The Apocalypse, a short story by Alfie Norris

My name is Jovan, and I am about to tell you one of the most unlikely stories you have ever heard. I was one of the lucky Serbs, I live in a nice house in Dedinje, I go to a good school, the French school actually and I have a family and a cat who love me. This was all going to change soon. I woke up, it was a normal Saturday morning, nothing special. Of course I had some schoolwork due Monday but, as usual I simply put it off until Sunday. I plodded downstairs, along the way I was greeted, happily by my cat, Budgie. I felt slightly sick for a moment, but then that subsided and I thought nothing of it. I wasn't’ the first on up though, dad was reading the paper, the Belgrade Insight actually, the cover saying in large bold letters:

Serbia to scrap genetically modified food ban

I said something that resembled “Morning” to him but I had only just woken up and my voice was a little husky. I looked in the fridge and suddenly everything looked horribly unappetizing. That was strange, I was usually somebody who loved food. Suddenly, the strange feeling in my stomach, which I knew was there all along, intensified, and it took all of my strength to not cry out in pain. Luckily dad was still reading the newspaper, his eyes slightly glazed over, mumbling something about taxes under his breath. I stumbled into the bathroom, groping along the walls searching for something to hold onto, the towel rack, “well I supposed it will do”, I told myself. I looked at myself in the mirror, I was deathly pale. My eyes slightly yellow. I tugged off my shirt and examined my chest underneath. There was a blue-green stain spreading underneath my skin, slowly creeping along, slow but determined. I sat down on the cold tiles and clenched my fists, once again trying not to scream in agony, this wasn’t just any stomach ache, this was something different. But then, just as fast as it had come, the pain subsided. I checked my chest again in the mirror, back to normal, as if nothing had happened. I stood there, a look of bewilderment stuck on my face. That was until my dad called from the kitchen, “fancy some bacon”, now I forgot all about this curious happening and before I knew it I was tucking in, suddenly hungry again. Everything was fine, that is until I went to sleep.I had a dream, a dream I never wanted to have. It started off with me walking along a deserted alleyway, searching for a hospital, that I knew shouldn’t exist. I walked in, time sped up by the strange powers of dreams. And suddenly I was in a room. A room with nothing on the walls, nothing at all was there, nothing, except for a table and a small chair. Oh and a slightly deranged scientist. He asked me a few questions, and I answered them, not really realizing what I was doing. Finally he pulled out a syringe and injected some clear blue liquid into the main artery in my arm. All the while talking about the greater good. I looked forward and saw the bread, the bread made from genetically modified wheat. I woke up, a cold sheen of sweat across my forehead, I was sitting bolt upright breathing heavily.I remembered what happened now. It was around three weeks ago that it had happened. I had taken some money out of my account, it was a birthday present for my mother, who had got rather annoyed with me a few days earlier, I felt as though I should pay her back. So I took out around 20,000 dinars to buy her a beautiful necklace. With all kinds of jewels embedded in it. The only problem now was getting the money back. The answer to that question came a little later when I was reading the newspaper. I was reading an article and when I turned the page I came to a load of adverts. I was about to skip them, as I usually do when something caught my eye. It was an ad saying, test subjects wanted, pay 2500 dinars, for more info come to this address. So the next day I left, and travelled to the centre where I found the address in a deserted back alley. In case you are wondering, I told my parents I was going to a friends house. Anyway, I saw this grotty hospital like building, so I entered. And you know the rest.

I was now sure that the green spread on my chest had been an effect of either the injection, or the bread, or both. The question was, why did it disappear? I decided to return to the lab to see if I could find the doctor, he had a few questions to answer. I trudged through the rainy Belgrade, it seemed as though the rain had arrived, solely to make me miserable. The day before had been lovely and sunny. I arrived in the alleyway. Everything looked the same, except for some extra graffiti. But as I got closer I realized something had changed. Instead of being completely bare on the front of the building there was a sign saying “The Best tailor In Town”  and instead of being unclean and  stained on the walls, they were spotless. I walked inside. There was a man sitting behind a desk eying a shoe with a magnify glass, talking to himself under his breath. He looked relatively old, around 60. He was surrounded by different suits and dresses and all kinds of different shoes. He looked up, “May I help you?” He asked. “There wasn’t some sort of lab or hospital here before, was there?” I replied ”I don’t know about any hospital young man” he answered, “although there is one around ten minutes walk away from here”. I shook my head “no, there definitely was on, right here,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I need to ask you to leave, now” he said, sharply. “But there was a hospital here”, i stuttered, confused. “Leave now,” he said with something menacing in his voice. And just like that, I walked out, bewildered, not knowing whether i was mad or I had got myself into a whole lot more than I understood.

 

I returned home, determined to find out what had actually happened in the lab. Then I remembered dad’s newspaper. “Maybe that had something to do with it,” I thought to myself. I looked up GMO in Serbia, but all that came up was an article by the Belgrade Insight. I was about to give up when I saw an article about a famous scientist found dead in his car after a terrible accident. I recognized the face immediately. He was the strange scientist who had injected me with the blue liquid. He must have faked his death as the article was a month old, just to start a new life. Then I put two and two together and worked out what he was doing had nothing to do with GMO it was something much darker, nothing to do with food, but genes alone. I returned to the home screen of the news website, and opened a new tab. I looked up the scientist, called Dr. Ivan Curcic. He was researching how to bring back dead genes, dormant genes that date back millions of years. After looking a little more I saw that some different diseases could be awakened through genes like Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. According to the news, when he died he was fixated with the Mayans. He believed that the world would end on the 21 December 2012, and one of the last things he said to his wife was if it didn’t happen, then he would put things right and make sure it did. I returned to the news website. The latest headline was as follows “freak virus outbreak, cause unknown”. I started to read the article, “The symptoms of this virus, are green veins that stand out, the lack of logical thought and the craving for human flesh”. I stopped reading at that point because I was beginning to feel sick, who could do such a thing, and why. That crazy man. I knew that, as I was the first test subject, it was my job to stop him.

3 weeks later...

Belgrade is a mess, almost a third of the population has been infected and the authorities, or what’s left of them still don’t know why. NATO has intervened but have not been given permission to shoot the the...creatures, as there still may be a way to save the people. Most of them are shambling around in the centre, everyone else is trying to get away, but the roads are constantly blocked. We still don’t know where the virus, or at least what we think is a virus has come from.

I am now in an abandoned petrol station. I know I must find the authorities who are in a bunker somewhere, unknown. I know the secret. I know what really happened. And I have an antidote. During the three weeks that passed I have been doing research, to begin with on the internet, until that was taken down, then came the power. Now I rely on candlelight. I am armed with a small hunting knife which I have never used and hope that I won’t need to. Thankfully Ivan Curcic wasn’t as clever as he thought though. The second time I returned to the alleyway, around a week after my first trip I found a business card. It read as follows.

Ivan Curcic

Genetic Engineering

Belgrade Institute of Sciences

So that was my first stop. I left there the day after, it wasn’t so bad then. There were only a few creatures zombies, and they weren’t very clever, they were easy to avoid. I would move by the cover of darkness, although that often didn’t help as some of the dormant genes that were awakened gave them an acute sense of smell. I found his office, it wasn’t hard to get into as most of the buildings have already been looted by the few groups of people who decided to stay. I found his office in a few minutes and already knew what I was looking for. The day after apocalypse started in Belgrade I had a dream. It was another one about me having my injection. Except this time I remember seeing at he bent down to inject me with the liquid, there was a second red syringe in his top shirt pocket. I knew immediately that this was the antidote. It was in case it all went wrong. Anyway I searched his office for around an hour but all I found was boring files. Until, as I was about to walk out the door, I heard the floorboards creak under my feet. Bingo! I went back to his desk and found a screwdriver that I had previously unearthed. I unscrewed the floorboard and there it was, yet another red syringe.

Back to the present. I am still in the petrol station. I’ve got the antidote safely tucked away in a satchel along with a survival handbook and some tinned food. I’m waiting for the cover of darkness for me to go and find the government and hopefully save the world. I wake up to the sound of someone knocking on the door to my station. There are two of the creatures following him. He is shouting for me to help him. I get up, after just a few weeks in a city like this I can wake up and be ready in an instant. I unlock the door and quickly slam it behind him, bolting it shut.

He introduces himself as Dragan Curcic, Ivan’s brother. “To begin with, I didn’t trust him, but once he told me his story, I had to believe him, I had no choice. I am Ivan Curcic’s brother, we used to work together, in genetic engineering, I was more of a nano tech person though. He was obsessed with it though, he would work well into the night. Until one day, everything changed. He came out of his study, a different man. And then two hours later he died in a car accident. Sadly now I know the truth. I know he is actually still alive and that you where his first test subject in this monstrous great plan of yours. I suppose you already worked out most of this?” I nodded. “I don’t suppose you have got any tricks up your sleeve do you?” He asked. I pulled out the red syringe and showed him. His eyes lit up. “I remember these” He said “My brother stuffed crate fulls of them into the boot of his car, he said it was another experiment but I was suspicious. Turns out I was right. By now the (let’s just call them zombies) zombies had lost interest and shuffled away. We ran for it, staying as silent as we could. Next stop, the scrapyard.

We walk in, making sure to tread silently as to not attract attention to ourselves. Almost at once Dragan spots it, lying on it’s side in the corner, a light green Saab. We opened the boot and sure enough there were three crates full of the syringes. Dragan does some calculations. After a minute he looks up and smiles, “there will be just enough” he says. The next day we find the Serbian government bunker, where all the politicians were fretting about making impossible plans. Something that Dragan didn’t tell me was that he was also a computer hacker and we passed the security systems in minutes. WHen we entered the bunker we are greeted by a look of surprise, followed by embarrassment followed by anger. That is until Dragan showed the resident scientist the blueprints for the gun that would launch the antidote that would reverse the effects and return everything to normal. At first he looked at us in disbelief but then I saw a hint of curiosity in his eyes, and I knew we had won him over. Of course they had to go through all sorts of processes to check to see if the antidote was toxic or not, they even brought in a specimen to test it on. But in the end it all worked out. Within the year life returned to normal and the decade after that changed into merely a bad memory. What I learned from this experince is this: There are some crazy things that life throws at you, that you just have to deal with. I’m not saying that tomorrow a group of genetically modified zombies will arrive on your doorstep, what I am saying is that whatever life gives you, be it lemons or a coconut you need to deal with it and conquer the problem as well as you can. And something else that you scientists, who think you are so clever, should keep in mind. 

Don’t mess around with powers you don’t understand.