The futapocalypse

Story by AbaddonFanboy

1. The Futapocalypse

Ralph fought to control his breathing and lie as still as possible beneath the torn curtain as possible. He had first become aware that one of them was following him 20 minutes ago, when he had finished sealing his uniform as best he could with duct tape and oxygen mask, though the eggheads had told him the virus wasn’t airborne. Actually, the scientists hadn’t actually called what they had found a virus per se, but the term was the closest they could come to understanding whatever was in the space alien. He was just the computer guy, exceptionally talented for sure, otherwise he wouldn’t have been recruited, but he knew nothing of genetics or virology. He just monitored and recorded the data the biologists pulled out and sent it to the surface and probably to whatever government agency that was way above his pay grade to know about.

It seemed like such a perfect job when the young wolf, fresh out of university with a distinction in computer sciences, had signed the discretion papers and been told the terms and conditions of work. 3 years work at a secret government dig site at the edge of a beautiful nature reserve, then full payment of his student loans, and a guaranteed well paid career in the military. His excitement had grown when they took him to the area, officially quarantined on the supposed story of a toxic waste leak, and ushered him to a non descript two storey cabin in the deep woods, ostensibly for tourists.

Beneath the house was a government compound, laboratories, dormitories, break rooms, recreational areas and offices. And beneath all this was the find of the century. No, the millennium! A crashed space craft, millions of years old by conservative estimates, with the mummified corpse of a weird xenos traveller within. Anthros and humans had travelled beyond Earth for millennia and settled hundreds of worlds, nut found no evidence of sentient life until now.

He was one of the crew who worked on reverse engineering the incredible technology, while another science group painstakingly dissected the mummified remains of the xeno. He had seen the creature several times, and been horrified at it. It was huge, 20 feet long from tip to tip and covered with dozens of bizarre appendages and orifices. He was so glad it was down to the biologists to study it and not his crew. Of course he couldn’t avoid hearing about it when everyone was gathered in the break room, when the xenobiologists gushed about stuff like advanced cellular regeneration, bio-energy mass conversion and a bunch of other stuff that was way out of his computing knowledge. Then, just yesterday, they had been squeezing about finding a core of still living tissue at the core of the creature, and their plans to carefully drill to it and extract it. Then, early this morning all hell had broken loose.

He had been back dating systems in the security booth just above the crash site, so he was able to watch the infection spread with mounting horror. The xenobiologists fell first, followed by the security staff that came to try and secure the area. They spread it upwards throughout the complex until he was the only uninfected person, unnoticed in the chaos, watching all his erstwhile colleagues… change and go mad from the security vids. The containment protocols had gone into effect the moment the contamination had begun of course sealing the solid steel blast doors to the surface and leaving the people to their fate.

Fortunately, he was the one who had designed said protocols and he had swiftly adjusted the programme as best he could from his hidey hole. He had changed it so that the blast doors would open just a fraction, for just a moment, long enough for him to slip out. He had set it for an hour in advance, long enough for him to sneak by the infected and get in position.

He had slowly snuck by them, taking ages in a journey that would normally take minutes, carefully avoiding his colleagues who were all fortunately too busy with each other to pay attention to the stealthy wolf. But then, just a few floors away from freedom and a few minutes until the doors would open, he became aware that someone was stalking him. If he went out in the open he would soon be caught.

Now he employed a desperate gambit. He had left the door open to a nearby decontamination room and left his coat hanging on the inside in just the right angle to look as though someone was wearing it. He had then hidden in a pile of discarded rubbish and held still under a curtain, just in time as his pursuer stealthily entered the room behind him.

He stifled a gasp as the wooden floor sunk a little under the weight of its tread. From his position near the ground and covered by the curtain, all he could see were two pink feet, mouse by the look of them. There was only one mouse he knew of in the entire complex, a female biogeneticist by the name of Spencer. She had been a rather plain, bespectacled individual, roughly 5”2 in heig

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