The Sixth Plague- Episode One: Fiddler's Rest

By Mel King

Charlie Maxwell, Narrator:

We’ll begin our tale on a bright, cloudless winter morning, in an old apartment building, in a coastal town in south-eastern Australia. I won’t tell you which town, because this tale is based on an entirely true – if somewhat stranger than fiction – sequence of events, which took place during the sixth global pandemic of the twenty-first century.

Anonymity is crucial, as you'll understand if you’re old enough to remember the sixth pandemic (or plague, as we’d reverted to calling them by then, an archaic term that better conveyed the suffering and erasure of humanity that each successive global affliction brought to the people of Earth). And if you do remember those dark, miserable decades, then you’ll remember the saying what happens in the plague stays in the plague, a term of questionable grammatical precision, but one which does, nonetheless, convey the extreme duress under which we (well, those of us who remained human) suffered in those desperate times. Of course, schooling was entirely left up to parents during the plague years, and those parents were, for the most part, too busy to teach the finer points of written language to their offspring. They were, you understand, somewhat preoccupied with the business of survival.

We’ll keep the exact name and location of the town anonymous, anyway, and simply refer to it as Fiddler's Rest. You’ll understand the choice of name shortly.

The sixth plague has been a very quiet time for humanity, surviving, as they are, by hiding in the shadows, but lately, it is especially quiet for our protagonist, Rocci Reggiano, who avoided contracting the actual plague, only to develop a catastrophic ear infection. The situation is less than ideal, when every doctor in town has cast aside the Medical Board of Australia’s directive to make the care of their patients their primary concern, and opted instead to kill, cook and eat them.

Where our story begins, more than eighty percent of the human population has developed Selective Aggressive Hyperphagia, or SAH, an affliction leading to an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. It followed what we now know as the PICO, or Pattern Induced Cognitive Overload event, a cyber-terrorist attack which catalysed the sixth plague around four months earlier, and spread by repeated sharing until, ironically, humanity became unable to keep communication or energy systems operational and the contagion self-terminated.

We’ll leave the scientific nuance of the plague in the hands of the few scientists we have left though, at least for now, and check in on Rocci Reggiano, who is sitting very still and silent in the hallway of a flat, by the front door, trying to determine if there is anyone in the hallway on the other side – quite difficult to do when you’ve recently battled a major inner ear infection and blown out both of your ear-drums. Rocci is writing a memoir in a notebook named JoJo the Journal. This memoir will eventually become a historically important document, being, as it is, one of the primary resources used to compile the gruelling tale of survival that I am sharing with you right now.

On the front cover of JoJo the Journal, Rocci has scrawled 'Is it Still Called Main Character Syndrome if You’re Literally the Only Person Left Alive?’ This question will very soon prove redundant, because Rocci is not, as you will see, the only person left alive.

Nor is Rocci Reggiano the name our valiant survivor was given as an infant, or even a self-chosen identity. The name in fact came about some three decades prior, when our protagonist was still in high school. Rocci Reggiano was a character conceived during a particularly hilarious theatre sports escapade, in a drama class, in a classroom not too far from the building in which Rocci now sits.

This original Rocci Reggiano was a continental deli owner with severe lactose intolerance, and a fondness for theatrically smoking marijuana. This character was doomed to forever cut artisinal cheese for customers, whilst being tragically unable to savour the pastoral pleasures of a locally produced washed rind cheddar, or a famhouse brie – the bread and butter, if you like, of Rocci's Rinds, a thriving smallgoods operation. Rocci Reggiano, then, was a character born of peak teenage humour, and the nick-name persisted well into adulthood. 

Rocci is now forty five years old, and is, for the moment at least, quite deaf, suffering from badly impaired vestibular navigation, and simultaneously desperate and terrified to leave the safety of the flat to go in search of a much beloved calico cat, whom Rocci calls Quince Paste, or Quincy for short.

Today’s part of the story belongs to Rocci, so I'll hand you over now. Be kind to our brave, dizzy hero, folks. It’s tough going, to be without both your hearing and your cat even for a short time in the midst of what is, for all intents and purposes, a zombie apocalypse.

Rocci Reggiano:

It’s been two full weeks and change since my ear-drums burst. Up until the point where it actually happened, I wanted them to perforate; I would have done anything to relieve the pressure and pain, never wavering or easing, just steadily increasing in intensity until it felt as though someone had stabbed me right through the head with a hot poker. In one ear and out the other, as they say.

I was desperate for the pain to stop, and in the end it became so intense that I almost poked a scalpel (found in a first aid kid I’d looted from an abandoned car) into my ears to help things along. Do not insert anything smaller than your elbow into your ear canal be damned; if you’ve ever had a serious inner ear infection then you’ll understand the abject misery I was feeling.

I’m glad I held off though, because self surgery probably would have resulted in the last infection I’d ever have. The thing is, I could still hear before The Perforation. Right now, I don’t think I’d hear a volcano erupt if I was standing right on top of it.

I don’t know if my hearing will ever come back; it's not like I can seek medical advice. We’re in the middle of another fucking plague – this one deliberately engineered – a rapidly spreading digital contagion hidden in the new iOS Doctor AI app. Exposure causes what we now call AHDSAH, or Amygdalar Hyperreactivity Disorder and related Selective Aggressive Hyperphagia, which is the syndrome that brought cannibalism to a world that really didn’t have room for any more horrors.

I suppose that’s enough context, isn't it JoJo? I don’t know if anyone will ever read this, and if they do, I've no idea how much of this they'll already know. I’ve no way of knowing if any countries managed to avoid the PICO event, or if it really did give the whole world the least enjoyable reach around since the Spanish Flu.

Enough waiting. I have turned the flat upside down, and Quincy simply isn't here. I keep hoping she'll come trotting out from some hidden corner, yawning and looking for food, but it seems less and less likely as the day wears on. I have to find her; I’ll go mad with grief if any harm comes to that cat.

I discovered her a couple of months ago, in a cat carrier, in the back seat of a car, apparently on the way home from being desexed. She’d made a mess of her stitches, which was why I went in search of a first aid kit. That was a rare good day, in a sea of terrible ones. I found a new furry friend, medical supplies, a van full of gluten free snack foods (very hard to come by lately), and a moving truck with an impressive collection of good books on board.

Anyway, I'm stalling. I'm scared. There have been a lot of cookers roaming the streets recently, and I can't hear anything coming from behind me. But it's time to be brave. I’ll open the door, just a crack; maybe she’s sitting out there, waiting for me to let her in.

Cookers. That’s what people started calling them, back when there still were people, because the obvious term 'zombies' didn't quite fit. Zombies, according to centuries of zombie-lore, do not cook their meat.

Alright. Here I go. Wish me luck, JoJo.

I’ll be back, hopefully very shortly, with Quincy safely back in my lap.

It’s the strangest thing, JoJo. I am at a loss to explain what’s happened. I did, as I planned, venture out into the hall, which was empty, and all the way to the top of the ground floor stairs. I checked all of the doors to all of the flats, and none had been disturbed since I set up my intruder detectors (which I crafted myself, with dental floss and thumb tacks).

The main door was still locked from the inside, with the security shutter drawn. There were simply no possible exits. So where the hell was Quincy? 

Outside, I could see a horde of cookers passing through town, slowly, walking in little groups, very social and upbeat with one another today. Some were even holding hands, or had linked arms. It was creepy. I think I prefer them when they're raging. There was no sign of my missing cat though, and I returned to the flat in tears.

To my very great relief, upon my arrival home, Quincy came running out of the bathroom, yowling in pain and bringing with her a guest, who has turned our quiet little life upside down. I know what you’re thinking. Cats hide all the time. Quincy must have been asleep in some hidden corner of the flat the whole time, right? Well, friend, I’m sorry to report that it simply is not so.

Quincy, you see, had been assaulted by a sea creature – a Fiddler Crab in fact – and when she tore out of the bathroom, it was clinging to her face like a tiny facehugger from a certain retro science-fiction franchise. Now I’m no marine biologist, but Fiddler crabs are pretty unmistakable on account of their having a single gigantic claw, and they’re not found around my part of the country at all. They live up north, where it's warm. So by this stage I think we can safely say the plot has become pretty bloody thick; in fact it’s gone from soup to chowder with the addition of a single crab, so to speak.

I managed to remove the crab with minimal damage to either the creature or to Quincy, and, being, as I am, now robustly non-carnivorous (in response to recent events), I found aquarium salts in one of the neighbouring flats and set up a little habitat in my bathroom for our new friend, Eric the Banana Fiddler.

I don’t know what to feed such a creature, or if he’ll survive even if I find a way to release him at the local beach. I reckon the sea down here, especially right now in the middle of winter, is too cold for him. Perhaps I can set up an aquarium, but with no power to run a filter or heat the water – well, it feels a bit hopeless. Anyway I’ve given him some tinned sardines, compliments of the late Mrs Barnes downstairs, who left me a very well stocked pantry, before she became a meal herself. He seems to like them.

Of course, all of that is secondary to the mystery of just how the hell Quincy escaped the flat, found a Fiddler Crab (which must have come from an aquarium – what other explanation can there be?) and then somehow materialised in the bathroom. I searched thoroughly and I didn’t find anything amiss except a bit of a leak under the sink.

I’m going to do another sweep the building, just to reassure myself there isn’t a window open, or a hole in the roof or something. I haven’t owned a cat before, but my friend used to insist that they can teleport. I thought it was a joke, but now I’m not so sure.

The flat next door previously had a cat; the owner, Jimmy, was still living there when I moved in, but he left to go and find his son, and he took the cat with him. He left a little harness behind though– I’m going to try putting it on Quincy and see if she’ll patrol the building with me.

I’ll be like a security guard with a guard dog, except I’m currently deaf, armed with nothing but a vape and a biro, and I’m dressed in an Oodie and slippers. Meanwhile, my fierce companion is a cat who couldn’t even fight off an attack from a cute little crab with a comically large claw.

Charlie Maxwell, Narrator:

We’ll leave our intrepid duo to patrol their building, seeking an explanation for Quincy’s temporary absence, and for the appearance of Eric the Banana Fiddler. Meanwhile, in the few minutes we have left, I’d like to quickly introduce you to Chris, who is currently soaking up the gorgeous June sun on a tiny little island just off the coast of Far North Queensland. Chris is reclining on a banana lounge just now, necking a bottle of Robert Oatley Shiraz, and pondering the curious visitor – a very friendly calico cat –  that appeared in the garden earlier, and now seems to have vanished back into the ether. Chris's dog Isaac is quite beside himself over the whole matter, and has been tearing about the island barking excitedly ever since.

Chris is admittedly grieving a dear friend, and has been drinking solidly since completing the exhausting task of digging and refilling a grave the day previous. It’s possible, of course, that the cat was a hallucination brought on by hot sun, dehydration and alcohol, but Chris's instincts, and Isaacs excited barking say otherwise.

We’ll hear more from Rocci Reggiano, Quincy, and our soon to be new friends Chris and Isaac this time next week. Until then folks, keep your pets safe, leave sea creatures in their natural habitat, and seek medical attention at the first sign of an ear infection, because you never know when the next apocalyptic disaster is going to strike.

The Sixth Plague will return with episode two on Sunday 7 June.

I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and attempt an "On the Run" serial of my own. I'll be writing it week to week and watching the comments to see if anyone has reported any plot-holes, made any suggestions, or perhaps thought up a better name for the story than "The Sixth Plague" which is all that I can come up with for now!
-Mel

Mel King is a Geelong based writer of sci-fi, horror and comedy.
Mel can be found here:
Mel King's Haunted Words
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or by email at melissakingauthor@gmail.com