A Zombification of Bears

If you own a Smartphone. Beware this new zombie game! You have been warned!!!!!!

Malin and Jedhi huddled close to the computer screen. They had finally perfected the new 'zombie virus' for their latest video game.

"At last, after two whole months, we finally got it working right". Malin squealed, her voice echoing through the large underground 'lab' which they used evenings and weekends when everyone had left the school.

"Now, send it to my phone, let's check it out". Jedhi said hopefully.

Malin selected all the people on her friend list, Jedhi and forty-five other people, and hit send. These people had already paid for the game, they had waited patiently while it was being tested and retested. Malin had always been impatient. She knew that she should have waited, but they really needed the money.

They had set up automatic pay and receive for their other subscribers. They numbered in the thousands.

Jedhi clicked on the icon. He could have sworn that he saw the image of a skull-and-crossbones just flit across his screen. They had certainly not programmed that in. He blinked, maybe it was his imagination. He felt his skin start to crawl.

Turning around, he saw Malin trying to hide her phone from him. His throat itched, his breath came in short gulps, his breath reeked when he opened his mouth to speak. No words came out, only rasping sounds as his shoulder slumped. Jedhi tried walking over to Malin, but she was already backing away. His feet dragged along the floor and for some reason which he could not comprehend, he just wanted to feast on the inviting stink of Malin's body odor, he wanted to rip her throat out and sink his teeth into her delicious stinking, traitorous neck. His senses had become extremely intense, his sense of right and wrong were deserting him as the minutes passed.

"What have you done Malin", he though he said.

What Malin actually heard was "gurgle, glug, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle", while drool slid slowly and sickeningly from Jedhi's lips, and down his cheeks.

"UGH! I hate real life zombies", Malin shouted as she ran for her life. She was bawling and sniffling awfully. This was not what she had intended. She had developed the 'touch zombie feature' without telling Jedhi, it was supposed to be a surprise, to enhance the playing experience. But, it was somehow having a highly impractical and real life effect on the skin. Could it be that once one touches the phone, the tiny nanos crawl in and destroy the body's immune system. Something awful and completely weird had just happened to her best friend. What had she really done?

The real and scary question was what was happening to the forty-five other people that she had sent to game to. What about the automatic subscribers, the thousands of people. Oh my God!!!!!!

How in God's name had that happened. Was it the blood from the tiny wound that she had gotten while administering the changes. The blood had actually seeped strangely into the petri dish of nanos which she had used. There had hardly been any to clean up afterwards. What bothered Malin was the fact that she had 'inherited non-specific innate adaptive gene mutation'. She didn't need to worry about herself, it was not really a threat to her body. Yet what if the nanos had found a way to alter the sequence and was now targeting the humans intentionally or unintentionally. Who could trust any computer system completely.

As she ran, she heard Jedhi shuffling towards her. Malin opened the door and collided with a huge brown bear. She dropped her phone and stood completely still, riveted to the spot in fear. The phone rang at that very moment. The ringtone of her mother.

The bear, intrigued by the sounds, dug it's claws deep into the ground, then bent it's mouth to pick up the phone, it's teeth sinking into the glass with a crunching sound. It chewed the pieces of glass, then spat out the unsavory metallic parts.

"Oh no. Oh God. What if the bear got infected"? Malin thought.

Too late. The creature bellowed loudly and started writhing in agony. Run Malin, her inner voice shouted.

Her two friends worked at the zoo. They had received the game. Animals were being reported on the streets, the news blasted from screens everywhere. Her back-up phone began ringing crazily. Her mother again. Malin knew what was happening. Her two brothers had received the game. Oh, if only they too had inherited the weird genes. They must be like Jedhi by now.

People on the street began screaming, two bears were fighting. Then they stopped. Both turned their complete attention upon the people. Where the virus or whatever it was, slowed people down, the bears had become twice as fast as before. They were mowing down people everywhere. Malin had found her car, but traffic was backed up as far as she could see.

Outside her window, the huge brown bear toppled a large man. The bear straddled the man, it bit deeply into the neck. Blood spurted from the jugular veins as the man tried to scream. It bit his hands off and threw them towards Malin. They each bounced off the glass of her window, leaving blood trickling slowly down the glass. Malin moaned, rocking back and forth, grief wracking her entire frame. She opened the side door, stepped over of the pool of blood, and sprinted back inside the building, fervently praying that no one or thing was chasing after her. There was no sign of Jedhi, she breathed a sigh of relief.

What was happening at her home. Her parents were not answering. Malin felt like an empty shell of her former self.

There was no way to contain that which people had no idea what to contain. The virus spread like wildfire. People boarding planes, trains, ships, people in all corners of the earth now had access to the game. The game was being shared everywhere and by everyone who played games constantly.

Thanks to Malin's phone even the animals had become 'zombified'.

Malin never made it home. The last thing she heard before all radio transmission went silent, was a broadcast for an approved bomb strike by the US Navy and on the entire world as Malin knew it. Nothing happened though. Almost everyone had died.

Malin's two brothers found her asleep and hiding in the lab.

She never had a chance.

Her last thought was of how one stupid mistake by a tiny human being could end the world as we all knew it.

David Becerra-Unsplash

Now comes a complete world of human and animal zombies. Will they adapt and become the new world order?

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