Free The World's Next Plague by Colten Steele Page B

any
pleasure, he was past feeling emotions now, but instead filled an
instinctive need.
    The men below scared and enticed him. He
ached to destroy, but far up in the trees, the need was weakened by
distance. The more time they spent in his vicinity, though, the
worse his needs became. His insatiable desire to consume the life
within them wrestled continuously with generations of instinct,
which pushed him to keep clear of the large upright creatures in
the clearing below. Often the men would make loud startling noises,
causing the howler monkey to flee temporarily… but he always came
back a little more anxious then before.
    Over the days that followed he gathered the
courage to sneak closer; hiding in a low branch just out of sight.
He could faintly hear the life-giving blood pulsing through their
veins. There he waited… undecided.
     
    ~ Chapter I ~

    Manon had never seen anything like it in his
years as a cameraman… not in his most terrifying nightmares,
fabricated from near fatal encounters with the most savage men and
beasts the world had to offer, had he imagined anything this
disturbing. Everywhere he pointed the camera another desiccated
figure lay moaning and feebly reaching towards the nearest member
of the crew.
    Ricardo “Rock” Santana yelled from the other
side of the clearing, “Hey… this way.”
    Manon stopped recording, carefully avoiding
any contact with the suffering beings scattered haphazardly across
the clearing, and headed over towards Rock. He noticed the clearing
was eerily quiet. Occasional echoing calls from a howler monkey
could be heard in the nearby trees, but otherwise the area was
silent. There were no birds singing or insects chirping.
    The international television star combined
the suave good looks of his Hispanic parents with the body of an
Olympic athlete sculpted during his years with the Fuerzas
Especiales, the Mexican Navy’s Special Forces. Rock had supreme
confidence, an unerring instinct for survival and a smooth baritone
voice. If he had a flaw, it was his overwhelming love for himself,
which he personally considered his greatest asset.
    He was kneeling near two figures barely
recognizable as human. A large spider was perched on the lower leg
of one of the bodies and arched upwards as Rock came close.
    “Start recording,” Rock instructed Manon.
“Zoom in on me until I motion towards the bodies.”
    Manon had been part of Rock’s crew for the
previous two full seasons of the show. He knew what to do, but he
also knew Rock was the star and expected immediate deference, so he
made no reply to Rock’s unnecessary filming instructions. Looking
into the camera with his dramatic dark brown eyes and an expression
of grave concern, Rock started speaking.
    “I am deep in the rainforest of Brazil. I
have been here for weeks exploring areas film crews have never
before recorded. I have discovered new species of insects and
plants the civilized world has never documented… but I was not
expecting to find anything like this.”
    Manon panned back to capture the disquieting
scene as Rock gestured with a magician’s flourish.
    The two nearest bodies were of an adult and
preadolescent child. It was impossible to distinguish the sex of
either without looking under the simple ragged loincloths, which
still offered a small shred of modesty. The bodies lay on the
ground, the child across the adult’s chest. Their once dark olive
skin was now cracked and dark gray, and stretched over the bones of
a body which appeared to have consumed itself from the inside. The
arms of both figures weakly reached towards Rock with grasping
hands. The heads extended towards him and the jaws opened and
closed slowly in a seemingly desperate attempt to reach the man.
Rock squatted just out of reach.
    “I have had the unfortunate opportunity in my
lifetime to witness people starving,” Rock continued, “but these
bodies are well past the point of starvation. There does not appear
to have been any way