Fifth Age of Man: Highschool from Hell

Story 1:

Who am I?

 

    “Where am I?”

 

    The voice trails off into utter blackness.

 

    “What is going on?”

 

    The voice echoes in the darkness that seems go on forever; yet the source can feel through the throbbing of their head that where ever this is, is narrow. It’s as though the blackness is concentrated in the center and shallow on the sides; or perhaps it’s just a trick being played upon the mind. There is a smell in the still air, a metallic yet delicious scent.

 

     This individual reaches out a hand into the open space, a hand they can not see through the blackness and fumbles about. Finally they touch a wall, the surface peels away like soft butter under their fingernails. The curling of what ever the wall is made of reveals long fingernails, too long perhaps.

 

     The individual scrapes the nail clean with equally long nails from their other hand, stopping with confusion with how rough their skin is. They stop as they stumble about in the darkness as that odd metallic yet delicious scent wafts up from the floor as they trip on something, something soft and squishy, a loaf of bread perhaps. They reach down to grab it when a scream echoes in their ears, not a scream of the real world, but one inside the head, a sudden flash of red, screaming, a girl in a school uniform running away.

 

     *nnnggghhnn*

 

    They topple over grasping their head, the thing on the floor *crunches* on their legs, that delicious smell wafts up again as what ever it is smears on their legs and falls off with a squishy thud as they stand.

 

     They are about to try reaching for it again when they stop and try to focus in the darkness, as something else occurs to them.

 

    “Who am I?”

 

    They narrow their eyes into darkness trying to see their own hands, as though, as if, finding them would answer the question. They rub their strangely rough throat with their equally rough and dry hand. They notice just now how raspy their voice is.

 

    “Am I a boy or a girl?”

 

    A hand reaches for the chest, nothing, a hand timidly reaches to the crotch, finding a shredded garment of some kind barely on the body, and nothing.

 

   “Nothing,” says the raspy voice.

 

   Not a penis, not a vagina, just smooth and rough.

 

   “Am I naked?” asks the voice, the words echo in the darkness.

 

   “Over there!” screams out a man’s voice.

 

   They turn and are blinded by a bright light.

   *ka-chunk*

 

   A sharp pain hits them in the throat, a dark.

 

   They fall over landing on something big, something with that delicious metallic smell.

 

   Their eyes widen in sheer terror as they go blurry as the source of the smell is a badly multitalented corpse of a teenage girl in a shredded school uniform.

 

   A man in a military uniform with figures behind him stands over the individual. They don’t look up; instead their gaze is fixated in horror at a sight beyond the corpse, a shattered wall glass sitting on the wall. With the light from the flash lights they can now see their own face, a green scaled thing, sharp teeth, with a yellow snake throat and yellow slit pupil eyes.

 

    As they drift into sleep the man standing over them says, “Tell the lock down crew we have a scaly ready for transport.”

 

 

Story 2:

    Ten years later:

 

   

   It has been ten years since the mass outbreak, at first things looked contained; the mist would appear, infect an area and the military would capture or destroy all the mutations. Sure there were many deaths in the process, entire towns and blocks would be lost. The greatest fear was from those that could spread the mutation to others, focus was mostly on the zombies and their sub-types. Then a few years into it, the massive outbreak occurred, people, animals, plants, the infection was beyond containment monstrous cows, pigs, corn, livestock and agriculture, pets, schools, office buildings, entire cities, panic in the streets. The militaries of the world were nearly helpless; The Unity Company became the messiah of a world in ruins. Like angels from heaven they emerged from hidden bunkers around the world with incredibly advanced technology, their seeker squads looking for survivors to take to safe zones around the world.

 

    These safe zone cities could best be described as ghettos on the surface and vast complexes underground, some so close to major outbreak zones that it looked like they were tempting fate. Sure we have the gates and the sensors, the walls, and all that but the mutations are the real concern, no doubt you cadets are well aware of the zombies, your classes in the bunkers taught you all about the sprinters, the shamblers, the jack in the boxes, about the different behavior patterns right.

 

     “Yes!” comes a reply of men and women in the dark room looking at a projection on the wall of everything their instructor was talking about.

 

     “Ten years ago that may have been the case,” continues the voice over the intercom system, “however in this last decade things have changed, zombies are at the bottom of the food chain; the mutations have increased in numbers, especially the animal and plant ones; the humanoid mutations are fewer, but incredibly strong; no doubt you have all been warned to avoid Las Angelus because of The Horror, that is a single woman with a massive bio-mass body built by eating zombies and anything else dumb enough to go inside her building or close to it. When you go out there remember, suspect everything to be potential enemy.”

 

    “Yes sir!” resound the cadets as the lights come on in the sterile room revealing fresh young soldiers being sent off to fight in a hopeless war against the rest of the world.

 

    ******

 

    “What is she doing?” asks one of the doctors watching a monitor of a woman with clawed hands and feet, demon like wings, tail, and blade like structures on her head almost like antenna, as she just sits on a ledge in the monitored zones of a town in the desert being eroded by sand and wind, all the yards and trees that had been transplanted here a decade ago long dead, the town returned to desert now.

 

     “She’s been like that,” says the female scientist, “since her mind settled.”

 

    “What?” asks a young man standing nearby looking at a sample labeled, “Scaley”.

 

   The two other scientists look at each other, the man walks off shaking his head mumbling, “they don’t tell these kids anything.”

 

   The woman turns, “She was an experiment, a volunteer in a now mothballed project to match mutations with mutations.”

 

   “We turned our own people into monsters?” asks the young man.

 

   “In a way…yes,” says the woman, “they volunteered for it though. After our people discovered that the mutations underwent major psychological turmoil during the transformations; but retained memories…kind of like having a psychotic breakdown…only amplified, however some overtime regained their minds…to a certain extent. That sample you have there for example comes from a guy who was captured by a team in a highschool break out just as his mind was returning to normal…mostly normal, we found out he regained speech, and memories while in observation…kind of relapsed a little when he remembered the things he did shortly after mutating.”

 

    The young man looks at the blood sample and back at her.

 

    “Any way,” she continues, “some of our people in the psychological studies department figured a way to make the mutations docile, or at least in the end worked out a way to help those just mutating retain their humanity if only mentally. It has some unforeseen side effect.”

 

    She points at the screen, “Her name is Claire, but she goes by Rhina now, turned out in her case the process created a dream state, her mind kind of…split, a second personality emerged tied to a realistic dream she was having while in the containment tube, a slow mutation could be more controlled and less likely to overwhelm their minds forcing that ravenous state they have to compensate for the still as yet not fully understood mass change…which defies the laws of physics…anyway, it seems she accepted the dream as real and this Rhina personality rebelled.”

 

    The woman shakes her head, “its been nearly a decade, but over time her mind has mended its self, and now she realizes it was just a dream her mind created to protect its self from the mutation; a sort of internal fantasy explanation her subconscious invented; now she is more of one mind…but…it seems this revelation is kind of depressing for her.”

 

   The young man doesn’t know how to take what he just learned, he knew upon receiving his new higher level security clearance he’d learn new things; but that they had soldiers turning into monsters in the early days of the war wasn’t something he expected.

 

    As the young man leaves the older man comes back, “So, you told him Rhina was having mental issues? Funny I seem to recall she got over that six years ago.”

 

    “His badge was only yellow level,” says the woman, “clearance only to work on projects from that long ago.”

 

    The man shakes his head, “I don’t see why they bother,” he looks at the notes the young man left behind, “So, the Scaley kid huh? That is really old, waist of resources.”

 

    “Until he proves he can be trusted,” says the woman, “better he not know and possibly leak to the public that Rhina is being stalked by the Witch…or even knows about Breeders and Hive Mothers and such; remember…”

 

    “I know,” says the man, “you don’t have to go all exposition on me I can take a hint.”