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The cellar’s light fixture was an old-fashioned incandescent that took Captain Blake only a few seconds to find after he felt the fraying yellow string tickle the side of his face. Once the room was illuminated they saw the horror they had previously only smelt. Three bodies, all neatly stacked, lay rotting in the corner of the room. A woman, no more than thirty-five, and two small children, ten and twelve, were the victims. The woman’s decomposition was the worst of them. Maggots had claimed the left side of her face and her cheek hung over her lower jaw like a thinly cut piece of steak. The children didn’t look nearly as bad. Their faces were cold and grey, but their eyes were closed in such a way that they looked surprisingly peaceful.
“Mary and Joseph!” Captain Blake removed a black handkerchief from his back pocket and covered his mouth and nose.
“Everybody upstairs,” Martin said.
There was no protest.
Martin came up a few minutes after the rest. He told them the three had died of shotgun wounds to the chest, most likely, the old man’s shotgun.
“Did he know them?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know,” replied Martin. “I guess it doesn’t matter.” It did matter, but no one wanted to admit such a chilling reality. Maybe they were unlucky souls who stumbled onto the cottage. Maybe they had turned to Variants. Or maybe the old timer had just gone mad.
“What should we do with them?” Annie asked.
“We ain’t doing nothin’ with ‘em,” Captain Blake answered.
“We can’t just leave them down there,” she protested.
“Honey, if we stopped and buried every poor soul we came across we’d be as dead as him,” said Lara, pointing to the old man’s body.
Annie looked down and saw the old man’s chest cavity had been caved in, his right rib section lay next to him. His abdomen had been completely hollowed out, the organs carelessly discarded near his feet. Annie’s eyes floated over the grisliness and she turned her head and heaved. There was no food or water in her system, only pockets of air that painfully lurched up her esophagus and dropped to the floor. It was a wretched, cruel feeling that consumed every ounce of her. “What did that to him?”
“The Variants, honey,” Captain Blake muttered. “It’s always the Variants.”
“Somebody get him out of here,” he said, pointing to the old man.
“I’ll do it.” Enrique was staring solemnly at the body, his bottom lip quivering in a state of shock. He didn’t say a word as he gathered up what was left of the old man and carried him down to the cellar.
Lara crossed to the other side of the room where Captain Blake was preparing a fire. She handed him some kindle and they spoke in murmurs as the flame grew before their eyes.
Martin knelt beside Annie whose dry heaves had finally settled to staggered whimpers. She stared off into one of the corners of the cottage, her gaze a mad combination of disconnect and vacancy. Anyone observing her would have thought she was on the verge of hysteria—and, in truth, she probably was.
“Let me take a look at you,” Martin said taking the bottom of her chin in his hands. He held one of her eyelids open and saw a large, dilated pupil staring back at him, a haunting island of black surrounded by a thin, pale green ring.
“You have hazel eyes,” he remarked.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “always have had.”
He smiled, pleased she was responding.
“What are you, a doctor or something?” she asked.
“Something.”
“Something?”
“Neurologist,” he said. “Well…I guess I was a neurologist.” He put his fingers on her pulse, silently counting the beats.
“Please,” she said, lowering his hand away from her neck. “I need to know what’s going on.”
Martin sighed. “There’s a lot to cover.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
He sighed again. “Then let’s start with our cast of characters:” That’s Lara Holliday.” He pointed toward Lara, but her eyes were fixed on the fire. “And the pleasant curmudgeon next to her is Richard Blake.”
“Captain Richard Blake,” the curmudgeon corrected. “Retired, of course.”
“Of course,” Martin said, “and downstairs is Enrique Valenzuela.”
“And you?” Annie asked.
“My name’s Martin…Martin Knight.”
“Doctor Martin Knight,” she corrected, a restrained smile finding its way onto her lips.
Martin nodded pleasantly. “And we, Miss Walker, are part of the three percent of humans who haven’t been affected by whatever those things are out there.”
“The Variants?”
He nodded, his features sullen.
“Why do you call them Variants?”
“Because, as far as we can tell, they’re human.” He paused, letting it sink in. But her reaction showed neither acceptance nor confusion. “Or at least a slight variation of them,” he continued. “We were only able to study them for a few days, to understand their variance, but it wasn’t enough time. We were overrun and had to abandon the hospital. They had brought me in to study the brain and spine variations, but I couldn’t find any. We also monitored its trait behaviors. At first they exhibited intense rage, and possessed minimal speech and motor skills, but, as the days wore on, they began to talk, and act, like us. They adapted at an incredible rate. It would be like an ape had evolved into man in a matter of hours.”
“But they’re human?”
“Super humans,” Enrique interjected. He trudged up the cellar steps, his shirt and pants covered in a dense layer of blood and gore. “They’re unlike anything you’ve seen before. Their speed, their strength…it’s unbelievable.”
“So they’re like zombies?” Annie asked. She heard Captain Blake and Lara share a laugh and she immediately resented them.
“No, not exactly,” Martin said evenly. “Zombies are the living dead, as in, they’re here by some supernatural force. Variants breathe like us, they eat like us, and their circulatory and nervous systems are identical to ours. They have tremendous communication and organization skills. Frankly, there’s nothing even remotely supernatural about them.“
“But that old man was hollowed out,” Annie said, shuddering at the thought.
“His organs weren’t taken or harvested,” he said. “They were only discarded.”
“Basically they just rip ya to shreds,” Captain Blake said. He removed a worn corncob pipe from his bag and packed the bowl with a handful of thick tobacco leaves.
“The Variants possess only behavioral differences, their lack of morality and remorse the two most notable.”
Enrique sat down next to Martin, crossing his legs and staring up at the doctor as if he were telling some fireside ghost story. Annie noticed his hands were trembling.
“Things started slow--as they usually do during an epidemic. I think all of us had seen it coming, though nobody wanted to admit it. People were getting shot in movie theaters and stabbed in line at the Post Office. It was ugly. And then all at once, the world just quit functioning.”
“Normally, that is,” Lara said.
“It didn’t affect everyone the same. While some turned into these maniacs, others went into cardiac arrest, or had seizures, or quit breathing. It was as if their bodies couldn’t adapt at the rate their brain wanted to. So while some became these monsters—the monsters that did that to the other man—others simply perished. And then there are those of us who…well…well, we hope are still human.”
“Hope?”
“We’re still not sure what any of us are.”
“But we’re gonna fight until we find out,” Captain Blake said, exhaling a steady stream of smoke.
“And take down every last Variant that we can.” Lara grinned and Captain Blake, and he returned the smile as he took another drag off the pipe.
“I remember,” said Annie, and the others exchanged looks in such a fury she barely noticed it had happened. “I remember people dying in the streets. The National Guard…I remember the National Guard. And then…” but her words trailed away as the memory struggled in her mind.
“It’s all right,” said Martin, though his words rang untrue.
Nobody said anything for a long while. The fire popped and crackled and Annie could feel its warmth on her back. Lara stoked at it, her gaze mesmerized by the soothing orange glow.
“Mrs. Walker--”
“Miss,” she interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s Miss Walker, not Mrs.”
He sighed, but said nothing to acknowledge an interest. “Miss Walker, I’m afraid it’s our turn to posit a few questions.”
She first looked at Enrique, whose eyes, normally kind and amiable, were now accusatory and untrusting. Annie noticed the others shared the same sentiment.
“What kind of questions?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” The question was so staggeringly simple she hesitated to answer.
“I was going to mail my son’s birthday card,” the words escaped from her mouth. “That’s when it started…I mean truly started…It was bad, and I think I noticed before…like you said…but didn’t want to admit the world had gone mad. But I needed to mail that birthday card…You see…I haven’t seen my son in several months and…I wasn’t really sure what to say…so…” Her words were clunky and fragmented, so she stopped in frustration.
Martin nodded, but she couldn’t tell if he understood or not. “And when’s your son’s birthday?”
“May 28th.”
The others exchanged a grave look. Then, all at once, their eyes fell on her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Miss Walker, to be honest, for a person to buried under that amount of rubble—the rubble we found you under—and emerge with only superficial injuries is a miracle in and of itself. But, to answer your question, we’re looking at you like this because this event we speak of—The Rise of the Variants—happened over four months ago.”
Annie stared back at him with disbelieving eyes.
“Now how is it, Miss Walker, that a woman of your size and stature could be buried, without food or water, for that amount of time, and come out seemingly unharmed?”
“It certainly is peculiar,” Lara added.
“Are you saying I’m one of them?” she asked incredulously.
“We’re not saying anything,” Martin told her. “We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m not one of them!” she cried. “I can’t be!”
They were sitting around her like a tribunal deciding her fate. The fire flickered against their faces and the once-pleasant glow suddenly turned harsh and ominous.
“I couldn’t be one of them…right?”
Still, nobody answered.
“Right?” Annie asked, though, now even she was unsure.
“Of course not,” Martin finally replied. But she could tell the others didn’t share his opinion. “Don’t worry, we’ll know more tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Last we heard there was a FEMA camp near downtown Chicago,” Captain Blake said. “Figure if we can get down there, we won’t be in such a hot pickle.”
“And maybe there will be other survivors,” Enrique said helplessly.
“We should get some rest,” said Martin.
They silently accepted his suggestion and moved about the room in preparation for sleep. There was a standard blue cot in the corner of the cottage. The fabric was worn and frayed. Lara staggered over and fell back on the thin layer of blue. She would be asleep in a matter of seconds.
Enrique wandered over to a small closet adjacent to the cot and rifled through its contents. He removed a green flannel shirt that was two sizes too small for him. When he put it on, the bottom of his belly danced below the hem. He took a vacant spot on the floor and curled up, blanketless.
“I’ll take first watch,” Captain Blake said. He picked up the old man’s shotgun and threw it over his shoulder.
“Here,” Annie heard Martin say. She turned to him. “This belongs to you.” Annie looked down and saw her son’s birthday card in his hands. The boy with the football shaped head smiled up at her as the fireworks erupted behind him. “We found it shortly before we found you. I figured you’d like to have it back.” He crossed behind her and took a seat in front of the fire.
“Did you read it?” she asked.
At first, he didn’t respond. He sat in front of the fire’s light, transfixed. She considered asking him again, but then he said, “No. I didn’t read it.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded, but never turned to look at her.
Annie brought her knees to her chest, clutching the four month old clothes draped across her body. Outside, she heard the rain intensify, battering the side of the house in shallow musical notes. She listened to them as long as she could, and then sleep took her.
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