WriterWithFire
Synopsis
An epidemic has ravaged the world, mutating and adapting to every treatment. In the darkest hour a private corporation presents a revolutionary new treatment giving the body the ability to revert and reformat its own cells to fight the disease.
The cure performs beyond the expected. The body increases muscle when needed, and subjects gain significantly increased physical abilities. Bodies repair themselves, wounds heal, bones reconstruct and limbs re-grow. It appears that mankind’s elusive dream of immortality is finally attainable. This dream however, becomes a nightmare when those who have received the cure become suddenly and inexplicably violent.
“Zombies are how they describe them, but that is not what they are. This is not the movies it is something far worse. Those of us surviving still in this nightmare have taken to calling them the Haunted.”
Isaac is a survivor trapped in the Southern California Quarantine zone. Hearing the call of the Haunted more each day he retells his story, starting from his wife’s death, through his discovery of the terrifying truth of the Haunted, and the mystery behind a secret society known only as “The Sons of Heaven”. The following is his story told in his own words.
Excerpt
The Sons of Heaven Experiments Chapter One:
The Haunted
It was bitter cold. I remember that vividly. It was the kind of cold that climbs inside you,
and hangs there like a fog. It reaches its icy grip from your lungs up to your throat and squeezes.
It cuts through you from your bones to your teeth, and every breath is crisp, vivid pain. I
remember the cold, but more than that I remember the warmth. The warmth of my hands as I
lifted them to my face desperately hoping that the blood running from them was merely a terrible
nightmare, and that I could simply wake from this horrible and surreal reality. It was reality
however, and the weight of it forced me to the ground next to the beautiful horror that was the
lifeless body of my first and only love. As I fell to the ground the knife I been holding fell from
my grip, and clattered to the ground. The knife I had plunged into the most precious gift I had
ever received. The only person who could make me think there may be a God, and that love
conquers all. I knew then that there must be a heaven, because I had entered hell. I had murdered
my wife.
No that’s not true: I told myself over and over again that that wasn’t true. She asked me
to, she begged me, and she had made me. I repeated it again, and again. That wasn’t
my wife laying on the ground next to me her life draining from her chest. Those weren’t her
beautiful green eyes that now stared at me soulless and empty. Her fiery red hair now darkened,
and matted with blood. Those were not her full red lips twitching and mouthing breathless
words. This was not her. This was simply what was left. Her soul had been freed and she would
not be trapped in this prison. My hand fumbled blindly for my knife as I shakily began to force
my limbs into obedience.
As I gripped the weapon once again the blood had stopped pouring from her chest, and
the wound had begun to close. My wife was healing. Not my wife I told myself now on one
knee, and forcing myself closer to it. Just a husk I told myself, a damned monster that only
looked like her. The eyes began to flutter back to life, but remained soulless, and dim, as I
reached for her blood soaked hair. Not my wife, not her eyes. There was no life, no kindness, and
no love. This was not my wife. As my grip tightened on the hair above her scalp her lips formed
a snarl and she uttered a guttural inhuman sound. It uttered an inhuman sound. “Isaaaac.” It
growled as my knife reached her throat. Its throat, this was not my wife. I began saying it out
loud. “Not my wife… you are not my wife.” I began sobbing as I drew the knife across the
things throat. The sobbing became uncontrollable weeping as the knife moved back and forth. I
leaned close and whispered in her ear “I am so sorry, and I love you so much… we’ll be together
again somehow. We have to.” After removing the head, I collapsed to the ground and
surrendered to the empty blackness that my life had now become.
