The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast - Pandemic Bonus

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

While the COVID-19 pandemic has many self-isolating, The NoSleep Podcast presents the Pandemic Bonus. Five previously-released Season Pass stories with themes about pandemics and plagues. TRIGGER WARNINGS! “The Pigeons Around Here Aren’t Real” written by Manen Lyset (Story starts at 00:03:45) Produced by: David Cummings Cast: Narrator – Peter Lewis, Clint – David Cummings “There’s Something Underneath Southern Utah” written by T. Takeda Wise (Story starts around 00:31:00) Prod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The No Sleep Podcast presents the pandemic bonus episode. During these times of self-isolation and quarantine, take your mind off of disease and infections by listening to Five Tales about, well, disease and infections, but of a fictional kind. They say truth is stranger than fiction, so here's some fiction to counterbalance the truth we're all dealing with. These stories were originally presented on season past episodes from earlier seasons. Now, let's join our plucky little team at the No Sleep Campus.

Can I have everyone's attention, please? Settle people, settle. Okay, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is we've successfully completed episode six of season 14. Ha ha, ha, well done, gang. Hooray! What's the bad news? Has Peter been up to his activities again?

I'll have you know my time lately has been spent doing nothing but my usual philanthropic endeavors, madam. I stand, or rather sit, corrected. Let's stay focused, folks. No, the bad news is because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are being forced to stay inside and self-isolate for the foreseeable future. That means we can't leave the no-sleeful. campus. Oh, man.

I can't stay here. I have to get to Italy. I have my yearly time shirt, my villa in Tuscany. I can't afford to miss the five days and three nights I've booked there. Andy, darling, whatever shall we do?

Being stuck in the colonies at the start of polo season simply won't do. I agree, my sweet. But it sounds like this is serious. We may have to forego whacking our balls on horseback for the time being. Speaking of ball whacking, where's Dan and Brandon? What? What's that supposed to mean?

You two love sports, like football and baseball. It's all balls with you two. Phrasing. Okay, okay, gang, let's calm down. We're going to be together for quite a while, so let's try to stay calm and collected. I know. Why don't we pass the time by telling scary stories to each other? So you mean like just continue working like we always do? No, I mean like we turn down the lights, make some popcorn, and tell each other stories. Oh, why don't we tell stories about plagues and pandemics? You know, like take our minds off reality with some fictional infectious tales? That is a great idea.

I'm sure we can come up with plenty of germ-ridden tales to have fun with. I know one about an outbreak having to do with birds. Bird flu? Yes, he flew away, but that's not really important right now. No, this story, see, is about pigeons. It was told to me by author Manin Lyset. Sounds great. In fact, I'll join you.

Let's call this story, the pigeons around here aren't real. It's no secret that big cities have pigeon problems. Toronto was no exception. Like rats in the Middle Ages, the disease carrying vermin spent the past decade running amok and increasing their numbers. It was my job to try and keep Toronto's ever-growing pigeon population in check. Thankfully, I came across an article about a pilot project where researchers replaced pigeon eggs with wooden substitutes. The birds, too stupid to know the difference, spend months caring for the fake eggs instead of producing more. The project was a huge success, and the pigeon population decreased significantly in a short amount of time.

It sounded like the perfect plan, so I implemented the solution in my city. What I didn't count on was for those fake eggs, and for those fake eggs, and for the first. for the abominations inside to be released into the world. Clint, my partner, came in one morning carrying a large wooden crate, with straw poking out of every crevice. Looks like Christmas came early this year. What is this stuff? I walked over excitedly, helping him set the box down on a workbench.

I pried it open to reveal its contents. This is the solution. to our pigeon problem. Reaching inside, I took one of the eggs. I was a little disappointed to see that they weren't wooden, as promised. Instead, they were thin, light, and hollow like those cheap plastic Easter eggs. It wasn't close to what I was expecting. Oh, well, that's what you get for ordering off of eBay, I thought.

Clint took a handful. These are the replicas you ordered? They don't feel remotely the same as the real deal. We were well aware of what the eggs felt like. Up until then, the only way to decrease the pigeon population was to sneak into their nests and steal the eggs. It was a futile, temporary solution because the birds would just lay new eggs

once they realized theirs were gone. That's what made the idea of using substance. so damn good. It's fine, Clint. They don't have to fool us. They just have to fool the pigeons. This'll work. Trust me.

The pigeons fell for it. Hookline and sinker. Months passed, and we started seeing a decline in the amount of younger birds in the area. I can't tell you how proud I was of what I'd done. I'd found a safe, environmentally friendly way of dealing with. these flying rats at the cheap cost of a few hundred dollars and an elevator trip to pigeon nesting grounds atop high-rise rooftops around the city. The problems started about three months in. Clint and I were inspecting nests on opposite sides of the city. I was halfway

up the building when Clint called me. I brought the phone to my ear. Yo! The sound of wind could be heard in the background. Evidently, Clint had reached his destination. Hey, some of our eggs broke. The elevator came to a stop, doors swinging open to let me off. I stepped out and made my way to a small staircase leading to the rooftop. We'll just have to replace them, no big deal. There had been a few violent storms since our last inspection.

And I figured the eggs must have fallen from the nests and shattered on impact. See, this is why wood would have been better, I grumbled to myself, as I exited onto the rooftop for my inspection. What? Most of my eggs were broken, too. The strange thing was that they were still tucked in the nests right where we'd left them. Had the pigeons figured out our ploy and attacked the replicas? Were the fake eggs too frail to survive our harsh Canadian weather? The same here.

We're going to have to start over. Oh, it's all good. We can hatch a new plan. They paused for a moment. Just... Just look on the sunny side of things? Yeah. At a time like this, puns.

Yoke with me. We couldn't leave the nests unattended for too long. otherwise all our progress would go down the drain. I sent Clint to replace the broken eggs with what was left from our original order. In the meantime, I searched online for anyone selling wooden eggs. Unfortunately, the cheapest and fastest shipper was the person we'd ordered from the first time around. We needed these eggs quickly, and our budget was pretty tight. I figured I'd order the subpar eggs one more time.

If they lasted long enough for city officials to see the plan was working nicely, then I was sure I could convince them to increase our budget so we could order better supplies next fiscal year. Just to be sure the pigeons weren't attacking our fake eggs, I also set up a security camera on one of the rooftops. I needed to know if they'd gotten wise to our ruse, though I highly doubted they had the same. mental capacity to do so. Still, the project would prove fruitless if the birds weren't fooled

by our cheap imitations, so it was best to keep an eye out. Over the course of the following weeks, I started getting strange reports about small animals behaving weirdly. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to them at first. They sounded a little insane to tell the truth. One woman claimed she'd seen a pigeon climb a tree. She said he crawled up the bark like a squirrel. Another report stated that a chipmunk had been seen attacking and killing, a neighborhood dog. Another witness called in about an injured cat, but when he investigated, all he found was a pelt. By the time I read the fifth report, I was starting to get a little worried. What was even more trouble was. to me was that these reports were coming from all over the city. If it had been confined to a single

neighborhood, I would have suspected an outbreak of rabies or a new disease of some sort. But the reports were coming in from all around Toronto and its suburbs, which span an extremely large area. How could any disease spread so quickly? It had to be something else. I was just a about to do a bit of research on the subject when Clint came in wearing a scowl. Broke. Shitty fucking eggs broke again. He threw himself on his chair. I forced a grin.

Hey, uh, crack. A smile, would you? He tossed his worksheet on the table. That was an egg-solent pun. You remember to bring the... footage. He unzipped his coat and reached into his pocket for an SD card. Got you covered. Movie time. We uploaded the footage and took a look. Pigeons. Pigeons sitting on their nests. Pigeons preening. Pigeons flapping their wings at one another. A squirrel. A squirrel getting

chased away by birds. More pigeons. It must have been the dullest security tape in the world. The kind of footage that even David Attenborough's lovely voice wouldn't be able to save. We fast-forwarded through days of pigeons doing pigeony things. Never once did they show any violence towards our replica eggs. Clint had to be. dozed off by the time something finally happened on screen. The only reason I was still conscious

was due to the copious amount of coffee I'd ingested that morning. It was the dead of night, in the video at least. One of the birds flew off its egg and perched itself on the nest, peering inside. This is it, I thought, leaning closer to the screen. I figured he'd attack the egg, But I was wrong. I watched as the video soundlessly continued, and something cracked open the egg from the inside. My jaw gaped open. This wasn't possible.

The eggs were plastic shells. The only explanation was that we'd missed one real egg somewhere in the bunch. Yeah, that had to be it. I was witnessing the birth of a baby pigeon. Nothing weird. Baby pigeons don't look like smoke. A puff of dark air came out of the egg. The pigeon head inches from it inhaled the gassy substance.

It reared back and stood completely still for about a minute before falling over. I watched as it started thrashing violently like it was having a seizure. then from its beak spewed some kind of chunky liquid that evaporated as soon as it hit the air. The pigeon's body seemed to deflate like a balloon, as though the creature was being hollowed out. I was left staring incredulously at the flat, immobile husk of what had once been a pigeon. Suddenly, the pigeon's chest bulged out, and the animal regained its form. At least, sort of. Its proportions were all wrong, its wings were bloated and angled oddly.

Most of its girth was in its neck rather than stomach, and its midsection had stretched out unnaturally. It was like looking at an animal pelt draped over the same. the wrong mound like a lunatic taxidermist's cruel experiment. The abomination of nature jerked its head towards the ledge. It twisted onto its back, legs contorting and dislocating in such a way as to be able to reach the ground. From its throat, I could see stump-like arms stretching out, clawing at the cement rooftop. In quick and jagged movements, the creature skittered over the edge and disappeared from view.

I was shocked, unable to believe what I had seen. I had to watch and re-watch the video several times before it occurred to me to wake Clintup. He grumbled unhappily, rubbed his tired eyes, and looked at me. You won't believe this. I rewound the footage and pressed play. His eyes widened with the same disgusted disbelief as mine. Even on my fifth viewing, I couldn't wrap my head around it. This is bad.

I know. After watching the video a few more times, we went home. I think we both hoped a good night's sleep would help clear our minds. Maybe, upon reviewing the tape, we'd realize we were mistaken. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Unlikely, but we could only hope. Clint was already at work when I came in. His eyes were glued to the screen.

Watching it again? Not exactly. I... I kept going. I approached the desk. and peered at the monitor. Kept going. His face was pale, and his eyes weighed down by large bags.

How long had he been here? Had he come in extra early? There were two days left of footage on the card. And you went through it? Yeah. Did you see more of those things? Clint pressed his lips together. Yeah, and some of them came back.

I raised my eyebrows looking closer at the screen. I noticed something odd about one of the nests. There were multiple eggs resting in the sunlight. They were neither genuine pigeon eggs nor replicas. They were too big for that. Clint pointed to the batch, his hand trembling. It laid them. I felt a flush of nervous energy climb up my spine like an elevator and then turned to the reports I'd been reading the day before.

Were the eggs at the center of it all? We need to call the authorities. We are the authorities. I paced around the room back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum. The phone rang interrupting my anxious march. It was another report of odd animal behavior. This time the culprit was a deer. In a spooked and almost disgusted tone of voice,

the woman on the line explained that she'd seen a deer slithering along the river. She said its body was sideways, but its head was upright. Oh, God, I thought. Whatever those things were, they could affect larger animals. While I tried to comfort the worried caller, I heard something from Clint's workstation. I turned around only to see a puff of smoke rising towards my coworker. Near his keyboard was a cracked shell, just like the ones on the rooftop. Without a word, Clint bolted to the bathroom, holding a hand over his mouth as though about to puke.

I dropped the phone and ran over to the door. It was locked. Clint, are you okay? Silence. All of the sudden, I heard him heaving violently, a sound of moist, gurgling and boiling water. erupted from the bathroom. Terrified of what would happen if Clint got out, I pushed the heavy workbench in front of the door. I stood in terrified silence as the noise came to a stop. Was Clint now lying as flat as a pancake against the porcelain throne?

Would it turn into some sort of bastardization of a human body like what happened to the pigeon? Silence. Clint threw himself against the door violently. Just one blow and nearly threw the thing off its hinges. Again and again he slammed himself against the surface causing the workbench I'd placed in front of it to slowly inch away. All I could do was push myself against it to try and keep the door closed. My only thoughts were to keep him from escaping for my own safety.

I knew he'd attack me if I let him out. I just knew it. The sound came to an unexpected halt, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe he'd expired. Maybe that thing needed fresh air to survive. Whatever the reason, I thought I was safe. But then I heard a crash. I'd forgotten all about the bathroom.

window. He's out there now, him and those other mutated atrocities. I don't know what they are or what they want. All I know is that they're roaming the city right now, doing God knows what. Most of them probably look like pigeons, but they can be anyone or anything. I just hope someone figures out how to stop them, because at last count, there were over 700 of those cursed eggs planted around Toronto. Now that I know these things can reproduce, God knows how many more eggs might be out there. He, I should have known, he'd come back. He warned me before. He said the creature on our recording returned to its nest to lay an egg. Those monsters seem to have the salmon mentality going back to their place of birth when it came time to reproduce.

Too busy answering a slew of panic calls all the while panicking myself. I didn't hear him when he came in through the front door. Thankfully, I caught a shape from the corner of my eye. Without even finishing my sentence, I dropped the phone and locked myself in the maintenance closet. He hadn't seen me. Outside the thin, wooden door, the room was quiet. If he was breathing, I couldn't hear it. His footsteps were just as silent. Had I overreacted? I hadn't actually seen Clint, just a shadow in my peripheral vision. Maybe it was my imagination to know, so I knelt down. Peered through the crack under the door and closed an eye to get a better look.

Wish I had. I wish I could erase that thing from my mind. To preserve Clint's memory as the man I knew him to be, not that, anything but that. What I saw was a mass of flesh inching along the floor like a slug. I couldn't figure out what was facing up his back or his chest. His spineless torso had folded over, bringing his arms nearly perfectly in line with his legs. His head, now completely shapeless, lay flat at his midsection. His mouth reminded me of the figure in Munk's famous painting, The Scree.

His grayed eyes stared at me as he continued to slither towards his desk, that they were useless decoration. He disappeared from view. Then came a horrid sound. A squishy and gooey noise that reminded me of the old slime ball toys I used to play with as a child. It lasted a few moments. Stopped. started again, and then stopped for good. Shaking in my boots, I remained concealed in my dark prison all day,

ignoring repeated hunger pangs and my own instinct to run. I couldn't afford the risk of being caught. As day shifted into night, I began to wonder if I could sneak past him. On our security tape, I'd seen normal pigeons sitting on nearby nigham. nests, seemingly unfazed by the creature. Maybe, Clint wouldn't. I had to take the chance. I couldn't hide forever.

As quietly as I could, I swung the door open and stepped into the office. The thing wearing Clint's skin was gone. Out of morbid curiosity, I glanced at his workstation, where I'd heard the unsettling noises earlier. There were two massive eggs sitting on his desk, coated in a viscous substance. I didn't even want to think of the implications. I didn't want to know out of which orifice he'd laid them. I wanted nothing to do with this anymore.

I ran out of the office to my car and drove straight to Kingston. Not going back. I will never go back. Someone else will have to deal with this situation. I could get away from them. Maybe I'm imagining it, but the pigeons outside look odd. Not as disproportionate and disfigured as what I saw in Toronto, but there's something wrong about the way they move. Those things are learning to better mimic the shape of what they're being.

possessing and faith spread well that's Canada covered how do you mean well a story from a Canadian author about a Canadian city introduced by a Canadian producer we get it Canada is sick

oh you mean sick as in the slang term meaning hot cool and fabulous eh I kind of doubt he means it like that Canada is too tame to be sick like that it would be like calling Utah sick Or Ohio. Whoa. You take that back, you Beantown Bozo?

Or what? Would you boys settle down? Resorting to violence after less than a day together doesn't bode well for our quarantine. Thank you, Erica. As always, you provide the perfect mothering tone for our little family. And let's not kid ourselves about Utah. It's not just home to salty lakes and big temples. Remember that time Aaron Lillis told us about all that weird stuff?

happening there? Yeah, I remember. In fact, when Aaron told the story, I was there, along with Jeff, Jesse, and Cummings. Of course. Author Takeda Wise was the person who filled Aaron in with all the details. Hmm. Very strange stuff.

Strange indeed. I always suspected it, but that story confirmed it. There's something underneath southern Utah. Dougway Proving Ground was built in Utah by the United States Army in 1942 to test, retain, and create biological and chemical weapons. In 1968, more than 6,000 sheep died or were euthanized around Skull Valley. The culprit? A mysterious organophosphate. Miles away at Dugway, open-air tests of the VX nerve agent were underway.

And though they never took responsibility for the deaths of the sheep, the army did pay out a considerable sum to compensate the ranchers. Since that event, coined the Dugway's sheep incident, there have been nearly 500,000 pounds of chemicals such as this nerve agent dispensed in almost 1,100 other open air tests. Dougway has also tested openly biological weapons, more than 300 of them. Oh, and then there's the anthrax. Two years ago, Dugway accidentally shipped live anthrax from sea to shining sea. New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Texas, and California. An investigation was launched. Nothing can be worse than this, right? Wrong. It gets worse.

On January 21st, 2011, I was hired as a scientific consultant and a liaison at Dugway for the University of Utah. Not even a week later, on the 26th that exactly 5.24 p.m., Dougway was placed on a lockdown. The next day at 12.06 p.m., the lockdown was lifted. Now, the people who run this installation would have you believe that there were no injuries, no damage done, that this whole incident was caused by a silly little lost v. X nerve agent some idiot had mislabeled and left somewhere he shouldn't have, that they found it. This is a lie, a blatant, immoral cover-up of something horrific, something unthinkable. They would have you believe that, that during the lockdown anywhere between 1,200 to 1,400 people were working.

This is a half-truth. The morning of the 26th, 1,398 people came into work, and on the 27th, only 1,21 walked out. I was one of the lucky ones. The morning of January 26, 2011 began normally. I had spent the last day teleconferencing my fellows at the University of Utah, and, though they didn't ask anything else of me, One of them did warn me to be cautious, telling me to watch out for anything that might be too spooky.

I went to sleep troubled, but as soon as dawn came, his words were washed from my mind, and I got out of bed rejuvenated, ready to tackle the day. As soon as I walked in, Corporal Lee called me over. He told me that my usual liaison would be different that day, that the higher-ups wanted someone from what he just called the agency to show me a special report. I felt my stomach drop. This wasn't good news to me. I had heard all the stories before about the place, about what they created and kept there, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

And yet my curiosity was piqued, and I found myself speaking before I could catch my tongue. Like the CIA? Lee blinked, keeping a stony face, and I recognized that I wasn't supposed to be asking any questions. Still, I persisted. FBI? He swallowed.

Clearly nervous. I can neither confirm nor deny that. I held my hands up, palms wide open. Okay, okay, forget I asked. He led me towards what looked like an unused office. Inside there was a single steel frame desk, a white chair in front of it, and an uncomfortable-looking plastic-covered couch with one occupant,

a middle-aged man with hair the color of wood. He sat coolly with his left foot on his right knee, his black suit jacket slung across the, armrest and was reading from a smooth black binder balanced across his legs. He looked up as we walked in, smiled, and stood, placing the binder cover down on the cushion next to him. Ah, Professor Park. Nice to finally meet you. Cooper. I grasped his hand in mind and we shook firmly once, twice before letting go. He stooped, picking up his binder and jacket before leading me out of the room and down the hall towards the decontamination chamber. The

The chamber was a thin, long, rectangular room that was lined with minuscule jets on each wall, the ceiling, and the floor. The jets activated the moment you stepped in and kept spraying until you had walked the entire length of the room and exited out the other side. What they sprayed was a totally scentless mixture of elements, structured in a way that would leave your hair and skin wet, but never your clothes. In the next room, he asked me to put on a clean suit. I looked at him questioningly until he spoke. It's required where we're... Suited up, we entered the elevator that descended into the dirty zone. See, the main building at Dugway doesn't expand out into the desert.

No, it expands into the desert, underneath it, and is nearly 18 stories deep. It's an intricate layout of tunnels that were made to keep the public safe from the experiments done, and the specimens kept it Dugway. Despite this foresight, though, the public was, and still is, in danger. We exited the elevator and started. stepped into a dimly lit corridor with heavy-looking doors lining each side. I had never been this deep down before, but despite my growing apprehension, I followed Cooper towards the sixth door from the end on the left side. We were met by a flurry of work by similarly

suited people, and I saw that the room was rowed with long tables littered with scientific instruments. Some I recognized, and some I didn't. Near the far end of the room were three long glass cylinders. One was totally full of a black substance. The others were half full and less. The black substance, whatever it was, floated around listlessly making the cylinders look like grotesque lava lamps. Ah, special agent, a pleasure.

A man with thinning blonde hair walked over to us. His speech was tinged with an accent, maybe Russian or German. Cooper walked forward. hand outstretched and greeted the man with the thinning hair warmly before handing him the black binder. Dr. Smith, nice to see you again. Thought this could be of use to you. This is Professor Park from the University of Utah.

She was recommended to me by her fellows. I squinted, confused. They had told me nothing of the sort on our teleconference yesterday. Dr. Smith approached me and shook my hand generously, hard. I resisted the urge to yank it away. Professor, I've read all your work. A bright mind. Oh, a bright mind.

Just wonderful. If you please, we've set up a station over here for you. Dr. Smith's voice was growing excited, eager, like a schoolboy gearing up for his big speech at the science fair. We've been trying to figure out what this substance is for decades. It's something unlike anything we've ever seen before. We've brought in chemists. Geologists, biologists, astrobiologists, you name it, all in the hopes of figuring out what it might be.

And yet, nothing. This is highly classified, Professor, so please bear that in mind. Of course. One question before I begin, Doctor. Where did you find this substance? Dr. Smith smiled and pointed up. The surface? He pointed up again.

The sky? I was perplexed. He pointed up three times. Space? Ding, ding, ding, correct. I felt my eyebrows raise and heard the skepticism in my own voice as I responded. You found this substance in space? As in, it came from outer...

No, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. Nothing as ridiculous. No, no, it was collected from a meteorite found long ago. We've kept it here ever since. Gotcha. I glanced over at Cooper, but he was staring, transfixed at Smith. And does this substance have a name?

Smith nodded, smiling. Legion. The results of the test subjects gave us the idea. Now, come, come, have a look. We can talk about all the boring details later. He gestured over to a stool on the opposite side of the table, In front of it was a high-powered magnifying glass. I sat down, pulling the stool closer to the table and thought to myself,

Legion. Wasn't that biblical or something? A demon? But why? Because, of course, demons, that's why. See, there's something you should know about the people who run Dougway and keep its secrets hidden from the prying eye of the public. Those people aren't truly interested in all the good things that could come from a place like that. Medicine, cures, vaccines?

No, they're interested in the bad things. Weapons, warfare, subtle things, sinister things, things that could covertly undermine an entire country. And that vial? That silly little vial they said they lost? Well, it wasn't a vial at all. It was an entire tray of them. And they didn't lose it. A scientist, underpaid, overworked, smashed it on the ground in a fit of rage or fear.

or both. Those vials, filled to the brim and ready to be tested, quarantined, those vials that shattered, they weren't full of that silly VX agent. Nope, they were full of something else, something that would turn your hair white, wrinkle your skin, make your bones curl in agony if you only knew what it would and could do to you, to yours, to humanity, to the world. To put simply, that shit would fuck you up. The substance in those vials was something I and clearly many others had never seen before. It was weird, indeterminable, alien, literally shifting between things I could recognize to things I had never seen before, upsetting things that would keep me awake, tossing, fretting until the easy hours of the afternoon. See, it was like an organophosphate, but it then wasn't. And it was also

very, very much like a prion, yet it seemed alive, literally conscious, and I had the sneaking suspicion that it knew exactly what was happening to it, where it was being kept, and deep in my gut, in the place where I suppressed all of my bad feelings, I felt another emotion boil up. Acrid, painful, fear. A voice suddenly rose up from across the room, shaking but strong. I'm fucking sick of this. I staggered back from the table, disoriented, wondering if that smell was the substance itself or the bile rising in my throat, and saw an elderly man standing behind one of the long tables stacked with trays and vials. His expression was electrified.

All activity in the room stopped as people began turning towards him. Some were laughing. Some looked afraid. The man continued, his eyes growing into slits. You people, you people think this is all fun in games. And you! The man was looking directly at Cooper, who returned his gaze, unblinking, his face unreadable. Fuck you. This shit is sick.

Dr. Smith strode forward, anger clearly visible on his face. What's the meaning of this? Hey, fuck you two, Doc. Leave! Now! The man looked around, saw the vials, and reached forward, and, I swear it happened in slow motion, snatched up one of the trays, lifted it high, high above his head, before throwing it down with all his might. The sound of them breaking was the most frightening thing I've ever heard. The room erupted in chaos.

Almost instantaneously, people were screaming, running, and around us, and ear-splitting, siren rang out. I was yelling and trying to cover my ears, forgetting that I was wearing a thick plastic helmet. Move! Outside the room, the sirens were louder, and down the hallway we could see about a dozen people cramming into the elevator. One of them was madly smashing a button behind his frame. Wait! Hooper called out, but we were too far, and the doors to the elevator closed with a final sounding snap. We ran forward, cornered, waiting for the elevator to return.

Behind us, a pounding started up, slow, growing in strength and speed, until it almost masked the siren itself. It almost sounded like someone or something was trying to break out of one of the rooms. The booming transformed the sickening sound of metal ripping. And then, suddenly, silence. We both turned to look down the hallway and were greeted by Dr. Smith. He was crawling towards us. His legs were completely gone, but instead of leaving a trail of red behind him, it was black, soot black. One of his arms was turning black, too, disintegrating or melting or both.

He looked up at us. His eyes were almost completely black and bulbous, protruding from their sockets like they were about to burst. When he spoke, a tooth fell out. Then two, then three, until his mouth was a gaping hole. He smashed it the asshole. The whore fucking tie. He smashed us right on the ground, and it sucked them up. You were there, you saw.

Sucks us all up. He'll suck you up soon, too. His head drooped. The blackness was. was spreading from his arms and his legs and his entire body, what was left of it anyway, was dissolving into a viscous, undulating puddle the color of midnight. We stood, shocked, unable to speak, when a hand, then a foot, then a face slid out of the sixth door from the end of the tunnel, an enormous conglomeration of everyone who was in that room.

They were all melted together, all blackened like they were burnt. It was sick. Then I screamed louder, piercingly high. As the whole of it rolled out and began moving towards us, making a moaning sound, I'll never forget. It approached Smith, the puddle that was him, and sucked him into itself. I saw his face press outwards in the blackness, screaming, screaming, until his voice finally unified with the others. It was close now, so close, and I could make out the individual features of each face.

Behind us, the elevator beeped, and we heard the door slide open. Hooper reached out and shoved me in the lid, and I fell backwards, watching as he stood next to the door, pushing the button to close the doors repeatedly. After what felt like a lifetime, they slid shut, leaving me with a lasting image of that thing heaving itself down the hall. We were stunned, Cooper leaning against one of the walls, be still on the floor. The siren echoed around us, broken only by our fierce, frightened breathing.

Cooper suddenly stood straight, startling me, and began taking off his clean suit. I pushed myself back towards the wall, sitting against it, staring at him, dazed until I realized what he was doing. That thing, wait till decadamination? Fuck it. He shrugged his jacket off and knelt to roll up his pant leg.

There was a pistol secured to his ankle underneath. The elevator reached the top floor and the doors opened to a sea of people all waiting to go through the chamber, waiting to get out. I exited the elevator and looked back. Cooper was still standing in it, rolling up his shirt sleeves. He didn't say anything. Didn't look up. Possibly go back down there. Finally, he met my gaze, then strode forth, taking my hand in his. Go and do whatever they say no matter what.

He squeezed my hand. No matter what. Toss me now, don't you? I looked to the left, seeing about ten gas masks hanging on the wall. Bug masks, I called them. I tossed one to him. He shoved it on before strove it. riding back into the elevator.

I watched the doors close. Never did see him again after that, at least not for a long time. We were rounded up in the chamber and told to wait until someone came on the intercom and gave us the all clear. We waited for hours, some of us silent, other sobbing. All the while, a strange, smelling liquid was sprayed onto all of us. Whatever happened that day, whatever they used on us

to decontaminate, it left the, those of us who survived with an unknown degenerative disease. I've aged decades, decades, in a number of years. Of course, I was tagged with all the others who survived and we were all monitored, kept in places where they had easy access to us to test us. Some protested, others committed suicide. Most, like me, just lived with it and allowed ourselves to be tested and caged like rats. And they would commend us, saying that we were doing a civic duty, true patriots, honorable. I'd rather be dead. It's been years since this occurred, and I've since moved out of Utah. They let me. They gave me the choice between two states,

one with mountains, one with ocean. I chose the mountains, thinking the fresh air and the sun might do my bones and my mind some good. But alas, I'm still so damn tired. Tired of keeping secrets, tired of suppressing my guilt, my fear. Every day there's a knock on my door, the orderly coming to check on me. He says he's coming to see if I'm still well, still comfortable, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he's checking to see if I'm still there, still secure, locked up tight with nothing to do, no way out.

I woke up at dawn in excruciating pain, so nothing new there. The orderly usually came in the morning or early afternoon with a sinister-looking smile and a handful of horse pills, pushing a two white cart with all the instruments to poke and prod and, yes, probe. But yesterday, he didn't come at all. That was new. It wasn't until I was getting ready to lay down that I heard it,

exactly at 11.11 p.m. A quiet knock on my door. Puzzled, I walked towards it, reaching out for the handle. Maybe it was the orderly. Maybe he got caught up and had to come later. I was expecting and usually had no other visitors. I opened it, and there he was, wearing a familiar black suit, holding a heavy-looking paper bag in both arms.

We looked at each other, his gloomy colored eyes meeting my own ash-brown ones. Thirsty? He held out the bag slightly at me, smiling. You haven't aged a day. I stepped back and let him in. He shrugged, muttering something. I didn't catch and walked over to my small dining table, setting a six-pack out. Why are you here? How are you here? I approached the entryway to the kitchen, watching him bustle about, setting the table.

Oh, just in the neighborhood. Thought I'd stop by. He paused, looking over at me. And I'm scrappy. Was it you? Were you the reason the orderly didn't come today? He grinned. Why? Thought you could use a day off, or days or weeks, the rest of your life. He sighed, sitting down at the table and gesturing for me to do the same. I'm sorry. So sorry. I said nothing, finally sitting down.

He continued. We moved it. I helped. The drinks sat between us, untouched. They said the place would be more secure. Sure, but it wasn't. The location itself was, and I tried to protest it. It... Where is it?

I could hear my voice raise in pitch, panicked. Is it here? It's here, isn't it? That's why you were in the neighborhood? He looked up at me, and I saw that he was tired, too, full of regret, defeat. He glanced away, looking down at his hands and muttered something I couldn't close. make out. What? He looked up, meeting my gaze, and said two words I'll never forget. It escaped.

That's a whole different kind of creepy. Glad nothing like that could happen over in England. What makes you say that? The queen wouldn't allow it. Yeah, fair enough. How about we consider a different kind of virus story? Like a computer virus. It's really not the same thing It doesn't have the same impact As people being physically infected And dying horrible deaths

Yeah, what are we going to say? I got an email and I couldn't unsubscribe Very funny I'm telling you emails can cause a lot of problems I for one can share another story with you About this exact same subject Emails, infections, disease, oh, lots of fun stuff in this one.

It was shared with me by author Shane Fligger. Can I join you again on this one, Peter? Certainly, although I really shouldn't be telling this one. You see, this one is about an email I should never have received. Before I get into this, I need to make something clear. I'm not here to beg for advice. or help, because I'm beyond any help. I've had to give up everything in my life that ever mattered.

This happened more than nine years ago, and I'm finally taking the risk to share it. World events are seriously scaring me, and I have more personal reasons that I can get into later. I am well and truly fucked. And it's all because of an email that I should never have received. In the summer of 2005, I thought I had everything I ever needed from life. I had just finished grad school and begun teaching English at a local community college. I had married the love of my life that January in an awesome and geeky ceremony. We had moved into a fixed-up bungalow on three acres of land, and we had just rescued an Elkhound puppy from a local shelter.

Life would I had enjoyed those days more. Faye and I had just finished working outside one night in July, and we were relaxing with a beer on the porch. He was gnawing on a pair of my socks I had tied into a knot for him. I asked Faye if she would mind if I checked my email before we went to bed. I was expecting a notification about the classes I was going to teach in the fall and was looking forward to actually using my degree. Faye went to bed and I logged into my work email account. There wasn't an email from my department chair,

but there was a new email entitled, Progress of EBOV-7X. I figured it was spam, but I impulsively clicked on it anyway. The email's intended address was just two letters off from mine, and it came with an attachment named E7X results and suggestions. It was addressed to a man named Mark, and it read as follows. Mark, attached are the prelim results from the last batch of tests on EBOV-7. The X-generation seems to be holding up much better to the modifications. Remember, this is eyes only.

So don't print this out or anything. You're new here, and we all think your help is really what's gotten us off the ground on this. If you have anything to add, let me know ASAP. Provided this gen holds up, we'll have a much better quarterly report for the bigwigs than we did last time. Just don't wear the tie with the mustard stain on it, okay? Reagan. I had no clue who either of these people were. and I didn't recognize the domain name of the email address.

The only part I could make out was Dietrich. Just as I finished reading it, Faye called to me and asked if I was ready to head to bed. I told her I would only be a minute, the cursor hovering over the download link for the PDF file. Every reasonable part of me said to just delete the email to pretend I never saw it. But, as you can probably tell, I was youthful. and impulsive. To the download link, and after a few seconds, the downloaded file popped up in my downloads. I opened it, fully expecting it to be password locked.

I mean, from the tone of the email, wouldn't you? It wasn't. Fuck, I wish it had been. After it opened, I was bombarded with sentences so thick with scientific lingo that I had difficulty even parsing it out. I was a liberal arts major for fuck's sake. There was one diagram I recognized, though, from having a friend in undergrad who majored in epidemiology. The diagram, I soon discovered, was of a virus,

the Ebola virus. I skimmed down until I finally found a paragraph that summarized what I'd been struggling to read. With the iteration of EBOV-7X, and the hiring of new personnel, we believe we have finally addressed the main desire of the client. EBOV-7X contains the following alterations from the base EBOV-0-Zero. A, increased incubation time of 12 to 40 days as opposed to EBOV-0 incubation of 2 to 12 days. B, suppress the lack of appetite common in EBOV.

v-0, thus removing one of the major diagnosable tools. C. Increased durability of the virus, allowing it to remain hot for up to eight hours outside the human body. See Test 100BA for applicable data. D. Decreased rate of fever increased by 20%, allowing for upwards of 35% more time before patient becomes immobilized. My chair away from the computer and simply stared for a minute. I rubbed my eyes and re-read the paragraph over and over again.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. What would be the point to this? Who would want these changes to an already deadly virus? Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to relax. I wasn't an expert on anything related to Ebola, but one of my strengths had always been an ability to think outside the box. and move past my own internal assumptions. I asked myself,

what purpose would these changes have? What would be the goal behind it? As I asked myself that, the answer came quickly. It wasn't about making a vaccine or wanting to remove the danger from the virus. Someone was altering Ebola to make it less noticeable,

to make it less easily, diagnosable. Someone was making a version of Ebola that wouldn't burn itself out. A version of Ebola that could be a pandemic. Holy shit. On pure autopilot, I copied the file onto a flash drive and put it in my messenger bag I used for work. I marked the email as unread and deleted it, then went upstairs to bed.

As Faye snored beside me, and the public. He curled himself into the crook of my neck. Sleep did not find me. Should I go to the police? The news? Should I just forget it ever happened? Eventually I fell asleep. Getting up the next morning, I debated telling Faye about the email.

I had never kept anything from her for the four years we had dated, but I decided against it. For all I knew, it was nothing, and there was no reason to worry her. I drove to work and tried to forget about it. I worked on getting my office situated to my liking and was about to call Faye to meet me for lunch when two men, in dark suits, knocked on the door. Yes? Dr. George. Yes, I repeated. This is Mr. Rhine and I'm Mr. Frawl.

One of them said. If you asked me now, I wouldn't be able to tell you which was which. They were both middle-aged white men, brown hair, clean-shaven, and wearing dark sunglasses. You may have received an email from our company server by mistake last night. Did you? At that moment, I had never been so appreciative of my grandparents teaching me to play poker. I frowned and looked upward to the left, acting like I was trying to remember. In case you're wondering, the idea that looking up and to the left suggests telling the truth,

while the opposite suggests lying, is a myth. Doesn't stop people from believing it, though. I told them I had gotten it, but that I had marked it as spam and deleted it. Would you mind showing us? One of them asked. He smiled and took his sunglasses off, probably in an attempt to appear more cordial. The second kept his glasses on, which made it impossible to see where he was looking. If we don't ask, our bosses are guaranteed to give us hell for it.

No sunglasses said. I agreed and logged on to my university email. I pulled up the trash folder and showed them the apparently unread email. We really do apologize for this. We've been installing new internal servers. and we've been having trouble with stored addresses and queuing emails. The new system is meant to automatically find the correct email address, but it's been attaching wrong domain names to IDs that are close.

They watched as I deleted it totally and seemed content. Each of them shook my hand, reminded me that the email was under corporate non-disclosure and walked out. As soon as they were gone, I shut the door and collapsed into the chair at the computer. How in the world did they find me, find where I worked, and send people in less than 24 hours? I looked at the USB stick in my bag, but didn't touch it. In some weird way, I worried I had damned myself with it, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it would end up being more important. I finished up my workday and headed home. The next day was Saturday and we needed to mow.

While some of you might think why would mowing take a whole day, I can only respond by saying that one of the downsides of having land is taking care of it. We had two tractors so that Faye and I could mow at the same time and finish in as little time as required. Before I explained what happened that Saturday, you need to understand something. Without fail, I serviced those tractors every time after we used them. I cleaned the mower decks, sharpened the blades when they needed it, and double-checked the engine. I checked oil and gas before and after using them. Yes, I'm a little OCD. It's been of more help than harm.

Faye and I each typically used our own tractors, but she had told me that hers had felt like it was pulling to the left, instead of going straight ahead. I told her to use mine and that I would check it out. She started the tractor and began to mow our field. The tractor worked fine for about 15 minutes. Then the engine began to splutter and cough. I noticed it and waved for Faye to stop. She did, shutting the tractor off and starting to walk towards me.

Several things happened all at one. up, walking to meet my wife halfway, Faye walked towards me, smiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw dark maroon sedan slow down as it drove past our house. The tractor exploded. The pieces of metal and rubber flew in every direction, and the shockwave knocked Faye forward onto the ground. The blast of heat hit me full in the face and felt like I had dropped face-first into a bonfire. to her scared shedless. She was fine, though the wind had been knocked out of her. I moved her to the garage, told her to call 911,

and ran back to the burning husk of my tractor with a fire extinguisher. I used the entire extinguisher, but couldn't get the blaze to totally stop. The next few hours were a blur. The fire department showed up, followed by police. The neighbors gawked from their front porches, and we were asked the same questions again and again. The cops asked if either of us had any reason to suspect foul play. God help me, I should have mentioned the meeting with the two men at work and the email,

but I kept my mouth shut. What would I have said, anyway? Well, gee, officer, I received an email last night from a company making a biological weapon out of Ebola, and today two men in dark suits showed up at my work to ask me about it in a vaguely threatening manner. I would have laughed at that myself, at someone else at it. By the time everyone had left, we were exhausted and starving. We loaded up the puppy into my car and went to Faye's parents' place, where her dad cooked on the grill, and I got lectured on the importance of taking care of my tools. Thing is, I did, still do. There was no reason for that tractor to explode. After dinner,

we went back to our home. There was a huge circle of blackened dirt and burnt grass in the field where the tractor had exploded. But otherwise, there was no sign of the circus that had filled our lives only a few hours earlier. Faye was exhausted, and she went straight to bed. I couldn't sleep. I kept running over every check to the tractor that I had done, trying to see where I could have gone wrong. The fuel lines weren't loose, no matter what my father-in-law insinuated. There had been no reason for it to explode.

Now properly feeling my paranoia, I needed to double-check the other major property that I gave my OCD an outlet on. The guns grew up around them, and they're only tools. Treated with the proper respect, there's nothing inherently wrong with them. We had a shotgun in the living room on top of the. the television stand. There was a handgun in the kitchen, a holster screwed into the bottom of the cupboards behind the fluorescent light for the counter, and a revolver my wife kept on her nightstand. Lastly, I kept a mare's leg in the basement, hidden in the pantry behind rows of mason jars filled with pears and peaches. I cleaned these every Sunday, disassembling them

and making sure they were in order. As I walked through the house checking each gun, the firing pins were all missing. Let me repeat that. The firing pins from the guns I cleaned every Sunday, like clockwork, were missing. The only gun that hadn't been tampered with was the mare's leg downstairs. The lines of dust hadn't even been disrupted, and the gun was still able to fire without complications. I went back upstairs and sat in the living room, trying to let my wife rest. while I had a panicked breakdown. In the span of less than 24 hours, I had learned a company was apparently making a biological Ebola weapon,

been confronted by men in suits who claimed to represent, said company, had one of my tractors explode, nearly killing my wife, and had come home to find someone had tampered with my belongings in an attempt to make me unable to defend myself. What the fuck was going on here? My first concern was for Fay. Was someone targeting both of us, just me? How would I be able to protect over the day

and remembered the maroon sedan that had been driving past when the tractor exploded? There was nothing noteworthy about it, but an instinct told me to watch for it again. Gun shop to the errand list on the fridge and went to sleep, resolving to keep an eye out for the sedan. It didn't help. Over the next weeks, I recognized a pattern of three distinct cars following my wife and me around town.

There was a black Honda, the maroon sedan, and a dark blue motorcycle. Whenever I would take the puppy outside, one would inevitably drive down the road while I was outside. When we would go to the movies, one would be parked within five spaces of our car. I even started to notice them at family gatherings, driving past. when one of my cousins had a birthday party, or when we visited Faye's grandmother at the nursing home. At the same time, more accidents began to occur around our home. The heat would miraculously go out, only for a repairman to say that we lucked out, because if I hadn't come when I did, you'd have a pretty serious build-up of carbon monoxide here.

The springs on the garage doors suddenly began failing, almost crushing the point. puppy when I was working outside. The power brakes went out in my car, forcing me to cruise down the breakdown lane in the highway until I eased to a stop and could put the emergency brake on. Did they know somehow that I had downloaded that information and kept it? Were these really accidents, or were they attempts on my life? After three weeks of this, I got out of bed in the middle of the night and checked the guns again. No missing pieces. I sat in the dark to think. Deleting the information now wouldn't help. If they knew I had it, they wouldn't know I deleted it. If push came to shove, it was the only leverage I had. The email had come to me by mistake,

so it wouldn't be logical to assume Faye had read it. She had been on the tractor I usually used when it exploded. It was clear to me that I had been meant to be on it, not her. The accidents had only started around the house since the visit of the two men. I hadn't seen them again in person, but the trio of vehicles were ever present. A real part of me wanted to take my guns and go hunting, but this wasn't the Wild West. I wasn't going to risk someone getting shot in the crossfire. And I wasn't sure if the police would accept my story. If this company had the capacity to find me in less than 24 hours, how could I be sure that they wouldn't fabricate evidence against me?

Should I tell Fay about all of this? She was my wife, my partner. I knew she'd be in my corner, 100%, but I couldn't risk her safety. Looking back, I know this sounds chauvinist. I'm not. Faye was more talented than I was in a lot of areas, but I was raised to believe that a man protects his family no matter what. Discounting the problems with the ventilation systems, everything that had happened was directed at me. If I told her, she'd become as legitimate a target as I apparently was. As long as these people kept trying to proactively silence a leak,

I suppose would be their way of saying it. My wife was in danger of being collateral damage. Her remaining that way was not an option, and I had to think of a way to ensure her safety permanently. I was out of options, at least the ones that left me in a position I wanted to be in, namely with my wife, safe in the life we had built. The only option I had left that would keep me alive and keep my wife and family safe was one I didn't want to do.

I had to disappear. Vanish out of the clear blue sky and make it as close to impossible as I could to follow me. Once I was off the grid, I could find a way to either expose the company or make some kind of deal with them. I couldn't expect Faye to follow me, nor would I want to expose her to that level of danger. I would have to abandon the love of my life, every accomplishment I had earned in order to survive this, at least temporarily. I've now lived in 60 cities, which sounds like a lot. Some were as short as a week. Others were a few months, but once you start moving, it's hard to stop. When you decide to disappear, it isn't nearly as easy as it sounds. Everyone tends to assume that it's easy. to drop off the grid, totally, just walk away from the life you've lived up to that point

and choose a new path. It isn't. At least, not if you don't want to be eventually found again. It isn't as simple as take the money out of the bank, stop going to work, go to a new town. To give myself a head start and to make sure it was clear that Fay wasn't involved, I had to do the legwork to provide misinformation to the people chasing me. I'm not going to go into a whole breakdown of how I managed to vanish. If you really want to plan it for yourself, there are plenty of materials available.

I'm just going to give an overview to make it clear how I approached the whole thing. First, I gave business cards and cash to friends who worked overseas. I told them they would be doing me a huge favor, and none of them suspected anything, or if they did, they never voiced their concerns. One went to China, another to work. Western Europe. Every time they left a card, it was a marker that someone would have to investigate at a cursory level, at least, which would buy me time. Two of our friends had just gotten married and had gone to South America on their honeymoon. When we went to their home for a dinner

party, I excused myself and quickly photoshopped tiny photos of my face into the mulling crowds behind the couple's smiling selfies. When the photos were posted on three, I excused myself, and quickly photoshopped, Facebook, any kind of facial recognition would hopefully find me in the background and again demand some level of investigation. Lastly, I randomly picked four towns off a map. I bought a prepaid cell phone, and when I should have been working, I looked up apartments for rent in those locations. I called and made appointments to look, appointments I never intended to keep.

I called water services, cable and internet. internet providers, magazine companies, all to set up subscriptions or knowingly false installation dates. For the callback numbers, on all those appointments, I made sure to give the number to the nearest police or federal authority station. I doubted the people who sent the email would be worried, but I fully intended to make it clear that I was meeting them step for step. For every sales plan or rewards program I belonged to, I called and changed my information slightly, I purposefully misspelled my name or had them fix my address to one of the four towns I had picked, or to a PO box I had prepaid just for this.

Everything was done with one reason to make it as time-consuming as possible to hunt down every lead I could place in order to give me time to find a way out of this mess. To make sure I didn't lose the information I had saved on the USB drive from the email, I printed everything out from it twice and sent each set of copies to a different PO box owned by private companies. Again, this isn't a how-to, but this is an easy way to break it down. Box A, Fake Everything, Town I Never Planned on Visiting. Box B, fake everything, town I never planned on visiting. Box C, real, sent one copy here, town adjacent to a place I was familiar with.

Box D, real, sent one copy here. Town where I planned on disappearing to, to start with. It killed me to see her smiling or playing with the dog or to hear her murmur, I love you, as she fell asleep next to me. If I had been able, I would have rewound until just before I had opened that damn email and continued to sit with her for as long as I could. I managed to keep my misinformation building efforts away from her, but the accidents kept happening. Our oven broke, and the heating element didn't stop getting hotter. I had to shut the power off for the whole house in order to avert a fire.

On my way to work, the stoplight glitched, just as it turned green for me, staying green for the opposing lanes as well. I almost got teaboned by an old man driving a midlife crisis mobile and had to grip the steering wheel extra tight to keep from yelling. One afternoon, Faye took Sigmund out for a walk in the backyard. I heard her scream and ran outside with the shotgun. I didn't know what to expect, but I was a little bit of her. I knew I wasn't going to go down without making a fight of it. She was holding the puppy and shaking and pointed out to the field. Even from that distance, I could make out the timber rattler moving through the grass. She told me the puppy had noticed it before she did, and she had barely

had time to yank back on the leash and move away before the snake had coiled up onto itself and began rattling. I walked out, aimed, and suddenly there was cooling snake. And suddenly there was cooling snake blood all over a five-foot circle. Faye was shaken and asked me if I had ever seen one before. I answered her no, and while we were technically in the range for one, I had never seen a snake like that in a populated area like where I lived. These accidents were getting more and more desperate. I have no doubt that if they had simply wanted me dead, they could have shot me.

From my own perspective, it seemed apparent that the desired outcome was to silence me permanently without any foul play being suspected at all. I didn't have any time left. I disappeared on an early Tuesday morning. I had seen a lawyer previously and drawn up divorce papers. I gave Faye everything short of a few hundred dollars. I didn't want to divorce her, but I had to keep her. but I had to keep propping up the fact that she didn't know anything about E7X or plans to weaponize Ebola.

I kissed her on the cheek as she slept and quietly got dressed. I had slowly been packing for a few days, a bar of soap here, a shirt there, and I was ready to go without more packing. As I got up, Sigmund yawned and looked at me, his tail wagging. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying as I scratched behind his ears and kissed him, trying to commit to memory his smell and the feel of Faye's skin under my hand. I signed the divorce papers and left them on the kitchen counter. I tried to write a note to give some kind of explanation, but nothing came, at least nothing that would keep her safely ignorant of why I had to leave.

I ended up writing, I'm sorry, please love you behind everything I had loved in a last-ditch effort to keep them all safe. It was lonely and terrifying ever since 2005. Nine years, nine long, fucking lonely years. I never stopped moving in the first two, staying. in one place for no more than two months before packing up. I worked odd jobs, always got paid under the table in cash, and lied with a smile every time someone asked where I was from or about the ring I wore around my neck. I've tried three times over the years to get the evidence I have to people who might be able to help me. Two were politicians, and one was a news person. I suspect you'll

recognize their names, Larry Craig, Anthony Weiner, and Tim Rossert. I picked the politicians not because they were tough on bio-weapons or the vast military-industrial complex, but because they represented states far from my home state. When I reached out to Craig on August 23rd, his staff seemed remote but interested. Four days after, I turned on the radio and heard that he had been arrested for lewd conduct. I went underground again after that for the better part of a year, moving and always keeping an eye over my shoulder. I reached out to Russert next, contacting his staff and explaining that I had a story that I would only trust to Russert himself. I was a fan of Meet the Press for a number of years and always appreciated that he never seemed to play favorites.

In the back of my mind I daydreamed about my life turning out like something from the Pelican brief, reuniting with Fay, seeing my parents again, my old employers offering my job back out of pride for my accomplishments. I heard back from them on June 10th of 2008, where his chief of staff explained that Tim would be contacting me personally to set up a meeting. On June 13th, Russert died. of an apparent heart attack. I cleared out my meager apartment and was on the next greyhound bus out of town the same day. After that, I left the U.S. for several years. It was easier to hide in more populated areas, and while my facility with other languages was never fantastic, I knew enough to get me by. I crossed back into the country in late 2010 and decided to attempt

to go public again. I contacted a junior congressman from New York this time, someone on the opposing side of the political aisle from my first attempt. I actually spoke with Wiener myself, and he offered me protection and his full support in exchange for the information I had. We verbally agreed, and I even traveled to New York City to meet him. We had agreed to meet in a nondescript corner restaurant, but he never showed. I waited for an hour but nothing. My off-the-grid instincts were screaming and I vanished into a dive bar. On TV, I saw the story, a sex scandal where Wiener had been having online affairs.

His credibility was now shot. I finished my beer and disappeared out of the city again. I've been underground ever since, and this is the first time I've tried to make content. with anyone in a long while. I wanted to address all of this more thoroughly. But yesterday's events have removed that as an option, not hear from me again for a very long time, because when I woke up this morning, I turned on the radio and realized that the family I have been skipping internet off of suffered a home invasion last night. The news is reporting that a team of four masked men stormed into their house at three in the morning.

The invaders shot a family's dog, killing it instantly, shooting the father in the stomach, and forcing the wife and two kids to watch him bleed out. By the time police were able to arrive, the invaders were gone. They murdered him and cut off three of the eldest child's fingers. Police reports are saying, intruders were asking about a man with my description, though the family didn't know anything. All because they happened to have an unsecured wireless connection. All because of me. I'm waiting at a bus station now. I need to disappear again, though hopefully I can manage to do

something for the family whose lives I managed to totally fuck up first. I've given a lot of thought to the idea of going to WikiLeaks or something, of being a hero, back to Wikileaks once, to assuage my fears after what happened with Russard. In the 24 hours it took them to contact me, there were already men in town asking about me. Now innocent people, I never wanted to be a hero. You can call me a coward if you want, but all I wanted was a normal life with my wife and a dog and 2.5 kids need to find a way back. This isn't a video game or an action movie. I can't just walk into a building with a gun and automatically assume everyone will recognize me as the protagonist, nor can I just walk into a newspaper or TV station and have my life be fixed.

This isn't worth my life or anyone else's. Come to my secondary reason for sharing this now. knowing what happened to his son. I know my mother still holds a ceremony for me every year on my birthday, and I don't want the same. Sorry, her new husband is old money, and she seems fine. Grateful for that. I know she was into this kind of thing, these shows. It's a remote one-and-a-million chance, I know, but there's a possibility that she could. I would hear this. Please, please know, I love you. I've never stopped loving you. I never wanted to hurt you. And everything I've done has been to keep you safe.

I know from lurking online using proxies and public internet access that you haven't sold that. There's a lockbox buried under the third fence post away from the road. It has the first book we ever read to each other. I had hoped to give it to you on our 30th wedding anniversary. But that isn't looking likely. Please do what you want with it. Goodbye, Faye. Goodbye.

They would chase any of you. But watch your back for a few days just to be safe. Corona swine flu? Makes you realize how many nasty diseases are just lurking out there. Well, speaking as a man of science, I find all of it fascinating. But not every infectious disease affects our insides, like lungs and guts. Think about all those terrible diseases that leave you covered in awful sores and postules. Do we have to?

Yeah, think about what a plague would be like if every infected person had huge, gloriously grotesque sores and wounds all over their body. That's the sort of plague where people end up in their churches praying for divine intervention. That's true. In fact, I can tell you a story about an event just like that. Author R. E. Rodden I shared this one with me. Oh, yeah. I can help tell this one. Me too.

And me, along with Mike Delgadoio. He must still be down in the dungeon at the moment. Well, let's start this one. It's a rather nasty tale about a disease known as Sunflowers Weep. The Centers for Disease Control had named it Sunflowers Weep, but the terrified masses made it theirs, with labels like Satan's mouth, and that old-time favorite Mark of the Beast.

If a neighbor thought you had the symptoms, you could bet they would call the hotline, and by bedtime, you'd be housed in one of the internment camps placed outside most major cities. I was thinking how paranoia was like this disease, spreading quickly through the world unchecked, with no discernible pattern. So, we're agreed.

The pastor interrupted my obsessive thoughts. I felt his eyes on me, but I was staring out the window where the bright June's sun was liquid fire, and everything had a golden tinge, even the freshly cut grass. I'm not sure, Dave. This time's different, isn't it? My God, I'd seen photos on the internet. An old man's bicep, a young man's hip joint. and once in an image that poignantly struck at the frailty of human flesh,

a woman's breast, the source of nurturing for all mankind, the delicate tissue corrupted in a way that haunted me for days after. Not at all, same as the others. Infestation began with the dime-sized rash that itched like poison oak. In just days, the patch thick. and grew into a pancake of rough skin, upwards of five inches in diameter, with whiteheads as large as pencil erasers breaking out across the surface in a spiral pattern that queerly resembled the head of a sunflower.

As dreadful as this stage of infection was, very quickly it became nightmarish. For all at once, the whiteheads would burst open. We have to support each other on this. And within each gaping hole, they found the grotesqueries of infection. Small life forms termed florids, for their resemblance to the blossoms that covered the heads of sunflowers, but looking every bit like fat white larvae, wriggled lethargically as they feasted on the chemistry of the diseased body part.

The weeping denoted in the... official name was a clear liquid that continuously oozed out of the openings around the larval bodies, determined to be a harmless waste product left over from the creature's feeding. Extracting them with tweezers was lethal. Within minutes of extracting the plump bodies from their nests, the victims convulsed and died. The larvae were attached to the bottom of the cavity, and breaking them free released a toxin into the victim that attacked several vital systems. Over 8,000 men, women, and children died before the discovery. Dave cleared his throat.

I didn't want to turn around and face him or the problem, not even from behind the relative safety of my desk, where I functioned as youth pastor. The same yellow gold in the grass gave an aura to passing cars, It blazed fiery white stars off chrome and glass, and I wanted to be out there at a baseball game or on a walk, someplace, anywhere, but here. It is important we stay united in these dark days.

When I stand up there, people look to me for spiritual guidance. What will they think if someone questions a decision of the church elders? The match flared, that old familiar fuse lit, and a slow burn began. My face tightened. I managed to suppress most of the sigh, but the thinnest hiss escaped with my words. Don't you mean church bored, Dave? No one's voted to support the idea of elders. It is only a matter of time.

I turned in my chair to face him. His eyes turned sharp, under the bill. of the Chicago Cubs cap he wore today. Rosie splotches broke out on his cheeks. In spite of the air conditioning, Dave was shiny with sweat, and I remember thinking I hadn't seen him wear a cap since he'd accepted premature baldness

and started cutting his hair close. Until then, Dave, you're not the king. Not very Christian, I admit, but the more he opened his mouth, the faster the fuse burned. Recovery from the disease was a random event. For some victims, the larvae simply died, dried up inside their cankerous wounds. The weeping stopped instantly, and the creatures could then be plucked out with tweezers,

and the devastated flesh treated. Yet others, over time, grew worse. The infestation spread, sometimes taking over entire areas of the body. the chest, the face, whole limbs, feasting until the victims wasted away and died. Only seconds before someone banged on my office door, I heard the storm blowing up the hallway. I was turning towards the commotion

when out of the corner of my eye, I caught the pastor starting up from his chair. I experienced an evil sense of satisfaction when he spun around to face the door. He actually looked afraid. I had one of those dizzy feelings you get when something huge is about to happen. That silent spinning sensation, as though the bottom of the world is dropping out. The door was thrust open, and Gladys hurried in with her little girl clutched protectively under one arm.

Gladys' eyes were black, shiny drops of terror, and Little Mason was holding on for dear life to her mother's forearm, as though she was being carried over a river of fire. Behind them, cleared down the other end of the hall by the front double doors. A packed crowd of church members was chattering at one another from round, pale faces. I barely heard them over the louder, closer sobs from Gladys. Okay, Gladys, hold on, take a couple deep breaths. I came around the desk, but stopped short of them. Honestly, I was as paranoid and terrified as anyone was.

Gladys had not seen the pastor yet. Dave had stepped quickly to the bookshelves behind her left shoulder. Gladys's breath hitched with panic as she tried to tell me. They, those... Gladys, please. They want to put my little girl in one of those hell holes. So it was trying to... True. Gladys must have hid the truth for at least a week, tried to maintain an appearance of

normality. Someone here either guessed it or saw it. I found myself angry and ashamed of the turncoat. Who? What? Those monsters! Gladys twisted her torso, while still shielding her daughter in one arm, to point through the door. when suddenly she laid eyes on the pastor standing off to the side, watching her, now backing up against my bookcase as though he expected to slip right through it and the wall behind. The back of his head thumped the bookcase, and it must have hurt something awful from the panicked way he slapped his hands on the top of his cap. It struck me how both adults' eyes shot wide and bright, with very nearly the same emotions.

I was astounded by what happened next. Dave, who had always maintained a certain level of self-control, even when under stress, pointed an accusing finger at both mother and child, and began shouting louder than Gladys' fearful screaming. Right now, Dave was not behaving like the leader of this church. You, you, too! Gladys, you were not.

must see black times she you monster hey think while they faced off i looked at mason her large blue eyes fixed upon her mother's face with a frightening intensity my heart ached for her but i looked at the bright pink headband covering most of the top half of her head and terror shot through me like black lightning the The band was tight and pushed her hair into a bouquet of brown curls that spilled out the top. In a moment, I saw what had given her away. The thin white line of a bandage peaked out from underneath the bottom of the headband. I looked at her face again, the downturned bow of her little mouth, the snow-white fear in her face, the staring eyes.

She was in one of our children's Bible studies, a gentle girl with a shy way about her. Exposing children! And God only knows who else to infection! I heard Dave shouting in what was supposed to be a higher volume of his reasonable voice, but sounded to me like hysteria. Gladys wasn't buying it either. She had Mason drawn tightly to her side. Her eyes were poisoned daddy. flying across the distance between her and Dave.

A disturbance out in the hallway drew my attention, and I leaned so I could see past Mason. It took a few seconds to accept what I was seeing, and then I think my eyes nearly popped from their sockets when I recognized the uniformed police officers and the men in hazmat suits from the health department. They were talking to individuals in the crowd by the double doors. The look I gave Dave must have been bloated with disgust,

as suddenly he glanced at me and did a double-take. What is it? I couldn't answer. How do you speak through emotions so thick and heavy that they're like a wall of pain? I just stared at him with my mouth open. Dave put his hands up between himself and Gladys' face and stepped wide around mother and daughter.

As he passed me, I stared transfixed at the new and dangerous animal he had become. The tiny blonde hairs on the back of his neck glistened in a heavy layer of sweat, the shiny fibers bristling, as though he had just dunked his head under a water faucet. He saw who was down the hall, didn't bother looking back, shutting his door on the way out to greet the officials. If I could have wished myself instantly to the other side of him, I knew I'd see the face of reason on a man about to offer up his sacrifice. Gladys swung back at me, wracked by grief. I heard tiny thin sounds coming from her throat.

She was trying to hold in a scream. There was a muttering sound approaching the door from the other side. I started glancing about as if I was trying to find another door to shove Mason and her mother through. Maybe I just wanted an escape for myself, because I knew what was about to happen, and I didn't want to witness it. I did time in Joliet's state for trafficking cocaine. At the lowest point of my life, I nearly pulled the trigger of a 45 against the temple of a narque, but I found something in myself that wouldn't let me. And so I did six years in a black, abhorrent nightmare.

I'd seen and done things and had things done to me in that, excuse me, Lord, fucked up hell on earth that made me doubt my sanity. So when my office door opened again, I was fast reverting to the unsaved animal I had been back then, even though I was scared to death by what that little girl had hidden under her cutesy headband. I was tensing up in a way that I knew meant violence, was coming. The old hated but familiar red mist was spreading over my eyes. And when Dave started forward with the hazmat team just a few feet beyond the threshold, I shoved out my right hand,

palm flat and large as a sign in front of the pastor's startled face. Have them wait a moment, please. The police and the hazmat team stopped in their tracks, looking from me to Dave. Why? I need to speak with you first, Dave. Why he did it, I don't know. Maybe the look in my eyes, maybe the tone of my voice, maybe it was God opening the thinnest crack in the wall of bluff Dave used to hide his own terror.

For whatever reason, he turned to the people in the hall and spoke calmly. Please, just give us a sec, okay? He didn't like it, I could tell, and neither did they. But the door closed without interference, and Dave turned around to face me. In an instant, he saw something in my face that alarmed him. I stepped quickly past Mason, not worrying about infection now, and locked the office door. What in God's name are you doing? Move over there, pastor.

Just then, I could see an awful lot of thoughts jumping around behind those eyes. I wanted to make sure he didn't make a bad choice at that moment. Because I knew I was ready to hurt him, maybe permanently. You will move over there now. I pointed to the wall behind him. He swallowed first, a nonverbal way of deciding correctly. He was trembling all over as he backed up. He wasn't afraid of Mason now.

He would have bumped against her had Gladys not pulled her out of his path, but he was very afraid of me. He glanced at the door, then at me, Perhaps one last test to see if a shout would pay off, and I tilted my head slightly and narrowed my gaze. There was no sound inside the room but the soft breathing of four people. I vaguely realized I'd been squeezing my fists while Dave looked me over, and when I saw understanding in his eyes,

I relaxed a little and opened my hands. Dave's back was against the bookcase now. Stay. Then I turned my attention, all of it, to Mason. Her eyes were shiny with tears. I knelt down so that I was eye to eye with her. I smiled, knowing that I was going on instinct, following an invisible line of illogic and emotion that directed my actions.

It was like miraculously discovering that I could speak a foreign language. Perhaps it was the same when a true believer for the first time began, to speak in tongues. You either trusted and went with it, or you mentally fought against it. I thought about it for a moment, how it shouldn't make sense, but right at that moment, I was desperate for any outcome but permanent incarceration for this little girl. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was discovering the true quality of faith. I raised my hands until they were level with the pink headband. Mason was staring at them.

I was afraid she might pull away at my next move, but she stood still as my hands came forward. I gently grasped the bottom edge of the headband, and very carefully raised it. She winced once, as the material caught then pulled free from a sticky spot on the bandage underneath. I paused a moment, looking her straight in the eyes, Watching her watching me, her beautiful curls fell down over the white bandage.

I dropped the headband. My heart banged in my chest and throat. There was a round, wet circle in the center of the bandage, up high on her forehead. Never taking my eyes off hers, I slid my fingertips gently around the sides of her head until they touched the ends of the white surgical tape that held the bandage in place. After a moment to prepare myself, I slowly peeled the tape forward until I felt the bandage loosen at her temples. It was stuck to the circle, but I kept pulling, very gently, very carefully,

and it tugged free into my hands. There it was. Satan's mouth Mark of the beast Sunflowers weep On the face of an innocent I heard Dave's sharp intake of breath Then a whisper of movement

I glanced up to make sure he wasn't going for the door But he had turned towards the corner And had both hands on the wall above his head Like a guy waiting to be searched for drugs One incredibly round, frightened eye stared at me from under his right arm. Mason's smooth forehead was infested. The circle of disfigured flesh was thick and inflamed, a bright red that I knew would be hot to the touch.

It was so much larger than I could imagine a tiny forehead could hold. At least five inches across. It had eradicated her hairline, so that where before the hair must have grown thick and vibrant, now only a few individual strands remained in the pocked circle. The whiteheads had already burst open. Inside the inflamed cavities, the tips of the larvae wriggled in a sleepy rhythm, as though they dreamed while they fattened themselves. I was nearly mesmerized by the even spiral of the florets coming from the center of the devastation.

As soon as I had lifted the bandage away, the openings had begun to weep, and their teardrops ran down into her eyebrows and lashes. I followed them downward, stopping at her eyes, where real tears swelled up and pushed over the bottom lashes. Does it hurt? Like a toothache in my bones. I was overwhelmed with an emotion I don't think I can describe clearly, even now. It was sort of like a warm wave of pity and love,

raining upward from where my knees rested on the carpet to enclose Mason and me alone inside a circle. Maybe it was only my imagination, or maybe if I could have stood outside myself right then, I would have seen the air distorted around us. I reached for Mason's shoulders and drew her away from her mother. Gladys was sobbing above me, and for some reason I thought of Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet. I pulled Mason to my chest and held her.

She began to weep against my shirt. I felt the hot dampness of her tears. It seemed right to do so, so I hugged her even tighter against me. I felt the rough pattern on her fore. forehead, pressing into the right side of my chest. Her little arms clutched me and held on tightly, and I started saying something without being fully aware of what. After a moment, I knew I was telling her it was all right. She was not a sinner, and she did not deserve this. I started praying the Lord's prayer softly against the top of her head, burying my face in her soft curls, smelling her little

girls sent. Somewhere in the middle of the prayer, I felt it happening. Minuscule pin-pricking sensations like the tiniest electric shock, as though thin microscopic splinters, had just shot through the material of my shirt and into the skin over my right chest. Just as quickly, the spot numbed, and there was absolutely no pain in the invaded flesh. I knew that by the end of the day, the itching sensation would begin. I continued to hold her tight while she cried it all out. I didn't want to let her go, but I was fearful I would smother her in my own desperate need to give comfort. Finally, I drew back a little and let her detach herself.

The larvae were still within their nests inside her forehead. But the weeping from the opened wounds had ceased completely. The doctors at the internment camp would recognize that the larvae were dead, that they could safely pluck them from their nests and treat the area with ointment and antibiotics. In six weeks, the nightmare would be over for Mason. Only a faint scar would remain above her lovely face. Perhaps the hair would even grow back.

Gladys dropped to her knees and hugged Mason to her, unaware it was over, and Mason buried her face against her mother's chest and cried. I saw Gladys stiffen. It's okay. Gladys looked at me as if it was insane to think so. I looked at where Dave still cowered in the corner with his hands up, and his forehead mashed against the wall with the baseball cap ridden up on the back of his head. I got up, unlocked the door, and opened it.

The hazmat team entered, but they stopped to look at Gladys. She was standing now, with a look of awe on her face, and having trouble getting into words exactly what she'd discovered. With a giant smile that was nearly a laugh, she gasped. They're dead. The creatures are dead and she's cured. The leader of the hazmat team came forward from the group and knelt down. He had on a mouth and nose filter, and he put on a pair of eyeglasses and stared intently at the infested area,

while his rubber-gloved hands gently pulled at the edges of the circle. After a moment, he frowned and raised his eyebrows. He looked at the other men, shrugged his shoulders, and removed his filter. He took off his glasses and stood up. This child needs treatment, not quarantine. She's past the dangerous part of infection. Gladys was looking at me as though she'd had an epiphany. She opened her mouth to speak, but I gripped her forearm and I shook my head slightly.

The look of confusion was there for only a moment. And then it was joy again, as she and Mason were filtering out of the room with the hazmat team and the police officers. One of the policemen remained behind. He was looking at Dave, who had turned around and was trying to compose himself. There was a look in his eyes as I had never seen. Something very close to mania.

He pointed at me. Him! Him! He's the infection! He is spreading this abomination! The policeman gave me one brief, disinterested look and then turned to call out into the hallway. We got another one here. Dave had a look of triumph that was frightening to behold, and I felt my own blood turning cold

when the team shoved back through the doorway. But they weren't looking at me, and the instant I caught on, I saw it reflected in Dave's eyes. Triumph crumpled into panic. The cop turned to the leader of the hatch, I saw it when he was shoved up against the wall that way. Back of his hat was popped up, and I seen the bottom edge of the infection. They moved in, and Dave surged forward against them

like a swimmer trying to break through an ocean wave. They grabbed his arms and took him down to the carpet face first as gently as they could. And there it was, just below the edge of his baseball cap, A sliver of angry red flesh like the bottom half of the devil's own grin. There was a moment where I thought about it. The cautious side of me didn't want to take another group of spore into me. It might kill me. And maybe it wouldn't work anyway. Perhaps the alien entity could sense an infected body and refuse to enter.

It didn't matter either way, really. I didn't feel the same overpowering urge towards Dave that I had for Mason. An innocent child inflicted with the mark of the beast. As I left the office, I knew the truth of the cure. For both Dave and myself, either love would save us or we would die. That one made me feel queasy. Are you getting sick? No, just sick to my stomach.

I need some water. I'd be careful about drinking too much water. Let me guess. People should eat snacks more than drink water, right? Well, I fully support the use of snacks for optimal health and well-being, but no. That's not the reason I'm concerned about excessive water consumption. Well, I need to do something. What do you have against water?

It's not me as much as it is, author, S.M. Piper. You see, she shared a story with me about a weird affliction that can spread from person to person. You mean through weird and provocative sexual acts? Because Olivia was telling me a story like that where a woman was... No! It has nothing to do with any weird Olivia sex stories. Aw. Hush, Brandon.

Let me tell this story. Along with me and Corinne Sanders. Yes. Along with you and Corinne. About a woman who discovered that there's... There's a man out there who can infect you with an unquenchable thirst. He's known as the dry man. Shadywood Apartments is a long, narrow building that sits at the top of a steep incline,

overlooking a body of water called Ambassador's Lake. There's a legend about the lake, relating to the founders of the town, meeting by the shore to settle a new land or something. It's a dry tale, not worth the effort of retelling. Looking out from my balcony, I'm graced with a clear view of the lake and the surroundings. There's a paved trail that goes all the way around the lake, wooden park benches dotting its circumference. Families, friends, and lovers come by the lake just about every day, and observing them has become something of a hobby of mine. I recognize the familiar faces, when I can manage to see their

faces well enough from a hundred or more yards out, of course. There was one man whose face I never saw, but I spotted him almost every day. He wore a tan fishing cap and cargo pants to match, with a red flannel shirt between. He looked like an angler, except I never saw him with a the rod, or even so much as looking in the direction of the lake. Instead, he would just walk around the trail, briefly chatting with those he passed and otherwise keeping to himself. If I had written about this lake and its visitors a week ago, that paragraph would likely have been the end of his involvement. Unfortunately, I have a tale to tell. It was only about four days ago that the police came to my home. They were going door to door in my complex, and I could make

out a brief, indistinct conversation coming from the apartment beside mine. If I'd wanted to, I could have heard the whole thing. These walls have mouths, and if you're willing to listen, you can experience a whole other life in lieu of your own. I try to respect the privacy of my neighbors a little more than that, though. Knowing they would eventually come to my door, I was prepped and ready by the time the Knox finally came. I opened the door and greeted them with a warm smile. After a brief round of introductions, one of the officers got straight to the point, asking me, Do you recognize the name Helen Carmine?

I said I didn't, and they produced a photograph, holding it out for you. for me to take. It was of Ambassador Lake and the surrounding park. The focus of the image was a boy and a girl, each very young, standing beside one another and posing for the camera. In the background were a dozen more people engaging in standard park fair. The officer indicated a bench just above the young boy's head, quite a distance away. Two people sat on the bench, see you. seemingly engaged in a conversation. This is the last time anyone saw her alive. Do you recognize her or the man's sitting with her?

Actually, I do. Kind of. Not her, I mean, but the man. Unmistakably, it was the man with the flannel shirt. I explained to them what I knew, that he visited the lake often, and to meet him, they'd likely just need to wait there for a day, two at most.

They thanked me for my time, gave me a card to call in case I remembered anything else, and visited the next apartment. I thought about what they told me, tried to imagine the flannel-shirted man as anything other than a harmless old fisherman, reliving his past via proximity to water. The police officers had warned me to be wary of him, that he may be dangerous. Finding it hard to believe, I told myself over and over.

It's never the ones you think it will be. Night falls quickly around here, as dark and foreboding as the days are bright and warm. I sat at my computer, immersed in the cool glow of the monitor, when it occurred to me that the rest of my apartment was pitch black. I got up and moved across the living room, heading to the light switch, by the front door, but just as I was about to flip it, I heard a knock at the door to the apartment beside mine. I paused and glanced at the clock below my TV. 1228, it read. It seemed strange to me that the police would come around at such a late hour, but perhaps they'd learned something new and

significant, or perhaps the neighbor had remembered something and called for them to return. Whatever the reason, when a response didn't come after a few seconds, the footsteps began to move towards my door. I softly gripped the doorknob and leaned forward to peer through the peephole. This latter action was taken on instinct, and if I'd really thought about it, I likely wouldn't have bothered. I don't like to think about what might have happened if I hadn't looked through the peephole first. Before my door stood the man in a fishing cap, flannel shirt, and cargo shorts. Had that been the end of it, I still may not have been as wary as I was. No, what kept my door closed and froze the rest of my body in the process was the rest of his appearance.

He was, in a word, dry. What I could see of his pale skin was ashen, looking as though it may flake off at the slightest touch. The brim of his fishing cap came down over his face and obscured his eyes, but his lips were plain to see, chaps and split, with jagged bolts of crimson highlighted against the pink, white coloration. White, wispy hair dangled on either side of his head out from beneath his cap. The man raised his fist and knocked on the door, on my door, three times.

I was a statue, glued to my people for fear that he may notice the flicker of light through the lens changing. Something deep inside me told me I didn't need to hear anything he had to say, and the best course of action was just to wait and let him go on his way. And so he did. After what couldn't have been more than a handful of seconds, the man in the flannel shirt turned and moved on, continuing down the row of apartments and stopping at the door of my neighbor on the other side. Just a minute. The reply came from an obviously agitated woman.

As uncomfortable as I was with the man's presence, I was just as curious as to what he wanted of us. Against my better judgment, as well as a principal or two of mine, I sidled up to the wall and pressed my ear against it, listening intently. What do you... Jesus Christ, do you need help? The reply came in a voice, so dry and dusty, it hurt my own throat to hear. Do you have some water? A pang of guilt struck through me. He was obviously dehydrated, and I'd left him outside to die.

What kind of monster was I? I heard the sound of the chain unlatching, followed by the door closing and the two of them making their way to the kitchen. She moved in quick, long steps, while his gate was a low temple shuffle, sliding across her apartment as she poured him a glass of water. I don't need a lot. Drink this.

I'll get you another glass. Don't bother. It won't do any good. A silence fell over the apartment. I'd heard about that, about how the time you realize you're actually dying of dehydration and may be too late to do anything about it. I wasn't sure how true that was,

but it seemed odd that the man had so wrong. readily accepted his fate. That's ridiculous. Come on, drink some more. Have you heard the tale of the dry man? Another pause. No, I haven't, but I... The way it was told to me was this.

Long ago, a hundred years or more, society wasn't quite like it is today. Less civilized, brutal. He stopped briefly, and I heard the sounds of a chair being dragged across the floor. Time was you could hang a man just because you had a grudge and more friends than he. Simpler and way, harder and a lot more. Back then, there was a fellow by the last name of Keene. First name, well, I can't quite remember.

remember his first name. Doesn't much matter. A man lives on by his actions more than his name. Keene was a drunk by nature and a loud one at that. In and out of a cell, Keene was like it was his home away from home. The faucet from their apartment turned on again, and the sound of a glass being filled with water followed. Funny, I thought. I haven't heard him stop for a drink yet. One day, the sheriff gets it into his head that he's going to teach keen a lesson. You like the drink so much, he says, that's all you'll get to drink. Keeps keen in a cell unlawfully, though not against the wishes of the town, and feeds him nothing.

but bread and beer with some game for dinner. A strange, dry staccato issued from the apartment, and it was a few moments before I realized it was the man's laughter. Guess the sheriff figured he'd better feed Keene well, even if he doesn't treat him right. The faucet turned on again. Another glass was poured. My own mouth felt a little dry, but I chalked it up to a sympathetic reaction.

Man cannot live on beer, even if he was raised on the bottle. The sheriff has this big barrel of water right beside his desk that he drinks from every day, right in front of Keen. The drunk bags and bleeds says he'll never touch another drop of alcohol. alcohol in his life. A lie both of them knew, but the sheriff is stalwart, refuses to let Keen out and just keeps drinking that water in front of him day after day. Two weeks of this go by until it seems the sheriff won't ever let Keen out. So the drunk, dehydrated, dying man, stops pleading.

That night, when the sheriff and Keene are having their respective dinners, the sheriff helping himself to as much water as he could guzzle. Keen starts telling him what it's like. Doesn't know why, really, but something possessed him to describe the way the air burned his throat on the way out and stung coming back in. He talks about his tongue, dry as a forgotten sponge, just sitting in his mouth, scraping against his cheeks and his teeth and his gums.

Can't get it comfortable, no matter where he puts it, says he's thought about chewing it off just to give it somewhere else to be. The faucet was running non-stop at this point, but I could still clearly hear the man's voice over the sound of the water. The sheriff, wouldn't you know it, starts drinking more water right in front of Keen. Ladle after ladle, he scoops into his tiny cup, then directly into his mouth, until soon the ladle isn't enough. The sheriff bends over the barrel and just starts lapping out of it like a dog, then sticks his face in and starts gulping it down, mouthful after mouthful of water. And all of this right in front of a man dying of dehydration?

He laughed, that harsh, awful laugh again. spiteful, petty is what it was. But there he goes, sticking his head further and further into the barrel until he just stops, slumps down over the edge of the barrel, gone limb. The woman's voice was breathless, as though she was responding to something else entirely. Her voice startled me. I'd almost forgotten she was in the apart. It had felt as though the man was talking directly to me. I was parched, but I stayed where I was.

I didn't want to miss a word, the man said. He gets out of the cell a little while later when the deputy comes by and sees what's happened. Couldn't have been keen, man's as shrivelled as a prune. Even if he wasn't locked in a cell, he couldn't have had. He couldn't have held the sheriff's head under like that. With nothing to hold him on, Keen walks free, and then he just walks,

goes wherever his feet take him. Soon after, the rumors start spreading. Stories of the dry man, a withered white with nothing but his tale of torture to tell. Curse to watch others gorge themselves on the one thing he wants most, but can't ever have. God, forgive me. I heard the sliding of his chair across the floor again. Anyway, I've taken up enough of your time.

Thanks for letting an old man share his story. His short shuffles carried him to the front door. despite the absence of any meaningful response from his host. The door opened, closed, and just like that, there was silence again, save for the ever-running faucet from next door. Quickly, I made my way to the front door, peering out of the peephole for another glimpse of the man,

but he was gone. Feeling more than a little tired, likely coming down off that odd primal adrenaline rush. I made my way to the kitchen for a glass of water before bed. Drinking it down more quickly and readily than I recalled ever have done in the past, I made myself another to chase it before heading to bed, expecting the water to slake my thirst sometime in the night. Upon waking, I discovered it had not.

I didn't even have to use the restroom. I just wanted more water. In my PJs, I stumbled back to the kitchen, pouring myself another glass, when the red and blue flashes coming through my front curtain distracted me. As I pieced together in the next 10 or 20 minutes, my next door neighbor had, at some point in the night, called 911. immediately before drowning in her own bathtub. My thoughts immediately went to the story from the night before, of the sheriff drowning himself in a barrel of water. I took a drink from my glass. Scanning the crowd of police officers and EMTs,

I spotted a familiar face. One of the two who had visited me the day prior was taking a statement from another man who lived in my building. I made my way into his line of sight as unobtrusively as possible and signaled him to speak with me when he got the chance. He nodded his understanding and a short time later met up with me in front of my apartment. Did you see or hear anything? I nodded and grunted through a mouthful of water, swallowing. Yeah, the man you were looking for with the flannel shirt?

I saw him last night. He knocked on my door, and when I didn't answer, he went to hers. I know I shouldn't have, but I listened through the wall. What did you hear? I told him the story of Keene, the sheriff, and the dry man, in much the same way as I heard it. I said I had no reason to suspect the flannel man had done anything, as it sounded like he'd left before going anywhere. other than her living room, but I admitted to falling asleep shortly thereafter.

The officer thanked me, and I went back inside, setting the mostly empty glass down on the counter. An hour later, that officer drowned himself in Ambassador Lake, in front of all his friends and colleagues. Nobody knew what to do. Several people had tried to help him, tried to go get him, and pull him ashore, But he brandished his gun at anyone who got close, even as he dunked his head underwater, taking deep, obvious breaths of it, like he was trying to fill every part of himself with the lake. It was only when his body went limp that anyone felt brave enough to approach. But of course, by then, it was too late. I watched the whole scene unfold with morbid fascination.

Something about it satisfied me, kept me looking down on as it played out long after I felt I should have turned away. I wasn't happy the man was dead, and I certainly had nothing against police officers in general. But the event fulfilled me, made me feel as though I could keep going. Perhaps I reasoned. It was one of those spiritual concepts. One life ends as another truly begins. An impromptu quarantine was placed around Ambassador Lake, and the water in our building was shut off for fear of contamination. Speculation grew like weeds,

and many shady wood residents relocated elsewhere, to hotels or with family in the city. I stayed right where I was. This was my home, after all. I looked out on the low. lake that night. The quarantine was still in effect, though I doubted how effective a strip of yellow tape around the lake really was. I tried to imagine myself in the position of that officer, taking heaving lungfuls of water without even flinching. The act seemed abhorrent, and I almost

turned away in disgust, until I noticed him. The man in the flannel shirt walked, a lazy zigzag down the path that surrounded the lake. His eyes wandered back and forth, as if he was just another park goer taking in the sights, never mind that it was nearly midnight. I studied him intently, and a thought occurred to me, a crazy, ridiculous thought.

Was that the dry man? It made sense, didn't it? He told him. a story to my neighbor, and she drowned herself in her tub before dawn. And his appearance, his dry, chapped, ashen appearance lends more credibility to the theory than I was comfortable with. If I assumed that a person could exist with the ability to talk someone into drowning themselves, and that this person was known as the dry man, the more obvious, albeit far-fetched, it seemed, I was so lost in thought that I didn't notice for a while that the man in the flannel shirt had stopped moving.

It was only several seconds after noticing this that I made another discovery. He was staring directly back at me. Me, the occupant of the apartment he had visited the night before. The home I had led him to believe was vacant. instantly I fell to the floor. It was childish, yes, but I couldn't think of a quicker way to break line of sight. I sat there with my back to the wall, praying he hadn't seen me. There was nothing I wanted less than a conversation with that man.

That was way too fast. It was impossible that he'd run up the slope, found my door, and knocked in that brief amount of time, wasn't it? Did that mean it wasn't him? Who else would knock on my door? Three times in the middle of the night. The silhouette of a man moved in front of my curtains, backlit by the street lamps outside. He was clearly facing into the apartment,

swaying gently back and forth. I held my hands over my mouth, barely even breathing through my nostrils. Every light in my small home was on. If I moved, I'd almost certainly give myself away. Not that I hadn't done that already. The black shape stood there, as if staring at me, and I stared right back. Neither of us moved, save for his gentle swaying, the rhythmic rocking back and forth.

I focused on that, concentrated on the. left and right and left and right side to side like a lazy human metronome for what felt like hours i watched him waiting for him to leave or to come back to my door and knock again or do anything other than stand and sway awoke in the late morning startling to my feet moment after regaining my census The silhouette at my window was gone, and after a brief hasty search of my apartment, I confirmed I was still alone. I went to the kitchen, grabbing a glass and holding it under the faucet before turning the knob. Right. Empty-handed.

I went back to my laptop and tried my best to go about my day. I forced myself not to think about the encounter from last night. or the fact that I felt as though I was living in slum conditions with officials and various suits coming and going from apartments to apartment. They came once to my door, but after confirming my water was turned off and a brief physical inspection, they mostly left me alone. The majority of the attention was concentrated on my neighbor's home. More troublesome than the commotion, however, was my third. thirst. When they dropped by the last time, the apartment manager had given me several bottles of confirmed clean water. I went through all five in two hours, and I still felt like I was running a

marathon in a desert. My lips smacked whenever I opened them, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth for several seconds before I'd forcibly peel it away. It was the strangest combination of feelings. registering a comfortable 72 degrees, while the inside of my mouth had me convinced I must have been licking sand. I stared out at the lake again. The wide, blue lake, full of water, and the heat in my mouth seemed to ratchet up, as if just looking at water was making what little must have remained in my mouth evaporate away. The quarantine was just a strip of tape. I'd watched the man drown himself. I wouldn't drown myself.

I just needed a drink. Before I knew it, I was sliding down the slope behind my home. It was a set of stairs a little further than I'd gone, but it would have been a waste of time. Time I could spend getting closer to the water, getting into the water, getting the water in me. I jogged up to the bank of the lake, slipping under the police station. tape. Distantly, I heard someone yelling at me to stop, but they didn't understand. I'd be right back out in just a second and take my slap on the wrist. This was a matter of life and death. Emmercing my head in the soft, cool water of the lake was the single greatest moment of my life.

I let it flood into every orifice on my head, surrounding myself in the cool refreshment, the nourishment I so desperately craved. I took in gulp after gulp, practically sobbing into the water in relief. I had almost died out there in the heat under the oppressive sun, but now I would live. I was so grateful just to be alive. The bliss lasted only a moment before several pairs of meaty hands grabbed me, pulling me from the water. I was dragged onto the trail around the lake, kicking and sputtering the entire time. The water flowed out of me in great heaves as I bitterly sucked in the dry air,

feeling it lacerate the roof of my mouth in desiccating streaks. My next physical examination was much more thorough. They confirmed that I had been given water, but they didn't believe I'd actually drink any of it. There was no urine in my unflushable toilet, and my body showed signs of extensive dehydration, signs which, they admitted, should have been discovered during the morning's check-up. They gave me a palette of bottled water and ushered me into my room. I finished the water in a half hour, and I needed more. more. Another check outside confirmed my fears. There were guards posted around the lake now,

moving in tight patrols. From my vantage point, I couldn't see any breaks in their formation, but I had to hold out hope that there would be. I had to get back to that lake, back to that sweet sensation I'd tasted too briefly, resolving myself to go outside and watch from a closer, more actionable position, I discovered something else. There was a guard posted at my door, a gorilla of a man that took up nearly the entire passageway. He turned to face me when I opened it. Going out? I laughed and glanced past him.

Several people in lab coats looked our way with worried expressions. Yeah. Are you going to try to stop him? stop me. I was only half joking. We're doing everything we can to resolve the situation. Translation. Yes, I am. This is ridiculous. Get out of my way. I tried to push past him, but he just stood there, arms crossed, barring my passage.

We'll let you know as soon as the situation is resolved. food and water will be provided to you at your request within reason. With that, he gave me a gentle shove and closed my own front door in my face. I reacted poorly. I screamed insults and slurs at the man outside. At everyone I imagined could possibly be an earshot. My voice probably carried through the entire complex, though it was unlikely many. people had stayed behind long enough to hear. When yelling didn't work, I resorted to violence,

pounding and bashing on the door as if it was being held closed from the outside, which, in a manner of speaking, it was. That option became closed to me when I slumped the floor, exhausted and defeated. I felt as if I was going to die in my apartment, killed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting me. If only they'd let me stay under the lake a little longer. I could feel the satisfaction approaching. It was within arm's reach when I was removed. There was no substitute for it. The lake was the only place large enough to help me. I waited there on the floor for hours, saving my strength, waiting for the right moments to make my move. It wouldn't do to be found out too early and have the situation escalate into a personal bodyguard, or more likely mandatory

relocation to somewhere with padded walls and straps and locks. Just until I was myself again. Just until I was safe. Fuck that. They just didn't understand. Knuckles white fingernails digging into my palms, I pushed myself past midnight. It had to be a little bit of my own. It had become utterly dark out. I was only going to get one chance at this. I stared desperately at my digital clock, and as soon as it struck one, I made my move. The sliding glass door that led to my balcony was, thank God, the most well-designed door I'd ever had in my life. It slid open like a dream every time, without so much as a squeak. Never before had I been so appreciative of master craftsmanship as when I closed it silently behind me,

tiptoeing out across my balcony. Next were the rails. Slatted, the gaps between them were much too narrow to squeeze through, even for someone with my slider frame. I would have to go over, and that meant adding another few feet to an already intimidating drop. getting to the position of sitting on the rail, legs dangling over the edge, was easy. I then rolled over, gripping the edge tight with my fingers and slowly easing myself down to a fully stretched out position. From there, I planned, I would slowly lower myself to the bottom of the rail, cutting my drop by just that much more distance.

That was my plan, anyway. As soon as I let go with one hand, the other quickly followed suit and I plummeted straight down, hitting the slope below at a gentler angle than I had imagined. Suppressing a yell, I curled into a ball as best I could while rolling down the hill, crunching and snapping through the dried leaves and branches. The sounds reminded me of my own dehydrated state. Salvation was only yards. away. On my hands and knees, I crawled toward the lake, scanning for the patrolling guards.

They weren't hard to spot. They swept the area with flashlights, moving back and forth as they always had. One of the beams settled on a spot a few feet to my left, doubtlessly having heard my rapid descent. I scurried towards a tree to my right and pressed my back against it. Letting out my breath in a long, slow exhalation. I was so close. Half a minute passed before the patrol got bored, or off schedule or both, and moved on. Just as I was about to get up and make a break for it,

a voice startled me so much I almost let out a yelp of surprise. Wouldn't do that if I were you? Sitting in front of me, me in the brush as quickly and silently as ever was him, the dry man. He sat bow-legged, his fishing cap tilted forward to obscure his eyes, but certainly looking into mine nonetheless. Despite my ravenous thirst, I stayed frozen where I was, watching him, waiting for him to continue.

I envy you, you know, with that stunt you pulled earlier. You got to feel it and live. Few people can say that, I tell you. When I opened my mouth to speak, my voice came out as a rattle. You're the dry man. He chuckled that horrible laugh of his. That sound like an old man choking on a piece of dry chicken. No, no.

He waved the idea away with his hand. I'm not him. I'm just one of his disciples, I suppose. And now so are you. I frowned. What are you talking about? I felt strange to be having a conversation with a supernatural horror. But the past few days had been anything but ordinary for me.

I was willing to give this a pass. You listened to my story through the walls, didn't you? I couldn't be sure until you took a dip today. They say it's the best feeling in the world. I agreed with him. Nothing better. I felt it too. at least a shade of it.

That's when I knew you must have been eavesdropping, must have heard it same as that other poor woman. The dry man looked almost sorrowful, his dried lips drawn into a deep frown. You knew what telling her that story would make her do. I did, but don't talk like you're any different. Here you are, trying to run off to die. Taking a back, I shook my head.

No, I'm not. I don't want to die. I just need a drink. A dry man sighed. If he was half as dehydrated as I was, and his appearance suggested he was much more so. The action must have been hell on his throat. Look, I've never done this before, so forgive me if I forget to mention something I should have.

But you and me, we're the same now. That's impossible. I've never been tortured. Hell, I'm not a century old. I remembered the details of the story all too vividly, even days later. Another wheezing chuckle. Neither am I. I told you, I ain't the dry man.

I'm just a dry man. A dry person now. Same as you. He held up a finger to silence me before I could interrupt. You and I play by the same room. We can't have water anymore, not a drop, or it sends us into a frenzy. You're likely feeling that now, I imagine. I was.

You have some water, and it only makes things worse. You got to have more, and before you know what you're finding a big basin and dunk in your head. in holding it there till you can't hold nothing anymore. You understand me? What? What am I supposed to do? Spread the word. Tell the tale of the dry man and those who hear it will feed your thirst. The water they drink nourishes you. Like I said, the stunt you pulled today. They set me right as rain for a good long while. It's why I'm willing to do you this favor. I stared at him, a cast.

So you, you murder people, just so you can get something to drink? That sorrowful look returned to his face, and he slowly got to his feet. Morals have to take a backseat to reality sometimes, kid. He turned to look across the lake. Some days there's nothing I'd like more than to just dive right in and feel it one last time. Embrace the end of a miserable existence. I watched him look at the lake for a long, silent moment. finally breaking it with, but you don't.

But I don't, and neither I'm bitten will you? He then left me alone by the water. The next morning, they found every single patrolman face down in Ambassador Lake. Mandatory evacuation was enacted on Shadywood apartments, as well as a man hunt for a certain resident who had gone missing in the night after eluding supervision. I'm so sorry for what I've done. You know the rules now, and some of you will survive. Some of you will become me, but I don't think all of you will.

Some of you won't believe. Others just won't have it in them. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I hope you understand. If you don't yet, you will soon. Oh, that does it. I'm not going to be drinking water for a while. Ooh, you should drink beer as a substitute. Can I suggest you try drinking a... I swear to God, if you make a corona joke, I will lock you back in the dungeon.

Okay, okay. Look, we can get through this. All of us. it just requires a small bit of sacrifice for the common good. Stay in your home as much as possible, keep a safe social distance if you must go outside, wash your hands, don't touch your face, and get lots of sleep. Wait, but we're supposed to be sleepless. That's true, but I am officially granting all of us, and all our listeners, the permission to get lots of sleep.

It's the best thing you can do for your immune system. And the good news is we'll all be stuck here, so we'll keep releasing our weekly episodes with healthy doses of creepy tales. Indeed we will. So I think we've had enough of story time for now. What say we get back to work

so next week's episode will be ready right on time. Yay! That's the spirit. And to our dear listeners out there, thanks for listening. Rather than spread germs, why not share this episode

with your family and friends? Misery loves company, as they say. And now for the credits, Mr. Cummings. Right you are, You've been listening to the pandemic bonus from the No Sleep Podcast. The musical scores were written by Brandon Boone and David Cummings. The stories were produced by David Cummings, Jeff Clement, and Phil Mikalski, who also produced this episode.

Visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn more about our show. This audio production is copyright 2020 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.