Tag: pandemic
Last Girl Standing (short story clip)
The first symptom of the virus wasn’t a sore throat or vomiting. It was denial.
Way back in the year 2018, Amelie was thirteen, and viruses were the last thing on her mind. She was all about school, working at her mom’s video store and riding her bike. Gliding along the shores of the Outer Banks in the glow of Earth’s rings, she dreamed of riding the Tour de France one day. But things got a little strange when she delivered “Paper Moon” to the nutty professor. He claimed to be from an alternate Earth where America won the Cold War — and no one nuked the moon.
She laughed. But he wasn’t joking. He said “Respect the Octopus. Listen to its song.”
A couple of years later, there was another war. Nobody knew who started it, but a bioweapon that combined the worst of the Spanish flu and rabies ended it. The islanders called it ‘Mommuck’, an old outer banks term meaning ‘bad craziness’.
Most of the people who got Mommucked died fast. Others turned into raging monsters who had a talent for eating faces.
Five years later, Amelie is still the fastest person on the Island. She’s the only person in Avalon, the last girl standing. Armed with her father’s guns and her mother’s determination, she managed to outrun and defeat every Mommuck in Avalon. Now, everything is hers, from Dirty Dick’s Crab Shop to Miz Daisy’s mushroom patch.
But something — or someone — is out there, sabotaging her octopus traps. Whatever or whoever it is, they’re fast, smart and out to get her. There’s only one former person she knew like that — the nutty Professor from alt-Earth.
Read this story and more in the limitless Visions VII: Universe anthology: