The Infernal Hunger
By itchingmyknee
Fifty years on from when you are reading, the Earth you know now changes. Humans are the only animals left roaming this planet. And all other life has departed.
The mammals were the first to die out. It happened so slowly, that nobody really noticed. First the pandas in captivity refused to breed, then the whales shored up on beaches in their thousands. Finally the monkeys, in a spate of frenzied cannibalism, attacked one another and ate and ate, until the species depleted and were gone, and only one male silverback remained. Stained with gore and coated in buzzing carrion flies that nested in his nostrils and eyes, he looked around at what he had done and died of heartbreak. Even the rats, that most resilient race, poisoned themselves with the chemicals that man created and rendered themselves sterile. The reptiles crawled off into dark places until their cool blood chilled and there was no spark of life to reanimate them. The birds set off on a final flight higher than any creature had been. Rumour had it that they nested in new forests in the clouds, as no corpses were seen, no lone feather floating to the ground. But it truth they flew so high above the firmament that their fragile bodies were consumed by the altitude, and returned to the earth as the finest powder. The fish, mutated and few as they were, staggered on through the seas. Their scales ripped from their bodies and their flesh tugged from their bones and they desperately sought pure water. Until the seas became sludge, a rich stock of fragmented marine creatures.
Here our story begins, when mankind, that proud race, comes to the realisation that extinction is approaching fast. The flora and fauna is dying. Many forged symbiotic relationships with creatures long dead, relationships so intricate that we hardly knew they were there, until the skeletal arms of the lifeless trees alerted us to their plight.
For many years man turned on one another to survive. He ate his brother, his neighbour, the weak and the sick. But then order was restored with the decree of one. One who brought order to the shattered race, and bound the survivors under a common bond. The saviour was known as the Oracle, a great scientist whose revelations marked the end of bad times.
The world’s women were separated into two categories: the Breeders and Feeders. The Breeders were a sad tribe. Their sole duty to propagate man. Pregnancy after pregnancy ruined their bodies and damaged the internal organs, overtaxed by the run of babies. They usually died by the time they were thirty, and the unlucky chosen who began menstruating early would find themselves raped and expecting as young as eight. But this was nothing to the Feeders lot. They too were impregnated, but to a different end. The babies they produced with similar rapidity were infected with the Oracle’s miracle gene. They grew at double the rate of normal children, and at 5 or so were ready to be harvested. Weighing in at over 10 stone. Their internal organs were small, the muscles static. Much like the battery hens laying in restrictive cages, these children were bred for one purpose: To feed the masses. Mothers would have their offspring snatched away, and might indeed eat them a few years later. This was order, this was law. This is how man crawls on through the ages. Glutted on the blood of its own kind.
(To Be Continued…)
Fifty years on from when you are reading, the Earth you know now changes. Humans are the only animals left roaming this planet. And all other life has departed.
The mammals were the first to die out. It happened so slowly, that nobody really noticed. First the pandas in captivity refused to breed, then the whales shored up on beaches in their thousands. Finally the monkeys, in a spate of frenzied cannibalism, attacked one another and ate and ate, until the species depleted and were gone, and only one male silverback remained. Stained with gore and coated in buzzing carrion flies that nested in his nostrils and eyes, he looked around at what he had done and died of heartbreak. Even the rats, that most resilient race, poisoned themselves with the chemicals that man created and rendered themselves sterile. The reptiles crawled off into dark places until their cool blood chilled and there was no spark of life to reanimate them. The birds set off on a final flight higher than any creature had been. Rumour had it that they nested in new forests in the clouds, as no corpses were seen, no lone feather floating to the ground. But it truth they flew so high above the firmament that their fragile bodies were consumed by the altitude, and returned to the earth as the finest powder. The fish, mutated and few as they were, staggered on through the seas. Their scales ripped from their bodies and their flesh tugged from their bones and they desperately sought pure water. Until the seas became sludge, a rich stock of fragmented marine creatures.
Here our story begins, when mankind, that proud race, comes to the realisation that extinction is approaching fast. The flora and fauna is dying. Many forged symbiotic relationships with creatures long dead, relationships so intricate that we hardly knew they were there, until the skeletal arms of the lifeless trees alerted us to their plight.
For many years man turned on one another to survive. He ate his brother, his neighbour, the weak and the sick. But then order was restored with the decree of one. One who brought order to the shattered race, and bound the survivors under a common bond. The saviour was known as the Oracle, a great scientist whose revelations marked the end of bad times.
The world’s women were separated into two categories: the Breeders and Feeders. The Breeders were a sad tribe. Their sole duty to propagate man. Pregnancy after pregnancy ruined their bodies and damaged the internal organs, overtaxed by the run of babies. They usually died by the time they were thirty, and the unlucky chosen who began menstruating early would find themselves raped and expecting as young as eight. But this was nothing to the Feeders lot. They too were impregnated, but to a different end. The babies they produced with similar rapidity were infected with the Oracle’s miracle gene. They grew at double the rate of normal children, and at 5 or so were ready to be harvested. Weighing in at over 10 stone. Their internal organs were small, the muscles static. Much like the battery hens laying in restrictive cages, these children were bred for one purpose: To feed the masses. Mothers would have their offspring snatched away, and might indeed eat them a few years later. This was order, this was law. This is how man crawls on through the ages. Glutted on the blood of its own kind.
(To Be Continued…)
posted by bitingmylip at 6:43 AM
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