Polaris Skies

Chapter 1

The Grey Monster has led to a global apocalypse. Nat and his group of friends wake to a hellscape when a bioweapons bomb drops in the Jenton orchards. Wolves crawl beneath their skin, and a genetically engineered religious cult decides they are demons worth hunting. Can they find a mad scientist in time before the wolves become a permanent addition to their DNA?

Genre: Slipstream, horror, science-fiction, fantasy, romance, lgbtq+

Gagging, sickening coughs rasped his throat. The stench was that of rotten meat, skunk, foul sewage. Still, there were three minutes before the bell would ring on his alarm for school, and he was exhausted. What had happened? Did the basement bathroom back up again? He peeled open one cold ocean-blue eye and stared at the dust motes floating across his blinds. Rubbing his eyelids, he listened for the sounds of his grandmother hustling around the kitchen, getting breakfast ready. The house was dead quiet.

Overwhelmed by the smell and silence, he pulled on a pair of jeans and dashed out of his room. He crashed down the stairs. The front door was only a few steps away, leading to fresh air. A misplaced glance. A stealing sense of terror snapped down his spine. He froze in front of the hall's full-length mirror. His college-sophomore frame was not what stared back at him in the mirror.

What stood before him unnerved him. He retained the same facial features, and his body was the same, yet not entirely. Something was off, but he couldn't put his finger on the change. His eyes were starkly different, though. Burnt glowing gold with deeply slitted pupils watched him warily. He blinked, convinced it was the strangely diffused green light shining in through the windows.

Pressure in his skull was almost crippling as he hunched, glancing into the mirror once more. Who are you? He thought. A rippling, like a million bees in the back of his brain, shifted the floor and his stomach out from under him. An unearthly chuckle echoed in his skull. He looked away, breathing heavily as he tried to regain his composure. He had not barfed since he was a sixth-grader when Ms Norwich had the class dissect a dogfish. He had cut into a putrid organ of some kind, and it squirted bile all over him. He sure as hell was not going to puke now. His stomach had other plans.

He turned from the hall mirror, ignoring the foreign eyes, to find a massive bear of a dog blocking the doorway to the kitchen. Greyed across the muzzle and eyes, its hips were unsteady, leaving it hollow and shaking with age.

He backed away from the dog, wary. His grandfather had been bit by a rabid dog and ended up in the hospital for more than a week once. He was not about to willingly get that close to a dog without knowing its owner.

Dodging the creature, he ran to his grandparents' room. What lay inside left him baffled. There, in the queen-sized bed, lounged a large, fat caramel-coloured dog with shaggy hair on his grandfather's side of the bed. His grandparents didn't own any dogs.

The arthritic beast rolled its head to stare at him. Cataracts hazed out one eye entirely.

This isn't happening. Where are Na and Grandfather? I've gotta get outta here and find Nat. He turned from the room and scrambled to the front entry where the stench hung pungent, mixed with cleaning solvent and shoe polish. He slowed, looking for the grey dog, but it had shuffled off.

Grabbing the handle to the glass front door, he jerked it open. It crashed into the wood-panelled wall as he rushed into the snow in little more than bare feet and jeans. Ice bit at naked flesh. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, he ignored the sting. He raced down the block and through a back alley. Trashcans he failed to dodge clattered. A cat hissed. Rippling nausea built up his spine.

Turning out from the backstreet, he leapt onto the sinking porch of a green and white cottage. He pounded on the door. "Please be here. Please be here. Tell me this isn't happening. Please. Come on. Hurry up. Open the door."