April 10th
17 Days After Quarantine

When first light did eventually come, his nerves, his entire sense of awareness had been tattered and torn; ragged like fabric that had been ripped from a tapestry. He’d managed to hold some water down, enough that he’d actually gone to the toilet as well but it had been when he’d looked out from the window and down to the pavement below before it came back up.

The two bodies of the couple upstairs had been there; but after the long night of terrors, the night of screams and alien voices, they were gone. He stopped for a good several seconds; looked hard and intently at the spot where they’d been, nothing. There was still the large and uneven circle of now dried blood where they’d both laid; but the bodies were gone, no where to be seen. It defied any and all logic. No carnivorous animals large enough to drag two bodies away like that were known in the area, and there’d been no one around since the day of the riots. The realisation of it went straight to his stomach, the water he’d done so well to hold down suddenly came straight back up as a murky translucent fluid that stung his sinuses on the way out and into the toilet. Images of the hive, of all that stuff he’d seen came back to him as he stared into the bowl. Were they part of it now? Was that what they’d become? Was the hive, the pus of humanity even real? He’d only seen it in the nightmares but they’d been so real and lucid he’d wondered many times about the reality of it.
Nothing had been moving around in the corridor for a while now; the whispering had settled but he still heard bits like the after image of a nightmare. The groaning, the ghostly and haunting sounds of the titanic along with the screams had subsided over the course of the last hour; but it was 5am and the sun was well on its way to emerging over the horizon. The approach of daylight had comforted him somewhat but he’d still felt sick, ragged, as if something were desperately wrong with his sense of awareness but he’d maintained he was still going out that day. After the last night he could feel it getting closer to him, slowly and surely it grew closer; a vicious cat creeping up on a hapless bird. But he didn’t know what lay ahead for him but he couldn’t shake the feeling it was coming for him, slowly, or maybe not so slowly, but surely. He’d still lost his composure enough that by the time he headed out from the apartment, he took nothing with him, hadn’t locked the door and no longer thought anything of the worries of catching the Plague as he might have done earlier. He had to reach Stacy, he needed a goal, something to look ahead to and with that, he headed out.

On the way out he’d looked over to the place next door. The door had been open, swinging just slightly as it caught a gentle breeze. Inside though he saw no one, no signs of recent activity, nothing to indicate anything had happened. He opened the door further, peering inside as it went, but still no one. He’d then gone right in, his memories of the family that had been there just an epitaph now that their apartment had fallen silent and the people themselves were nowhere to be seen. Even without them there he’d felt as if he were trespassing, as if walking onto the scene of a crime; the only thing that had been missing was the red barrier tape and the chalk lines on the floor.
By the time he’d reached the street below he couldn’t help but be struck with the memories, the images from the nightmare. To his relief though, he’d not seen any of the bodies lining the street like in the dream. The place still held a palpable uneasiness over him but the revelation that it hadn’t been reality, despite its lucidity gave him some small measure of peace as he paced down the road. Compared to inside, the air had felt fresh. A cool spring breeze nipping gently at his ears, and it felt kind of nice, it felt natural, and unlike the last several days, like things were meant to be. The subway came into view at the end of the road; the pit of nightmares, and he realised that without any traffic or anyone else around, he wouldn’t even have to take the subway to get to Stacy’s place. But he’d stopped for a moment and stared at it for several seconds before deciding to himself he wanted to go through it instead. In spite of what he’d been made to endure in the nightmare, he wanted to go through just to show himself none of it was real. There was nothing on the streets like he’d seen, and there’d be nothing down there either and he was going to prove that to himself. Every step closer he’d felt some part of him protesting against it; his legs feeling heavy, his chest short of breath, even a slight sweat on his forehead but he’d still gone forward. The subconscious mind endlessly remembering, recounting what he’d seen, but the rational mind discounting it in favour of reasonable logic instead.
He’d been about ten metres out when someone, a person suddenly came into view ahead near the mouth of the subway. The first person he’d seen, and still the first he’d seen in days. A woman, slim, blond hair, she’d looked to him as if nothing were wrong before turning toward the descent. Charlie had then realised from his depths of honesty and his sharp observation, that he knew this woman. He’d looked harder before she’d disappeared down the steps; the gait in her step, the posture of the shoulders, it was Stacy. The realisation had filled him with as much joy as it had mystery but he’d still called out to her after she’d gone out of view. Picking up his pace into a gentle jog, he’d descended the subway steps without a second thought and kept his gaze ahead as the light of the morning faded behind him. He saw her again further ahead, her flaxen hair shining in the dark as if reflecting the dim lights of the subway. She’d disappeared again and he’d gone in further picking up the pace to try and close the distance between them. He’d ran on further before realising; after the nightmare, after what his subconscious had been trying to warn him of, that he’d been wrong and he’d made a huge mistake. Within moments, it seemed like he then found himself back in the nightmare. The fetid air rose up from somewhere below deeper down in the subway. The lights had been obscured by the gruesome, fleshy growth he’d come to know so well. The tunnel had grown dark; the floor wet and sludgy, everything around him moving gently with the pulsing of the grotesque meat. Voices, screaming like they had done during the night came through from somewhere deeper in the subway; their sharp noise cutting through the vile air like a knife through cloth. The sight of the hive, its hot, moist surface reflecting the light and creating the image of what it could have been like being trapped inside some dreadful creature. It was real, the nightmares, the visions, everything weren’t just some vision or dream; but it was real after all. He’d just wound up like an overtightened sailors knot, every muscle in his body stiff and non compliant with terror. His stomach had felt as though he’d had some nightmarish creature coiled into a ball there, something he needed to get out, the sickness of fear going straight through him like a black dye colouring the water. Then the full horror of it came to him again; the full realisation of just what he’d stumbled into, of what nightmare he’d entered and its reality in the real, waking world. Piles of it had grown in the corners, of veins, of muscle and sinew, of things that once lived and now only remained as ghastly, disgusting travesties of the living world. At that point he’d panicked as the memories, the trauma of it rushed back to him like the return of a forgotten sickness. He hadn’t even remembered where he’d entered from, which way was out or which would lend him any kind of escape from the nightmare. Arms, legs, faces, pieces he couldn’t put names to moved, writhed in the horrid gelatinous flesh where all things became one; where all was consumed, annihilated and disseminated throughout the pus of humanity.
Suddenly there was a wet movement from somewhere in the masses of red white flesh before he caught sight of an organic, albeit completely alien looking limb arise from the torrid mass lining the whole subway. Then with that he’d just ran, he’d ran like he’d never ran before straight through the unknown lefts and rights of the nightmare hoping by some miracle he’d encounter some salvation or another. His sloshing and splashing in the watery, fleshy sludge had roused entities unknown from their slumber in the flesh and sent them screaming after him. Within moments he was at full sprint with the dreadful and horrifying sounds of something chasing him; screaming and howling down the tunnel after him. He hadn’t dared look behind in fear of missing any opportunity of a way out that might have arisen to his fore. What had originally sounded like a single set of footsteps behind had quickly transformed into a horrendous tumult of frenzied movement and horrifying near human screams coming after him with what sounded like maniacal anger no human could possibly possess. He’d just ran, ran in sheer terror through the labyrinth until, by what must have been a miracle, light appeared ahead, daylight at the top of the steps.

After clearing the steps, Charlie had sprinted out and back into the relative peace and safety of the daylight. He hadn’t known for how far, but he’d ran still at full speed for a good while as the terrible noises seemed to recede into the distance; presumably cowering from the light of day. He’d carried on running, his subconscious mind taking him in the general direction of the park and he’d only glanced back once to survey if he still had any pursuers. The subway had been about fifty metres behind; its entrance, the gateway into an otherworldly nightmare appeared small and distant. The area looked clear from anything that had been chasing him mere moments ago as if they’d turned back and fled to the safety of the darkness they’d known so well. He’d stopped and turned his face to the sky as he gasped for breath in long, ragged cycles; his hands shaking from the adrenaline, his mouth dry from fear. Stacy hadn’t appeared anywhere inside, he’d heard nothing from her. It had been as if she’d never been there, but he’d seen her, as clear as day. It was real; he couldn’t believe it but it had all been there, just like everything else, impossibly and terrifyingly real. Things that shouldn’t have existed, things that couldn’t have existed, yet there they’d been; all on display in the macabre exhibition that had been the pus of humanity.
As if the horror in the subway hadn’t been enough, he allowed himself once more to investigate another locale from the nightmare. He’d convinced himself it was on the way to Stacy’s place anyway, that he’d have to walk right around it anyway. Part of him hadn’t wanted to, and an equal and opposite part of him had. He couldn’t shake the image of the park, the football field and the thing that had been there in the nightmare.

Just as in the nightmare, he’d approached the field; the crest of the hill not far ahead, and he’d then seen people, the first people about during his outing. They’d all been spaced out from one another as if abiding by the social distancing rules that had once meant so much, but they’d all been facing away from him toward something he couldn’t see. Everything from the nightmare had come back to him, it had all been exactly like it.
The people, dozens of them had stood there spaced well apart from one another and all of them facing the main, horrifying spectacle of the scene; the metaphorical elephant in the room. Everyone had been blank, expressionless and unreadable and Charlie had felt no inclination to attempt communication with anyone on account of the profound sense of wrongness about it all. It had been more as if they’d been possessed or in some way under the control of some force unknown. They’d all stood there motionless like humanoid shaped tombstones scattered about the field; all the while, with every step, the thing came further into view over the hill.
By the time he reached the top and could see over to what had once been the football field, the horrifying amalgamation of meat came fully into view. The thing pulsed and writhed only slightly, its long tendrils of what looked like processed flesh extended out from the main body to what must have been about twenty or thirty metres across the pitch. Everyone that had been there had stood there motionless; but upon looking closer Charlie saw more, something he either hadn’t seen or hadn’t been there in the nightmare. Just to the fore of the mass, at its metaphorical foot, sat a pit of some kind. Fleshy and far wetter than the rest of it as if it were some kind of living slurry pit made from live flesh. The people stood around were far and wide and many of them near the front, closest to the thing, had been slowly moving forward, toward it. Charlie had stood there motionless as he’d noticed everyone slowly moving toward it as if being pulled in by a subtle, gentle tide. The first person, right there at the front had then been only a step away from the foul living slurry pit before something came to Charlie, something not of words or perceived with senses he’d been familiar with; but some other perception he’d never known.
From his distance, he couldn’t see anything specific about the person right at the front, but they’d walked ahead, closer and closer before falling into the pit. That had been when Charlie had felt it, some other intelligence, a force interacting with him. He’d realised in that moment that everything that had happened, all of it was far more than just a mere sickness. He’d realised then that there were some other force at work, that there was a being, an intelligence that had somehow penetrated their reality. One that could warp reality; it didn’t have to want to, it didn’t have to think about it, it just did, simply by being there. The nightmares, first the Plague victims, then the children followed by the adults. What they’d seen hadn’t been mere dreams or hallucinations, but vivid images of what was to come, of what would become reality. But everything that had penetrated their world had merely been a side effect of the presence of something wholly terrible and unknowable. He’d watched as the person at the front began to sink into the fleshy slurry. The barrier between their body and the sludge quickly broken down, the flesh merging, intertwining as the body became stripped of it parts. Blood and bone and sinew all in view as the body rolled within the undulating mass of slurry. He’d seen then, the Plague, the nightmares and everything that had come to be, hadn’t been a series of unrelated events or coincidences; they’d been one and the same thing. The people stood waiting to give themselves to the pus of humanity looked to be largely unaffected by the Plague. They’d been the ones that’d had the nightmares, that’d had their minds reprogrammed by what they’d been made to see. The Plague victims on the other hand, had formed the mass of the hive and the hideous things within it where it had all begun.
He’d stood there for several minutes watching as the people, one by one gave themselves over to the Plague; to the rolling, pulsating pus of humanity that had taken them in, stripped and amalgamated them into things that there was no name for. The horror, the horror of the revelation had been too much. He’d known it for some time but he knew right there he’d been turning the truth away from himself, to see less of reality, to see less of what was becoming of the people, of the world. But now it had been revealed to him in blistering, disgusting clarity that he couldn’t refuse to acknowledge. He’d moved on, powerless; he’d left the rest of them to their morbid fate they seemed to want so much.

By the time he reached Stacy’s apartment block he’d found nothing. No one on the ground floor; which considering everything, hadn’t surprised him. But making his way through the corridors to the stairwell, he’d felt tension, in himself, in the environment around him like a residual charge left behind after something terrible had happened. With each floor that he’d ascended, he’d felt a greater sense of unease like approaching the crest of a roller coaster before the unavoidable and inevitable drop on the other side. He’d been nervous, scared of what he’d eventually find when he reached her apartment but he’d still gone on, he had to know, what ever it was. It had been the third floor when he’d first seen it, the start of it, of how it began and then of how it consumed everything in its path. At first he’d seen just long, narrow vein like growths on the walls like an ivy expanding its territory; but soon it had turned, grown into the thick, repulsive and meaty tendrils covering the entire interior. Thoughts, images, mental scars of the hive, of what had been in the subway all came back to him in rush of painful memories and emotional responses. His body had responded; heart rate increased, the blood ringing in his ears and his hands shaky as the adrenaline began once more. But he’d still heard nothing, no movement, no near human shouts or screams. He’d reached Stacy’s floor still feeling he were the only one there yet the tension of it had been undeniable. The angles of the walls seemed to push down on him. A bizarre loneliness about the place yet he felt something had been watching him; its hideous eyes watching him from somewhere he couldn’t see, from somewhere in the growth now sprawling across the entire interior. He’d got the sense maybe it hadn’t been just a single entity but perhaps the growth, the pus of humanity collectively observing him.
His heart had been racing, his face sweaty in the fetid air as he first lay eyes on what had been Stacy’s apartment door. Approaching, it had been too clear to him the place was now a part of the fetid hive; but without any signs of movement, he’d gone ahead and entered the putrid den of what had once been a place of happiness. Inside though, he’d found nothing but more of the same; the pus consuming everything he’d known there leaving only bits, fragments of the environment he’d once known sticking out from the mottled flesh here and there. He’d gone through the whole apartment; his feet gently sloshing in the fluid, squelching in the foul meat of the hive underfoot but he’d found nothing. He’d felt himself deflating. A balloon with a slight hole that would eventually and certainly fall back to the ground sooner or later. He’d felt as though a weight had both been added and removed all together in a single, confused moment before he’d turned back to the door, the way out but then he’d seen her; she was just standing there.

“Come on Charlie, we need to get out of here.” He heard her say as she walked past the door out into the corridor.
His awareness had come back to him; the fresh breeze of air returning a revitalised, renewed energy back into him. She’d walked out toward the stairs, her flaxen hair a dash of beautiful colour in the foul grimness of the hive. He could smell her, even amid the disgusting hive of flesh around him and the fetid air; he could smell her beautiful, enchanting essence that he’d known so well. It had been as if the pus around him no longer mattered. He’d found what he’d ventured out to find, now to escape and return home with the elixir. He’d followed her all the way back down the steps, her image disappearing every so often as she descended the steps a little too fast for him but he followed the best he could. With each floor down the growth had disappeared more and more until they reached the ground floor once again; the exit in sight, daylight shining through the main entrance as if guiding them out from the nightmare. The descent, and eventual exit from the building had all gone as a hurried departure toward what was hopefully something new, something nice, something he liked. She’d stood there out in the open across the forecourt of the apartment building. Her hair bright and vibrant in the sunlight, her smile as radiant as the sun itself as she looked, waiting for him, for their long awaited embrace that would bring them together once again in the lovers shell. With every step closer he’d felt his nervousness unending, as if some part of him wondered if things were the same between them; but her gleaming smile had shown him everything he needed to know as reassurance.
He’d gone step after step closer; then suddenly in one horrifying moment, it happened. Suddenly the fact that the events of the last ten minutes had not been what they had seemed had been made all too clear to him. With every step closer to her beautiful smile and her open arms promising a lovers embrace, the sky grew darker, the landscape around him morphing into sour notes of black and red; the world around him turning into a horrifying nightmare from which he’d thought he’d almost escaped from. Stacy had disappeared into the darkness; her expression one of reassurance as if she hadn’t realised or been aware of what was happening, of what horror was unfolding second after second. It had been in that moment the landscape had altered. Infinite leagues of land, each piece a screaming face looking up at the sky of black. Around him Charlie saw only endless faces. Screaming, agony, terror; an unearthly landscape of nightmarish reds and blacks where the gentle blues and greens of the real world had once been. It had only been noon, yet the nightmarish darkness had come. Day into night, the realness of light turning into the horrid, surreal dark. He’d felt in that moment as if his essence, the last part of his humanity were beginning to be sucked out from him and into the void. Around him, every conceivable nightmare emerged, everything he’d seen, and everything that was still to come was out there on dreadful display. A nauseating unease followed as he felt something, he hadn’t known what at first; but it had just emerged into the world for the first time.

It was a being, an entity, a force, a god. The mind had gone, it had gone; but even a dead god can dream. He’d realised with that knowledge that the Plague, the nightmares, the riots; they were nothing compared to what came after, of what was still to come. He felt some kind of understanding of what was happening; a feeling, a series of ideas or thoughts impregnated directly into his mind; some level of comprehension of what was happening.
The nightmares, what they’d all seen weren’t just some image created by the delirious human mind thrown into disarray by the Plague. It was real, what they’d seen was real. It had been happening all along; the nightmare had been crossing over into the real, waking world. He knew then that that was what no one understood about any of it. Everything that had occurred hadn’t been just a coincidence or a run of bad luck; but there was some other force, entity at work that had brought all of this about. The Plague, the nightmares, they were a terrible machination of the gods dream, or perhaps nightmare; all together finding its way into their plain of reality. An unearthly nightmare made real.

Concludes in episode 5