The Eden Strain by Doug Klein (PART TWO)
(Check out PART ONE here)
Their black bio-hazard response van was speeding to the housing Brickstone Suburban Complex, and a heavy silence had settled inside the vehicle. Punchline broke the static, but his voice no longer carried its normal boisterous charm.
"Seven days. Seven deaths. This is clearly an attack." Punchline was driving like a maniac, but his eyes expressed nothing but calm determination. Curveball shifted in his seat and checked his sterilization rifle.
"Eden strain, huh? That's what they’re calling it? Do you really think it was those crazy fucking zealots? The ones leaving all those messages on the buildings in the Processing District?" Curveball spoke with a twinge of irritation. He hated people who made his work hard. Ogre chimed in from the back of the van, his body jostling back and forth in his secured seat.
"Midnight something, right? That's what they’re called?" Ogre didn't pay much attention to the outside world unless it was trying to kill him. He had been paying a little more attention as of late, but he was still a bit behind.
"Midnight Genesis. They’re a bunch of fucking kooks who think that the Great Fall was God rebooting Earth, and we managed to fuck it up and save ourselves with technology. Now they claim to be fighting fire with fire, using whatever shit tech they can find to try to start the world anew. You'd both know this shit if you ever read the damn dossiers!" The last line was laced with patronizing love, as was usual when Punchline was reprimanding anyone. The van came to a sudden stop outside a small quaint looking house. The silence in the vehicle returned for just a passing moment.
"Go time," Ogre said as he unbuckled from his seat. Punchline and Curveball followed suit.
The front door was slightly ajar as the three approached. No time to be polite, they had donned full masks and weapons were at the ready. They could only hope that the least they would be doing would be delivering the news that Mrs. Walters husband had died and that she would get civic compensation due to it being man-made, but that was very unlikely. If Frank was that far along, Mrs. Walters was also probably slated for incineration.
Using hand signals, Ogre took the lead and opened the door and the three moved inside. Almost immediately, their HUD displays in their masks began flashing air content warnings. Not good. Not good at all.
Punchline issued a hand signal for caution, and the three waited and listened. Silence permeated throughout the house. A shuffling sound, a few rooms over, caught all of their attention. Punchline jerked his head in the direction of the sound and the three continued on.
The HUD displays in all of their masks began to signal high danger as they entered the kitchen. They did not need those warnings, for the room itself was enough to make one's skin crawl.
Pools of blood filled several areas of the tile floor. An almost thin green mist seemed to occupy the corners of the room. One wall in particular was covered in blood that was smeared into a message.
On the 7th day, God rested, and our work began.
The three stood, guns all pointed at a female figure sitting in a chair, facing the wall with the blood message. Her body was shivering. It was Mrs. Walters. Punchline was the first to speak.
"Mrs. Walters? You have been infected..." Punchline was unable to finish, as Mrs. Walters stood straight up, the chair tipping over behind her. Her fingertips had seemingly exploded, and strange yellow fungal growths sprouted from them. Her head leaned back and turned in an awkward way, a bloodshot eye peering at the men from the side.
"Midnight has come." The words were spoken in a rough whisper, and as the mouth opened, a rush of coagulated blood oozed out and spilled to the floor. Mrs. Walters turned to face them, and it was clear now. The first full phase Eden strain victim. The top of her head burst into a shower of flesh and bone. Another giant yellow fungal growth unfurled from her head cavity, this one with small sacs of green liquid all over a large bulbous part. She had become ready to spore.
Curveball's irritation overrode his fear. Her step forward and his gun began to flash. Bullets ran through the body of what once was Mrs. Walters, creating clouds of red blood and green fungal material.
"No! Stop!" Punchline tried to intervene, but Curveball had kept walking towards the creature as it convulsed from his barrage. The body eventually collapsed back into the wall in a splatter of gore and slid down. Curveball walked up to it, and grunted in satisfaction. He turned to speak to Punchline.
"This is gonna be hell to clean..." As Curveball spoke, the creature had risen again, the yellow fungal tendrils from its fingers now wrapped around his head and body. Punchline and Ogre had their guns ready, but hesitated as Curveball was blocking them from the spore-thing. Curveball struggled for a moment, but as he tried to get his gun back into his grip, his head was torn from his neck in one horrendous motion. His head was flung towards Ogre, and his body towards Punchline. Both men dodged the tragic projectiles, and watched the creature skitter up the stairs to the second floor. Punchline was the first to rise and bolted after it.
"It's going to try to spore, we have to intercept it before it hits the roof!" His shout was quick and clear, and Ogre slung his regular rifle aside and pulled out a large barreled weapon he had strapped to his back.
Punchline ran as fast as he could up the stairs and caught fleeting glimpses of the fungal atrocity as it scampered to the attic. The door was swung back at Punchline who kicked it straight off its hinges as he entered. To his disbelief, he saw nothing. A heavy impact slammed him from behind, as the creature had sprung from the corner to his left. The dimly lit room spun around Punchline, his mask now screaming critical damage and imminent threats constantly. The spore-thing loomed over him, but Punchline was fast. He slung his rifle around and fired a three-pronged metal dart at the creature. It sparked with electricity as it flew, but the creature shifted and the dart skimmed across its face, tearing away the last of what had been Mrs. Walters face and sticking into the wall behind it. The grotesque fungal horror then lunged for Punchline.
"Oh, fuck me." Those were the last words Punchline said. The spore-thing gripped his body and slammed him hard into the ground twice then threw him out of the attic window, his lifeless body landing in a twisted heap on the ground outside.
The creature moved to the now broken window and began to clamber outside. Ogre arrived from the stairwell with his canon like gun carried in both arms, clearly putting a strain on his large frame. The spore-thing hissed something ungodly and then rushed to the roof. Ogre lifted the gun, listening for to the loud scratching as the thing moved to a spot to spore. He fired his canon at a support beam right under the sound of the monster. A pyroclastic blast erupted from the barrel and tore through the beam and the roof itself. The roof caved in, dropping the creature to the attic floor in front of Ogre, the bulbous head seemed to stare right at Ogre as fibrous membranes separated, making a disgusting sort of mouth from which a visceral howl emanated. Ogre silenced the howl as his canon fired once more, reducing the bulbous, and most of the body to ash nearly instantly. The other tiny limbs of the thing fell to the floor, but Ogre began picking them up and placing them in a containment bag he had on him. He pressed a button on the side of his mask.
"HQ. This is Ogre. Assuming lead of MSF unit 47. We have two MSF casualties and tier 9 contaminants. Send for quarantine and cleanup. Flag command with the words ‘Midnight Genesis’ and do it now." Ogre heard a quick reply acknowledging he was heard. Deciding he had collected enough material for analysis, he fired one last blast to cremate the last of the monster. He could already hear the air support in the distance. Midnight Genesis. He would never forget that name now.
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