A LITTLE PREYER

JUNE 24

This is the journal of Ron Bergoin. I am 37 years old and, as far as I know, I am one of the few survivors.

I am leaving this book in the RFD mailbox with the red flag up in the hopes that someday someone will read it. I don’t know why. I just have to write it down. Bear with me. I haven’t had to write by hand for many years. Bloody computers!

Everyone expected that the world would end with a bang, not a whimper ... Some atomic holocaust or humungous plague ... zombiism, even ... just not the way it did.

It’s been 3 months since the GEN Bs became the dominant species on the planet. I kind of saw the writing on the wall, as it were, so I got out a lot earlier. I came to our fishing shack. I won’t tell you exactly where it is, but I suppose you can guess it’s not far from here. It’s well off the beaten track, so my guess is she won’t find me.

My wife Hanna and I thought we had been blessed. Hanna fell pregnant the first time we tried. The pregnancy went perfectly. No sickness, no deficiencies, no problems whatsoever. We had already decided to call our baby Sam or Joy. If it was a girl, Hanna wanted her to have her grandmother’s heart shaped locket.

At 41 weeks to the day, Hanna went into labour. And died.

Hanna was rushed into an operating theatre, and the baby was delivered by emergency caesarean. The baby girl was healthy, calm and completely alert. Joy it was. No sign of foetal distress, but she was covered in blood and gore. The surgeons noted that there was major damage to most of Hanna’s internal organs. Some were missing completely.

Her first word was “Father.” Three days later.

JULY 4

Happy Independence Day. I have a bit of solar and wind, so I can power the SW radio. I hear less and less each day.

It’s been at least a year since humanity declared war on itself and began to kill its young ... before the young ate them.

Isolated places like Australia, Iceland and Hawaii got tough real quick and killed every single child born after B Day and all pregnant women. They thought at the time that the mother was infected, too. By this time, some of the GEN B children were 3 years old.

Dying is just another part of life. That’s what the celebrant told me at Hanna’s funeral. I hope the celebrant went early. There was nothing to celebrate after that.

If they had known that all the GEN B babies were going to turn out the way they did, I reckon they would all have been drowned at birth. Not drowned. Their necks dislocated as their heads emerged from their already dead mothers. Twisted right around; 360 degrees. Like Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST. “The Linda Blair Manoeuvre” they could dub it. You have to do it quick before they get their eyes on you. Otherwise, you’re in for it.

Whenever you mess with Mother Nature, there is a price to pay. Some scientists insisted the GEN B DNA came from a comet or meteor. Others believed it had been here before and became frozen for a million years in the arctic tundra. Maybe it was just another evolutionary stage. Maybe it was created in a lab. Whatever. Every foetus on the planet was affected.

Apparently, Joy wasn’t the first GEN B baby, but early enough so that word hadn’t spread widely and precautions weren’t being taken. They even let me take her home for a while.

After two weeks, she was walking and talking fluently. I guess the overwhelming astonishment at this prodigious development helped overcome the grief at losing Hanna and any suspicion that Joy may have had something to do with it. In a month, she even asked to sit on my lap and play the piano.

It was the huge spike in childbirth mortality that was noticed first by the media. Doctors suspected a virus was causing some sort of organ liquefaction, until they watched via laparoscopic camera. The retractable needle-sharp teeth and claws were almost imperceptible, but as the mother went into labour, the foetus proceeded to shred and consume the organs surrounding the uterus.

Sorry. I have to stop.

JULY 25

It would have been Hanna’s birthday and our 15th wedding anniversary. It helped me remember both dates.

A small school bus came by while I was writing my last entry. One of those yellow ones. At first I had hope that it was other survivors, until I felt the tingle behind my eyes that meant there were GEN Bs on that bus, searching.

I dropped to the ground behind a rock and thought only about being a ferret killing a chicken. My fangs sinking into its neck, the blood soaking into my fur to be licked off later and the femoral spurts down my throat. This ruse had worked once before, with Joy, and I was hoping it would again with whoever was on the bus. I guess it did. I only write at night now.

As the bus drove by, I could see it was being driven by an adult with a GEN B on its back, claws set deep in the driver’s flesh. They were still too young to drive, but when in direct contact with adults, they could control rudimentary actions. Heaven help us when they’re old enough to fly.

I feel a bad cold coming on. I always used to get a summer cold, so why should this summer be any different? I may not write for a while.

AUGUST 9

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The cold. Maybe it’s all the fresh air, fish and physical exercise.

One of the theories about GEN Bs was the “Spiderman Hypothesis.” That some recombinant spider DNA had gotten into the human gene pool. It was the relentless urge by the GEN Bs to actually eat their parents that gave root to this idea. Some species of spiders are eaten by their young. Spiders also tend to lay eggs in other hosts and the larvae eat their way out. This all sounded plausible, but it happened all over the world at once. I mean, Peter Parker never tried to eat Aunt May or Uncle Ben, but then they weren’t his real parents. The boffins were still on about this theory at the very end.

My suspicions were raised when, about 6 weeks after Joy was born, I started eating inordinate amounts of rich foods, high in fat and carbs. This just wasn’t me, but I somehow couldn’t resist. Joy started hugging me a lot and licking my face. I also became agoraphobic and refused to leave the house. I realise now that Joy was fattening me up and keeping an eye on me. Controlling my mind somehow.

Thankfully, that’s when they came for her. It was still a bit hush-hush, but for national security, they were removing all GEN B babies from their homes. Heaven knows where they took them, but they didn’t kill them. At least not straight away.

Joy became ferocious. More bobcat than six-week-old. She broke the arm of one soldier and nearly tore the throat out of another before they got those nooses on poles around her neck. They wore prismatic goggles so eye contact didn’t work, but I could still feel her lashing out mentally. I nearly fainted.

The mind control was the last development to be discovered. People stopped calling them prodigies and started calling them little monsters. If they couldn’t eat their fathers, they started chowing down on any adult within range. Heaven help you if you make eye contact. They are the spider and you are the fly.

I heard on the SW last night that a 747 full of GEN Bs crashed at Honolulu airport. Thankfully, no survivors. They had controlled two pilots, one of whom was still strong enough to overcome the mind control and plow the Jumbo into the runway. The Islands are now on high alert and that place has bristled with AA since 1941. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.

I know that Joy has an undying need to eat me. Even as I write those words, I LOL. It repeated itself a million times in the early days. Mother dies in childbirth. Father takes the infant home. Infant controls the father and any siblings. Fattens them up and then eats them one by one, starting with the father.

I don’t think she’ll stop till she finds me. That’s why I am writing this journal. They have no need for written language and will probably ignore it.

SEPTEMBER 23

It’s been a while since I wrote in this journal. I know there have been groups of GEN Bs searching. A small plane flew over recently and I felt the tingle. The shack is under trees, so no trace is visible from the air. I also saw the bus on more than one occasion, or at least heard it. I have to be very careful.

I miss Hanna. I miss any human contact. I even miss Joy. I honestly have no animosity towards her. I guess even Dr. Victor Frankenstein (“Franken-STEEN!”) had a love for his monster. That novel was written by a woman, so maybe she knew that some men have a maternal instinct for their offspring.

I wonder if spiders gladly give themselves up to the digestive juices of their hungry young, knowing it is all part of life’s great circle. Not some sort of abject horror.

Prodigy or horrible monster? I guess it is in the eye of the beholder. And, of course, the winner gets to write the history.

OCT 13

I hav no dobt this will be my last en try. Using my left hand becoz my right is gon. Joy cam out of the darknss. I flt her tingle but did nothng. She had becom a butifl little grl. She stll wore the heart shapd locket around her nek.

I lookd in her eyes and felt peace. She extndd her fangs and claws and I flt a momnt of fear. I put up my right arm and she bit it almst off.

They mst have venum becaus I hav no pain. I took my pencl and drov it deep into hr eye to her brain. It was a quik as I coud do for you Joy. I wish I was a spider. Or a feret. Good by.