Mother Cell

There’s a great myth trapped beneath every great ideology, that of the last few people made pure progenitors by incest. It’s a hold over from great deaths all across history, the damnable condition of abuse in the rueful clawing at survival made necessary by near extinction. The sense it made, in those greedy aftertimes to bind all in the horrid complexity that was a supposedly simple world.

Though they were not only two, or three, or bound so securely by blood and descent, they were humans. And that was good enough, when all others were left in shambling rot.

But all things rot, and so for however long they’d been alone. 

They were probably like that once, clawing at survival as bodies with minds rather than a mind with bodies, but the infection had run its course and now they were one in a way that could not be so easily narrowed given the parsimony of future generations. 

That being said, or grunted or believed was unimportant, thought wasn't needed as bodies searching for food, as flesh seeking itself. For even as one mind they could not hope to self-replicate with the frailties of their infected once mammal bodies. It's been said before what bodies seek when given new life, and with new flexibility brought on by those same hungers, by the rot subsided by truly strange evolution. There are consequences. Bodies are bodies, cells are cells, and they make more if only to trap others, like mitochondria, unto the fashion all near extinctions prefer. 

The thing that was once she bears weight like all did before, but without pain, without thought. Loveless in only the manner that flesh that is only flesh can be, split by tradition cellular and mammalian, the child is born infected, and only for a little while will it be an individual. 

Only now is the weight bearer alone again, cut away hidden where lesser infected can not hope to inflict their shambling avoidance of extinction, from the cold which would tighten the once rotten mass of its pelvis. Stuck in hyperflexion, waiting for the individual to eat in the shelter long abandoned by their human predecessors. 

Soon the deed is done, a new belly fed and left for the moment, as while they had once rotted, and were once before that singular, like any cell which metabolizes they also excrete. The baby does not cry for the flesh which leaves it, no matter how individual the new cell is, it is still long mutated from such a concerned or mammalian state. 

Soon all will be one anyway, this first connection bound only to feed and be fed, before it decays like any unused neurotransmitter, replaced by the other nodes which will figure for better utility, like memories used to be in the blackened mass of the once lady's mind. 

Once such was done, one would assume the two nodes would rejoin, no matter the wire-mother nature of their bond, but as it turns out the body hadn't been alone. A human is here, fearful of the turbulence as such an old building could not hope to guard against anything more, nor did it offer much in the way of sustenance. 

The little node awaiting its change was not overly concerned, it was as new as it could be, but it wasn't so needy of its mother cell. And so it did not cry and rouse the tempestuous nature of the human interloper, but they still looked down to see the new node. 

"A baby? Who the hell leaves a baby like this?" the cracked voice says, bending down to meet the node. The baby, flesh as flesh, born infected will soon appear as such, but chances were just as good that it would be abandoned. 

Not by body, not by the mother cell. 

Wire or not, rot or not. 

The human picks the future node up, wound up in a blanket crinkly tin colored. It's not changed yet, not like it's meant to. It's the only other body to be touched really, the only other cell to make one, and it's not scared at all because like its mother cell it can not be. Not really. 

There is a seizure, the little body skips in the manner much overdue, and the human is unnerved, "Oh that's why, huh?"

"I'm sorry baby," they stay steady, "You're just a little changeling, ain't you? Mama ran off 'cause things are tight? Right?" 

"Well, that's alright. We're cold right now, but I got somebody good." they say to the baby. The pulse of the sickness wearing through, jerking, but not much else, "too quiet though, should learn to scream. Cry and Coo, make it worth it. Everybody does the first few days." 

The human tilts, trying to keep their back steady beneath too little weight, "Then in a few months we can make you laugh. Won't that be cool?" the baby closes its eyes, sleeping like all things do. 

Then the node opens its eyes again, clear as day, and the bond starts to fade. Not like it would with the mind all together, not like the bodies falling. The fever burns away in the human's arms, and the new node is no more. 

Not rotten, not once rotten, just whatever the human decided it was in her arms. 

The mother cell wanders away, witnessed only by a confused human and a failed node. Deathly quiet is the human, and though they are seen it matters not. Its leave as a single-cell in want to multiply has ended.

But that's fine, this isn't the first, and as the coming generations fester farther into inbred rabble, their flesh made use of by the virus, and hopefully into forms much like this. It will not be the last.

The journey out of the would've been condemned Supermarket feels more arduous than it is, but then, she'd not had a baby before all that. Or the sudden bravery against the cold that came with even noticing her… goodness, what even was going on there? 

"Hey, Terry!" her friend said brightly. 

"Fuck, shut up!" 

As intuitive as anything, "Why do you have a baby?" 

"It was in the supermarket, it had a seizure. I think it was abandoned." Lucky her he hasn't had one since that night. 

"By who?" 

"A Zombie." thoughts falling back on the stresses of that night. 

"No, that can't be right. Look at him? That's just your baby." Which, well fair, looking at the over fluffed bundle made Terry all moody, but that was no excuse for the Zombie to just not notice her. 

Maybe she really was a mutant. "I think you're just making things easy for me. I'm not even sure how everyone will feel about an extra mouth."

"It's not like anyone is bagging it these days, gotta feed the zombies properly you know?" he pointed out, people being rare, even a weak baby is a good chance if no one you know died over it. 

"God you're depressing." 

But he just smiled, "Well it's not like we've found anyone new who ain't shambling these days. If they pass on the new blood we can just pass on the labor and move on." 

"So come on Terry-Mama, let's go home."