Nightmares in the Morning Mist

“They are everywhere! Run!”, Thomas screamed at the top of his lungs. His face was cringed in complete fear, and the blood had drained leaving only a ghostly white appearance. He lumbered forward, stumbling; the tears and scratches all over his body showed his deplorable state. He shrank down on one knee as he slowly lost his strength.

“For the love of God, Annie. Run! They are coming, can you not see them coming.” His hand caught him as he slumped fully to his knees, keeping him from falling entirely. He had so little energy left. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds all over his legs. White fur scattered over every part of his body. One eye was swollen entirely shut with nasty claw marks crisscrossing his face from where he had taken severe wounds.

Annie just stood there, looking at him, her face an utter mask of horror. “Oh Thomas… How has it come to this?” She leaned down to try to pull him to his feet, but he used what little strength he had left to push her off—he desperately tried to fend her off with swats, and weak shoves. The half of his face not marked by bloody disfigurement stared pleadingly at her.

“Annie. Can you not see them? They are coming. Please, run. You stubborn woman, listen to me this one time. Leave me. If you love me at all Annie.” His swollen eye leaked a milky white secretion, pustulating over his face. But his other eye looked clearly at Annie, as it filled with tears. They flowed down his face as he silently stared at her, desperately hoping within his soul she would turn and flee.

“If you love me at all, Annie. Listen to me this one time.” His energy escaping him, he no longer pushed her off as she tried to coax him up. But there was just no way she could lift him. She stood there, her arms on his shoulders, as he lay half slumped on hands and knees, half lifted, half laying against her. His energy exhausted he lay sprawled against her.

As she tried to lift him, her eyes darted all over the surrounding grasses and forests. She was constantly searching as she continuously tried to get him moving. As she stared out over the grassland, she saw it over the knoll of the horizon, what vaguely appeared to be a white cloud. A mist. It slowly moved, expanding whiteness in droves as it came continuously closer, silently, slowly.

Holy terror filled her eyes as she stared, gasping. “No. Thomas, no. They are coming Thomas.” She quickly threw her body at him, desperately trying to pick him up. “You must move. There are thousands of them Thomas!” She kicked him in utter frustration, “Move, damn you. You don’t get to leave me here, not like this. Stand up. We have to go; we have to go now.”

His eye, still brimming with tears, stared at her. Without the energy to fight her off, and without the energy to move any further, he just stared at her. Tears silently streaming down half his face. Lacking even the will to argue with her, he just simply said, “Annie, go. Please, Annie. Go now, and never look back. You know I love you; you know I will always be with you. Go now.”

She screamed in frustration at the complete futility of it. She couldn’t move him. She couldn’t save him.

She ran. She looked over her should as she ran. The cloud of white descended slowly behind her, covering the landscape. It moved slowly, but deliberately. The white haze slowly took shape into the individuals that made it up. They ran, seemingly aimless, yet they appeared targeted. They ate, scratched, devoured everything in their path. She ran faster.

She sobbed as she fled the hell behind her. How had she left him behind? How could she possible have ever done that? She would never forgive herself. It was better that she had died than to abandon him to that fate. She was ascending to the top of the furthest rise, and she saw out over the valley below. Completely out of breath she paused, the climb had not been that strenuous, but she had been running on stop.

As she looked out over the valley, slightly to the left on the ridgeline. She saw him laying there. He was much as she had left him, yet he had laid down or fallen. But he remained partially leaning up on a slumped elbow. He was too far away to see entirely clearly, but she sensed his presence. They were staring at each other, even over this distance she could feel him. She almost thought she saw the reflection off his eye, still glistening with tears, sparkling in the rays of the sun.

She didn’t think it was possible for her to have the emotion left, but the heart-thrashing scream pierced the air as it was wrenched from her bosom. The white cloud had swarmed up the ridgeline and had entirely flowed over Thomas. He wasn’t even visible anymore, there was only the white film, cascading across the hill. Where Thomas had been laying, among the whiteness, various pockets of red also appeared, and continued to move and roam with the larger body.

She didn’t sense him any longer. His eyes, his eye, they were no longer on her. Annie collapsed to the ground, sobbing controllably. He was gone, she could literally feel that he was gone. Her soul, forever missing its completeness. A barren emptiness, gaping, jagged, harsh, remained. This could not be. She couldn’t live like this. She lay there, weeping.

She didn’t know how long she had been there. Time had lost its essence as she lay staring at the dirt of the ground, lost in the infinity of emptiness. But in her grief, she still heard it. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of squeaks and squeals could be heard faintly, but they were growing closer. Between the tears her head finally raised to the noises. Annie stared at the base of the hill which she had climbed, and she saw them. Hundreds of them. They were mostly white, except where the patches of dirt had made them a brownish white or dusty. Many of them had splotches of red on their bodies, the blood of victims that had gotten in their way. Those that they had feasted on during their rampage.

Annie’s eyes of dread and despair shifted to the eyes of rage, of hate. She would kill them all, all of them. But not now, she was defenseless now. No weapons, no protection, they would swarm her and kill her as surely as they had killed Thomas. She had to make it to the edge of the village. There would be weapons there, people. They would scourge the land of this plague if she could just reach the village.

She had no choice, she ran again. She had three miles to go. The white cloud of monsters wasn’t that quick, she would easily stay in front of it as long as she kept moving. She ran, but she still wept bitterly. Over and over again, she whispered, “How has it come to this? How could this happen?”

It took her the hour to make the village. She would have made better time if the day had not already been entirely and utterly exhausting. But she could see that she had outpaced the fiends by two miles. They didn’t move too fast, probably because they were destroying everything in their wake.

As she approached the village she started screaming, exhausting the last of her energy reserves. The outlying houses had several heads pop out windows and doors, and then people from several houses ran out to help her.

“Annie? What’s wrong? Why are you bleeding? What’s going on?”

“Thomas was in the fields; he was just checking the crop. But they came out of nowhere.” Small sobs escaped her lips as she trembled. “They descended on him. I was at the sink doing the dishes, looking out the window. I saw them swarm him.” She broke again in a gasp, not wanting to remember. “How did it come to this? He fought them off, and he started to run back toward the house. But three of them twisted around his legs and he went down. They tripped him; the monsters tripped him.”

“Annie, what are you talking about? This doesn’t make any sense. Who tripped him?”

Her rage, still boiling inside of her, caused her to yell in a fury. “Those murderous devils tripped him! They were on him in moments, they clawed and chewed half his body when he was on the ground for but a minute. He swiped half them off him and got running on his feet again screaming at me to get out of the house and run. We made it a mile, up to River’s Bend, but he just couldn’t go any further.” She let out a wail, “He made me leave him!”

Several more of the villagers had gathered around and their eyes widened with fear, and mostly confusion. They didn’t understand what was happening. And, Annie, beside herself just wasn’t making sense.

Jasper, one of the village elders finally tried to coax answer from her. “Annie, where’s Thomas? What happened to him?”

“They murdered him! They killed him!”

“Who? Who, Annie?”

“The monsters! Can’t you see them! Look on the horizon you blind fools! They are coming, can you not see them coming!”

The villagers spun to look around, everywhere—the confusion and fear continuing to build. A small child, Joseph, slowly pointed out the direction where Annie had come running. Always quiet and soft spoken, he perked up meekly, “It’s like a white blanket. Well, a dirty white blanket.” Shock and horror all at once dawned on him. “But we buried them all. We killed them all, and we buried them all.”

The other villagers finally where also becoming aware of what Joseph saw; they saw the white mist on the horizon. The blanket of fur, dirty fur, bloody fur, that covered the hillsides. It was slowly working its way toward the villagers. Meticulously cleaning, devouring, everything along the way.

Annie was forgotten as Jasper started shouting orders to everyone in the village. Annie didn’t hear the orders as she stared blankly through the town. She didn’t turn around; she wouldn’t look behind her. Tired, lifeless, aimless, she started walking through the town. Nothing mattered now anyway. It didn’t take her long to exit the other side, and she just continued a slow drudgery walk away from the village.

Even if she still breathed, her life was over. They had taken it from her. They would kill everyone in the village as well, perhaps if they all ran. But it didn’t look like Jasper was evacuating, apparently, they were planning on fighting. That was madness, of course.

The entire village did not see her as she crested the far knolls outside the village, for their eyes only lay from whence she came. The tide of fur grew ever closer. The villagers had setup defensible stations and zones, and they had outfitted themselves with every makeshift weapon they could bring to arms. No one knew if it would be enough.

As the expanse of white grew closer, the villagers could start to pick out the individuals. They were coming, it seemed much faster now. Perhaps they picked up on the fear, perhaps they sensed the availability of food. But the front runners perked up and started breaking off heading right for the villagers. And then they came, in droves. Hundreds of them.

The weasels, that had been infected with the unknown disease, descended upon the villagers. All the weasels had been slaughtered and buried, thousands of them. But here they were, sickly alive, maybe they were dead? Their half rotten corpses flew at the villagers.

Annie heard their screams.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/25/culled-mink-rise-from-the-dead-denmark-coronavirus