Milliliters. That was what success relied on. A cure to the transmissible infection ravaging the world would come down to a tiny measurement. A milliliter too little or too much altered the chemical makeup and would render the antidote ineffective. Equally important was to maintain a precise temperature, a difficult feat to achieve since the air conditioning broke three days prior. Beads of sweat rolled from the chemist’s brows and dripped from the rounded tips of their noses, like the murky teal liquid dropping into the vial from a transfer pipette. Donned in white lab coats bearing the stains of their efforts, this assembly of heroes was the last defense against master predators stalking the Earth. A pharmacologist, analytical chemist, a chemical technician and engineer dedicated all effort toward developing a cure.
Outside of their steady breathing, the only noise was the voice emanating from a small, black, battery powered radio with a silver antenna extended to its fullest length. “If anyone out there is still listening, Aurora is being stalked. That’s right, stalked. As in hunted. Picking us off one by one. We’ve staggered our watch shifts to throw them off. Bullets are becoming useless. I repeat, bullets don’t work anymore. They’re adapting. Evolving faster than we can keep up. Camp Hawk has already been overrun. We’re losing, people. Losing. San Francisco, New York, Houston, all of them silent. Satellite images show bzzt -ditions around the wo- brzz -same.”
The voice was abruptly cut out by a burst of static. Promptly, the chemical engineer snatched up the radio to twist the volume down and adjust the antenna for a better signal. He turned the dial, searching for a frequency to find the voice that might continue to update them on what they all knew: they were running out of time.
The drops of liquid added to the vial sank to the bottom and faded to swamp green, a few shades darker than the last batch at this stage. One final change would occur. “Thirty seconds,” the pharmacologist told her technician when she handed the vial, completely sealed with a yellow plastic cap, to him. Jacob grabbed the concoction in hands protected by latex gloves and carried it to the vortex mixer. The machine whirred to life as the pointed tip was pressed to the blue rubber top, swiftly increasing speed to a thousand revolutions per minute. The chemicals within swirled, combining into one and transitioning through shades of green.
“If any of you believe in God as I do, now is the time to pray,” Jacob suggested, glancing at the other chemists through protective goggles.
“If this works, I’ll be a believer,” the analytical chemist responded, eyes locked on the vortex forming within the vial.
Hopeful stares were exchanged between the recently formed group of colleagues as every one of them secretly thought a prayer to any deity that was willing to listen.
Ear splitting barks preceded three rapid fire shots that exploded through the facility, jarring each of them. Jacob firmly held the vial and glared at the doorway into the next room.
“Back down!”
The chemical engineer grasping the radio marched into the next room. Stan harshly questioned, “What in blazes is going on?” Not a single window lined the walls, only the glaring fluorescent lights hanging above offered light. A large creature with thick patches of brown fur covering bulging muscles cowered away from a man wielding an automatic rifle. All that kept this predator back was fear, a leather muzzle, and the chain entwining its neck.
“Hey, man, knock it off,” a man shouted while swiping at his companion’s arm. The creature, whining, cowered toward a shadowy corner in fright.
“Get off me, Max,” he argued back, shaking off the admonishing swat he received. “Got it calmed down, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but at what cost? Use your head, Jack. They’re lurking out there. We can only reinforce the walls so much. You’re compromising the mission,” Max retorted.
Jack shifted the strap of the gun around his neck, and from his waist aimed it at the chained beast. “That’s why we should’ve been holed up in an underground bunker like I told ya’. Not this damned lab.”
“Knock it off, you two,” Stan snapped at their bickering, twisting the knob to increase the radio’s volume. “We had all the resources we needed here, but we’re starting to run low. Your only job is to keep us safe while we work.” He swiveled the antenna and bent it to the verge of snapping for a better signal. With all efforts to hear the comforting voice failing, he resorted to smacking the side of the radio in frustration.
Jack critically questioned, “You still ain’t fixed that thing yet? I thought you were an engineer.”
“Yes, I am,” Stan responded, turning a blue-eyed glare to the man with a machine gun, “of chemicals.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed. Max slowly shook his head in disgust while Jack turned his attention to the beast tugging at its chain. “Thing is ugly,” he remarked.
“Watch your mouth,” Max retorted, stomping his boot down.
“What? It only cares about killing.”
“We’re trying to help them, unless we have no other choice.”
“Actually,” Stan chimed idly with his attention returned to the radio, “that was a coyote cub. She is scared because she’s been separated from the pack. The mother is who’s been stalking our walls.”
“That was a coyote?” Jack’s green eyes widened in surprise. “It’s as big as me!”
Max wondered, “Was it born like this?”
“Yes,” Stan answered, pushing his half-rimmed glasses up his nose. “They’re rapidly reproducing. That’s why we need to combat this now, with medicine and not guns, before it’s too late.”
A horrendous boom trembled throughout the entire research facility, eliciting a shriek from metal suddenly forced to cave inward. The three men standing in the room became transfixed in horror at the sight of the large wall dented inward. A second cacophonous explosion accompanied a second emerging crinkle in the wall.
“She’s tryin t’ break through,” Jack exclaimed in terrified alarm.
“We’re surrounded!” A panicked woman’s voice filled the room to announce her arrival. She hopped down the ladder and landed on the catwalk crossing the length of the room with a clatter. Binoculars dangled from a strap around her neck, donned in a dark green tank top with camouflage pants budding with cargo pockets. Her complexion, tanned from the constant sun, was dusted with dirt. “By those things,” she shouted, thrusting her index finger at the chained beast. “They’re everywhere!”
Eyes widened, illuminating with grim comprehension, Stan quietly whispered, “An organized assault.” He twisted his hand with the radio and glanced in its direction. “They’re hunting, but this time food isn’t the only motivator.”
“How much longer for that mix?”
“It’ll be done any second, Angie. Why?”
The woman on lookout tightened her blonde ponytail, snatched up the strap to an automatic rifle and hung it around her torso. “Pray for me,” was her only answer, before ascending the ladder one rung at a time. The men stared in silence as Angie’s combat boots disappeared through the roof access. She dropped the door to the hatch, and latched it from the outside.
A third clang that punctured the ear drums rang out through the research facility. The captured and chained coyote pup whined, calling out for its mother and siblings with yowls deafening and painful to human ears. Jack and Max, as if of one mind, confirmed their stock of ammo and flicked off the safety to their guns.
“Die you fuckers!” Angie’s muffled scream permeated the aluminum roof, accompanied by rapid gun fire that jolted the spine. Screeches of painful howls echoed from every direction as bullets connected to rip the flesh, puncturing hearts and lungs, but another bang threatened to tear the wall down beside the coyote pup.
The blur of a white lab coat hurriedly entered the room. Grasped in Jacob’s gloved hand was a needle and syringe filled with an aqua marine liquid. “Pin it down, now,” he said frantically. Other members of the lab team joined them, fearlessly rushing to help restrain the predator. Jack and Stan moved closer, the latter snatching the chain close to the neck, while his companion pressed the machine gun’s barrel to its chest.
“This will probably be the last transmission from us, folks.” A crackling voice suddenly burst to life through the radio. The chemical engineer raised the volume with a twist of the knob. “It’s like they figured it out. They figured it all out.” This beacon of hope, the only connection to the events of the outside world, trembled with fear. “Whoever is listening, if anyone has been listening, I’ll try to keep you updated, but the hunters have just burst through our reinforced walls.” A sudden burst of static threatened to steal the broadcast, so Stan thrust the radio into the air. “I can see them. Some of them are human. One of them’s giving the orders, even if we can’t understand them. I never thought this would be how the world would ended. Global warming, nuclear fallout, meteorite impact maybe, but not this. Not by having our families turned against us like vicious beasts.”
Together the men and women working to deliver the cure overwhelmed and held the writhing predator down to the floor with their combined strength. Max secured the muzzled snout while Jack roughly snatched up the right foreleg with his hands on either side of a shaved patch of fur. Jacob stabbed the needle into its leg through the bulging vein and pushed the plunger down in the syringe until half of the antidote was injected.The coyote threw her head side to side, howling for aid from her kin. Her lips peeled back into an angry snarl, threatening them with her long, vicious fangs dripping with saliva. The chemists and military men backed far away, beyond the reach of the chain being used as a leash. Collectively, they held their breath and waited. The dread thickening the already dense air was shredded by rapid banging on the wall, already buckled and the rivets holding the steel panels together threatening to snap with every next collision.
The coyote pup limped, forming circles to walk away the pinch in her front paw. Chewing at the shaved area where the needle entered her vein failed to alleviate the pressure. When the discomfort persisted, she turned her focus to the humans before her, the equivalent of prey, and snarled. Her maw widened to stretch the muzzle before suddenly snapping shut with a clack of teeth.All of them flinched. Satisfied in frightening her apparent attackers, the coyote pup lifted her snout to the air and a pain filled howl escaped.
“Nothings happenin’,” Jack bluntly noted.
“Come on, come on,” the pharmacologist pleaded, squatting down, urging for the slightest glimpse that the coyote was beginning to revert from a monster. The predator was active instead of lethargic, far from the side effect she anticipated from a potent remedy.
“We didn’t have enough time to study, Sarah,” Stan ruminated aloud, hand holding the radio dropping to his side as the pure static sustained. “Everything that was infected by the chemical spill at the lab in Jersey was mutated at the molecular level, rapidly changing their DNA. Humans, rats, my dog.”
Frightened, Jack aimed his weapon at the bending wall. “Well, it wouldn’t have spread so damn fast if ya’ll wouldn’t have-”
“Stop arguing, this isn’t anyone’s fault,” Max snapped.
“We needed years to study this, not a few months,” Sarah admitted in defeat, her reddened hands raw from chemicals trembling in fear. “We knew it was molecular, transmitted by saliva, but exactly which strands of DNA were altered we only began to guess before things got out of control and it looked like the end of the world.”
The seam of the metal walls at the point of rupturing burst inward. Dozens of rivets popped out of place and clattered on the floor. Jack and Max aimed their guns at the crack between the walls where a ray of sun slipped inside. A vicious growl permeated the room, and with one more lunge a coyote twice the size of the pup confronted her prey.
Dropping the radio, Stan muttered, “Say hello to Mama.”
A limp body with blonde hair and camouflage pants, one leg twisted grotesquely in the wrong direction, hung through the coyote’s mouth. The pup’s mother stalked forward, bowing her head with the body pinched between her jaws.
“She’s offering Angie to us in exchange for her pup,” Max exclaimed with hope.
“What? No way,” Jack argued, tensing his arm to fire the gun.
“Jack, no,” Max scolded sharply, pressing the barrel of the gun down to point at the floor. “I’ll release the pup, we get Angie back and we can help her.”
Sarah was the first to protest. “You can’t do that!”
“And why not? It didn’t work,” he harshly reminded. “If we keep our lives we can find a way to try again!” Without waiting for further arguments, or permission, he let his rifle hang off his torso from the strap and carefully approached the pup under the dark, glaring eyes of her mother. Max unlocked the chain with the key on his belt, and then unbuckled the muzzle. In unison, he backed away cautiously toward his companions and the pup padded toward her mother to offer a gentle nuzzle in greeting.
“Now, Angie,” Max ordered, his hand raised and waving his fingers in a demanding gesture.
The adult coyote lifted her head with the woman between her maw, and crunched down. With a brief shriek of agony, Angie’s blood drained to the floor in a steady stream.
“No,” Jack screamed as the corpse fell to the floor with a thud. He raised his machine gun and yanked back on the trigger, spraying bullets into the coyote’s hide while the researchers covered their ears. Blood poured from the broken flesh, but the metal only permeated skin deep. Five more coyotes poured into the room through the opening made by the mother, the pup’s siblings prepared for revenge.
“She tricked us,” Stan mumbled. “The bullets aren’t working.”
In breathless shock, Max added, “She knew they wouldn’t.”
“Run,” Jack hollered, and the mutated coyotes sprung forward on powerful hind legs. Sarah raced for the doorway to the lab, but her path was blocked and a pair of jaws lined with razor sharp teeth descended upon her. Her screams were swallowed.
A percussive duet of firing guns fought back against the predators. The crescendo of a tortured groan in the song of survival gave way to a solo of gunshots. Crimson pools painted the floor in splotches. Skulls crunched between mighty jaws. Coyotes feasted on fresh meat, humanity’s last hope, to snapping sinew.
Kilena Shrelack 