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: This is the third excerpt from David Spangler’s explosive exposé, Beware the Shade: Where Horrors Hide in the Daylight, 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 questions have been asked a number of times, “Where was the army? Where was the Coast Guard? The Air Force? Why weren’t the Horrors bombed from the air?” The fact is, the National Guard did show up, and the Coast Guard was an important and helpful presence, especially when it came to evacuating people from the island. But what people forget are the conditions that existed on Plum Island after Nancy swept through. Even without the murderous Horrors rampaging south from the Pearl, chaos was everywhere. Roads were clogged with downed trees and overturned cars; even whole roofs had blown off houses and were blocking streets. The island is bisected by a river running north to south, named (in a fit of creativity by the original settlers) Plum River, which in turn has a tributary called, what else, the Little Plum River. The 1st Precinct police station and the Island Wide Light and Power complex are bracketed on three sides by these two rivers. After Nancy, several of the bridges crossing the Plum and Little Plum, connecting the two sides of the island, were damaged as well. As a result, just getting around was difficult. All electrical power was out, though some homes and businesses had emergency generators. As a consequence, for the first day and much of the second after the storm, communication was practically on the level of smoke signal and pony express.

This wasn’t just a Plum Island problem. The whole Carolina mainland extending tens of miles inland was reeling from the damage Nancy had caused, not to mention from the ongoing danger of rising flood waters as the storm’s massive rainfall caused all the local rivers to overflow their banks. Everyone in that coastal region was focused on their own survival and recovery. Even if communications weren’t so damaged, who were the Plum Islanders going to call? More to the point, given all that was going on, who was even going to believe their confused and often garbled messages about people being eaten or transformed by hideous monsters out of a George Romero zombie flick?

No, the Plum Islanders were on their own, at least for the first thirty-six hours or so before the true nature and extent of the danger began to sink into the minds of the federal authorities in Washington, D.C.

After failing to talk with Martha Winfrey at the P.I.R.L. HQ West, I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Obviously, people needed to be alerted about what was coming their way, but how? Who could I tell? The S.W.A.T. team and their commander, Arnold Stallone, had been gruesomely killed. For all I knew, some of them had reanimated and were now part of the mass of things, the Murder of Horrors, that was slowly making its way south.

Then I remembered a Plum Island tradition. After all, as bad as it had been, Nancy wasn’t the first hurricane to hit the island. At the center of the island was a zoo, the Riverhead Zoo, just up the road from the 1st Precinct police station. After previous storms, an ad hoc group of concerned citizens always made it a point to show up to give the zoo keepers whatever help might be needed with the animals. There was usually at least one policeman or policewoman there, but as the police were usually needed elsewhere, others from the community had learned to step in and show up to provide assistance. I was sure it would be the same this time. The zoo, I thought, was the best place to go, especially as it was only a couple of blocks away from where I was.

When I arrived at the zoo, I found that my intuition had been correct. Constable Joseph Friday was there, leading a small group out of the entrance to the animal compound. The head zookeeper, Isaiah Doolittle, was smiling and waving goodbye. Apparently, the animals and their enclosures had all weathered the storm. The group was now headed to the nearby Kuhn’s Coffee and Roastery, a favorite boutique coffee shop that, from the outside at least, had also survived intact. I decided a cup of coffee was just what I needed, too, so I ran across the street and into the shop to join them.

Entering the store only moments behind Friday, I found Jim Kuhn welcoming everyone and starting to take orders. I could hear the hum of his generator in the background, providing power to his coffee machines. A heavenly aroma spread out from the large circular, hot, gas-fueled drum in which he was roasting his coffee beans. Looking about, I recognized the members of the group. There were Gordon Fieri, Biff Rodgers and Ellie May Bobby from the Neighborhood Watch, Ed Kramden, a bus driver from the Transit Authority, and Ralph Norton, the head of the island’s sanitation department. The fact that the animals in the zoo had all been in good shape and damage had been minimal had obviously buoyed up their spirits. They were chatting happily together as they waited for their brews. They had no idea what else was brewing on the island.

“Hey, everyone,” I shouted, trying to get their attention. No one heard me, so I climbed up on a chair. “Hey! Hey! Listen up!”

At that, they all paused and looked at me. Fieri, famous for his tailgate parties featuring his own homemade moonshine, yelled, “Hey, it’s that private eye, Spangler! What are you detecting now? Coffee?” He laughed his hyena-like laugh, and to my satisfaction, no one else joined him. I’m sure I looked like a wild man, disheveled as I was, and not an object of humor.

“Listen! You’ve got to go out and warn everyone! There are monsters on the streets, and they’re killing people!”

“What monsters?” Kramden asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what they are! Something the storm let loose from the Pearl, I would guess? But I just saw a mob of them kill Commander Stallone and the SWAT team!”

That got Friday’s attention. “Stallone’s dead?” He immediately reached for the walkie he had on his belt and called his dispatcher. “Hey, Denise. I just got a report that Stallone and his gang had been attacked. What? I don’t know? Looters? Have you heard anything?”

I could just hear her tinny voice through Friday’s receiver. “Stallone went silent about an hour
ago. Haven’t heard from him or the others since. But communications have been bad all morning…”

Friday looked up at me. “Say again what you saw…”

I was about to comply when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye through the coffee shop window. “Them!” I whispered, pointing across the street. “I saw them!”

Everyone looked where I was pointing. There, coming down the street towards us was a small group of horribly deformed and distorted people—or what had once been people—the whole group having more arms, legs, and heads than it should.

A high-pitched scream of terror filled the room, but it wasn’t coming from Ellie May. It was Ralph Norton, his face pale, his eyes bulging, his mouth open. “Shut it,” said Ellie May, elbowing him in the ribs and bringing his scream to a coughing halt. “Don’t need that screaming in my ear!” Then she added, “Look at ‘em! Those things ain’t natural.”

Friday, by this time, had quickly replaced his walkie with his service revolver. Taking aim, he fired off three rounds. We could see that the bullets struck the things running towards us, but while blood spurted, there was no other effect.

“We’re going to die!” Fieri wailed.

“Grab something and fight,” Ellie May shouted. As one of the Horrors burst through the plate glass window of the coffee shop, she whirled, grabbed two cups of coffee that a shocked and paralyzed Jim Kuhn was holding in his hands just prior to serving them, and threw them in the face of the thing that was reaching for her. It screamed, one giant over-sized hand and one tiny baby-sized hand both reaching up to cover its eyes.

Everyone grabbed whatever was at hand—chairs, knives, cups, plates—and began beating on the things that were trying to kill them. I would have joined them, but in the melee, the chair on which I was standing was knocked over, and I fell headfirst to the floor, rolling partway behind the serving counter and thus out of sight. I saw three arms, apparently attached to one individual Horror, reach over the counter top, seize the still frozen Kuhn, and pull him close. I felt the spray of blood on my face as it bit into his neck.

So much for the future of Kuhn’s Coffee and Roastery.

Getting to my knees, I saw a large metal rod on the floor behind the counter. I had no idea why it was there, but I grabbed it and surged to my feet, adrenaline pumping like caffeine through my veins. I saw a Horror beating Friday to a pulp with outsized fists and swung my rod at its head (fortunately, it only had one of them!). To my surprise, it collapsed, its skull splintering into a dozen pieces. Apparently, this thing had mutated brittle skull bones.

All around me were screams, grunts, cries, and a shrill keening, which, I realized, was coming from me, almost like a battle cry. I swung my rod over and over, blood and gore fountaining around me. I had no idea such a berserker rage was dormant in me, but on that morning, it surely came out.

Suddenly, it was over. We had triumphed. Ellie May, Biff Rodgers, and I stood in the midst of carnage. All the Horrors were dead, but so were five of our party.

We all stumbled outside, drenched in blood, panting with both fury and fear, savages emerging from the most primeval of contests, the life-or-death moments of hand-to-hand-combat. I dropped my rod, my fingers suddenly numb.

I let go too soon. A gasp from Ellie May, a curse from Biff, and a menacing growl behind me made me swirl around.

“Great Scott!” I whispered. “Buckman!” The eight-foot, Hulk-like muscled monstrosity that was standing in the street, staring at us, looked little like the photo in his criminal file, which had come across my desk in the course of an investigation. Still, enough similarity remained that I recognized Cliff “Hanger” Buckman. He had murdered eight members of his family by hanging them all from trees outside his house. I thought he was in prison for life, but I later learned he had been one of the “dangerous inmates” that Martha Winfrey had expressed concern about in her now-infamous email: prisoners promised reduced sentences, or even freedom, in return for becoming experimental subjects.

Now, he was not only a crazed killer, but a crazed, mutant, “Most Wanted,” killer.

With another growl, he ran toward us, and such was his speed, that we had no chance to escape. Before I knew it, his massive arm swung toward me, knocking me head over heels onto the ground, just as I was reaching down to pick up my rod. This probably saved my life, as had I been standing, his blow would likely have taken my head off. Through a haze of pain, I saw him seize Biff and literally rip him in two.

At that, Ellie May turned and began to run, with Cliff “Hanger” right behind her. I thought she was trying to flee and knew she had no chance against his preternatural speed, but instead she ran right into the coffee shop. Of course, Buckman followed her. I heard sounds of commotion, then suddenly the whole place exploded. Sheets of flame shot into the air, walls splintered outwards, and pieces of charred debris began to rain around me. I had no idea what had happened, but when, as the seconds passed, Buckman didn’t appear, I assumed he’d been killed. Ellie May, too, in what had obviously been an heroic act of suicidal sacrifice.

But then, to my surprise, she stumbled out of the wreckage, her face and arms blackened with soot, her clothes in rags. Seeing me, she gave me a bright grin.

“What…what did you just do?” I stammered, amazed she was still alive.

“John’s coffee roaster was fed by gas. I pulled the pipe loose, hoping the hot roaster would ignite the gas as it flowed into the room. Then I leapt into his freezer for protection. And it worked!” Her grin grew wider.

“You could have been killed, Ellie May!”

“Well, I figured with that monstrosity coming at me, I was going to die anyway. Might as well make a Last Stand!”

There were other brave last stands during the next three days, though they didn’t all end as well as Ellie May’s. But hers was the first I knew of, perhaps the first of all. Because of her bravery and quick wit, a cruel mutant monstrosity was brought to its end, roasted!

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Previous Articles from David Spangler:

The Plum Island Horror: First Encounters

The Plum Island Horror: The Peril of P.I.R.L