ECOPOCALYPSE CH.4 - TO THE HOSPITAL!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.4 - TO THE HOSPITAL!
By Mandy Ward

The Helicopter dips as you momentarily lose control from shock. How could it get this bad? What on earth is causing this?

As usual, Milo reads your mind.

Milo shudders. “What the hell is causing this, man? We did all those tests and there were no malfunctions or side effects from the prototypes. Shit, we even had a whole fricken town testing them for a whole year!”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get close to an Environaut recently, so how the fuck would I know?” you point out irritably as you wrestle the ‘copter back into stable flight.

“So what’s the plan?” Milo is jiggling his right foot and tapping his left hand on his left knee.

You ignore the annoying movement and concentrate on flying. “Not sure at the moment. I know that I’m not going to run away from this until I’ve had a damn good look at what’s causing it.”

Milo laughs. “Man, you’ve got so much money stashed all over the place that you could just go to ground. Why not let the Government sort it out?”

Glancing at him, you realise that his eyes have glazed slightly and his skin is looking far too yellow, even for an Asian.

You frown. “Did you use the john this morning before I woke up?”

“Yeah.” Milo’s voice is starting to sound slurred. “Man, I don’t feel so good.”

“Shit! Shit…just…shit!” you give yourself over to a bout of swearing as you swing the ‘copter around in the direction of the Iscariot Hospital. “Hang in there, buddy, I’ll get you to my sister at Iscariot.”

“Thanks.” Milo wipes a dribble of brown away from the corner of his mouth. “You got anything to drink in this thing? I’m parched.”

“Sorry, Milo. I don’t allow food or drink in here.” Risking a glance at your friend’s face, you increase your airspeed. I have got to get him well; I can’t fix the Environaut without him. Using the auto pilot for a moment, you text your sister about Milo. Her answer is predictable:

He’s a shit anyway; it’s just like finding like. Bring him in. We need a guinea pig that isn’t too far along for the treatments we’re developing.

Smiling, you put your phone away and take control of the ‘copter back from the auto pilot. “Madge says they’re developing a treatment. Trust her to be on the ball!”

“Yeesssrrrgh” Milo gurgles. Brown liquid is dribbling from the corners of his eyes.

“I just hope I can get you there before you try to attack me.”

“Yeesssrrrgh”

Dropping the helicopter cleanly onto the helipad at the hospital, you scramble out as the rotors slow.

A group of ER nurses rush out with an odd looking trolley. It’s one of those metal cages that the hospital uses to transport boxes and bags around the place, but it’s been covered in acrylic sheets and reinforced with metal. There’s a soft looking waterproof mattress on the base of the cage, and a bottle of some kind of gas attached to the side.

All the nurses are wearing hazmat suits, and they bundle Milo out of the helicopter and into the cage before he has a chance to complain. The door is bolted and one of the nurses turns the tap on the gas canister.

A loud hissing fills the air and Milo’s eyes droop before he collapses to rest on the mattress.

“Anaesthetic?” you ask anxiously.

One of the nurses turns towards you. “We’ll keep him sedated. It seems to slow down the rate of decay and hopefully it will give us time to administer the treatments."

You blink. It isn’t a nurse, it’s your sister. “Madge? Why are you in one of those?”

“Why do you think I am? It’s an airborne contagion, you idiot!” she marches towards you. “You had to go and invent something that turns people into Golgothans, didn’t you? Why couldn’t you just have gone and been an astronaut or a surgeon?” Madge looks upset.

“What’s happened?” you ask, moving closer.

The rest of the nurses wheel Milo away. Madge links her arm through yours and pulls you along behind them.

“Have you used a toilet this morning?” she asks.

“Not yet.”

“Have you been in close contact with any of the affected people?” Madge is strangely insistent.

“Did you not see the news this morning, Sis? They invaded my house and flung poop at us.” You snap back. “What’s with the twenty questions?”

“I’ve been dealing with the results of your little invention. Did you realise that three quarters of the patients I’ve had in the last two weeks have had a significant level of mercury in their systems?” she blinks. “Mum was one of them.”

“Oh.” You can’t think of anything else to say. You might have been estranged from your parents since going to college, but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t care about them.

”She died.” It wasn’t a question and you blink back the tears. “Time enough to grieve later, little bro.” Madge pats your shoulder. “Did you ingest any of the feces thrown at you?”

You gag a little at that thought. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“We’ll run some tests on you and put you through decontamination.” She eyes the suit you’re wearing. “A pity we’ll have to dissolve the suit in acid, but it’s the safest way to do it; burning just puts the infection vector back into the air.”

Two hours later you are pronounced safe from infection and, dressed in a set of scrubs and a hazmat suit, you are allowed to visit Milo with your sister.

“Hey man!” you wave at him inside his plastic encased cage.

He raises his head and you stumble back at the rage in his eyes and the brown, foul smelling sludge dribbling from his eyes, nose and mouth. He’s wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and there is brown gunk everywhere around him.

“He’s been through decon and had the treatment.” She gestures at a second gas canister. “It’s just a case of waiting now.”

“How many people have you cured?” You ask, feeling guilty.

She looks sad. “No one yet.”

Ushering her out and down the corridor to her office, you fire questions at her. “Do you know exactly what is causing this? Why do they start spitting up brown slush? What is it that the Environaut has done to cause this? Am I liable for any of this? Is Dad all right? What about animals? How widespread is it?”

She shuts the office door behind you and pushes you down into a seat. You unzip your hazmat suit and push it down to your waist in relief. Phew these things are hot.

Madge just unzips the hood.

“You’re a stupid excuse for an intelligent man,” she snaps. “The mercury in the Environaut’s coolant system is causing the zombie state. It’s affecting the brain in a completely new way, and there’s not much we can do to counteract it. The treatment we’ve come up with works about fifty percent of the time.”

You remember what Milo was swearing about. “Shit. The mother fucking board interfered with the design specs! They must have used the older design internally and the new design externally.” You collapse back against the chair. “What about the sludge?”

“That’s the remains of their internal organs; they go into rapid decay for some reason. While our treatment has been successful against the zombification, humans can’t live when they don’t have a heart, lungs or nervous system.” She raises an eyebrow as you dive for the waste paper bin and throw up in it.

Wiping your mouth on your sleeve, you turn back to her. “Why is that happening?”

“We don’t know. And the only way we’re going to be able to find out is to take samples from a working Environaut.”

“Aren’t there any in the hospital?”

She snorts. “You have got to be kidding. The hospital board vetoed acquiring Environauts when you refused to discount the price per unit.”

But that wasn’t me! That was the board; I remember fighting them on it six months ago. You swear in fluent Russian.

“Enough of that.” Madge aims a slap at the back of your head and you duck. “To answer the rest of your questions, if it was an internal fault that caused this then yes, you are liable. Dad is fine; he’s on his yacht in the Pacific. Animals don’t seem to be susceptible and it’s happening everywhere that your invention has penetrated.” She folds her arms. “So what are you going to do about it?”

You walk over to her office window. Outside the hospital, the numbers of shit covered zombies are growing, hunting down anyone still capable of movement. You remember Hal at EcoGen. “How are you keeping them out?”

Madge joins you at the window. “All the doors from the ground are locked. We have a thousand or so patients in here that we can’t risk. That’s why we’re keeping those brought in by helicopter up here in isolation.”

“How do you get supplies?”

“The Army airlifts them in.”

“What the hell can I do about this?” you wail. “Milo is the engineering genius. I’d need all the plans and a lab, not to mention…” you trail off and stare at your sister. “Will he survive?”

There’s a knock at the door and a nurse in a hazmat suit hurries in. “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Tebid–Fewmet, but the patient is asking for your sibling.”

The two of you suit up.

“I don’t know why you haven’t gone back to your maiden name, that bastard is long gone,” you say, zipping Madge’s hood up for her. “Besides, his name is almost as ugly as his face.”

She shrugs and stalks away down the corridor after the nurse.

Milo is sitting cross legged on the mattress. Brown slush has dried in long streaks down his body and, looking at the state of the cage, you’re glad for the canned air in your suit. That place must reek.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“You have to fix the damn machine. I know what’s wrong, but I don’t think I have enough time left to help you.” Milo coughs and a deluge of brown gunge splashes over his legs.

He ignores it. “First you have to get everyone to cut the power to the machines; that will stop anyone else being affected. Then you have to destroy the main processing plant. The fuckers on the board must have used mercury in there as well; the presence of mercury in the individual units would just cause toxification, not all this as well.” He waves a hand at the slurry around him.

You blink. “Did you understand that, Madge?”

She nods. “I can call the President to order a shutdown of the power plants. That’s the fastest way to kill the power to the machines.”

“Milo, how do we fix the Environaut?” you ask your oldest friend.

“My notes…” he coughs, “…at the lab… change the… coolant and…” a veritable flood of decayed internal organs emerges from his mouth. He slumps to the floor of the cage and the light goes from his eyes.

You find yourself crying. Poor bugger. What a horrible way to go.

Madge steers you back to her office. “Let’s get this sorted out.

So what do I do first? You think, sitting down while Madge makes her phone call. Destroy the main processing plant or pick up Milo’s notes? Or shall I just call it a day and do a Dad?
What's next?

A. Do you head to the marina for your yacht and join your dad in the pacific until it all blows over?
B. Do you try to retrieve Milo's notes from the lab in the hope that they hold the key to saving your hide?
C. Do you assemble a team to destroy the Main Processing Plant?

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - JUST DRIVE!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - JUST DRIVE! By Wayne DePriest

You slip into the seat and crank the engine. Your DeLorean is one of the ‘AXI’ models, so you’re sitting on the right. You thought it was cool when you bought the car. One of the advantages of this model is it doesn’t have all the crap forced on it by the government for sale in the US, so it’s gonna be fast—just what you need at a time like this. The engine catches, you hit another button on the remote, and another garage door opens behind you, revealing a well-lit tunnel.

“What the hell?” Milo exclaims.

One more click and the car starts to rotate.

“Holy shit!” Milo is wide-eyed. “This is too cool! You never told me about this!”

“It was my little secret. My version of the Batcave.”

“Where does it go?” Milo asks as the car stops rotating, now pointed straight at the mouth of the tunnel.

“I don’t know,” you say as you drop the tranny into first and hit the gas. “I’ve never used it.”

The car leaps forward and shoots into the tunnel. You double clutch and hit second. Then third. The lights are a blur as you and Milo barrel down the tunnel. You shift into fourth and see the tunnel curve to the right ahead of you. Around the corner you see the end of the tunnel. The opening is obscured by some kind of brush. You figure the builder put it there to camouflage the entrance because he’d seen your Batman collection. The brush can’t be too dense, certainly not enough to stop a DeLorean. Milo grabs the seat belt, slams the buckle home and presses his feet against the floorboards.

“Are we doing 88 yet?” Milo’s laugh is just a bit hysterical.

“Close,” you say, glancing down at the speedometer.

“Be the shits to bust through into 1985 or something.”

Just before the DeLorean hits the brush, the obstruction drops away. You realize there’s a pressure switch under the floor of the tunnel, like at a busy intersection for a left turn. The car shoots out of the tunnel and rockets onto a weed grown two lane track through a stand of trees. You back off of the gas as the car jounces over the uneven ground.

Milo’s whooping and hollering like a kid on a thrill ride at the state fair. You’re trying to keep the damn car on the road so you don’t slam into one of the trees. Up ahead you see some blue sky, fewer trees. You’re breathing a bit easier as the car slips between the last trunks. Your foot stomps on the gas pedal and the car leaps forward the last few yards to the top of the hill.

And over.

Only there isn’t any over. There isn’t any anything. Except a long Thelma and Louise drop into the jumble of heavy equipment eighty feet below where they’re constructing another Environaut. The front end of the DeLorean crashes into the bucket on a front loader. The stainless steel folds like an unpaired poker hand. You and Milo are thrown forward as the engines pushes through the firewall, crushing both of your legs against the seat. Milo’s seatbelt snaps from the strain. Your head bounces off the steering wheel while Milo’s bursts through the windshield. A broken nose for you, to go with the mangled legs. Milo’s nose breaks, too, but not until his head rolls off the crumpled hood, bounces off a tire of the loader and lands face first in the dirt. Blood is running out of your nose, but not as much as is pumping out of Milo’s neck stump and you frantically pull at the seatbelt, thumb jabbing the button to release it. The pain in your legs and nose is making you dizzy as you struggle with the door. It won’t open. You start to puke from the smell and sight of Milo’s headless corpse. Knowing a human body voids waste when it dies is not the same as being trapped in a car with the body doing the voiding. The vomit splashes against the window when you turn your head. Physics being what it is, some of the nasty bounces back into your mouth, which sets off another round of ralphing. Somehow you manage to crank down the vomit-covered window and pry your useless legs free. The smell of smoke kicks a burst of adrenaline into your bloodstream.  You pull yourself through the window and tumble to the ground eight feet below, landing on your left shoulder and snapping the collar bone. A scream escapes your lips as the bone breaks and your mutilated legs flop into the dirt. A loud whump! makes you look up at the car teetering in the bucket above you. The gas tank has exploded, upsetting the delicate balance of the car. Bits of flaming debris hit you, scorching your clothes, your face, your arms. But it’s nothing compared to sight of the flaming DeLorean tipping backwards and slipping off the bucket. The last thing you see is the vanity plate.

Up close.

SHT HPNS

Oops...Return To Chapter 1

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - MONDAY

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.1 - MONDAY By Tomara Armstrong

You’re vaguely aware that the sun has risen. Shades of pink paint the inside of your eyelids, while the memory of last night is a blur of alcohol-scented flesh-colored money. You just want to sleep it off, but the swamp of saliva you’re resting in keeps bubbling and tickling 

your nose, preventing a deep, restful sleep.

The door rattles and footsteps cross the room. You’re pretty sure it’s Monday, which means Rosalinda, your cleaning lady, is here to clean up your weekend shenanigans.  She kicks a gaming controller across the floor on her way to the kitchen and flicks on the television. You don’t care that she’s cursing you in a foreign tongue—your leather sofa is like a cloud 

sent from heaven, cuddling you ever so gently.

Your head throbs, and you groan as Rosalinda pitches last night’s bottles and cans into the enviro-bin. You roll over, covering your head with a pillow, exposing your bare ass.

At what point last night did you lose your pants?

You shrug it off and smile, trying to ignore the draft and push further into your cavernous sofa.

She turns up the volume on the television, loudly announces that she intends to run the vacuum, and strongly suggests that you seek the comfort of one of your many bedrooms. You grunt, pulling the pillow tighter around your head, trying to drown out the TV.

… Our investigative reporter Gail Silverman is live on the scene. Gail?

Thanks, Dave. I’m standing outside of Smart EcoGen, President and CEO...

Your eyes pop open. Did she say your name?

Surely not. You close your eyes again, trying to get comfortable.

Picketers have started camping out in front of the mansion since reports first started pouring in that their popular waste recycling generator, the Environaut, is responsible for a slew of health related problems cropping up around the world. President and CEO…

You sit up. She definitely said your name. You fumble for your glasses and accidentally spill a beer on your cover of Scientific American. “Shit!”

...has yet to make a comment, but a Smart EcoGen representative stated early this morning…

You jump up, flinging the beer across the floor and onto the TV. Rosa shoots you the stink eye and stomps off down the hall.

…are looking into the reports, but insisted that the safety of the public has always been first and foremost…

You’re ashamed. Ashamed that you had too much to drink, ashamed that you had too many friends over, and ashamed that you burned the other copies of Scientific American to make s’mores—ten copies with you on the cover, sacrificed in the name of snacks.

…What started as a peaceful display of vulgar signs and chanting has become more…

While you mentally make the vow to NEVER drink again, something hits your window.

…Oh my god, Dave! Protestors are flinging…feces at the mansion! This peaceful protest just got ugly.

Your stomach turns as the clods of human waste thud against your home. Rosalinda is going to quit for sure.

“What happened to your pants?” You swing around and see your best friend, Smart EcoGen VP, Milo Sabe, sprawled out on an angora rug. While he has pants, he also has a moustache and “DERP” written across his forehead—you’re guessing with Sharpie.  You keep the information to yourself as you dig a pair of shorts out from under your couch.

“You hear what’s going on?” you ask, slipping on your shorts.

“Protestors outside—throwing shit? Yeah, I heard.” He rubs his eyes, shaking his head.

“What’s that about?” You walk over to the window and peer outside. “Uh…”

Outside, picketers have scaled the outer walls of your property and are quickly crossing the lawn toward the house. They’re dirty—real dirty. So dirty, in fact, you think that they’ve covered themselves in the very stuff they were flinging at your home moments earlier.

Milo jumps as a window breaks. You back away slowly at first, but as the bodies begin pulling themselves into the room and blood drips down the broken class, you decide it’s time to go.

“Come on!” You pull Milo’s shirt and run off down the hall, leaving the protestors' incoherent shrieks behind you. They’re still trying to get into the house and starting your way.

Heading toward the center of the house, you slip in a puddle of water in the hallway. You skid to a stop, but Milo slams into you, sending you through a bathroom door. You quickly hop to your feet, averting your eyes. “Sorry, Rosa.”

She is sitting on the toilet with her head down. The water is on, and the tub is overflowing.

“Rosa?”

She lifts her head, and looks at you, chewing on her thumb.  “Are you ok?”

Her bloodshot eyes stare through you, as she peels the fingernail off with her teeth and spits it at you. You watch it hit your chest and fall to the floor, sinking into the pool of water collecting at your feet. Drops of blood swirl for a fraction of a second then disappear with the current.

You feel beer vomit tickling the back of your throat as Milo pulls you back into the hall and gives you a shove. “Time to go!”

The sickness fades as you run toward your bedroom. Once inside the room, you slam and lock the door.

“What now?” Milo’s eyes scan the room as you palm your bookshelf, remembering the access combination for the secret passageway. “Plan ahead” was your motto when you had the house built five years ago—it’s finally paying off.

“Aha!” The door swings open and you pull Milo into the dark hallway.  You can hear protestors banging on the door as you close the entrance and head down toward the emergency bunker below the house.

Your hand traces the wall, flipping on the light. The fluorescent bulbs buzz and pop, illuminating a massive room filled with cutting edge technology.

“What the hell, Bruce Wayne? How long have we been friends? You never told me you had a Batcave. I hate you,” Milo says.

“Oh, shut up. What’s the point of having all this money if I can’t indulge in a little frivolous spending?”

“A little?” Milo snorts, looking over the extreme gadgetry and flickering control panel. “I want a raise.”

You fire up a large display, push several buttons, and instantly you can see the whole perimeter of the house as well as many of its rooms. It’s quickly filling with protestors. You see their painted faces and wild eyes on the monitors. A thought creeps into your head and you shiver. They’re hunting you.

Milo is staring at the screen too—the color drained from his face. “What button do I push for the Batmobile? You have one right?”

“Uh… Yes and no.”

You press a button and the room begins to vibrate. A door opens, revealing an impressive display room filled with boxes of comics ordered alphabetically. Action figures fill glass displays—some loose, others with original packaging. In the middle of the room, on a pedestal, sits the Batmobile—a miniature replica fit for a circus clown.

“Shit.” Milo deflates. “That’s not going to get us out of here.”

“No, but I have a car.” You smile and press another button. A garage door opens, exposing a custom DeLorean DMC-12.

“Of course you do,” Milo rolls his eyes. “Does it run?”

“Sh-yeah.”  You think it does anyway.

Milo hops in the car and you grab the keys, pondering your plan of action. 

Should you:

A. Head to Smart EcoGen HQ and see if you find out what's going on;

B. Hold your ground and take back your house; or

C. Screw this! Just drive!