ECOPOCALYPSE CH.6 - "C.D.C, A.S.A.P."

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.6 - "C.D.C., A.S.A.P." 
by James McShane

Your trip to the Centre for Disease Control Headquarters allows you time to calm yourself down and indulge in a little family bonding with your sister. You and Madge never saw eye-to-eye on many things over the years, but when she brought back her first girlfriend and introduced Suzi Ching to Mom, you stormed out of the house and wouldn’t come back until they’d both left. This incident made Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays a hornets’ nest for the next fifteen years. It’s not your fault you’re a bigot; society made you that way. You wish you could turn back time and make things right again, a-la Sam Beckett and Quantum Leap. But going by your recent experience with inventions, any time machine you built would probably result in the Nazis winning World War II and the San Francisco 49ers winning Superbowl from now until Doomsday. Neither of these possible events sit well with you. You are who you are – now deal with it.

You turn to Madge and say, “Hey, sis, remember that time you and Suzi…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Madge replies into her headphone. “I’ve not yet forgiven you for that,” she continues. “However, if you can in any way make this"—she points down below at the shit- and blood-stained streets—"better, maybe this Christmas I’ll buy you something nice.”

“I always wanted a pony,” you say wistfully.

“I was thinking more of a one-way trip to fucking Jupiter.” She turns to you. “I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

Madge has mellowed over the years, you surmise.

“Are we there yet?” you ask, changing the subject. You’re the pilot, and you know how long the journey takes, but you really want to move on from all this bitterness.

“Two minutes,” Madge replies. “I rang ahead. The president’s guy at the CDC is expecting us. You better know what you’re doing.”

“It’s like we said earlier, Madge. Whoever’s lost is gone forever. The only way I can fix this is so it never happens again. I hope this joker listens to me.”

“Who else is he going to listen to? The Ayatollah?”

You grunt in mock agreement. The sooner this finishes, the better civilisation can get going again. You will make this right.

You hope.

As you bring the helicopter down on the roof of CDCHQ, you experience a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. There must be at least twenty CDC goons as your welcoming party. They have guns. Lots of guns. As you and Madge step out, a goon in a hazmat grabs you by the arm and throws you to the ground.

“So you’re the fucker who’s responsible for this eco-Apocalypse?”

You raise your hand and introduce yourself. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” you add. He slaps you across your face with a gloved palm. “I didn’t think I was this popular,” you mumble.

A voice from behind your assailant calls out. “Easy, Ernie. Let’s not give the CEO too hard a time. After all, amends must be made. Bring them down to the lab.” The new guy, who you assume must be the president’s eyes and ears in CDC, points to Madge, who is carrying the new and improved Environaut from the helicopter. He pulls you up and offers his hand.

 “Jack Sneedon, President’s Liaison, CDC.”

You both shake. “I take it you’re aware of what we have here?” you say. “With the improvements I made to the original design…”

“Yeah, I know,” he says as his colleagues move Madge and the devise into the roof elevator. “Your sister filled me in over the phone. Some shit about co-coolants. I don’t get it.” He fixes you with a steely glare. “But I’m hoping you do.”

Once more, you hope.

Down in the lab, you unpack all your equipment and prepare for a demonstration of the Environaut. You look around and see that the place is spotless. No blood. No shit. “You’ve been cooped up here all this time?” you ask. “No breaches of security? No Shithead Zombies?”

Sneedon shrugs. “One or two got through the main gate, but that’s all. Our guys are clean and good to go. What about you?”

Your head drops. “I lost my Mom and my best friend.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sneedon replies curtly, “but we’ve no time for sentimentality. We can grieve our dead later – provided we don’t become one of them. Set her up and let’s see what she can do.”

The demonstration works like a charm. After thirty minutes of further testing, Sneedon and his cohorts are less agitated than they were when they met you on the roof. It didn’t stop Hazmat Man from slapping you once more, this time with feeling.

Sneedon takes out his phone. “Wake up the president!” he barks. “Tell him I have good news.” His face loses several shades of natural colour. “What the fuck?” he roars. “When the hell did that happen?” He finds a nearby chair and just about manages to flop into it. He rubs his hand over the top of his head. He appears to be sobbing. “Artie’s in charge? Holy sweet fuck!” He ends the call and looks at you.

You feel a hand at your shoulder. It’s Madge, getting all sisterly like. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“Turn on the TV,” is Sneedon’s response.

On the big screen there is a shot of the White House. The ticker at the bottom of the screen reads: “President and Vice-President invoke 25^th Amendment. Speaker of the House, Arthur Gantly becomes President of the United States. News conference to follow shortly.”

You look at Sneedon. “They must have fallen foul of…the foulness.” Now you sound like a badly written twelve volume fantasy epic.

“You got that right,” Sneedon says. “Artie is out baying for blood. Your blood.”

“What do you mean?” Madge asks before you can even formulate the question yourself.

“My man at the West Wing says China, Russia and the entire Arab nation wants your head on a platter. They’re having their own problems and the only way they can placate their citizens is to ask for your public execution.”

You gulp.
Now that your life is on the , do you:

A. Offer to turn yourself over to the bloodthirsty masses, hoping your self-sacrificial gesture will change Artie's mind?
B. Appeal to Artie directly and show him your new and improved Environaut? He's not that much of a nut, is he?
C. Do what every self-respecting person would do in a situation like this - run?

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.2 - DAMAGE CONTROL

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.2 - DAMAGE CONTROL By Jason Campbell

“Jesus Christ, my head feels like it's going to split open,” you shout. “Would you all shut up?!”

You glance around the room, staring down all those who just want to keep arguing. Whether it's the bloodshot eyes or the smell of shit and alcohol that seems to permeate throughout the room, everyone's attention is turned to you. A couple of noses twitch in disgust at the smell.

Where is that smell coming from? you wonder.

“Well, what's the plan, boss?” your Head of Public Relations asks. The comment drips with sarcasm. You had meant to fire that weasel-faced little jerk months ago. Now here you are in the middle of a public relations nightmare, and all he could think of is insulting your intelligence.

“Aren't you the PR guy? Why don't you pull your head out of your ass and see if you can figure out a way to spin this and regain some of our market share? That is what I pay you for, isn't it?”

You stare him down until he turns away, but not before tossing a couple aspirins on the table. “You look and smell like shit. Take these, it'll clear the cobwebs. I'm going to need you clean and awake for any media campaign.” Pushing past the rest of the board, he leaves the conference room, nearly knocking Milo over as he enters the room.

Milo walks up to the boardroom table and looks around. You are barely able to contain a snicker. The skin on your VP's head is bright red. It no longer says VP DERP, but you could stop traffic with how raw and red it is.

“Well, what's the plan?” Milo asks, ignoring the fact that everyone is staring at his forehead.

“There isn't one yet. The PR weasel is looking into it,” you answer as you pop the two pills that he gave you into your mouth. Pulling a silver flask from your pocket, you wash them down with a swig of bourbon.

You turn your attention to the scientific side of the equation; it's what you're best at, after all. You never really did want to be The Face of the company. The science was solid, you were positive of that. Something else had changed, maybe an outside influence. Your nose twitches as an offensive smell permeates the air.

What is that smell?

You notice a couple other people are covering their mouths and noses as they dismiss themselves from the meeting. Even Milo is looking around for the offending odor. Very subtly you turn your head to sniff your own armpits. Nothing...

“Did you just smell your own pits?” Milo asks.

“No, my neck is stiff; I was just getting a kink out of it,” you answer defensively.

Milo is about to say something when the head of your Public Relations team walks back in. Right next to him is a beautiful blonde. She looks as if she just walked out of the pages of a magazine. You rub your eyes, sure that you are hallucinating, there is no way this little twerp knows this hot babe.

“This is a reporter for KWCM, Channel 32. Time to get down to the business of repairing the company's image.” He turns to the cameraman. “You can set up right over there.”

“Whoa, whoa. I thought I would have time to...Do you smell that?” You have to fight back a gag reflex as your nose is invaded with the putrid smell of human feces. Milo's eyes widen as he points towards the corners of his eyes. You shrug, not sure what he is saying. Again he points at the corner of his eyes and then points at yourself. Reaching up to the edges of your eyes, you rub your hand across your eyes.

They come away covered in a brown liquid. You begin to gag. The smell is horrifying, and it appears to be pouring out of your eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” You glance around the room and everyone is staring at you—everyone but Weasel-Face.

Your PR guy turns to reporter. “As I promised you, exclusive footage of what our flawed product can create. The human body literally turns to shit...Ooops, can I say that on TV? We are reworking our schematics and the chemicals involved in the waste recycling and will have a new model available soon.”

What?! You try to shout at that weasel-faced little ass, but brown sewage spews from your mouth. Your vision is blurring; you can see that it's leaking from every pore.

Your legs give out as your bones begin to liquefy.

“Unfortunately there is nothing we can do for those in these advance stages of the sickness,  like our CEO here. We have created an antidote for it and it has passed all government tests. Our VP here will prove that it works. The first pill starts the liquefaction process, the second set is the newly reworked formula which will reverse the process.” He hands Milo a couple of pills. The last thing you see as your body becomes a brown stinking pile of liquefied sewage in the middle of the floor is your Head of Public Relations handing Milo the same pills he gave you for your hangover.

I knew I should have fired him....

Oops...Return to Chapter 2