Unnatural Disasters Read online

  Soon she was lost in a recipe: quail with Gorgonzola and prosciutto. She heard something that sounded like a burp and looked around. The windows were open. Perhaps there was a frog in the garden. She tried not to look at the bowl, but she couldn’t help herself. The plastic stretched several inches above the rim. She decided to ignore it and turned a page in her cookbook to a recipe for rabbit in caper sauce.

  Plop!

  She knew what that was. She reached for the rubber spatula. A white mound of dough lay glistening on the Formica. As she scooped it up, another glob of dough plopped onto her hand. For a second, she almost imagined she could feel it moving, wriggling across her fingers. She cried out, repulsed. She rushed to the sink, swishing hot water over her hands until all the white clots disappeared down the drain.

  Plop! Plop!

  She turned and saw the dough spilling over the sides of the bowl. She ripped off the plastic and beat the dough with the spatula. It deflated into a tiny ball. She wiped up all the dough on the counter, then sprayed the surface with Windex for good measure. She considered dumping the rest down the sink, but hesitated—it might clog the pipes. She knew she was overreacting, but she didn’t care. The idea of eating anything else cooked with the dough made her queasy.

  What then? Toss it out on the compost?

  No, she’d wrap it up in a trash bag and bring it to the curb for the garbage collectors.

  But not now. Weariness overtook her, and she stumbled off to bed. She’d deal with it in the morning.

  • • •

  Early the next day, the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Gunther. Her voice was unusually agitated. Her eldest son, Richard, and his wife had visited her last night hoping she could help them sort out a disagreement. They’d talked for hours, hashing things out until Mrs. Gunther thought she’d finally calmed them down. But after she went to bed, the quarreling resumed. Her daughter-in-law somehow managed to fall through the sliding glass door in the living room and was now in the hospital. Mrs. Gunther hated to ask Gillian to get involved, but she had to take her husband to the doctor and wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital until later that afternoon. Could Gillian go and hold Richard’s hand until she got there? She was very worried about his state of mind.

  Gillian almost asked why she didn’t reschedule her husband’s appointment but realized Mrs. Gunther wouldn’t be calling if that had been an option.

  She told her it was no problem, that she was happy to help. She turned off the coffee pot, threw on jeans and a tweed blazer, and stuffed an apple and the latest issue of The New Yorker into her purse. As she turned to close the kitchen door, her eyes fell on the bowl of sourdough.

  I’ll get rid of it when I get back, she thought and locked the door.

  Richard was contrite, his large athletic body caved in over his knees. He had been weeping. It turned out that his wife didn’t exactly fall through the sliding glass door. He had only meant to keep her from scratching him, he said. When the doctor came out of the operating room and reported that his wife would be all right, Richard began to blubber again. Gillian held his hand and told him that all marriages had their rough times, and that working through their differences would bring them closer together. It surprised Gillian to realize that she didn’t believe a word she said. Richard, however, seemed comforted.

  Mrs. Gunther didn’t show up at the hospital until eight in the evening. When Gillian got home, it was close to nine. She was exhausted. Tom teased her about being Florence Nightingale. He ordered her to bed, brought her a hot toddy, and read to her from a slim volume of Pablo Neruda love poems. Soon she fell asleep.

  • • •

  Hours later, Gillian woke to a buzzing sound. It was dark, and the moon was full. The smell of hops made the air seem thick and hard to breathe. She scrambled downstairs. The kitchen door opened with resistance. The buzzing was louder and pulsing. As she walked in, something cold and wet grabbed her ankle. She opened her lips to scream; a glob of dough fell from the ceiling and plugged her mouth. Frantic, she spit it out and wiped it off her face, but her hand stuck. She twisted around in horror.

  The dough was a foot deep, climbing over the stove, the walls, and the refrigerator. She tried to run, but the dough rooted her down. She glanced desperately at the window—the screen was black with hornets attracted by the sweet yeasty smell. The buzzing was unbearable. Prying her hand from her face, she picked up the broom and beat down the dough. But this time, it didn’t shrivel up.

  If only she could get to the stove, she could cook the dough and kill it. She pulled up one knee with both hands and yanked her foot free. Stepping toward the stove, she reached for the knobs for the front burners. She put all of her weight on her front leg and lunged. Her foot slipped and she fell, her arms sinking into the dough. She couldn’t even scream.

  Slowly, the dough bubbled over her and buried her.

  • • •

  The next morning, Tom sprang out of bed feeling young and energetic. He looked at the empty half of the bed and figured Gillian was out jogging. He was so lucky, he thought, to have a wife who kept in such good shape. He felt proud and grateful. Why not make breakfast and have it ready for her when she got back? He pulled on his sweatpants and went down to the kitchen.

  He noticed the bowl of sourdough in the corner. Hadn’t Gillian said that it needed using? What a great idea! He’d make sourdough pancakes. He broke an egg into the bowl, added milk and baking powder, melted butter on the griddle, and poured the first spoonful of batter.

  As he stacked the golden griddlecakes on a platter, he glanced outside. The screen was covered with dozens of dead hornets. How strange. He’d ask Gillian to clean it when she had a chance. Quite morbid really.

  He took the pancakes to the picnic table outside and served himself two, drenching them in maple syrup. How delicious!

  Unable to stop himself, he ate another, and then another, until he’d consumed them all. Every last one of them.

  RICKMAN’S PLASMA

  * * *

  WILLIAM MEIKLE

  He would call it “Soundscapes of the City,” and it would make him his fortune, of that Rickman was certain.

  How could it fail?

  All it had taken was a reconfigured dream machine. Courtesy of Dreamsoft Productions, a particularly skilled burglar, and the latest software from MYTH OS, Rickman’s visions of bringing his music to the world were now that much closer to reality.

  For the past forty nights he’d sampled and tweaked, taking the raw sounds that streamed into his loft apartment from the city outside. He merged them with his dream compositions and formed them into a holographic construct of sound and light and ionized gas, an ever-moving plasma bubble that hung like a giant amoeba in the center of his room.

  As they swam, his creations sang, orchestrated overtures to the dark beauty of the night.

  It had been a long hard journey to this point. During those first few days everything was sharp and jagged, harsh mechanical discordances that, while they had a certain musical quality, were not what he needed…not if he was going to take the world by storm. The plasma had roiled and torn, refusing to take a permanent shape, and Rickman despaired of what the city was telling him. Everything was ugly, mean-spirited. The music of the city spoke only of despair and apathy, and his dreams didn’t make a dent when he overlaid them.

  Then he had his epiphany.

  Aptly, it came to him in a dream.

  It starts with thin whistling, like a simple peasant’s flute played at a far distance. At first all is black. The flute stops, and the first star flares in the darkness. And with it comes the first chord, a deep A-minor that sets the darkness spinning. The blackness resolves itself into spinning masses of gas that coalesce and thicken into great clouds of matter reaching critical mass and exploding into a symphony. Stars wheel overhead in a great dance, the music of the spheres cavorting in his head.

  Rickman jumped from his bed and pointed his antenna toward the sky.

  Almos
t immediately he got results.

  The plasma formed a sphere, a ball of silver held in the holographic array. At first it just hung there in space, giving out a deep bass hum that rattled his teeth and set all the glassware in the apartment ringing.

  Things changed quickly when he overlaid his dreams.

  Shapes formed in the plasma, concretions that slid and slithered, rainbow light shimmering over their surface like oil on water. They sang as they swam, and Rickman soon found that by moving the antenna he was able to get the plasma to merge or to multiply, each collision or split giving off a new chord, the plasma taking on solid form.

  But it still wasn’t right.

  The really good stuff only really started to happen this very night. He played back his previous recordings while keeping the antenna pointed skyward.

  The plasma roiled.

  The sounds became louder, more insistent, especially when he pointed at a certain patch of sky.

  Soon he had a repeating beat going, with a modulated chorus above it that rose in intensity, and rose again as the plasma started to pulse.

  He set his recorders going and started experimenting, feeding the recordings back to the plasma through his one-thousand-watt speakers, merging the sounds with the compositions from his dreams.

  Within the hour the globe of plasma was responding to his dream overlays. When he played the recordings back at full volume the plasma swelled. The music grew, the chords overlapping one another in an orchestrated dance.

  Rickman was so excited that he didn’t notice the walls of his apartment beat in time to the music.

  Nor did he spot that when he turned his back, the plasma ball grew, stretching like an inflating balloon. Cobalt blue colors flashed and it surged.

  Rickman was its first victim.

  • • •

  The cops arrived ten minutes later in response to a neighbor’s complaints about the noise.

  When they burst in the door a plasma ball of rainbow colors rose to dance in the air in front of them, a swirling aura of gold and purple and black.

  The sound started.

  It was low at first, almost inaudible, but it rose to a crescendo until their ears were buffeted with raucous, mocking piping; a cacophony of high fluting that crashed discordantly over them.

  Then the smell hit them, the fetid, unmistakable odor of death that caught at the back of the throat and threatened to send their guts into spasm.

  The cops ran.

  They didn’t look back, and all the time the crazed fluting danced in the air around them. They called for help; but each shout only brought a fresh surge in the plasma. The air above the plasma crackled with electricity, blue static running over the formless mass.

  It dragged itself across the floor, leaving a grey glistening streak of slime behind.

  Within the protoplasm things moved, detached bones flowing, scraps of clothing fused with unidentifiable pieces of flesh. The surface boiled in numerous small lesions that bubbled and split like pieces of over-ripe fruit.

  But worst of all was the source of the fluting. A huge, red, meaty maw pulsed wetly in time with the cacophony.

  The younger cop made it to the elevator and slammed the button. He screamed, frustrated, as the doors slowly opened. He let them part just enough to slip inside then turned to look for his partner.

  She was less than two yards from him, arms outstretched, pleading. He began to move toward her, but she stopped and jerked backward like a marionette. Her mouth opened wide into a scream, and she fell forward, her right hand hitting the down button even as he stretched out vainly.

  The door began to close and, no matter how much he strained at it, he was unable to stop it from shutting completely. He could do nothing but watch the events in the hallway beyond through the elevator’s small window.

  The plasma had caught her by the ankle. Oily colors flowed across her body, the protoplasm gripping her tight.

  She struggled hard to no avail.

  Their eyes met, just once. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to speak, and that was when the swirling blob engulfed her head and the noises from her throat ceased to sound human.

  The protoplasm surged again, and suddenly the window of the cab was coated with slime.

  The cop gagged and fought hard to keep down the bile as a human foot, still trailing bloody threads behind it, floated across his view.

  • • •

  The cop spent the next fifteen minutes persuading his superiors that there was a problem in the tower block. In that time the plasma ate the little old lady in number 621 who played her radio too loud, the three kids jamming on electric guitars in 437 and the family in 223 who had been watching the latest Disney animation on their 60-inch TV.

  By the time the cop’s backup team arrived it had already filled the whole of the ground floor public area. The cop made sure he was first back through the door, but what met him made him step back immediately.

  A shimmering rainbow blob nearly four feet thick covered the floor. There were things embedded in it—blood and hair and bones and eyes, fused and running in to one another as if assembled by a demented sculptor. And in the middle of the floor something rose up out of the mass, a forearm stripped to the bone, skeletal fingers reaching for the roof. On each fingertip a grey, opaque eyeball stared blindly out at him.

  That wasn’t the worst thing though. The worst thing was the way the bones of the wrist cracked and groaned as the hand turned, the fingers flexing and bending as all five eyes rolled and stared straight at him. The mocking cacophony of high fluting crashed discordantly over him.

  He raised his gun and fired.

  The noise echoed loudly in the hallway.

  The plasma surged again, enfolding the cop until he fell into it, like a drowning man going down for the last time. The plasma rolled forward, forcing its way out onto the sidewalk beyond.

  The backup team saw what happened to the cop. They started in with their own weapons.

  The air filled with the noise of gunfire.

  The plasma surged and took them.

  Sirens blared as the squad cars of more backup teams arrived in the street.

  The plasma surged and took them too.

  • • •

  The mayor got involved ten minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of police, the mayor’s press officer and the chief of the fire service.

  “So what is it doing now?” the mayor asked.

  “Still growing,” the chief of police answered. “And still feeding.” The policeman was white as a sheet and trembling.

  “How many casualties?” the mayor whispered.

  “Too many to count,” the press officer said. “It has covered three blocks…and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area.”

  “That’s it,” the mayor said. “Call in the National Guard…and somebody close that window!”

  Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

  • • •

  People screamed.

  The plasma surged.

  It took thirty minutes to muster the National Guard. In that time, the plasma spread by five blocks in every direction.

  If there was a noise, it consumed whatever made it. Trucks, people, dogs and subway cars, all fell under the surging protoplasm, and all served to feed its exponential growth.

  The National Guard brought in jeeps.

  The plasma ate them.

  They brought in choppers.

  The plasma ate them, protoplasmic tendrils shooting skyward to suck the machines out of the air.

  The Guard used bazookas.

  The plasma surged, and suddenly, the Guard was gone.

  The city was full of noise.

  The plasma fed.

  • • •

  The president got involved twenty minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of staff, the head of Homeland Security and the director of the FBI.

  “So what is it doing now?” the president
asked.

  “Still growing,” the head of Homeland Security answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet and trembling.

  “How many casualties?” the president whispered.

  “Too many to count,” the chief of staff said. “It has taken most of New York State, and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area. It will be here in minutes.”

  “That’s it,” the president said. “Call in the Air Force. We’re going to nuke it…and somebody shut that window!”

  Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

  • • •

  The plasma lay along the eastern seaboard covering most of New York and New Jersey.

  Flocks of birds cawed and fluttered.

  The plasma ate them.

  Three passenger jets inward bound from Europe passed overhead at thirty thousand feet.

  The plasma threw up tendrils and ate them.

  The bomber carrying the nuke came in at over a thousand miles per hour.

  The plasma ate it.

  The nuke exploded creating a fireball of white heat and radiation at more than a million degrees centigrade.

  The plasma ate it, surged, and headed for Canada.

  • • •

  The president of the European Union got involved an hour later. Assembled in his room were the heads of the UK, France and Germany. The president of Russia was on a TV screen, linked in by satellite.

  “So what is it doing now?” the president of the EU asked.

  “Still growing,” the Russian president answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet and trembling.

  “How many casualties?” the president whispered.

  “Too many to count,” the Prime Minister of the UK said. “It has covered most of North America and is heading south and east fast…and we don’t know if anybody is still alive anywhere. It will be here in minutes.”

  “We only have one option,” the president said. We hit it with every missile NATO and Russia have and hope for the best. And somebody close that window!”