Man to Monster

The bitemark upon my shin shined red with a purple hue outlining the teeth' indentations.

"No! No! George, please, no!" wailed my wife.

Her knees buckled, slamming against the wooden floor of the abandoned, looted home we had found short reprieve in God-knows-where, Michigan. My children, Meryl and Leo, stood behind their distraught mother. By the looks on their faces, they had not yet comprehended the severity of my situation.

It had been a week and a half since the outbreak—a lab test that had gone awry. The U.S. military thought they had created a superhuman drug, one that overrode the humanistic qualities of pain, reservations, fear, and the consequence of reckless abandonment. Simultaneously, this drug also heightened testosterone and adrenaline levels beyond their standard yield. The intent was, upon inoculation of the said drug, the soldier, Marine, fighter pilot, policeman, fireman, and any other form of military and first-responder personnel necessary for the safety and protection of the populace would become fearless machines that could enter any burning building, gunfight, and combat zone with the sole intention of completing their objective. Without the inhibitions of the typical human, one would think this was the beginning of creating the most fearless corps of men and women the world had ever seen.

From my understanding, the testing transpired in a northern Californian military installation. Volunteers of the U.S. armed forces participated in the experimentation with the promise of hefty compensation. At first, it seemed a success. News reports stated that the "super soldier" had been produced, stoking courage in our countrymen and fear in our enemies. Footage circulating the interwebs showed army men stepping through thick, boarded walls, swarming and cutting down artificial targets with precision and lethality, scaling walls at lightning-fast speed, and performing deftly feats on land, air, and sea. The Pentagon was still patting itself on the back when one of the test subjects had ravaged and gored his wife, child, and housepet. Not only that, another was at a house party and had cut, bit, and shredded some of the other partygoers with their bare hands. Worse, those affected by these sudden acts of acute violence had taken on the monstrous nature as well. The captured affected, now infected, were held against their will by scientists of the highest order. These experts revealed the drug's design had gone rogue. What best could be described as a feedback loop, the effects that made the drug successful had become indefatigable. The bodies of those with the drug in their bloodstream were unable to shake its domineering effects. It seemed to feed itself, making the subjects more fearless and tolerant of pain.

Moreover, its psychosis-altering capabilities had reached levels of deadly proportions. A ravenous desire to bite, claw, and eat raw flesh had become the deity of their souls and singular desire. They had become what we had called in sci-fi, fiction lore, and literary horror, now a reality, zombies.

When our little suburban outpost in Lansing had become overrun by these zombies, we, like millions of others across the country, made a break for safety. As to where that was, we did not know, but we knew to pack our things and take off in the minivan. However, that did not last long, as traffic and the onslaught of the infected stagnated vehicular mobility. We took on foot, crossing medians, abandoned interstates, through woods and fields, and anywhere where the screams of victims and wretched cries of monsters had subsided. Government proclamations were useless; assuring us to stay in our houses until protection arrived was akin to waiting in a burning house until rain clouds arrived. To top it all off, there was not even a whisper of a cure. We were at the mercy of this infernal contagion.

The zombies finally forced us out of a vacant barn we had stayed in for a few days. I hotwired an old pickup truck in a nearby garage and drove on some backroads until we encountered an abandoned neighborhood. With a machete I had collected in my hand, I had cut down all opposition in our way. A fully infected zombie, which still had the rigors of a merciless beast, also had severely debilitated coordination and reaction. My machete swiped and sliced through the susceptible flesh of the infected; a mere sidestep and a high school-level trained baseball swing proved sufficient. All seemed manageable, that is, until I passed a half-chewed corpse, severed by what appeared to be the teeth marks of a chainsaw. As I motioned for my family to hurry over an HVAC unit and through a busted-out living room window, the halved corpse snatched me by the ankle. With its clammy, gray hand, it yanked itself towards my leg and clamped its maw around my shin. I stifled my cry and hacked it away until it fell still. My wife, Erin, noticing the struggle, immediately turned her eyes toward the wound as I entered the abode, leading us to our current predicament.

She groaned and cried, knowing what was in store for me, for us. I could not help but try to comfort her. I bent down to collect her.

"No!" she shrieked, slapping my hand away. A sudden life beheld her, for she scuttled to our children and held them in her arms—a darkened complexion formed on her face. She snatched the machete and extended its edge toward me.

My initial reaction was to reprimand her for the hurt, but, conceding doom was at my door, it gave me hope. For even if the slightest bit of my bodily fluids entered her bloodstream, our children could fall too, devoured by filicidal mania. If my wife were willing to reject her husband, one she had been lovingly married to for nearly a decade, with such sharp rebuke, she must certainly have the perseverance to lead two of our four surviving children. My children, Meryl and Leo, had not fully understood the dystopian future before them. At the formative ages of eight and six, respectively, they knew something was unnatural about this new reign of terror. They had seen their elder brother and sister ripped to pieces, protecting them from the infected pursuants. When I found time to weep for my eviscerated firstborns, I did so liberally, but not in front of them. I will join them shortly, but I must put my mortal family in order first.

"Honey, Meryl, Leo," I said, kneeling to meet their eye level.

"Yes, Daddy?" uttered Meryl. She had her chin against her chest, and it quivered.

"That's a good girl," I said. "I want you to—"

A sudden pang shot through me. The side of my neck tightened, and my lower jaw protruded out, baring my lower row of teeth. The children gasped. My wife pulled them close to her and backed away from me.

"Back!" I shouted. "Get back!"

I was not sure how the transition would consume me, but I had certainly felt it. A raging swell of power spread within me. It was like a high, unlike anything I had experienced before. My strength seemed to surge; the forces of gravity were effectless. A ludicrous idea came over me that I could easily lift a car or thrust my knee through the wall. Subsequently, a craving for flesh had come. My mind started to obsess over the notion of sinking my teeth into a sumptuous piece of raw chicken. I thought about how my teeth would break the surface, diving into its tender structure and tearing it and consuming it, slaking my hunger. I slid my tongue between my molars to replicate the sensation. Then, my senses returned.

I must have fallen into a fit, for my family gaped at me with fretful eyes. I was on my side in a pool of sweat. I didn't move. If I could lie still and slow my heart rate, perhaps the effects of the bite would curb, leaving my family more time to flee so they could remember me before I succumbed.

"Sweetheart," I grunted. A pain was forming deep within the pit of my stomach. "I want you to—I want you to get to my parents."

My wife, clutching our children, replied with a tear-filled cry, "How? How, why, how?"

"Their cabin in Barryton. They have guns, land, it's isolated, it's ... Arrgh!"

The pain had reached an unruly state. My back arched, my limbs tightened, and I began to writhe and twist upon the ground violently. I froze, paralyzed by the locking measures of my muscles. I saw my son's leg—supple and bare—peek out from behind his mother. It was then that a sudden predatory inhabitant inside me overpowered my sensibilities. My fingers dug into the floor; I let out a roar, drool trailing from my jowls, and scampered toward my terrified family, ready to tear the flesh from their hides.

"Run, kids! Run!" my wife cried.

As my family started to flee, the fear of loss, my human quality, supplanted the monster that had hijacked my mind. My body eased, and I slumped again.

"Erin!" I shouted. She and my children were near the end of the hall. They turned around. I was dizzy, exhausted, and on the brink of fainting, for my body could not handle the sudden rise of the drug's power.

"What—what is it?" she shouted through sobs.

My head rolled to its side. I took in the sight of the beautiful family I had. The woman I had vowed to, the son and daughter I had watched grow and play, the family I carried in my heart.

"Take care. I love you."

Her chin quivered. "I love you, too," she said.

I breathed a sigh of release. "Go!" I shouted. "Get out of here!"

My wife nodded and sped around the corner. When the patters of their feet were out of earshot, I was at peace. The mental guards laid down their defenses, and the disease scaled the ramparts, displacing the man I was and becoming the monster I had feared. I let out a horrid, blood-fueled screech as I rose from the floor, tearing my clothes from my body. It was rage, it was fury, it was the lust to kill and taste the living. A waft of the odors left by my family slithered up my nostrils. I inhaled their flavor, turned towards the hall, and sped after them. The hunt was on.

"Aarrraagghhhh!"