Weavers Book I: The Cutters

Tip #1: It Could Be Anyone

It could be anyone. That's the most important thing. The nice man next to you on the subway, with a bushy red beard and caterpillar eyebrows. The short Mexican woman complaining to her stylist at Great Clips about how her hair never stays straight when she wants it to. It could be the balding, toothless druggie on the corner of 8th street, holding up a grimy cardboard sign. PLEASE HELP, GOD BLESS. It could be the popular boy at school, with his shocking yellow hair and thick, ropy muscles. For that matter, it could be the edgy unpopular girl who chews her black hair and never talks to anyone except for Mr. Simmons, the hot teacher who all the girls want to bang, for some reason unknown to me. It could be the little six year old kid in Walmart begging his mom for the Family Size bag of Doritos. It could be anyone. Once you've got that down, you're fine.
    In the beginning, the first week where it got really bad, everyone flocked into groups. That's how you survived. Strength in numbers. Which, at first, worked fine. But then, someone in the group would get it. The disease. And then everything went to shit. No more groups. I guess I learned to stick to myself early on, given that my dad was the one researching it. But even I was in a group at first. Because after my dad died of it, the fear of being alone was too much to handle.
    Let's just say I got over that fear.
I guess it started with my dad. You might've heard of him. Who am I kidding? Everyone has heard of him. But just in case you've been living under a rock (which you might be, given that we're in the midst of an apocalypse) I'll tell you about him. Dr. Gordon Johnson. Degree in biological sciences. It started when he and my mom, Marie Cullen, found the meteorite. Fourteen years ago. It happened on my birthday. March 28th, 2012. While my mom writhed in labor, my dad excavated the meteor. When the first human hand touched the rock, a cloud of thread-like bacteria was released into the air. It spread like wildfire from there. But it spread silently, never showing symptoms. At least, not until two months ago.
    What he found, none of us could have predicted.
    I'm not any kind of fancy writer, I've only got a ninth grade education, and so I'm a bit screwy when it comes to putting my thoughts out on paper. Plus the times and whens and wheres and whos get all jumbled in my brain, so sometimes I'm yesterday and other times I'm tomorrow. Who knows what time is anymore? The clocks don't work. Thus time is just another old world problem. The old world... where parasites were things in movies and horrific ebola documentaries.
    They have a name for it now. It took a while, but eventually, everything has a name. That's how humans cope. Naming. We name, we saw, we conquered. If it has a name, it belongs to us. Like children, or pets. Movere Relatorum, we called it. Moving threads. Latin. Complicated shit. Some people call it by its latin name. Others call them stitchers. Some call it worms. Me, I call them Weavers. But the name is only half of the story.
    Movere Relatorium is a unique little bastard. Bacteria, virus, whatever the Hell it is. No one, not even my dad, rest his soul, knows how it spreads. Maybe it crawls into your ear while you sleep. Maybe it sneaks through the scrapes on your skin. Maybe you breathe it in. Maybe all of the above. But me, I know for a fact that Weavers are attracted to blood. I know because... well, let me just tell the story. The story of the Cutters.