Chapter One

June 15th, 2015 - 13:30 hours

It was eighty-eight degrees shortly after lunch, and it had been an awfully hot day to have a headache. Henry Prince walked briskly down the busy Atlanta sidewalk, eyes fixed on the concrete a few feet ahead of him. His head was throbbing, his vision a little blurry and his heart was racing. He was hot, so damn hot. It felt like he was having a panic attack in a microwave. He knew what panic attacks felt like all too well. Government work had made him intimately familiar with all forms of stress and their various side effects. His footing was sloppy and he knew it, but he didn’t care. He was trying to slow down his heartrate and his breathing. All he had to do was get a reign on his stress and he’d be fine.

He’d been telling himself that lie all day. Deep down, he knew that what he was feeling was something very wrong, something that crept out from inside of him to possess him.

“Biological possession.” he muttered to himself.

The office receptionist returning from lunch gave him a nervous glance and then looked away. He knew her from the courthouse, saw her every day.

“I’m sorry, Miss Carpenter.” he said, not looking at her, speaking his thoughts. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry, something’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” she asked, her eyes fixing on his face. “Oh, you do look flushed.”

“Sick.” he said. “Sick. Sick. I’m sick.”

Her thin brows knitted over her eyes and she nodded slowly.

“I think you need to go home.” she said. “You seem confused.”

“Confused.” he whispered the word with a nod. “…confused…”

Miss Carpenter turned to round the handrail and climbed the first two steps before she stopped to watch Henry continue down the sidewalk.

“Mr. Prince?” she called after him. “Aren’t you coming back to your office?”

“No. No. No. No.” he said mechanically. “No. No. No.”

By the last ‘no’, his voice was breaking and tears were wetting his eyes. His steps were slowing and starting to look like the gate of a drunk.

“Mr. Prince?” the woman called again.

“NO!” he screamed.

Lunchtime foot traffic scattered away from him, some hurrying on their way. Others gathered, asking him if he was okay. A few others took out their cell phones and recorded the affair with grins.

“You okay, Henry?”

He turned toward the voice he knew, gazing into the blue eyes of the man he had worked with for the last seven years. He couldn’t think of his name. He was trying, but he couldn’t find it in his mind. His thoughts weren’t even thoughts, just a whirlwind of noise, too much like the screeching of terrified bats to be anything remotely human in origin.

“Henry?” the man asked again.

He took Henry by the elbow and leaned close to whisper to him.

“Let me take you home.” he said. “Or to the hospital. Something’s wrong.”

Henry pinched his eyes shut. His tie was choking him. He was smothering. His mouth was dry. He gasped for a deep breath and clawed at his tie, the knot only pulling tighter.

“Here, let me help you.” his friend offered.

His kind gesture was a fatal mistake, and one of the first keystrokes to the end of the world.

“…help…” Henry whispered the word, eyes still closed tight. “…help…help…help…”

“I am, Henry. I am, just a second.”

He worked at the slick knot with a chuckle.

“You really did a good job on that knot.” he said with a grin, finally pulling the tangle of cloth loose.

“…good job…” Henry whispered. “Good job.”

His eyes flew open, fixed on his friend. The man recoiled instantly, repelled by the crazed look in his eyes. But it was too late.

Henry screamed “GOOD JOB!”, a high pitched, breaking scream, and slammed his body to his friend’s. The two of them toppled to the sidewalk with a grunt. A few onlookers bolted, yelling for help. Two continued to record with their cell phones. Others watched in horror.

“Good job!” Henry screamed, latching his teeth to the flesh of his friend’s jawl.

He made another muffled sound around the mouthful of flesh, then grunted “good job” lost in the flailing screams of his victim.

He tore away pieces of the man with his teeth and his hands. He ripped the soft pieces off him, lips and eyelids, ears and nose. He tore his left cheek away with his teeth, and dug his fingers into the flesh of his belly, tearing away bits of flab with his hands. The video of him eating three mouthfuls of his flailing coworker went viral in record time. He never looked up at the crowd, never responded to the pleas of others to stop or go away. He never stopped repeating the last words he spoke as a human; “help” and “good job” lending a surreal horror to the act. The only thing that stopped him was seven, .40 caliber, hollow point rounds fired into him by the Zone 3 Atlanta Police Department.

Officers drug the mauled man into the shade, giving him what medical attention they could while they waited for EMT's. Despite the terrible state of him, he was in surprisingly alert condition. He, and a few officers, recoiled when Henry Prince sputtered blood and sat up with a growl in the middle of the sidewalk. Three of them wrestled him to the ground and zip-tied his wrists behind his back. They dragged him into the shade, as well, calling for a second ambulance.

Henry was unresponsive to conversation, making eye contact but saying nothing other than "good job" and muttering a pitiful "...help..." before lunging with teeth bared. It all went straight to social media, of course. Oddly enough, it was only one of many instances of sudden insanity in the streets that day.

One hundred and sixty one miles north, in a small town in south east Tennessee, Madison Cartwright was also suffering a rare headache. It was triggered by the howling of an inmate in an observation cell just down the hallway from her office. Eight years in corrections had taught her the difference between the screams of an obnoxious attention seeker, and the terrified pleas of a truly tormented soul. The hoarse, gasping cries of the woman in that cell were genuine. Listening to them for eight hours had put Madison on edge and brought on a migraine.

She didn’t often have headaches, so this one was particularly disturbing. She shuffled out to her car at the end of her shift, instantly nauseated by the June heat and the sunlight that hurt her head. She made the drive home with no memory of traffic lights or other cars. When she arrived home, she glanced at the grill of her car, half expecting to find it damaged and plastered with gore. She wondered if she had run any red lights or hit any poor animals in her stupor. But the icepick pain behind her eyes made her rush into the house and the blessed dark of the cool interior.

She had trouble sleeping that evening, fighting nausea and a host of other stomach troubles. She called her lieutenant at an ungodly hour to tell him that she wouldn’t be in the next day. He didn’t answer the phone, which was unusual. She left a message and had only just hung up the call when jabbing pain in her head strobed light across her vision. Cold nausea drove her to the bathroom. Everything went black right about the time she vomited.

Check back for Chapter Two!