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Life on the road to Hana The oddly aggressive behavior of that little squadron of feral chickens on one of the first turns outta town should have been our tip off. Dodging and dancing in the one lane road with jeeps and vans full of tourists on their way to the sacred isolated peace of eastern Maui. That or the pile of dead pigeons they’d just conquered and left to bloat just off the roadside. Such a beautiful morning like most here full of expected perfection makes it easy to ignore an outlier detail like that or to just not see it at all. It’s hard to accept horror in paradise… even when it’s dripping blood on your shoes. A few more miles and something else appears to rest in the road. As we approach Gordon says “god dammit.. somebody plowed a goat!”. Clearly this thing was not dead as it careened its head in what seemed like 360 degrees.. limbs still and clearly mangled by what appeared to be not just one but two sets of tire tracks. “Sorry ass mainlanders -sorry folks not you guys but some people are just too much for me to believe these days.. gimme a sec and I’ll put this poor sucker outta his misery”. As Gordon got out with a big knife and a what looked like a big hardened piece of eucalyptus with a large knot on one end I could hear this suffering creature blare. I know very little goat but the sounds wafting through that open door have to be all their top curse words. More than just his word choices.. because it definitely seems as if he’s scream speaking.. is the tone.. instead of a fearful agony this Billy I would swear slings bravado. “Is he taunting Gordon?” I ask no one in a hushed voice. As Gordon approached I could tell by his evermore cautious gait that this is not an everyday occurrence. I note that he looked like he’s walking a tightrope as he raisedthe club over his head a good 10 feet before he was within striking distance. The next thing that happened finally sealed the deal that this was not gonna be a routine day.. the dying or should have been dead goat began to spit blood at Gordon.. actually it was not so much spitting as it seemed aggressively clearing his throat with a continuous aggressive vibratory exhalation as he aimed the flood of unorganized sick wetness at our guides face. 2 distinctive modes came from this unfogettabke symphony.. each huge exhalation started with what I thought of as “one of the kids dropped a spoon in the garbage disposal” which would be followed by the less mechanical but no less disturbing “novice really getting down on a cheap plastic saxaphone”. A sound and vision I will never be able to vacate from lurking just beneath my conscious present. As our tour guide quickly had a change of plans I noticed what I was pretty sure were 2 sets of bloody footprints going in separate directions from the scene. “That thing must have rabies guys .. I’m not getting any closer.. sorry ladies but I think the safest and most humane thing here is for me to let the van do the deed.”. “Agree.. hey Gordon.. was he trying to snap at you right at the end there?… he didn’t bite you did he?” “Na I got dodged the bastard at the last second”. No way you could guess as he was covered with pissed off cabrito venom. He quickly wiped down with a towel as he put the van into gear and eyeballed the goats head. Emily and Jill cringed as the rest of us stared at each other with “is this happening faces”. “I get him?”.. “yeah” it looks like it. The goats head was clearly down and shaped like a half flat football now. “Good…let’s forget this and get on to Hana.” We all quietly agreed other than maybe em who was heartbroken for the pitiful way the animal had had to die and cried into her hands. “Sorry girl that was messed up”. As we scooted on down the road I couldn’t stand not to take one last look back. Now I’d never bet my life on this because adrenaline was still racing but to this day I’m almost sure I saw that head slowly rise from the road like Timelapse footage of a flower growing. It was easy enough to tell myself that my eyes suck and I know my imagination shines sometimes so I kept that tidbit to myself. Probably shouldnt have but it wouldn’t have changed a thing- no one was ready to turn around at this point -even Emily and before we’d made another mile Gordon dashed all hope of return to normalcy with “Holy shit look at the whales!! A whole pod of them beached and more in the bay!”. We all looked across the starboard window and down through a huge valley where on a large indistinct grey beach 3 humpbacks had parked - one appeared massive to me. Indeed there seemed to be more whales on a b line for the same little cove.. racing almost. As we got closer I could see smaller bodies also in the sand. Seals maybe.. small dolphins of some sort and an orca. Behind them in the shallows there appeared to be a frenzy that I couldn’t be sure was feeding or fighting.. but there was about 100 yards of light red water washing to shore. On the sand was an even more bizarre scene…several of the smaller I assumed carcasses were still in motion after having been crushed by larger ones. All including the largest had many wounds. Bite wounds and wounds from being butted poured blood all over this cursed beach… but more shocking yet was how clearly most of these sad things were still aggressively rocking and thrashing in what appeared to be an attempt to make their way further inland. “Never seen anything like it… makes no sense..” Gordon kept murmuring to himself as the rest of us rotated open mouthed looks at each other and the horrendous scene below us. “Gotta call this in” -Gordon “no service!” “Can we turn around?” Em “I don’t wanna do this trip anymore.” Our beleaguered tour guide is clearly flustered and is past hiding it. He’s made this drive 1000 times and has seen it all… almost. We can hear him struggle to relate the events up to this point on his radio to headquarters. Some weird cloud blew in after midnight from the east and there’s been limited communication from past the midway point to Hana and none from Hana proper.. none of that is too rare.. not the communication loss that is. Gordon says “weird cloud?… what the hell do you mean?”. More of a dust cloud apparently.. a native coming into town about 3 said he saw what looked like a vortex or tornado spinning full of dust from one of the smaller unpopulated islands. He said it seemed to be electrically charged as it was struck repeatedly. He said it grew and grew then moved out over the water then he got behind the mountains and couldn’t see it. He seemed more than a little freaked out but he was an older guy.. one of those who still clung to alot of the old spiritual beliefs of the islands… anyway we were the first load out today so there had been no reports back and there were a shitload of oncomers 5 minutes behind. We had better get a move on per headquarters. I heard who I assumed was Gordon’s boss say it was likely yesterday’s unseasonably late storm that had the sea creatures navigation fouled up and that he would call it in. Gordon seemed as if he was being shamed and naturally left out the goat story. He walked back to us and said “you heard him”.. we gotta get going.. no way we can go back on this one way road with that convoy behind us.. not without a medical emergency anyway. I hate it.. makes me sick to see those fish dying like that but what can we do? Let’s make the best of it.” Em nodded that she understood and she seemed calmer for the time being. “What the hell?!” I thought to myself. Multiple different sea creatures not just whales or even the same species beached at the same place.. and not just beached but summer slamming each other all the way to shore and even on it. Fighting as if they had accelerated evolution and were not just curious about breathing air.. but like they couldn’t wait another second to see what was up out here on the flip side.” I had no answers. “Shit shit shit!” Bird dabbed out his Winston.. the only shitty cigarette he could get when the supply raft dropped off his weekly rations. “Damn well be glad I get any at all.. be smoking whatever straw I could find out here and probably melting neurons.” Total contraband out here. Bird was rapidly becoming disenfranchised with pseudonestor xanthophyrs.. honeycreepers..kiwikiu… the Maui parrotbill. He’s given half his life to this bird and right now it was making him smoke shitty fucking cigarettes and drink ….yehhct.. pineapple hooch vodka. More than that though he missed his girls and his plum .. and his little piece of paradise at home. “Alright.. focus now dude… this matters”… as he took another step into the lava tube that he hoped was gonna prove his theory. These birds were thought extinct .. yet he kept seeing em out here.. and he was pretty sure he knew where they had found as their hiding spot from that usurping egg sucking bastard of an ass mr mongoose. If he was right he could save these majestic creatures. Bird loved birds.. well his first love was the sea… the story of how he came to put his passion into these reverse engineered reptiles that hollowed their bones.. turned scales to feathers and had the balls to take tot he air all while holding onto that sinster snake smile is one bit for today. Let me just leave this digression with a slight editorialisation - the hummers were never supposed to beat the manti. They rewrote reality… literally. No more on this today. Bird crept another step into the smallest of the lava tubes on his home away from home- Pu’uki’l island. Straight east of Hana and part of the islet bjrd sanctuary… he just needed to document the birds living deep in these caves. That would be enough.. any other data would be a bonus. As he approached the a small cistern in the back a flurry of ancient dust went straight up both nostrils and directly into the rostrum of this legend of a man. Bird didn’t know it much less care ..but he was about to become famous. So was his dear parrotbill. The Hawaiian Hoary bats he’d stirred out of their safe slumber finally found the small entrance and were gone. “Fuck a bat!” and as he looked up and spotted a lone little bird above his reach - not one but two countdowns began. Several pics as best focused as he could get and some basic environmental measurements and he was zippity doodahing his doomed as back to base camp for a shot pineapple vodka… and about 10 Winston’s. He take em both smiling tonight. Life was good. The legend of the Baron of Blood.. the demon man who could fly and wouldn’t be an important factor in the story of humans for another few hundred years. Still it’s Important to note that it started at this moment. One small bit of protein. One capsule of rna. The dormant phage was caught in the updraft as those bats stirred just as had happened a million times before over the years. The unique factor this time was the pair of parrotbills roosting in their new found haven. The lava tubes had turned out to be the perfect spot for these nearly extinct birds to stage a comeback. Reports had been coming in for a few years of spottings but there had been few confirmed and most experts thought these were mistakes.. not Bird. He had a theory.. the birds had lost most of their nesting trees due to fire and clearing along the coast. Bird had an idea that the last few in desperation had stumbled upon the ancient lava tubes. He was exactly right and had they found these tubes earlier.. they would probably have been one of the more dominant avian species on the island. But they had had no need and therefore had likely rarely inhaled the same air as the hoary bats or their excrement and likely never inhaled it in an enclosed environment. The phage made its way straight through the cribriform plate of the female and directly onto the little birds forebrain. Now normally one phage in the forebrain would be no problem for an animal.. but like most birds and reptiles the parrotbill is teaming with salmonella. More than a few circulate through the flyers’ bloodstream and it was a natural instinct for this Lagos bat lyssavirus phage to find its way into a meningeal capillary and puncture likely the only bacteria in the world with the exact flagella protein coding that when altered by this phage.. would create something quite novel to the animal kingdom(one more quick side story about the hard to imagine future of Bird and how he and only he would accumulate the disease and not perish… he was scratched by the male parrotbill in its hasty exit from the lave tube. Nothing big enough to even register with Bird during the excitement but enough to inject a living salmonella or two into his bloodstream that as you will see shortly would make him the first human case of hyperprion acquisition. This saved him from certain death though 500 years from now most would certainly think that even though this mechanism turned out to be the cure for hyperprions.. humanity would have been better off had he perished.). Prions … kuru.. creutzfeldt-Jacob .. are well described and understood. But a hyperprion.. meaning one that flips proteins into the wrong chiral forms exponentially faster than regular prions .. were not only beyond our current understanding.. they were also beyond even our imagination. The bird pair found refuge in a nearby tree and within 30 seconds the first altered flagella protein was off the zipper assembly line and 10,000 more were right behind it. Within 1 minute all the beta sheets in the forebrain of the little bird -case zero- were flipped to beta barrels and instead of slowly forming areas of misformed hydrophobic proteins forming amyloid plaques like in a regular prion disease… the entire area is almost instantly warped on a macroscopic level. This is instant death if it occurs in any area of the brain other than the frontal lobe.. that steering wheel of the limbic system. Old evolutionarily the limbic system has the ability to take over the behavior of all animals in the right circumstance through a cascade of self feedback loops that enable explosive reactions. The form of rabies typically thought of “rabies” or what got old yeller had is called the furious form.. now imagine what happens when we take a hyperprion and for all practical purposes put the limbic system on nitrous .. make that pcp and nitrous. The male mate of case zero was dead and nearly unrecognizable in less than 2 minutes from the bats liftoff. It took a grand total of 4 more hairpins before the next layer of emotional scar was applied to the fresh wound of this horrid morning. Mid sentence Jill was interrupted by what sounded like a cinder block hitting the side of the van. “A deer.. I saw it shoot out of the bamboo!” Emily blurted through tears. As the group all looked to the passenger side there was a collective inhale as they saw a small deer staring at the door… antler broken.. blood spraying from a small arteriole from the gash in his head. As soon as he locked eyes with Landon they watched as he spooled into an immediate rage. A screeching sound that was some kind of hybrid between a bleet and a honk sent shivers up everyone’s spine but within an instant he was attacking the door again. Butting it and goring at it like his next breath was inside that door. After the 3rd blow he backed up as if to have another run at it. Another cinder block dented the door and this time the poor possessed thing knocked itself out.. but to everyone’s horror as he laid awkwardly flat bellied with three legs splayed to the side and one bent unnaturally under him he continued to make muted versions of that same hellish noise. Each pant sprayed deer spit and blood to the perfect tritone sound that had to be ripping its vocal cords apart. “Alright we’re heading home guys.. enough of this haunted wildlife shit.” Gordon said emphatically as Emily sobbed and her dad tried his best to console her. They all noticed as the driver tried to turn the van around he couldn’t seem to find reverse. He kept hitting neutral or shifting back into drive and gassing it before he had the completed the shift. It sounded like he was gonna burn the transmission up(if he didn’t run them off the nearby cliff) and he seemed as surprised as his passéngers at his new handicap. When he opened his mouth to presumably say “what the hell?!” or something of the like what came out was a throaty hiss that sounded like he was trying out his parseltongue impression. He registered a wide eyed mind blown expression for a millisecond before his face melted into the most intense snarl imaginable and he was turning and spinning in his seat trying in what looked like an attempt to get back to them. He seemed to be no more adept at operating a seat belt than he was at operating a vehicle anymore and spit and snot poured from his mouth nose and eyes. “Open the door.. let’s get out!” Jill screamed. “Wait!” Michael barked “no telling what else is out there and I’m worried whatever this is might be airborne”. He wasn’t sure if this was some sort of infectious process.. hell it seemed just as likely to be some kind of spiritual phenomena but he was thinking that most likely unless it was some bizarre environmental process that this must be infectious. Gordon’s small cut was distant enough to have taken all of 5 minutes to fully convert him. All animals other than reptiles and birds were only susceptible to the hyperprion through breaks in the skin.. no salmonella flagella protein sequence to convert into missense segments. The scared and confused father of this family was thinking.. if thjs is in the air .. it’s only a matter of time before we succumb too. “What the hell though.. let’s fight till we can’t”. Just as he was about to open the door the hyper focused creature that moments ago had been their tour guide had managed to get his seat belt undone.. likely by accident and then his door opened. “Here he comes.” Said Emily as Michael pushed her and Jill to the back corner away from the door. Screams and crying distorted his eardrums but Michael could still hear that subglottic growl from the monster that was about to rip his family apart. As the door opened and Michael - repeatedly saying Gordon’s name and trying to talk him out his raging attack mode… began to kick at him.. just as Landon brought a tire tool he’d found under the seat crashing down on the tour guide’s head. Not even a seconds delay.. like it hadn’t even phased him. Again he rang Gordon’s bell and followed this time with a jab that took out Gordon’s left eye with a squirt of aqueous humor and a strange little resonant sound as the metal slid against the bone of the infected man’s orbit. “Sorry man.” Landon offered but Gordon was not stopping. Michael yelled with a little hope “Get the other eye buddy… and y’all do not let his blood or eyeball juice get on you. Don’t touch him at all if you can avoid it!” He wanted to say “and if you can figure a way real quick to become anaerobic.. dont breathe either but please share your secret”. They had thrown everything in the van at his face including full soft drink cans and the poor guys face was starting to look appropriate for his current mindset. Strips of eyeball including his whole cornea flipped over backwards with his green iris ripped in half still dangling as Landon score at least 2 more teeth rattlers on his cursed crown but nothing seemed to be able to slow this guy. Just when it appeared he was gonna have them he rocked a foot to his left and blew out his breath before he let forth a scream that was both insane furosity and unforgivable pain. He focuses his attention down and to his left where the demon deer had speared him with his broken antler about midway up his chest wall. The thing was trying to back up and give him another shot while gouging at the same time and it was obvious that he had created a sucking chest wound. In between pants and screams you could hear the fizz and bubbling as blood poured down his side and mingled with that of the deer on the animals now exposed skull. These two were locked in what looked like a tango from the bottom rung of hell… spinning and jerking.. back and forth as the man showed superhuman strength in picking the entire creature off the ground and trying to break its neck by twisting its torso around the head fixed to his axilla. Finally just as Gordon appeared to be approaching cardiovascular compromise from his hemopneumothorax he got enough leverage where he must have severed the deers spinal cord because it emptied both its bladder and colon down the man’s sock and his legs went limp while his tail spun repeatedly around in circles. Amazingly the animal was still bitting and flailing its head trying to gore just once more before finally getting perfectly still. It’s eyes however we’re still wide open and maddened and the scene of Gordon staggering with the quadriplegic deer impaled into his side and being dragged like some banshee rug was almost hard to process. Gordon sat down Indian style and still began to throttle the neck of the deer with what seemed like the last of his juice and at that moment the van started to roll again as Michael had climbed into the drivers seat during the melee. As he pulled off .. toward Hana there was a collective shrill scream “other way dad!” from the other 3 passengers. Michael did his best on the narrow road- praying in the back of his mind that his faculties didn’t fail him as the previous driver’s had at this maneuver -but the van slowly turned and Michael punched the gas and swerved to avoid hitting the two dying souls still dead set on finishing the other off first. “Everybody ok?” Jill queried as Emily looked back just in time to see not one but two Hawaiian short eared owls(Pueo or Asio flammeus sandwichensis) swoop down and begin the tear the flesh from Gordon’s face. More tears from the animal loving tender hearted girl. The little parrotbill lay sheared into several soft pieces in the dark acidic humidity of the stomach of a tiger shark. His body long dead with no ability to respond to the dopamine fueled circuit of his limbic system that still raced. It still wanted nothing more than to kill.. and so still managed a few pecks here and there in the belly of this leviathan as its last few neurons finally began to shut down like witnessing rolling blackouts across a huge valley from a mountain top vantage point. The thing had scored a pretty respectable streak of tally’s before finally succumbing.. her mate, 6 other parrotbills, a handful of doves and other various birds all had fallen at her feet only to rise shortly again. She had taken at least 5 eyes from 3 different animals including a deer a wild pig and a mongoose and let us not forget that she single-handedly bridged the hyperprion from land to sea by attacking a porpoise directly in its blowhole then given before mentioned tiger shark hell before being shredded and swallowed. The little fiend had set in motion the cascade of events that peaked 2 hours later in the beginnings of that horrible beach scene. Rest in peace little bird.. you may have just set the stage for earths mantle to be re inherited by the insects kingdom. No limbic system to speak of. Michael drove slowly.. we didn’t survive all that just so I could run my whole crew off a cliff. After about 3 minutes of driving and just as they entered a long single lane but fairly straight bridge they met the second van of tourists of the day. Hauling ass down the steep hill it barely made the sharp turn on 2 wheels with the driver never letting off the gas. “Oh hell what now?!”.. Landon asked without really wanting to know. He would never truly know.. but he was about to get a good damn idea. The van miraculously righted itself and accelerated madly straight at them. Michael had about 100 yards to make it to the end if he weren’t blocked and about 200 yards back the way they’d come. No other choice.. he proved his still intact shifting skills and floored the van in reverse.. “gonna take it right in the face if we don’t get outta this fools way!”.. he said and the girls both screamed like you’d hear standing next to a rollercoaster. They all wondered just what in the hell this poor person had seen to make him drive this way and then the following question…”we gonna keep heading that direction even IF we can get outta their way in time?”. The Mercedes van was quickly on them as Michael did his best.. and his focus on the road made him the only one to miss the circus act that was happening in the other vehicle. The driver appeared to be a young boy about 10 with a hole the size of a 50 cent piece dead center in his forehead that you could see daylight through. It looked like someone had taken a lazer sharp toilet paper tube and given it a couple of good snacks with a mallet. Somebodies clearly got a big ass caliber gun in there. His head was just above the steering wheel and next to him in the passenger seat was an old lady locked in battle with and gnawing on what they could have sworn was the writhing and body of a small monk seal. The normally placid thing had gouged several huge chunks of meat including her whole nose from her face. There was a lot of feverish action in the back seats too but not one of the three observers could make out much more than that it was violent. The van was rapidly gaining with another 100 yards for the home team to make it back to the Hana side of the bridge and it looked like they may be pushed back across the last 75 yards or so when suddenly a man hunched forward from behind and twisted the little head of the boy a near full 360 degrees. As he did he turned the wheel as far left as he could and the van immediately jumped the outdated old stone railing. Jill would never forget the the look on that man’s face as they went over.. “he was not infected!”.. “he was normal!”.. .. he had chosen presumed death rather than let this vehicle deliver its hellish night mare to Hana. One clumsy bounce off the hillside then the van performed what looked like a gracious swandive.. side doors symmetrically opening simultaneously. A silent free fall 300 feet onto the black lava rocks below with a sickening boom that echoed from all directions with a pretty funky syncopated rythym. Emily had a crazy clip in her head of whatever craziness was going on in that van being altered very little on the way down. No one said a word for about 30 seconds until Michael broke the silence with “which way y’all wanna go? Another van is due any second.” 2 votes for Hana and 2 for the city -who voted how doesn’t matter but in the end they flipped for it. A dreaded goocher suprised no one on that day and so to Hana they headed. Bird woke late.. the sun was up.. it was well up. Damn pineapple vodka my ass.. that’s just moonshine..his head felt like he had a sunburn on the inside. Weird though.. he had given himself an extra sip or two in celebration of the previous afternoons breakthrough but he never got a hangover. NEVER. The headache was short lived and Bird came to the conclusion as he poured his first cup of field coffee and thumbed out his first heater with a second already in hand that he must have just slept crooked. Rather than just feel normal however he felt sharp.. like in the zone sharp.. he guessed just serotonin release from now having the finish line of this career defining research in his sights. Still though.. he felt like he kinda wanted to punch a stranger in the mouth to celebrate. Bird didn’t do that or think like that. Weird -but gotta get moving. Supply raft will be here later and I need to have my returns packed up and a written report ready to send. This was gonna be huge f’n news back home.. and his “supervisor” the illustrious dick Maurice “flathead” Flint-Dibble was not just gonna eat crow he was gonna polish a huge freaking crow knob. “Heheheh.” Bird made the funniest laugh when he was the one who had caused it. “BOOM!”Exploded the loudest sound Bird had heard on Maui.. maybe one of the loudest he’d heard in his life. The exploding van was less than 2 miles from him with very little obstruction between him and it and it startled the piss out of him as he was finishing his report. “What the hell?!” “I better radio the police .. some stupid tourist just went off the cliff at turn 33.”. He never would forget what he saw next .. a whole flock .. 15 or so myna birds raced overhead. These birds were headed TOWARDS the sound of the crash.. and not leisurely. In fact he didn’t think he had ever seen birds fly so desperately.. even when fleeing. The clincher though occurred when just as they passed above him two or three began to fight each other mid flight and spiraled down still clawing and biting in a thud about 150 yards away. Birds instincts served him well in being dead quiet at this moment.. not that he would be susceptible to the dreaded disease.. oh no Baron… missy fate has something far more sinister in mind for you. The birds would have been on him and he just didn’t have time for that right now. About 10 seconds later a small deer with a deeply ripped gash in its side raced in the same direction with the exact same zeal followed by a huge wild pig snorting and screeching. “Holy shit what is this evil?!” Bird thought to himself. He knew whatever it was would be life changing and he sorta dreaded to find out what more this day may have in store. Thirty minutes of quiet driving and things could have almost felt back to normal except for the fact that the group saw almost no wildlife of any kind. Butterflies and bugs sure but other than a stray bird here or there it was like life had been paused or erased. Around the next corner they could make out smoke billowing from what they assumed to be Hana and realized that this was not likely some super localized phenomena … visions of the little town as one big frenzied fight of all non insect life forms of the infected type. A nightmarish squirming snake ball of creatures all with the same goal.. to aggressively engage as many other living things as they could. Jill finally suggested what they were all thinking “maybe heading to town is not our safest option.” “Exactly.. I’m afraid that’s death.” Emily added. “I was thinking that maybe we should head down one of these long driveways and try to wait this thing out in an isolated house.” Said Landon “but ideally we’d pick one that is not inhabited”. They continued to drive evaluating each long driveway for signs of being not so recently manicured while avoiding the ones that looked undriveable or abandoned for years. “It would be great to pull up and ask an inhabitant for any news but so far our luck has suggested we can’t trust anything alive on this island.” Michael murmured.. “we just need to find a safe spot with lockable doors and lay low for a day or so… maybe they will all kill each other off.” Who knew.. but staying on this damn road didn’t seem like a great idea. “We also outta look for some simple weapons.. maybe bamboo spears.” That they did as they drove. About three-fourths of the way to Hana they had seen 2 more vehicles that had run off of cliffs.. both on fire with no apparent survivors. “Damn.. if we could just give all these things a car they might end themselves” jill offered with Emily reminding her that these creatures had been people with families just a few hours ago. “Just trying to break the tension.” Jill. Around the next bend Michael shut the engine off and told everyone to be perfectly still. Nobody questioned and did just that. Out a few hundred yards in the small cove below them a small fishing boat feverishly raced along full throttle.. haphazardly combing the shore. They could only see one person in the boat and he was scanning the water all around him and then scouring the land. The guy was not paying attention to his steering in the least. They assumed correctly that he had hopped the boat before he flipped while trying to escape god knows what- converted onboard and now lacked the faculties to maneuver the craft. “He’s just feaming for someone to tear apart…” Landon stopped mid sentence as the monster looked their way and began to thrash around the captains deck. It knew enough not to just jump in the water and they all wondered if the loss of common sense was gradual process or instant.. because this guy was not completely out of control yet but was clearly no longer someone they wanted to meet. “How did he know we were not just an abandoned van?” Michael. “Surely they don’t have super hearing or super smell…” the truth was that they did have vastly more sensitive senses .. not enough to hear them talking .. he was full throttle against the wind anyway but in this case a glare of the sun was projected off the windshield and there was a slight exhaust plume from the van. Two deadly clues. These creatures instincts had them scan for signs of life and when there wasnt much of that.. they would settle for the least common denominator. The algorythm worked like a charm.. case in point. “He’s got a long way to get up here to us but unless he sees something else to distract him he will be on us like a bloodhound” Landon correctly deduced. In the end it didn’t matter because this former mayor… a 9th generation Hanaian was indeed in that stage of devolution where he was becoming quickly less functional as far as operating anything mechanical. He raced around the hull of that boat twice more in a desperate attempt to find a way at the only life he could currently fathom reaching before heading back to the captains wheel and randomly turning it back and forth. The first turn inland nearly threw him overboard before the boat did a 360 then headed straight out to sea. “Not sure how widespread this thing will be but I pray for whoever that boat runs upon” said Jill “y’all think this is or could become worldwide? Are we looking at an apocalypse?” Nobody answered .. just three half shrugs as Michael put the van back in drive again. He restated the obvious “we gotta get off this damn road.” And he kept to himself the three big shark fins and couple of humpback outlines he could make out trailing in the boats wake on its way out of sight. Bird had seen another couple of pigs.. another deer.. several mongooses(why not no geese or better yet mongi?) and quite a few more birds racing this way or that .. all exhibiting the same bizarre aggression and most having signs of having been in a fight. He had decided it safest to stow away in a lava tube for awhile .. not the famous one from yesterday but a much smaller one he knew to be uninhabited. He was running on gutfeel here but after several hours of not seeing or hearing any action he decided he needed to prepare for his supply raft or risk starving the next month(that and no Winstons). He knew the raftsman,Stan enough to suspect the guy was the kind of ass who would not spend more than 15 minutes waiting before he took off with all the supplies in tow. On the way too and back at camp it was dreadfully quiet other than the wind and waves. The enormity of what might be going on started to sink in but in his mind he still hadn’t accepted the fact that humans might be involved and of course he had no clue of any link between what he was experiencing and the events in the fated lava tube last night. Just then he heard the wound out outboard of the mayors boat coming from the direction of the big island. He assumed it was his supply raft at first and so had come out near the beach when he noticed that the motor was not letting up. Wide open he was nearly side by side with the island now when Bird decided to duck in the grass. He peeked and saw a crazy eyed chubby native man randomly giving the wheel a turn of a few degrees back and forth but not with any real aim. He had what appeared to be a bloody dead gull in one hand and another very much still alive one buzzed around his pock marked and bleeding bald scalp and he swatted at it with its dead kin. The man must have sensed Birds movement as he immediately stared and tried to adjust the wheel of the speeding boat. The boat did a 180 nearly swamping itself in its own wake and beginning to run a large dilated circle matching the shape of the super small island. For 15 minutes the boat ran lap after lap like he was doing time trials.. each one a little faster than the one before.. not because he was becoming a better driver or moving any faster.. the boats natural turn course just seemed to be ever so slowly spiralling inward. All the while the demon driver glared at him. Bird at this point realized that the man was being controlled by whatever strange thing had take over the birds and animals this am. If there were any doubt it had been erased when 5 minutes after his unannounced arrival a motley pod of tiger and mako sharks with 2 whales had shown up.. made a couple of complementary circles then as they saw Bird.. one by one beached themselves. It was akin to watching while fish being thrown or slid into place at the fish markets in Seattle. They were all doing their best to belly their way the rest of the way presumably to him without much progress. Just as bird was doing the math on the small odds of him getting out of this alive the supply raft appeared - coming from about the same coordinates as the mayor on his return trip to sea from earlier this morning. Hmmm.. how is this gonna play out? Bird began waving his arms in an attempt to warn the raftsman to turn around to no avail. About 50 feet from shore the mayors boat flat out t-boned the outboard rigged raft and sent Stan the supply guy flying right into the water. Luckily or maybe not really so much in the long run none of the maddened swimmers mentioned above were still there. Stan clearly couldnt process what was happening and he began swimming toward Bird his little boat had made a direct ninety degree turn and beat its captain to dry land. It sat and idled with its cargo unharmed. Bird ran out to meet and warm the man that he had never particularly cared for just as Stan finished wading in and began trotting his direction barely noticing the fish and mammals rolling along on the sand. “Who the hell is that and what’s his freaking problem?!” Stan got out just as he noticed the 9 foot tiger shark and just as it noticed him. Before he could give himself any more distance from the obviously not dead fish it had rolled its head sideways and taken a right leg mid calf for an early afternoon snack. Stan howled as the blood began to pour and Bird went back to base for something to use as a tourniquet. By the time Bird had made the 90 second trip there and back he heard the conversion of Stan’s voice to something never before heard on this planet and at that moment the immensity of what he was dealing with hit the scientist. He dropped and watched as the frothing man still pouring blood attacked the smaller of the two whales. This one had just barely made its way out of the water. He ripped at the whales flesh and poked at its eye running around and around trying to find a better access point. All the other creatures on shore stimulated by this more intense activity tried their best to get at Stan. The juvenile whale was still lying on a fairly steep portion of the shore and in an attempt to get at the man began to roll like a massive grey log back into the water.. knocking Stan in as he did. Just at this time around the horn came the mayors boat and the whale lurched and began flopping then swimming straight toward it. Stan had just enough time to swing his body onto the whales back hand on its fin -trying to pull himself to a better fighting position. The vessels had clamped and the bleeding amazingly had nearly ceased from his new stump. The mayor still with no control of his boat could do nothing.. although I’m sure if he could have he would have maintained his exact course. Straight for the whales head. Twenty seconds later there was a horrible sounding collision of a boat hull cracking the skull of a whale. The sound that whale made I’m sure could be heard for a hundred miles underwater and Bird felt the reverb where he was on land. No beauty this carried instead it sounded like a repossessed banshee on quaaludes. The register of notes made Bird think of just how wonderful the whales songs had been back in his baltic sea nights as a young man. The boat launched itself in the air about 4 feet and its trajectory could not have been any more perfect to catch the nearly bled out delivery man like a well worn in baseball glove. Softly he came down after being launched from the whales back and he landed immediately with a bead on the man pacing captain. Hopping his way- these two met with a hatred that sadly was not the first human vs. human exhibition of the day. Far from it in fact. Hana had few humans left other than the “winners”. There were plenty left laying around. .. brains still sparking but unable to move. Only a handful were still lurking and they would mostly neutralize each other if left with no other stimulation. They would hunt each other to extinction. The outcome of the battle on that boat is unknown because the collision with the whale and its well landed trick jump had turned its course back out to sea and in the general direction of the big island for the second trip today. The big injured whale struggled along behind - 2 foot streamer of grey matter chumming its course. “Well that can’t be good.” Bird threw in as he walked toward the raft.. making sure to keep plenty of room between himself and the party of on the shore. What a grotesque site.. these animals and fish followed him like the potential snack he was -more than a snack.. they didn’t just want to steal his flesh… they wanted to steal his existence. They so desperately tried to reach him but none could. This whole intense interaction had been witnessed by our family of four from the back porch of the nice little house they had lucked upon. It had been recently inhabited.. but the owner must have gone out to work or for something else early that morning. Maybe the owner would be back that evening.. but they all guessed not and they stayed in the hidden quiet of the covered back porch. “Now what do we do about that guy out on the island?” Asked Landon. “He clearly is not infected likely has no clue where to go.” “Let’s give it 10 minutes.. and if he hasn’t become a stark raving hulk like the rest and hasn’t attacked that horde on the beach we can send reflections off Emily’s make up mirror to him”. offered Michael. “We can’t risk making any noise even if he could hear us. That island can’t be more than 1/2 mile off and he has the raft. He may be too spooked to respond or to come this way since he likely hasn’t figured out the time dynamics of this thing yet.” “But we owe it to him to try” said Jill. “But come dark we want total darkness tonight or who knows what we attract so let’s give him a few minutes then get on with it”. They waited 30 minutes to be sure. Bird sat and went over and over all the last 24 hours in his head and thought he had a decent representation in his head. Some virus.. super fast. Ultra aggressive. Even birds and fish? Right about now from his safe place in the lava tube- he had decided his safest move was to wait at least a night in silence before trying to head … head where? Didn’t know yet but he wasn’t gonna stay here forever. Of course he had killed the engine of the supply raft and pulled it safely to shore- right at that moment he saw a bright light flash by on the sand and come to rest right in front of his tube… clearly artificial. Ok so somebody knows I’m here… did those guys seem to have the faculties to understand using a reflection to lure out a potential victim?” Bird was almost sure not but didn’t he want to risk leading some other creature to whoever was trying to help him. He decided he needed to wait until the next morning. That last night he sat and smoked Winston’s and drank pineapple hooch and thought. Life and death and how we truly have no clue about how much we think we know about either. Back on land the four people on that back porch shared many of those same thoughts. Right after dawn the next morning Bird was ready. He had seen or heard nothing but the wind and his usual bug pals all night. He loaded up his gear and scratched his initials - RD - in the wall of the lava tube and headed towards the raft again. Same creepy ass parade of eyes and more viscous scoots and alien like sea barks and growls. Bird didn’t care at this point. He flipped both middle fingers at all those animals.. not as a disrespect. He loved animals but to show the powers that be that he was a survivor. He would go home if there was one. He took a few steps.. turned back around and flipped both birds again.. this time fancy French style. “Heheheh” and he cranked the motor and turned the boat toward the little house where he had guessed the reflection had emanated. He hoped none on the beach animals could flop their way back into the water to make him regret his that last gesture. He knew there was a good chance that he might attract others but nothing seemed to follow. What was amazing to him as he landed his craft was home many smaller non lethal fish had also beached themselves in places. “This place is gonna stink to high heaven soon”. He thought. Landon first noticed the little raft making its journey and notified the rest of his family… they waited nervously as Bird came up the hill toward the house. No attack birds.. no pigs.. no deer. Just a clearly uninfected man. He waited until he got to the porch and quietly entered before receiving Michael’s hand “hi I’m Michael and this is Jill Landon and Emily.. man are we happy to see you.” “Good to meet y’all too .. y’all gotta fill me in asap but let’s go get these supplies before they go bad in the sun… are these things z…”. “We don’t know” Michael cut him off. Landon took three trips to the raft and they filled the fridge and freezer. “Y’all live here?” Asked Bird. “No we are tourists .. pretty sure the owner isn’t coming back… not sure any of these people are coming back.” Head down and a shrug. Bird liked these people.. for some reason he couldn’t ignore the desire to punch Michael in the face but he liked him just the same. It was here that they sat down and spilled all the details they had to each other and had a small lunch. “How long you think we outta wait before heading anywhere” asked Michael. “At least 5 days” answered Bird. “I’ve got a radio but it would be madness to even attempt to call at this point. Who knows what we’d be attracting .. maybe even government quarantine”. The two men looked at each other and knew that they liked the way the other thought. Fast friends these people became over the next several days until finally they were ready to send a radio signal and find out if the world still existed. They had seen or heard no signs of life since Birds arrival and it felt like time to shit or get off the pot.. plus the food wasn’t gonna last forever and this Michael dude keeps sneaking a Winston here and there.. we got 2 days smokes max. As Bird cranked his old military radio Michael said to Emily “See.. I told you we’d see plenty of life on the road to Hana”. “Oww!” As she punched him in the arm. The radio went off in town on the mainland. The office was empty but the window was broken and after no answer to the signal Bird began to speak. “Home base come in… this is Bird.. come in.”…. “Request update of status of mission… and of the world”. Static .. louder bird repeated his message and this time it was met by a thud as the agile form of a parrotbill performed a perfect kamikaze dive bomb into the headset.