Below you will find a The Plum Island Horror short story written by David Spangler. Please note that this is a work of fiction and not an example of gameplay. Enjoy! -Rachel

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE:  David Spangler’s explosive exposé, Beware the Shade: Where Horrors Hide in the Daylight, is currently under a government restraining order, forbidding its publication for containing “material damaging to national security.”  We are litigating this action and fully expect victory and vindication under the free speech provisions of our Constitution.  In the meantime, enough eyewitness accounts of the events of October 25-27 have surfaced to justify our publishing the following excerpts from Mr. Spangler’s book.  They add to the rising chorus demanding a full and transparent investigation of the unimaginable and unmitigated disasters that befell the unsuspecting citizens of Plum Island and the town of Greenport.

            The Lewis family never saw what hit them. 

            Which, considering, was probably a good thing.

            Others did see, however. For those who survived, the images of that first moment of contact will be forever seared into their memories. Much worse was to follow, of course, over three fateful days in October.  But it’s always that first event, that first encounter with the unknown, that stands out, demarking the jagged split between the familiar world we knew and the unimaginable one that has descended upon us.

            The Lewises were, as far as anyone knows, the first.  Unfortunately, they were not the last.

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            Superstorm Nancy hit the East Coast of the United States with all the fury of an Earth goddess scorned and determined to get revenge on the humans who were so devastating her climate.  High winds, storm surges, and rain that didn’t just fall but speared horizontally across the earth like a host of impaling javelins.  “Apocalyptic” was the most frequent term applied to the storm and its effects.  But on Plum Island, just off the Caroline coast, apocalypse didn’t begin to cover the terror of Nancy’s aftermath.

            Arthur and Madeline Lewis, their son Archie and their daughter Gwen were among the first to venture out to see what damage had been wrought.  They had reason to leave the shelter of their home, which had miraculously survived.  They had recently purchased the Wennerbread Bakery from old Mrs. Wenner.  Eighty-six years old and widowed for the past ten years, she had finally decided to retire.  It seemed to the Lewis family that this was a lucrative investment as the bakery had a good reputation throughout the island and, best of all, it was only a couple of blocks from The Pearl, a government installation officially known as P. I. R. L., the Plum Island Research Laboratory.  No one knew exactly what was being researched or what kind of laboratory it was.  Everything was very hush-hush.  But it was filled with scientists and doctors and who knew what other professions, all of whom were potential customers.  Madeline Lewis especially had plans to expand the old bakery into an upscale and very inviting coffee shop.  After all, even scientists like a fresh hot pastry with their coffee in the morning.

            So, the Lewis family carefully made their way up roads filled with fallen tree limbs—and the occasional fallen tree itself—past stunned neighbors and roofless houses, fearing the worst as they got closer to where the bakery was located.  I’m sure it was with a gasp of relief that they saw as they approached that the building was still intact.  The front windows were gone, as were all the windows in the other shops along the street, but windows were easily replaced.  Much more important to their plans were the expensive ovens and other appliances within the bakery itself.

            Parking, they all went into the store, mindful of the broken glass, to survey the extent of the damage.  For that reason, being inside, they didn’t see—and perhaps didn’t hear—the mob of things that suddenly appeared further up the street, coming from the direction of The Pearl.  But the things had seen them.  That was all that was needed for the mob to swarm the bakery.  The screams that followed, I’ve been told, could not be forgotten by those few who heard them.

            For there were a few other hardy survivors venturing out to see what was left of their island.  Other shop owners were investigating their own potential losses.  They became the unwitting and horrified witnesses of the end of the Lewis family.  Even more terrifying, they saw their resurrection as part of the mob, recognizable only by the scraps of clothing hanging from their now mutilated and grossly deformed bodies.  Hiding around street corners or peering through broken office windows, these few witnesses fled as the things poured out from the bakery in search of new victims.

            As it turned out, Plum Island being a small atoll after all, I was not far away while the Lewis family were meeting their fate.  I was in the Pomegranate Mall where I had my small Private Investigator’s office, sandwiched between Crispy’s Donuts and Carmichael’s Haberdashery.  (Don’t ask me why my office was there; that’s a whole other story—and horrible in its own right!).  One of those who had witnessed the Lewis’s fate was a friend who came immediately to tell me what had happened.  Hearing this, I called Lee Hartman, chief of the Plum Island Constabulary, on my smartphone, which, fortunately, was still working.  I remember the conversation distinctly.

            “Chief,” I said, “there’s been a murder.  The Lewis family, the ones who just bought old lady Wenner’s bakery.”

            “A murder?  Are you sure?  I’ve got my hands full right now.  We’ve been hit by a hurricane, you know!  There’s death and destruction everywhere.  Maybe they were killed by the storm.”

            “No, it was murder.  Fred Davis saw it.  A mob of things killed them.”

            “Things?  What do you mean, things?”  I could hear the exasperation in his voice.  Why was I bothering him about “things” when there were so many other problems?

            “Yeah, things. Monsters.  I don’t know.  But whatever they are, there are a lot of them and they’re killing people.”

            “Monsters.”  A pause.  “Have you been drinking, Spangler?  Did flying debris hit your head?”

            “Goddamn it, Lee.  Davis is scared out of his wits, so he saw something.  Maybe looters?”  I used a word I figured he’d know.

            “Looters?  Why didn’t you say so in the first place instead of all this falderol about monsters and things?”

            I quote this verbatim to illustrate the response that I and others got time after time from authorities when we tried to describe the horror that was descending upon our island…and maybe upon the world.  Who could believe monsters?  But monsters they were, former human beings mutated out of all shape and proportion by the nightmare chemicals and energies set loose within The Pearl by the destruction Nancy caused.  At first, I called them Grotesques, for that they were, and in spades.  But sometime during that first day, someone started calling them Murders:  a Murder of Horrors when they gathered in rampaging mobs, and the term stuck.  After all, “grotesque” merely described what they looked like, but murder defined what they did.  Over and over again.

            As a result of my call, the Chief sent Commander Arnold Stallone, head of the SWAT team, to investigate the “looting” of the Wennerbread Bakery and the murder of the Lewis family.  Perhaps foolishly, I jumped in my car to intercept them and see for myself what was happening.  (My friend Davis said he was getting off the island and left me.  I hope he made it, but I never saw him again.)

            I knew Stallone operated out of the 1^st Precinct, which was just west across the river from the Mall, so I headed in that direction.  Fortunately for me, the SWAT team moved faster; they were probably already out checking on damage.  Had I actually caught up with them, their fate would have been my own.  I would not be writing this as a witness.  But witness I was.

            While much of Plum Island is built up, especially in the south end where the town of Greenport is, parts of it are still untouched meadows and forests.  Stallone and his team were in just such an open area north of a strip mall where Jiffy Jeff’s Used Cars and Luke’s “Use the Force” Comics were the main attractions.  To the east of this area is a small range of hills.  That’s where I went to get a better view, for I could see the SWAT team kneeling behind their vehicles, guns out and firing.  What they were firing at I couldn’t see at first, but then I did.

            My God!  How I wish I could forget that sight.

            I have no idea how large the mob was, this “Murder of Horrors.”  Dozens and dozens, maybe a hundred or more.  Their shapes and sizes were so varied and terrible to look upon that my eyes refused to take them all in.  Every Horror had once been a human being, but they had become something else. Mostly their human features were distorted grotesquely, abominably, hideously out of shape, but sometimes they had extra arms, extra legs, strange protrusions from their bodies, even tentacles.  Monsters.  I even saw one who had two heads, impossible as that seems, though in that crush of ravening, appalling bodies, it was hard to know.

            Frankly, I’m not altogether sure what I saw.

            But what they did was all too clear.  Stallone and his troopers never had a chance.  Their bullets seemed to make no difference as the mob charged upon them.  They disappeared beneath a squirming mass of flesh, and it seemed to me they must be being torn apart.  But then the mob began to move on, heading south, and I saw, to my horror, that what was left of the SWAT team was getting up and joining them.

            At that point, I abandoned my car, afraid that I’d be spotted driving away and instead made my way across the hills to the Oceanside Industrial Park on the other side, not knowing then that it was soon to be visited by its own brand of terror, ordinary birds that must have been caught in the noxious, toxic fumes rising from the ruins of The Pearl and had now become fearsome and mutated birds of prey bringing death from the sky.

            This was just the beginning.

            For all the damage Nancy brought, it was nothing compared to what was now unleashed upon the island.

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