Wolfy Chai

200 years into the future, the world had largely become a vast desert. Every last hectare of rainforest had been burned to the ground nearly 40 years prior to make way for the growing demand for meat consumption and a burgeoning herd of hungry mouths to feed.

Meat production became increasingly infeasible due to the unprecedented resource scarcity and a multitude of virulent plagues spawning from intensive animal agriculture feeding operations that had resulted in billions of casualties. The global meat supply collapsed. Consequently, meat rations were establish for each city.

As meat prices ballooned, caged animal trucks began to be raided whilst on their routine transport routes. Usually in teams of 4, hungry stragglers surrounded the trucks, broke into the cages, and violently slaughtered all the animals inside before feasting on their flesh.

As things began to escalate, meat carcasses began to be dropped into the center of the towns by government-sponsored helicopters which led to an explosion of feeding frenzies, causing people to resort to ripping the raw flesh directly off of the bone with their teeth in an effort to get their fill of sustenance.

In an effort to re-establish global order, the powers-that-be mutually decided that shifting the population towards a plant-based diet would be the only rational way to save what remained of the human race. So, they had started pulling out decades of bioengineering research pioneered by billionaire philanthropist, Bill Gates nearly two centuries prior in order to roll out a new line of bioengineering meat alternatives.

Food became increasingly centralized as production began to rely entirely on high-yield vertical indoor greenhouses and the new lab grown “meat.” Pretty soon, the entirety of the global food supply was in the hands of a handful of multinational food giants who directly colluded with the government for power.

One of the earliest policies to be enacted in the formulation of this novel post-omnivore world was a total ban on the production of meat. It effectively blacklisted meat by citing its overwhelming environmental impact (and internally to ensure the complete capture of the food production sector).

After these initial policies were enacted, citizens were left with no viable alternatives. Years of animal agriculture had rendered every other edible species of animal extinct after it had destroyed all of their habitats to make way for the expanding human taste for meat; the last remaining confined animal operations were either raided by gorilla-warfare tribes or culled after contracting one of the many bio-engineered viruses; and all the outdoor acreage of arable farmland had already been fully depleted.

Unfortunately for the corporate offices, the aftermath of this initial policy package did not necessarily go as smoothly as planned. There were several uprises that quickly became more and more frequent. While many lived a peaceful existence as plant-based peacekeepers, isolated groups of vigilantes remained, developing the charecteristic bulging red eyes and excessive aggression.

Soon the World Psychiatric Association (“WPA”) stepped in, adding for the very first time in fifty-years a new psychiatric condition: “Flesh Vampires.” These were people who were once entirely normal but drifted deeper into psychosis and developed deep red bulging eyes the longer they were deprived of flesh and blood. In the preliminary clinical trials, the only cure seemed to be providing the sufferer with some form of rotting flesh…

In the wake of these findings, the government realized it would need to step in to prevent any rogue flesh vampires from obfuscating their profit margins and ironclad grip over the populous. So the government formed a fortress surrounded by 50 foot walls and a moat to hold the so-called “flesh vampires” called “the oculus”

One by one, the gorilla groups were thrown into the encampment. Although its residents were provided with plenty of food and water, no interventions to date had been successful in preventing the progression of the disorder. And frankly, the government did not care what happened, so long as everyone stayed within the walls.

Unfortunately, not all of those who were captured were in fact “Flesh Vampires.” The governments dispatch operations more than occasionally caught off-target populations—namely, persons with active conjunctivitis infections and persons with hyperthyroidism.

One such person, Martha Higgabomb, just happened to be one of those cases. Having suffered from Hyperthyroidism all of her life, the economic stressors and social unrest led to a major flare up of Miss Higgabomb’s symptoms.

Miss Higgabomb was a 76 year old grandma with pearl white hair, dentures, and was a little rounder than most. With the recent flair up, her eyes begun bugging out more than usual, causing the authorities to clump her in with the group of mentally decrepit flesh vampires.

At first, everyone seemed to be cordial at the camp. Everyone was stuck in the same boat and the human element in each person was still recognizable. But as the weeks had passed, extreme cases started to become more frequent. In the beginning, prisoners began biting themselves just so that they could taste blood again. This then evolved into sucking on others. In the final stage, came cannibalism.

Miss Higgabomb was a prime victim for the vampires first ambush. The group conceded that she had enough fat on her to feed at least four for an entire week and that she would be an easy kill due to her advanced age.

The attack took place during the middle of the night. Miss Higgabomb was sound asleep on the bottom bunk of the barracks. Her nightcap was on, her dentures sitting in a saline solution on the nearby bedside table, and she had on her favorite pair of fuzzy socks for sleeping. The group strategically surrounded her on every side and leapt onto her, gnashing into her flesh until she let out enough blood to inevitably hobble over and die.

After the feeding, instead of the participants eyes retracting back to their normal size and color, they unexpectadly grew in their intensity—their condition had progressed too far to be saved.

It didn’t take long for the chartering group to dissipate under the clout of their unreconcilable differences. From there, bands of heathens were released throughout the encampment. The thirst for blood and the taste of putrified organic matter became too great to resist.

The commons became so bloody from all of the feasting that had ensued so much so that when it rained, blood washed into the moat that surrounded the compound. Shortly thereafter, the moat turn from a pale green to a dark red color.

At this point, the disease had entered the latest stage of its prognosis for the vast majority of people who remained. Features of final stage included: the development of a second stomach to accommodate additional feedings, a dislocating jaw. that could be used to swallow a victim from their head down, and lizard-like facial features.

The final few flesh vampires turned to drinking the bloody moat waters to keep themselves satiated—even though it wasn’t ever enough. So, they attempted to claw their way up the sides of the walls to reach the bounty of humans residing just a stones throw on the other side but were widely unsuccessful. They could smell them, but they could not reach them.

One day, this all changed. A stray flesh vampire somehow managed to claw its way to the top of the wall. It leapt over the other side, now only a pale resemblance of something that used to be human. Its back was covered in dark oily spines and its head was surrounded by swarms of flesh-eating flies. Its teeth begun to gnash as it let out an excruciatingly high pitched squeal that was dinosaur-like in nature. The villagers below scattered and screamed in complete horror from what they witnessed.

The flesh vampire then unleashed a retractable, black, forked-tongue into the crowd, that was equipped with olfactory sensory organs in order to locate a victim that had the most nutritious flesh within a 40 foot radius.

The tongue proceeded to latch onto a breastfeeding woman in the infirmary, wrapped her in itself as it retrieved her from inside the building. Right before being consumed by the retractable jaws, a local humanitarian, Jessica Moonshine slashed clean through the flesh vampire’s tongue, visibly releasing the souls of all of its victims into the air and causing its body to implode into a cloud of black exhaust.

The government got word of the outbreak and realized it needed to activate the immediate culling protocol. As the remainder of flesh vampires were hungrily cawing up the walls of the encampment, a helicopter fashioned with military-grade machine guns eliminated them one-by-one. As the bullets flew into a growing cloud of black dust and ash, a monstrous cloud erupted covering the entire earth for nine days.

When the epoch came to an end. All that remained was the blood river… for now.