Better off Undead

Chapter 49: Manmade Monster

"What have you done?"

They all turned to see the first creature, the one Amber had called Sgt. Moore, standing in the doorway. He was watching them with eyes ablaze in anger, fists clenched so hard they were shaking, and mouth set in a thin, even line.

"What have you done?" he demanded again, taking a single step into the room.

Everyone exchanged unsteady glances, unsure of how to respond. No one said anything.

"How could you do something so... so... horrible? Don't you realize what you've done? Don't you realize what I was doing here? I was trying to create perfection! I was trying to create a new society, a better society! And you have ruined it!"

"What are you talking about?" Eli asked.

The Frankenstein's monster that was once Sgt. Moore fixed its burning eyes on Eli. "Can it be true? Can you really not understand what is happening here?"

"Why don't you explain it to us?" Eli prompted.

Sgt. Moore took another step into the room and looked over each of the still fully living humans one at a time.

"How?" he said once his inspection was complete. He paused and fixed his glare back on Eli, who could only stare back, blinking in confusion.

"How can you not understand perfection?" he continued, as though he had never expected an answer in the first place. "And how can I explain it to you, if you do not understand it?"

Eli nudged one of the corpses with the toe of his shoe. "How can you call this perfection? Don't you realize what you've done to these people? How you made them suffer? You're sick, Mr. Moore. You're sick and you're in need of a cure."

"Sick?" The creature echoed the word as if it was one he had never heard before in his life. As if the very concept of being sick was an utterly impossible and unthinkable thing. "No. I am not sick. I am beyond sickness. I am incapable of getting sick. I am incapable of ever being sick again. I am better than that. I am cured! Forever cured!"

"Cured? You're not cured. Don't you understand? Don't you remember? You were experimented on. You were the test subject for a completely new serum. A serum created from a virus. A virus that your escape and time on the loose has helped to spread. You aren't cured, you're the Typhoid Mary of the deadliest disease anyone has ever seen. You're traveling around bringing death, destruction, and disease wherever you go. You're like all Four Horsemen of the apocalypse rolled into one body."

As Eli spoke, the creature began shaking its head, growing more and more frantic with the movement as time passed. "No," he protested. "No. No! It's not true. It's not! I'm the omega... and the alpha. It has to end so that it can began. When God saw how wicked man had become, he regretted having created them. So he brought the flood to wipe out all living creatures. But he chose one. One! To be the carrier of the new generation of man.

"The flood has spread across the earth, and I, I alone can create the new man. The man who shall inherit the earth following the destruction. A new man, who will be free from disease. Free from corruption. Free from evil. We are the new age of man. And only I can create it!"

Eli swallowed and looked to the others. To his surprise, he found himself actually wishing Gabriel was there. Someone who could argue scripture better than he could.

"But the flood already happened," Eli continued anyway. "It can't happen again. God sent the rainbow as a promise to Noah that he would not flood the earth again. This cannot be a second flood because God wouldn't break that promise."

Sgt. Moore shook his head. "No. That's just it. He can't flood the earth again, so he had to come up with a new way to achieve the same ends. He has cleared the way, so that now my race can flourish."