Kane was a normal man trying to survive in a world of monsters. He was currently doing his best to make it in what was now known as Newmerica, previously known as New York. After the Cure had rained from the skies, what was left of humanity on this continent had fled here to try to eke out as close to a normal life as it could. Kane had spent the last few years trying to save up the money to get his family to Hong Kong, but the low pay he received as a scavenger was barely a drop in that bucket. He was going to have to move up the ranks if he ever wanted to afford three tickets to Hong Kong. At ten thousand dollars per person, that was looking less and less likely.
He typically raked in only five hundred to one thousand dollars per load from his scavenger runs, and he was having to venture further out each week just to manage that. Factoring in the supplies required to even make the trip, along with ammo, rations, and the cost of supporting his family after that, he was only able to put two to three hundred back each time he got paid. To make matters even worse, the price of ammo was going up, and the monsters roaming around outside the walls were getting bigger and stronger on a daily basis.
When the time came to finally get his family out of here, it was going to be nearly impossible. His son would be difficult to move with his condition, and the more he speculated about it, the more it became clear that he would probably have to charter a private flight. That would cost twice as much, but if his son got any worse, he would have no choice.
As he drove home contemplating all of this, his mind began to wander to the next area he was going to scavenge. He would have to map it out when he got home, then get the permit tomorrow, before anyone else claimed the out-of-the-way cul-de-sac he had spotted two days ago, when he had been forced to take a detour around what looked like a heard of alligator-bison.
His headlights splashed across the front yard as he pulled into his driveway, and his dread over what he would find in the house this time wrapped its steely hands around his heart and squeezed. His wife was what had come to be called a Dumper, a person who could not hold their animal mutations for long but had become addicted to the temporary boost they received from consuming live prey. Most weekends when he got home, she was already nearly comatose on the couch after having transformed back into her regular self. Some nights she acted perfectly normal, and they would make it through a meal before some random bug crossed her path, giving its life for her next high.
As his mind drifted even further, he thought back on how it all began.
. . . . .
The world used to be a normal place, but eighteen years ago, that had all changed. In Delhi, India, a test subject escaped from a facility that was working on a breakthrough gene-splicing program. This subject was never found … but within two weeks, animals in the area began to morph into strange beasts. It was not discovered until much later which species were spreading what was quickly realized to be an unprecedented virus—and by then, it was too late. Between the mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, wild dogs, rats, and other life forms that may have fed on the infected test subject, the growing fear of mutated beasts in the area brought a true investigation of its epicenter to a screeching halt. As a result, all the test data was sent to a sister lab in Hong Kong so that the scientists there could begin working on a cure.
Meanwhile, the virus was found to be capable of rewriting DNA at an astounding rate, causing its victims to take on attributes of other animals they had consumed. Somehow, the original facility in India had discovered a way for the stomach to read the DNA of its contents. After two years of failure in finding a cure—two years of the world slowly descending into chaos as humans withdrew into super cities surrounded by giant five-foot-thick walls—the Hong Kong facility finally decided to pick up where the Indian facility had left off: it began testing the virus on human subjects. Tragically, the only breakthrough they eventually managed was to give humans the same ability as the infected animals, allowing the host to rewrite their own DNA to accept input from other species’ genetic code. The scientists had indeed worked out a way to cure the infected beasts—but at the cost of infecting humans.
So, after much deliberation among what was left of humanity, and despite their overwhelming fear of the mutant freaks of nature wandering around outside the walls, they decided to release the ‘Cure’—which would come to be known as the Downfall. Giant batches of the Cure were loaded into airplanes to be dumped out over every source of fresh water they were able to reach. The oceans were still off limits however because the creatures of the deep had become even more fearsome during the years of viral rampancy.
The Cure was supposed to fix the beasts, but too much damage had been done to nearly every species, except insects, before the mutations were halted. Original species were nearly nonexistent, and they quickly became extremely precious commodities. Only Pure, unmutated life forms could be consumed for their attributes and abilities, as their genetic makeup had not been smothered by unnatural changes and thus could still be read, making them the only way to gain the attributes consumers wanted.
As the Cure was disseminated, the world experienced another drastic shift as humans suddenly developed the ability to absorb animal traits. Even more frightening, mankind soon arrived at the shocking discovery that after acquiring only a handful of characteristics from consuming a few organisms, the consumer became more animalistic in nature. This marked the final shift into the downward spiral that was life today, for although a semblance of utopia had been created in the cities that remained, soon a dark underbelly began to bubble up to the surface: if one were seen to exhibit overly animalistic tendencies, that person was either exiled from the city or killed outright. Thus, it was not long before the old, unprotected cities were completely overrun, and the wild mutants most exiles had become began to fight back, striving to find a way into the new walled-in cities. It was then that the walls went up in earnest around all remaining cities, and world travel came to a screeching halt almost overnight. There was still limited communication between cities, but the cost of doing so became too much for most families to bear.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
So once again the utopia that had finally seemed within reach because of the abilities humans gained from their mutations, putting everyone on nearly equal footing, inevitably began to schism and splinter. The rich paid the poor to consume just enough animal flesh to transform into obedient dogs, cows, or other outlandish monstrosities, keeping them as pets or bodyguards as the world slowly came unglued.
It was not altogether a bad place, however. Most businesses in Newmerica managed to stay open, and life went on as normally as it could, given most people in the city now sported some form of animal characteristic or attribute. Kane’s brother, for instance, was now basically a minotaur who owned a strip club populated with dancing cat girls. Meanwhile, his sister was a renowned surgeon who had only become more intelligent since taking on some dolphin traits. Of course, these two had gotten lucky with their transformations; many were not so fortunate.
As for Kane, he had never personally tried to absorb anything. He was not a Humanist by any means, but he never had the urge to gamble with his genetic makeup, like his wife and the rest of his family had. His parents had both lost their lives in the chaos of the Downfall, but his mother-in-law was still alive, and she visited often to check up on his wife and son while he was away on his missions.
. . . . .
Kane snapped back to the present with a shake of his head. Heart still filled with dread, he exited his SUV and approached his house. As he opened the door, he heard his wife’s cheery voice calling him from the kitchen.
“Kane, is that you, sweetie?”
He smiled to himself as the dread lifted from his shoulders. “Yes, Miranda, I’m home.” He turned to close the door, pressing a button in the entryway, and the sudden pressure in his ears assured him that the vacuum seals had resealed themselves.
“Ugh,” Miranda groaned. “I am never going to get used to that.”
“How’s Harry?” Kane walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around his beautiful, petite wife, planting a kiss on the top of her red hair.
“Fine.” She turned away from the stove, kissing him gently on the lips. “He’s in the clean room in the basement, playing one of your old gaming consoles. Dinner is almost done, if you want to go watch him play for a few minutes. Just drag him up with you when you come.”
Kane descended the basement stairs and entered the plastic box outside the cleanroom. As it pressurized and sprayed him down with insecticide, he watched Harry destroy a stack of wooden crates with a wrench on the tv, wielded by a cat-like beastie with a robot on its back.
“That’s one of my favorites!” Kane said as he entered the room.
Harry whirled around and locked eyes with him—crystal blue, just like his mother’s. “You’re home!” he exclaimed, trying to contain his excitement.
As his son lumbered towards him, Kane examined him surreptitiously. His sixteen-year-old was as ghostly pale as ever. He did not notice any new mutations, but he could not be certain between the baggy hoodie and raggedy old Tripp pants—a donation from Kane’s high school wardrobe, which had belonged to Kane when he was young, covering any overly noticeable changes to his mostly snake-like appearance. As they embraced, his son squeezed him too hard, forcing Kane to cough and let go.
“Sorry, Dad,” Harry mumbled, looking down at the floor.
Gently, Kane took his son’s scaly chin in his hand and tilted his head up. He slowly tucked Harry’s long black hair—so much like his own—behind his catlike ear.
“It’s okay, son. I am proud of how strong you’ve become. You have nothing to be ashamed of with me, or anyone else in this family.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Harry said tentatively. “It’s just that I’ve started to get used to all of these changes, and … I think I should be allowed to start going outside again—”
“No!” Kane cut in, more harshly than he intended. Harry flinched away from him, at this outburst and Kane scrambled to find a gentler tone before he continued. “No. We don’t know how many more transformations your body can withstand before the rampancy begins. We have to be extremely cautious. That’s why we’ve taken so many precautions to keep you safe.”
“But Dad, I…”
“Dinners ready!” Miranda called from the kitchen.
“Let’s go eat,” Kane said before Harry could start back up again, opening the door to the chamber and reversing the process he had used to enter.
“Need to save my game first.” Harry grabbed his controller off the couch. “Be up in a minute.”
As Kane entered the kitchen, his wife gave him a questioning look. “How did it go?” she asked as Kane sat down at the table.
“About how it normally does,” he said despondently.
“But it is getting better,” Miranda insisted as she set a plate of food down in front of him.
At that moment, a bat flew into the window with a thud, startling them both into silence. They moved toward the window to see if it was still alive.
“How strange,” Kane muttered absently, trying to block his wife from getting any closer.
It was too late. He watched her eyes glaze over at the sight of the creature lying helpless on the windowsill. With a quick, jerky movement, she wrenched the window open before he could stop her. Behind Kane, the door to the basement opened just as the pressure sensors started screaming due to the open window. In the ensuing panic, as Kane wrestled the stunned bat out of his frantic wife’s hands, a single housefly flew in through the open window, unnoticed.
Kane tossed the bat back out into the yard as his wife’s anguished screams overrode the high-pitched screech of the air pressure alarm. Then he dashed from the room and over to a panel in the living room wall, flinging it open to reset the vacuum. As the rooms repressurized, Kane made a silent promise that he would find a doctor to get to the bottom of his son’s strange abilities, he opened a neighboring panel labeled Pest Control. Just as he was about to hit the button that would administer nontoxic insecticide from the sprinklers hidden around the house, his wife began screaming again. This time it was a different scream, and his blood froze in his veins with the anguish that the scream contained.