the trucker down as another man came through the door, looking much like the trucker did in the moonlight. Seth sat in awe as the shotgun-shell guy blew the man's head off with a 12-gauge sawed off before the prophecy could come to pass. This struck Seth as odd, his second sight had never been wrong before, and a chilling thought took residence in his mind as the door to the establishment swung shut behind several more of the stiff moving men... And their appearance didn't change!
Seth downed the last of his drink and motioned for Tom to follow him to the back exit. Despite their best efforts at hiding their destination, They heard shrieks of discovery and then Seth felt the heat of lead shot as it flew past him. He pushed his companion to the floor and, in one, fluid motion, slid across the bar and dropped to a crouch behind the barrier. "What's your problem, man?!" Seth called from his hiding place.
"You think they won't be out back waiting for some snack to open the fire doors?" The mysterious gunman said.
"I don't know who this 'they' is that you speak of, but I do know that you're an out-of-his-mind, psycho vigilante, and I'm gonna get outta here before you get us all killed."
Seth raised his head just high enough over the bar to peek out and survey the room. There was a rapidly growing pile of bodies forming a barricade in front of the door. Seth tried to place what was odd about the freaks that were crawling over their dead compatriots with that hungry look in their cold, blank eyes. When one of them caught sight of him, he realized it, the...the thing had no throat and half of its face was sliding off the exposed bone.
Try as he might, Seth could see no source for the moonlight to hit that unnerving figure that was moving toward him, leading the comedian to the conclusion that this thing was an honest-to-goodness walking train-crash victim. Seth caught movement in his immediate periphery. Diverting his attention, he saw that angsty-shotgun-man was stuffing a rag into a bottle of vodka and lighting it with the same Zippo he used to cauterize the trucker's arm. Lobbing it toward the door, the man grinned with grim pleasure as the room soon filled with the smell of burning flesh.

*****

Tom could not believe what was happening. At first he'd figured that someone had slipped him a mickey and he was hallucinating, but as the adrenaline began to overpower the alchohol and he started sobering up, it dawned on him that he really had just narrowly avoided being shot in the head with a shotgun, and that there was a mad man mowing down what seemed to be a mob of crazed cultists that were heavily into bodily mutilation. Tom quickly joined his companion, Seth, behind the bar, just as their resident lunatic tossed a makeshift molotov cocktail at the entrance. That wasn't the most disturbing part of his action, not even close. It was the fact that the now slightly on-fire freaks kept coming without flinching. 'Holy shit!' Tom thought, 'this is some pretty heavy shit I'm in!'
He ducked behind the counter again and began to take stock of the resources at his disposal. There was a low-caliber rifle and two pistols with a pair of spare full clips for each of them taped to the underside of the bar, to his right. Tom's comedic friend was to his left, still observing the chaos that was going on on the other side of their temporary shelter. Pulling Seth down by his shirt and simultaneously ripping off one of the pistols, Tom handed it Seth, along with it's corresponding two mags.
Grabbing one for himself, he motioned for his friend to follow him as they once again made their way towards the door, stopping to slide the rifle across the floor behind the bar to the cowering and confused bartender. This time, the two actually made it. It seemed as though their new friend was so preoccupied with the bars newest hostile patrons that he wouldn't miss them for quite awhile. So, the two busied themselves looking for a vehicle that could get them out of the center of the acid-trip they had landed in. They found only one, and there was a free gift that came with the tasteful two-seat sports car: a slobbering half-crazed cannibal finishing the snack he was making of the car's previous owner.

Tom looked on, horrified as the creature rose to full height, joints creaking and straining audibly. The thing began shambling foreward and Tom's arm was frozen at his side. With timing that could only have come from an action hero, the vigilante shot twice from behind Tom and pegged the cannibal in the head with both slugs.

*****

Seth wathced as the strange gunman cut down yet another assailant. "Move!" the man called. As they all slid into the small sports car, Tom said "There's only room for two!"

"Leg room isn't a luxury we can afford to take right now," their savior said, connecting the ignition wires, and the engine revved in compliance, "So just sit there until we get out of here."
The purring of the fine tuned engine erased all noise from out side. It was very comforting.
" You know, you guys really almost got yourselves fucking ki...," The gunman's words were choked off when the freak that he'd just blasted tore his throat out from the open car door, two clean bullet holes right in the center of his forehead. Screaming, Seth managed to slide over to the driver's seat, throw the car in gear, and tramp on the accelerator, sending the men flying into the night.

Episode 3: Outbreak

2006-03-21T23:49:00.000-08:00

"Hey, Seth, lock the door when you leave, okay?" Tom called out, headed for the coroner's office to see what the hell John was rambling about.
Seth grunted in acknowledgment, he had begun to play with his butterfly knife and that took up almost all his concentration. Tom was surprised that Seth had even heard him. On the way to the morgue, Tom was hit by the worst of intuitive feelings. He couldn't shake the idea that the shit was really about to hit the fan.
After finally claiming a parking space in the crowded lot, Tom approached the door and pushed his full weight onto the bar. Realizing too late that the door was locked, Tom accidentally rammed his face into the Plexiglas. He looked through to the room beyond as he rubbed his nose. the lights were off and it wasn't even 3:30. Usually, if no one else was there, John could be found inside, doing some tidbit or another. Although, the strangest part of it all was that John had just called him a few minutes prior.
Shrugging it off as another strange part to a very strange day, Tom got back into his car and drove home. Upon entering, he found Seth on the couch, not an inch from where Tom had left him, staring out the window.
"You alright there, bud?" Tom said.
"Your neighbor's getting dressed."
"Oh no! Not old-lady Baker!" Tom joked, "I didn't know you were into that sort of thing, Seth."
"Not that one, the hot one with the huge... apartment."
"Oh, Anita, yeah she's John's sister. Which reminds me..." He trailed off, grabbing his phone from the coffee table, dialing several digits that he had memorized. "Hey, Anita... Yeah it's me, Tom. I was just wondering if John had called you within the past twenty minutes?... No?! Well, if he does, tell him I was looking for him... okay, thanks...M'bye."
"By the way, Tom," Seth looked inquisitive, "What happened at the morgue, you were only gone 10 minutes."
Tom threw his hands into the air. "That's the weird thing, I showed up and everyone was gone. Like, the lights were off and everything."
"Hey, if I didn't know any better, I'd say we were caught in some cheesy horror flick."
The two friends laughed at that thought. Seth soon got bored with conversation and suggested that they go see a movie or something before it got dark. Tom didn't understand what the quality of light had to do with anything, but he didn't push the issue. After all, this was the same guy that performed stand-up for lunch joints and country clubs during the day.
The two friends went to the theater and saw a really crappy remake of some movie about a giant gorilla that Tom couldn't remember the name of. Afterwards, they went and grabbed a bite to eat at a fast-food place down the block. The boring flick, combined with the hot, greasy food in their, now full, bellies gave the two the overwhelming urge to sleep. They went back to the apartment and Seth passed out on the couch. Tom still had just enough energy in his reserve to make it to his bed, and then he allowed himself to be seduced by the flowing tides of sleep.

*****

Seth awoke just as the sun rose over the skyline. He loved the sun, for several important reasons. First and foremost, Seth was a bit of what you might call a psychic. Although, he considered it more of an infernal curse than anything else. In the moonlight, Seth was able to see the way people were going to die. The sad part was that he was unable to turn it off. That was why he did all of his comedic work during the day. Seth had a great sense of humor, you had to when you were faced with this kind of horror or you'd lose it.

Set aside the obvious that he couldn't act normal let alone talk to someone that had a brain tumor bursting from their skull, and there was also the fact that most comedians worked at nightclubs, so he was probably the only one on call for daytime gigs in all of Chicago. That's right, for all the detriments his curse placed on him, the real reason he worked in the daylight was cold, hard economics. Seth did a lot of work with the elderly, and got casual dining restaurants crazy business, so he always got repeat customers. Seth never broke an appointment, it was against his nature.

But on this particular day, he couldn't bring himself to be comedic. There was just something in the air that told him this group he scheduled for today wouldn't get much use from him. So, he called the diner, told them he was really sick, couldn't make it and hoped to reschedule. Then, Seth went back to sleep on the couch. Eventually, he could no longer stave off lucidity. He sat up to the smell of Tom cooking breakfast. Now he remembered why he liked to sleep at Tom's place. Belgian waffles, scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and an ice-cold pitcher of OJ. Seth stood up and, in his very trademark manner, said: "What, no coffee?"

Tom shot him a venomous look, then said "Hurry, before the eggs get cold."

After breakfast the two friends commenced a large marathon video-game session. They covered the entire spectrum of gaming experiences by 6 o'clock.

"Hey, Tom," Seth said. "Let's go drinking, man."

"Why the hell not, we haven't gone in at least six months."

So, Tom and Seth made their way to a nice little bar just outside china-town called The Stone Table. They got three rounds in and began to spill the beans about their lives since the last time they had gone drinking together. Seth was thoroughly enjoying himself when the guy next to them stood up abruptly and walked out of the bar. Seth figured he and his companion were being obnoxious, so he started to speak with a softer tone, hoping his friend would catch on.

*****

Bud was sitting at the bar, enjoying his beer, when two yahoos came in and sat next to him, gettin' all loud. That made his whiskey taste like piss. He couldn't stand it when these pansy-ass little girls that call themselves men walked into his bar, thinkin' they're gettin' drunk offa' three shots of gin. Pussies. If he hadn't been on parole and on his second strike, he would've taken the two of them out back and shown them how to behave in his part of town.

So, as an alternative, he went out back and had a smoke. Bud looked around. No cops. That's what he liked about the Stone Table, you didn't have to worry about pigs pokin' in the wrong direction...a noise. From inside? No. There was a slight echo to it. It sounded like a scuffle.

Squinting his eyes against the dark, Bud strained to see down the long alley. Then, like a bat outta' Hell, some guy came rushin' into Bud's line of sight. He was tryin' ta say something, but he was bleedin' so bad from his neck that the words got turned into gurgles and slurps.

Four guys came out after him, moving a lot slower than their predecessor, but somehow, still keepin' up. The bloody guy fell about five yards short of Bud. Sucks for him, in this part of town, if you fall, you're fucked. The other four...God there was somethin' weird about the way they were moving...The other four descended on him and started to wrestling around with him. They must've been some real pieces of work, they had big hunks of skin fallin' offa' them, and they were stumblin' around like they were hopped up on PCP or something. That's probably what it is, he reasoned, They just got messed up and decided that this guy was lookin' at 'em funny.

Then, those sick motherfuckers started biting on the guy and chewin' on him. Bud dropped the cig out of his mouth without even noticing it.

He called out "Hey, what the fuck is your problem. What the Hell are you doin' to him?!"

The closest one looked up at him with eyes that were deader'n a doornail. The sick fuck bared his teeth and jumped impossibly from the ground to Bud's throat. He managed to bring up a forearm just in time to absorb the bite. He pulled the freak off his arm and a chunk of flesh came off with him. He said a silent prayer for the poor sonofabitch that these bastards targeted first and ran back to the bar, trying to cut off the blood, that asshole got him good...real good.

Episode 2: A Stiff Drink

2006-03-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

When Tom left the coroner's office and got into his car, he sat for a few minutes, trying to piece the new information into the story. Many times, speaking his thoughts out loud helped him to make sense out of them, so he started rattling off parts of the tale as he put the vehicle in gear and started away.
"So, kid goes all quiet and detaches himself from family and friends. Then, eight or so months later, guy is suddenly a cheery Casanova, goes on a 48-hour sex fest, then croaks."
Even out loud the whole story seemed bonkers. If Tom had been an outsider reading the Voice, and had seen that story, he would have gotten a lifetime subscription to the Chicago Tribune.
"And then, when we look at the little freak's fluids, he's got this weird micro-thingy swimmin' around in his blood, spit, and semen. What in God's name did I get myself into this time?"
Tom pulled into the parking garage of his apartment complex and, getting out of his car, shook his head at the sheer... strangeness of it all. When Tom got to the door, he found his best friend of 20 years, Seth Greeley, in his apartment. " Hey, Seth, don't you have a gig at that lunch club you were telling me about?" Tom asked genuinely.
"No, my dear friend, My 'gig', as you call it is tomorrow, don't you ever listen to me?" Seth faked a sob. He was always fucking around when Tom was trying to be serious.
Tom went over to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and Seth asked "what's wrong?" He had that knowing look on his face like a 'don't lie to me 'cause I'll know' kind of a thing. Tom was surprised that his stress was physically noticeable. He recounted his day to Seth, along with all the "confidential" information John had given him.
As soon as Tom was done, Seth just sat back in his seat and just said "Damn," shaking his head. Tom felt better simply by saying it to someone else and not having them laugh at him.
Even after all the weirdness of the day, Tom couldn't shake the feeling that things were not yet at their most strange. And then the phone started to ring.

*****

John Waverly was used to being the weird one. He had a lot of habits that most people found gross or disturbing, or even a combination of the two. In high school, he never had many friends, and the ones he did have either used him for help on their homework, or tried to use him to get to his extremely attractive sister, Anita, now 27. He hadn't visited her in awhile, and he thought he'd check out early to go see her. Anita lived in a fairly large, two-bedroom apartment all by her lonesome, and so she asked John to stop in as often as he could. He had always tried to be there for her and she loved him for it. Though she never told him, he was her favorite of her three siblings.

John was unbuttoning his lab coat and saying farewell to his stiffs (One of his least attractive rituals), when eight coroners assistants came in with a full load of new cadavers. "Goddammit!!" He muttered to himself.

One of the assistants approached him with a charting sheet and a grim look on his face. Taking the sheet, John felt himself go pale. All eight, female, had had sex with Christopher Brookes two days prior, the day before he died. John hurried the seven assistants that were ignorant of the situation out of the morgue, then he turned to the only one left.

"What's your name?" John asked.

"R-Roger Dettling, sir"

"I suppose whoever gave you this chart explained to you that we're dealing with something way worse than AIDS. Am I correct?"

The assistant nodded, "Y-Yes."

"What are you so nervous about?"

"I'm not nervous, sir," his lip quivered, "I-I'm tr-trying not to cry. You see, one of these girls is my sister." Roger lost it. he started to break down right there. It was okay, though, the dead don't judge. and when the kid finally got a hold of himself, John looked him in the eye.

"Hey," he said softly, " I'm sorry for your loss, but those samples won't get themselves. Can you do that for me?"

Roger nodded, starting on. While Roger was taking care of the task, John had turned the computer back on and was cataloguing the new arrivals. The assistant was soon finished and John gave him freshly printed toe-tags and told him which bodies coincided with which tags. John finished cataloguing and began helping Roger placing the cadavers in the freezers.

They soon finished, and John started filing away paperwork, simultaneously checking the labeled blood samples individually. He wanted to compare these cases with the original strain, so he spun around in his chair and asked Roger to take a fresh batch from Chris' body.

"Which drawer is he in?" the kid asked.

"Box 302."

John picked up the phone to call Tom Jennings to update his friend while he kept his unstable acquaintance busy so he couldn't think about his grief. Tom picked up on the second ring, "What's on your mind, John?"

"You might want to stop by when you get the chance. The first victims of the new micro virus just stopped in to say hi."

"Really?! I'll be there as soon as I can."

They said their goodbyes and John hung up. He continued on with the paper work and ignored the sounds of rustling clothes and the freezer door opening and shutting, writing them off as noises from a productive Roger. After about three minutes, John started to hear slurping sounds followed by the crash of glass against linoleum. He turned. "What the hell is wrong with you kid?" he yelled seeing the full back view of Roger standing over the pieces of and empty, bloodstained sample container.

"Look, Roger, I know your sister is dead, but that doesn't mean you have to drink the virus and kill yourself." Then, John noticed the stiff, awkward stance that the assistant had taken.

Concerned, he crossed the room and placed a hand on the kid's shoulder, turning him as he did so. John then found himself staring into the cold, dead eyes of Christopher Brookes.

Episode 1: PHADEed genes

2006-03-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

He had loved her since the first time he'd seen her, in 9th grade. But, in the tradition his life always observed, Sarah Vega had never even cast a look his way. Well, why would she? Christopher Brookes wasn't much to look at, not to mention his utter lack of people skills. To compensate for the fact that he was socially inept, Chris poured his life into learning all he possibly could, in case he should ever need to, oh say, rebuild human civilization. He couldn't explain it, but he just knew, deep down, that he would play a pivotal point in the evolution of his race. He had tried to express the feeling to his parents, but they didn't get it, no one did. The problem was, everyone his age was caught up in the rat race that was high school. Chris could've been on one of the teams, he was athletic enough, he just didn't buy in to all the machismo bullshit. Besides, his mind was always occupied by thoughts of Sarah.
Sarah wasn't exactly the type of girl you'd take home to meet mom. Chris had heard some of the guys refer to her as " a good time" or "a great lay". Pigs. They could never understand her the way he could. Chris wished with all his might that she would stop messing around with those losers and come be with him. He made a vow to himself to stay a virgin until Sarah finally came to her senses and ran into his arms.
Well, the years past and Chris' love for Sarah grew, as did his social skills. He made friends and became a rather well-rounded person, and she ignored him. In their senior year of high school, Chris worked up the courage to introduce himself to her and ask her to be his. He had "bloomed" into a decent-looking guy and his personality had developed as well, so what could possibly go wrong.
In the first week of the new semester, Chris sought out the object of his affection, but she was no where to be found. He asked her ex-boyfriends, her friends, but none of them had seen her. Strangely enough, Sarah's best friend, Tasha Whitmer, was absent that selfsame week. Tasha appeared at school a short time later, and Chris discovered, upon inquiry, that Sarah's "exploits" with the male populace of the school had caught up to her and she had died over the summer.
Chris went into shock, and the next three days were a blur to him. The first thing he remembered after his surprise subsided was the overwhelming emptiness in his heart. Those sick bastards that called themselves men did this to her. It wasn't her fault, she was the victim here. It wasn't too long before Chris' rage consumed and poisoned him. With the help of his flair for computers and his newly acquired charisma, Chris used the people that were close to Sarah and the data banks of all the local STD treatment centers to track down all the infected men she'd slept with.
By then it was all just a game of numbers. Chris stalked them all and... Gave them a more permanent solution to their maladies. He was particularly proud of his first. He'd made such a mess. Chris' parents went out of town for a second honeymoon, and so Chris decided to take a page from Poe. When he brought home his rather inebriated "guest", no one was even near enough to hear if he was blowing the house up, let alone meting out justice. Chris placed the swine in the bathtub and began to go to work. By the time he finished, the bath was half-full and his new "friend" had been an hour gone.
Chris disposed of the carcass at the livestock ranch across town. In his dysfunctional stage, Chris had learned on the Internet that pigs can and will eat anything, even bone. It was ironically fitting to him that swine would devour the swine. The rest of his engagements were shrouded in a blood-red miasma. Soon it was all over and Chris began to detach himself from reality, poring over documents upon documents on the web, trying to find a way to bring back his beloved. He would have her, of that he was sure. That's when he discovered an old set of rituals from the Canary Islands.
Ten months after Sarah was laid to rest, Chris had perfected his ritual and visited her grave in the dead of night. Laying out the goat skull, dagger, and vial of his own blood on the lush grass, Chris drew the prescribed figure on the ground with salt, placed the skull in the center and began to chant. He poured the blood on the skull as he did this, and when the chant was finished, he thrust the dagger into the stained skull.
No sooner had the crunch of bone subsided than an altogether different crunching began. Sarah's newly animate fingers began to writhe their way out of the ground. Chris helped to dig her out, and as soon as she was freed, he couldn't contain himself, he made love to her right there in the cemetery. It was all he had dreamed it would be and more. He climaxed twice from the sheer rapture of his dream coming true. Chris dressed himself and fell asleep with Sarah in his arms. The next morning, his high had worn off and he faced what he'd done, leaving him with the realization that he had a corpse in his arms.
Utterly disgusted with himself, Chris quickly undid the spell, sending Sarah back to rest. Hoping to wash away the shame, Chris decided to make up for lost time by sleeping with any and every young female he could get his hands on, for the next two days, at least. Yes, that was when the PHADE virus took hold and killed him.

*****

The computer screen in front of him went blank as his workstation rebooted itself, completely erasing an all too long day's work.

"Fuck!!" he exclaimed, drawing stares from several of his co-workers. Shrinking as far down into his cubicle as he possibly could, Tom Jennings, 24, tried to think about the story he'd been working on. Tom was a reporter working for the City Voice, a low budget newspaper desperately trying to compete with the Chicago Tribune. Tom was a top notch reporter, and was only working at the Voice for two reasons.

The first and most important was that the Voice only printed real stories and none of that tabloid political garbage. The second was that he'd been fired from the Tribune for sleeping with his boss's wife. Who needed fancy newspapers, anyway. Besides, it was nice being number one for once instead of second best, like he was at the Tribune.

Tom was an investigative reporter, and right now he was looking into the mysterious death of some 17 year old kid from the upper west-side. Weird how it happened, The kid detaches himself from friends and family for eight and a half months, then gets all cheery for two days, does a whole bunch of chicks, then up and dies for no reason. At first, Tom thought the initial blood work-ups had missed an STD he'd died from, but the doctors assured him, no disease that had incubated to a lethal level could have been missed by the most primitive blood test.

Tom's phone rang, he answered it. "Hello, Tom? Yeah, this is John over at the lab, you've gotta' see this...Oh shit!" John hung up.

Tom grabbed his coat and hat, buttoning up on his way out the door. He was at the Coroner's lab within ten minutes, though it should have taken him fifteen. But that wasn't important. Tom flashed his press badge to the secretary and she let him through. Bursting through the double doors, Tom said to the startled John Waverly "What've you got for me, Johnny?"

"Well, check this out," John said, gesturing for Tom to look into the microscope, "they are normal dead blood cells until you do this..." He pricked his finger and placed a drop of blood on the open slide.

When Tom looked through the eyepiece again, the dead cells had reanimated themselves and began to consume John's blood. "What the hell do you make of this?" Tom asked.

"Now come see this," John pointed to a computer screen, "This dead kid's got a micro virus entwined with the blood cell tissue, that's why we didn't catch it before. Look," he brought up another, identical chart on the screen, "the same thing happened to his semen."

"Well I'll be damned," Tom said, "This kid's a Darwinian poster child, isn't he?"

PHADE to Black

Table of Contents

Episode 4: Room for Two

Episode 3: Outbreak

Episode 2: A Stiff Drink

Episode 1: PHADEed genes