The Genesis People - Chapters 3 & 4

                                            3

                                The Nightmare Begins

I’ve never met this Daniel Griffon or Sarah Terrahman. The only explanation I have of obtaining knowledge of their existence, background and involvement with the event comes from a fellow scientist who worked with them, and who also stole every audio and visual recording onto a memory stick during the time that the shit really hit the fan on May 24th, the day that things really got out of control. 

   The last visual recording during the project showed an experiment with the plant. The plant had undergone various different tests. However, when I say ‘plant’, I mean its cutlings, just as Daniel Griffon wanted it to be. Bizarrely enough, according to the video and audio recordings, and the scientist who took them, those copies grew immensely quick. It took only four hours for each clone to grow. There were five cutlings produced in a little over half a day.

  The clones had been tested on countless organisms, including fish, birds and insects. In all of those tests, the cutlings absorbed their hosts’ DNA and created a duplicate body that grew inside the now dead creature. Each cutling, or newly-created being, still possessed the characteristics that made them stand out. The original plant, on the other hand, had been the real subject for its last test; Daniel, who had slowly lost his sanity and everything else connected to him, nicked one of his hands with a scalpel and offered it to the plant. The plant, rather than simply absorb the blood protruding from his hand, instead lunged towards the hand and shot out vines that prevented Daniel’s arm from moving. The bulb of the plant opened up, revealing dozens of rows of teeth. A tongue-like appendage leaped out of it like a firework sent up into the sky. It released a green, vapour-like substance that crept its way into Daniel’s hand and bloodstream. That vapour contained its DNA, the virus-like

   Daniel showed a tinge of fear, but otherwise remained collected. The feeling of having vines wrap round his arms was relatively disturbing, and the feeling of the vapour making its way into his body was somewhat painful. But he had awaited this. He waited to test himself on that thing, to become, in his own, deluded right, the transcended being. Within moments of having the green cloud skid through his body, Daniel felt exhausted.

The plant unwrapped his hand, placed its appendage back into the bulb, and remained as if it never even attacked him. Daniel felt the opposite of what he was mere minutes ago. Whereas he felt lively and reasonably at whole, the sense of fatigue and death now approached him.

   He realized his mistake. He was not supposed to be some new form of life. He was supposed to be the template, not the result. He now knew that his work and manipulation had ultimately cost him his life. He felt the slow dread of his DNA being sucked out of him and into this internal invader. He collapsed onto the floor, his eyes feasting on the plant that had absorbed both his body and life.

   Within a couple of minutes, several scientists made their way into the room. There were four scientists, excluding Daniel. The four carried him away, two carrying his legs, the other two carrying his arms. Dan’s rapidly weakening body was locked in a white room. Only a door, a security camera and a mirror could be seen inside this room. If you’ve seen movies involving interrogations, then you’d know that the mirror was a one-sided mirror, so the doctors looking through the glass had the safety of a possible Dan duplicate being oblivious.

   Two hours had passed when it happened. For two hours, Dan’s body declined in physical appearance. His skin rotted; his hair fell out; his body pulsated in various areas. Then, finally, some force made its way through the chest and started hammering it with all its might. The force eventually burst out of his chest, blood splattering across the room. The now-deceased shadow of Dan’s former self collapsed onto the floor. A small, grey arm with a red ring round its wrist revealed itself, much to the sickness and ghastliness from those watching.

    The rest of the creature made its way out of the chest. It resembled a pale-grey child with bright hair, the same shade and colour of its host. Red rings were present around the elbows, knees and neck. Its eyes shone a golden brightness, giving it a demonic appearance and an unearthly aura. Suddenly, after making it way off the body and onto the floor, it shrieked in agony and kneeled down with its hands on the floor. It was undergoing a rapid mutation from fledgling to adult. The creature’s bone structure stretched and widened, and its face shifted and formed into an adult’s. The finger nails sharpened into talons. As the scientists watched this, they had requested something to kill it. But there were no weapons for such an eventuality.

   At the end of the metamorphosis, the creature was now a demonic-looking copy of an adult Daniel. The Daniel-clone stared at the supposed mirror, and then smirked, showing its mildly sharp teeth. He walked over to the glass in a slow, hypnotic pattern and placed a taloned hand on it. It did the same to its remaining one, pulling its face towards the pane as it did until it could easily fog it up with his breath. He entered a facially neutral pose, once again pulled off a smile, and setting the atmosphere for the most unexpected and disturbing moment that the scientists were about to experience.

   ‘I know you are there. Hello.’ It said this in Daniel’s voice, in a plain, robotic way, but at the same time, with a humour as twisted as its hellish new body. The fact that this creature, who had the distorted image of Daniel, could achieve the ability to speak rendered the scientists in a state of awe. It had killed Daniel and had absorbed his genetic make-up and layered it onto its own.

   While some were thinking, ‘oh my god’, Sarah was thinking, ‘I don’t believe it. That thing’s become him. It can successfully absorb humans. I wonder, can it –‘

She was cut off by a dawning realization. It could be possible for the clone and virus to spread DNA through touch. She then asked in desperation where the four who carried Dan off were. She explained her theory to them, and they too were dying to find them. The only places where security cameras were not allowed were living quarters. Groups of three made their way to each of the respective scientists’ living quarters, Sarah being in one of them.

They all found the same in each room; each scientist sitting on a desk beating a slow two-beat rhythm. However, there were no rotting bodies. The grey-skinned beings said, ‘We feel so much better. Much, much better. Through touch, mentality and biology can be re-written. We are not clones. We are changed. We are a hive mind, and you will join us soon.’

   If what was being said was true, then the virus/DNA was an entity that could infect people in different ways. By being directly infected with the virus entering a wound or mouth, such as Daniel’s case, the person will die and have a physical copy created. By simply touching the infected, or any copies, the infected will slowly have his body and mind taken over and changed by the virus. The groups were, unfortunately, exposed to the virus/DNA through touch, which spread across the base in a matter of hours.

  One cynical scientist, Dr Mark Harrow, knew of what was going on, and stole all files and recordings on the project onto a memory stick. Harrow is the scientist who told me everything about this.

   He activated the facility shutdown system on a computer, scared for his life. He always brought a handgun incase things went wary, as he knew that this was the only way to prevent a world-wide infection. Harrow only had limited ammunition, so, after sending a bullet into every head of the infected he could aim at, he dashed to the only exit of the facility before it closed tightly. One hundred and fifty people were locked inside that facility that, in a sense, created them.

   When he got out, he sighed with great relief. He had contained and killed many people who were either cloned or controlled by that virus. He made his way to Hawaii to use a phone so he could inform the American government of what had happened. He used one of many motorboats across the facility’s island,

   While he seemed happy to be alive and sad for the loss of people, he did not know about an additional element in the virus.

   It possessed an instant healing factor.

                                              4

                                         Hawaii

The healing factor that the creatures possessed allowed them to survive a gunshot wound to the head. As soon as they fell they rose again. With the memories they gathered from the DNA of their hosts, they knew how to deactivate the facility shutdown. As a result, the process of spreading and combining the virus’ DNA could infect even greater if they absorbed at least one country, since the human replicas/virus clones would carry on the work.

   One hundred and fifty. That was more than enough to infect a country. And what better country to infect than Hawaii, which was right next to the facility? This way, the beings in Hawaii would help absorb and simulate with the world.

   Getting to Hawaii was not difficult, since several boats were made to travel from Hawaii to the facility. These boats were motorboats, allowing fast transportation when skidding across the water. As the beings set foot on the docks of Hawaii, they were met with glances from many people. The reaction from the residents was understandable. These newly-arrived people were out of the ordinary with their terrifyingly-monstrous appearance, and the talon only made things worse.

Some locals laughed, some were scared. All one hundred and fifty creatures gave people glances before a police officer attempted to arrest them.

   This police officer, Henry McOwen, aged 46, father of two, thought the same things as the locals; what the hell are these guys doing? Over one hundred pale-grey men and women, with talons the size of bread knives, walking through Hawaii in a trance-like state.

   ‘These guys must be from some sorta cult,’ he thought. Although you now know as to why these creatures looked disturbing and strange, Henry’s explanation, however odd-sounding, gave itself an air to linking it to a devil-worshipping cult.

   Henry, valiant as he would be at a time like this, was but a walking distance away from them. Being brave, or just plain normal, given his own reasonable explanation at the time, walked up to the first wave of the creatures with no worry. He simply took out his handcuffs and spoke to them.

   ‘Alright, everyone, you are to all go away now. If you do not comply, then I’ll be forced to arrest you. Please do as I say.’

   Poor, unfortunate idiot. Sure, he had a good motive, but he forgot an important rule of arresting large amounts of people: always sent back-up. The first wave reached out a single hand and whisked at his clothing. It didn’t matter if they infected his skin, but as long as the DNA-virus reached something that can interact with a person, then that was enough.

   Henry felt that this was extremely out of proportions. This was too much of a joke for him, no matter how bad. Still with his cuffs in hand, he had the determination to grab one of the beings and send them down to the floor, where he handcuffed it. As he got up, something inside him fueled him with a sensation of death. His thick, bulky hands were wracked with sweat and an almighty tightening pain. His face started to sweat as fast as his heart could beat; and that heart was beating fast enough to explode. Soon, his legs felt numb, then lifeless, then finally nonexistent.

   Henry collapsed on the floor as his body gradually degenerated into a host with a mind and body under influence. After several minutes, the pain stopped as his heart returned to normal pace. His skin now adopted the same tone and marks as his ‘brethren’. By this point, the sons and daughters of the Next Step Project attacked everyone else. Even when the police shot them, they were still impervious to bullets. Hawaii, a great vacation resort, was now being overrun by the spawn of Hell.

                                                                 *

   Dr Harrow, having just informed the government about what happened at the facility, heard the screams of Hawaii. He removed himself from a phone booth inside a bar he used, and saw the seemingly-dead bodies of DNA-virus beings rampaging throughout the country. He realized that he had to escape now, or else who would tell the rest of the world of what happened thanks to a young British idiot and his ties with the government?

   As he got out the bar, he saw to his left the fleeting survivors galloping to safety, and to his right, the ever-growing, zombie-reminiscing creatures, whose slow movement and eerie silence beckoned an afterlife of mental and physical slavery. Dr Harrow, with a memory stick containing information that would combat this infectious threat in his pocket, ran in the same direction as the free-minded, free-bodied people.       

   These people, only knowing that they were being attacked by strange, monstrous-looking creatures, ran to their homes or into vehicles to get away from the nightmare. Some even took the liberty of travelling off the island with the use of a holiday-abroad luxury ship that had thankfully entered the docks.

Though there were now hundreds of these viral beings, and several hundred more survivors aiming to enter this sea-bound haven, chances were slim in getting away scot-free. Since gunfire proved wasteful, an undetermined number of people got in their vehicles and used them to create a large barrier around the dock that would give the survivors enough times to escape.

   This tactic proved successful, with a total of 700 people managing to get onboard, with the good Dr Harrow being one of them. A few ten-odd ships were also available, allowing roughly twenty people to enter each ship. These poor survivors of a vacation gone horrifically wrong figured that their story might not be taken seriously by the rest of the world, but realized that with an estimate of seven hundred people, the rest of the world might believe them.

Now seemingly trapped in Hawaii, five-hundred-and-eighty-six viral monstrosities did not anticipate the intelligence of the humans. With their hive mind, they decided to call themselves the Genesis People, on the summary that their creation and mission would spark a new wave of life-form across the planet.

Their new prison, though larger, still provided them with a new way to access the globe’s continents; airplanes. The Genesis People would use these to scatter themselves through various airports, sending ten of their own to each country.

   First, the remaining, ordinary people now quarantined on Hawaii had to be ‘cleansed’ of their former selves, and reverted to the new side, the ‘right’ side.

   With knowledge from almost six-hundred people, the Genesis’ first intended country involved parachuting only two People into a country under conflict, infecting both warring factions.

   Their first target was Afghanistan.