THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 9: THE RAGE OF NATURE

The world came to an end rapidly.

Maybe it was the fault of the world leaders withholding vital information about what was going on from the populace. Maybe, just maybe, if people had been ready, what happened would not have been so devastating.

As people still celebrated the end of the Purple Threat, news of the new Lebedev Syndrome began to filter in, and they demanded answers, but none came.

The Lebedev Syndrome was taking on a global proportion with many countries reporting one or two incidences of human beings that had changed suddenly and also acquired cannibalistic tendencies.

People were hopeful, though, mainly because victims of the Lebedev Syndrome were still human beings, and could be taken care of by law enforcement agencies.

Governments reassured their citizens not to panic and that everything was under control. They blamed the strange phenomenon on a rare viral attack that would be controlled quickly to avoid further spread, and this was followed by an intensive drive to keep videos of Lebedev Syndrome out of the public domain.

Calm began to settle, and people began to breathe with hope again.

Then, in the control room of the United Nations where Mr Sho Kawasaki had barely left, he saw something that troubled him very much.

He had been writing about everything he knew about the purple visitor, what he had surmised, and what he had seen. He updated his website although he did not publish it. He saved everything in a draft for refining later.

He attached images from the satellites covering the purple crater. He broke off shortly to eat and take a quick shower, and when he came back to the control room, he saw it!

Actually, he saw them!

The satellites had taken an aerial view of the crater, and in all the images Sho Kawasaki saw purplish lines on the ground. Eight thick lines were branching off in all directions across the ground!

The professionals in the control room were staring at the images with horror on their faces.

"Mr Kawasaki," a senior US attaché asked in an unsteady voice. "What do these images mean? What is going on?"

Kawasaki was trembling as he reached out for a chair and sat down heavily.

"It has assimilated some flesh of people killed by the Lebedev group, and it is a bit stronger. Those lines don't mean well for us, not one bit!"

"What do you think they mean?" the attaché asked harshly.

"Remember I told you it can't rely on those chosen people alone? I believe it chose those people to cause a state of anarchy in countries. Now, it is reaching out. It is hungry for more energy, more food. Those ominous lines are spreading – possibly across the earth – and although I don't know exactly what that piece of turd is doing with them, I believe things are going to get a whole lot worse for people of the earth. Something evil is going to happen. Maybe we don't have days but mere hours before those lines reach us. Please, make every minute we have now count!"

Hands trembling, he reached for his computer.

The first thing he did was publish his post titled The Purple Alien: What We Know About It.

After that, heart beating with fear, he began to update that post!

***

The purple lighted lines ran deeper into the earth than the cameras had captured, and they moved swifter than the people of the earth knew.

The lines moved across the land, across mountains, down valleys, and into the oceans and rivers.

They moved through the deep forests and the driest deserts. They moved into the seven oceans. They spanned the earth and crisscrossed. They touched every little bit of the earth in sections and networks.

They soon formed webs that bound the earth together, and it all took not more than an hour!

Evidently, the purple entity was mapping out the world unknown to the people of the earth!

People could see the purple lines on the ground and the seas, and slowly anxiety, terror and panic began to set in.

There were no explanations for them because, suddenly, everybody was thinking of safety and what might be happening. All over the world, people gathered in groups to watch and wonder what the purple lines on the ground could be!

When darkness came, the lines assumed a neon-like quality and glowed ominously like lights. Some people just laughed over it and took pictures, but underlying that mocking exterior were people beginning to freak out. Their selfies with the purple lines on the sea showed the underlying stress around the smiles, an unspoken acknowledgement of something bad represented by those global purple lines.

Journalists had a field day reporting on the appearance on both land and sea, with some tracing them to the forest beds.

The selfies stopped when the seven seas began to behave abnormally. The sea waves began to pile up!

They stacked up, and this phenomenon was seen on all shores!

About five hundred metres out, the sea waves did not flow to the shore but began to pile up with that ominous purple line on top of them.

It seemed like the sea was beginning to rise from its bed!

It puffed up like the beginning of a hump, gradually growing bigger and forming a surfer's dream wave.

Slowly, people who had been swimming in the seas – from South Africa to Europe, from Cuba to the Kingdom of Eden – began to move slowly out.

Some stood with their surfboards and watched that phenomenon. Others wisely rushed to cars and drove away. The panic was real now as the reports came in from all seven continents that the seas were puffing up, rising ominously, growing huge, growing wings!

And that purple light was cresting all of them!

It was worse on islands because aerial views showed the sea surrounding those islands with their rising waves… higher, higher, higher!

The panic hit big time!

From being just a rising fascination, that sight of the sea flexing slammed doom into the hearts of many people. There was a frantic rush of people from the coastal areas. Traffic jams quickly formed up, more than ever in the history of the world. Even from very far off, people could see the sea rising into the sky, the waters drawn up by that mysterious purple light.

The tops of those arcing waves were frothing and beginning to curve inward now, and it was evident that the world was going to witness one mighty simultaneous sea wave slams from the seas!

The elements changed too!

The sun became dull, and the winds blew coldly!

Those on the night hemisphere saw how glowing the lights on the top of giant waves were, a brilliant purple that spelt impending doom!

People who were rich enough and had private planes left the coastal areas hurriedly and some who were on islands simply flew away! People fled to trains and left the coastal belts.

The roads were jammed with carloads of people fleeing from the horrible sight!

The voices of people raised in terror began to be a uniform lullaby around the world. People who were not near the seas watched the horror unfolding on television screens and the internet!

They could see the middle of those huge waves churning ominously, gathering momentum, flexing it out so badly, baby! There was no doubt that it was going to be one mighty, funky, blast of a wave!

People caught up in traffic jams got out of their cars and began to run. Children were scooped up and held tightly to chests as their families fled.

Then there was that crop of peculiar people who thought it was all a joke, just a freak curve in nature that would correct itself soon enough. Some of them took advantage of the panic and moved from one abandoned house to the next stealing coveted items.

Chaos!

***

It was simultaneous!

From seven continents, the fury of seven oceans came slamming in!

The piled-up giant wave had risen to unbelievable heights, a greatly unnerving sight that made people feel the vulnerability of their state and acknowledge that the sea was a dangerous and frightening element! Held in check by an invisible law, the sea had always been a beautiful attraction for humans, taken for granted and enjoyed since time immemorial.

But now, the law was broken!

The sea was baring its fangs, and they were horrible fangs indeed!

The frightening waves had risen to dizzying heights, slanting into the sky in a horrific manner, curving, curving, always curving and frothing at the top!

Finally, it broke!

It came rumbling towards land!

And that was when that crop of looting and laughing individuals knew that this time around, nature was not going to correct itself, no baby! This time, nature wanted a bite, a huge chunky bite!

Yummy bite!

It churned and roared and rumbled as it came for the land! People screamed and tried to get out of trapped cars! They took to their heels! Their strident screams rose into the air as the horror finally became reality!

Craaaaaaaaaaassssshhhhhh!

It was worst than a tsunami!

The sea hit the land and shook it to its very knees!

Watching on the screens, Sho Kawasaki's fingers trembled wildly across his keyboard as he typed his final words:

May God save humankind!

May God have mercy on us all!

The sea has decided to walk on land!

This alien entity will have us all.

Mercy, Lord, mercy on us!

As he clicked on the update button, the wrath of the sea descended on the land!

Tall, beach buildings and houses collapsed like paper toys!

Cars were lifted and flung away like cotton wool! Families were swept up and crushed below the waves, tossed around like toys and slammed senseless like mannequins!

It was the revenge of the seas!

On all continents, everywhere!

Booooooooom!

The water claimed the land like a hot knife through butter, slashing and tearing and breaking! Trees, buildings, humans… anything in its path was broken down with fury

It was probably the only time in the history of the world where people simply went dead quiet and watched the c*****e!

It was horrible, and not meant for human eyes!

By the time the wave lost its destructive smash, huge cities, towns, buildings lay wasted!

The number of deaths was uncountable!

The Kingdom of Eden – an island – suffered mightily!

The sea crushed it from all angles and swept through the kingdom!

The palace, built near the seashore, was one of the first to be hit! The mighty sea hammered over it and broke it down to its foundations. The glass globule that contained the still body of the son of King Eli was taken by the waves and tossed into its dark depths!

And, later, as the sea receded, it took the globule with it and it bobbed rather gallantly on top of the sea, its contents now mixed and jumbled up because of the violent movements!

The son of Eli – dead or undead – was borne out to see to an unknown destination!

***

Maybe those who were on land felt lucky, for once!

They thought about how they had coveted beach apartments for so long and now see how safe they were!

But, their sense of security received a sudden deflation when a slight tremor passed through the land, shaking buildings and making stuff fall in rooms. They looked around them with apprehension at first, then smiled sheepishly when the tremors stopped.

Maybe, it had been because of the harsh onslaught of the sea!

But they couldn't have been farther from the truth!

They had forgotten – or perhaps most did not know, or notice – that the purple lights had passed across lands before reaching the seas and wreaking their devastation destruction!

And now it was the time for the land!

An earthquake suddenly ripped through the earth, from foundation to foundation, coast to coast, country to country!

Humans were reduced to screaming bodies of horror!

It was unexpected, so the devastation was thorough!

A global earthquake measuring the worst on the Richter scales tore through the earth, churned it mercilessly and shattered it!

Chaos!

***

It didn't end there, no sir!

Humans probably thought there could not be anything worse than simultaneous tsunami and earthquake of epic proportions hitting the earth.

But they were wrong!

So, so, wrong!

As the sea rose and plundered the earth, it vomited its contents on the earth, and left them behind!

Dead bodies of people that had drowned in the sea were left on the surface of the earth, rotten and savagely disgusting!

These were bodies that were green and stinky and bloated! Horrible, squelching things that lay on the earth in frightening angles and heaps!

Then the earthquake came!

An earthquake that churned the earth and turned it up, spewing things into the air that came crashing down!

Things like dead bodies buried in the earth, intentionally and by accident! Dirty, rotten, horrible bodies in torn and bedraggled clothes!

The earthquakes also broke down the laws of the jungle and tossed dangerous reptiles, man-eating animals, and hideous worms on the earth!

They all lay dead in the cities after the tsunami and the earthquake. But those purple lights reared up, covering them, hitting them!

The lights entered the dead bodies the seas had vomited out, and the ones the earth had coughed out! The lights also entered the bodies of the wild beasts strewn across the cities!

Then it happened!

Man's worst nightmare!

The dead animals, the dangerous animals, well, their eyes flew open and became deadly purple lights!

And the green dead bodies from the sea, the rotten bodies, the stinking bodies… well, their eyes opened too, filled with the same purple lights!

And the dead bodies from graves, from accidents sites, people that had been hidden in the belly of their earth… their eyes opened too!

And when they stood up, they all had three blood-red concentric circles on their foreheads!

They snarled, and their fury was savage! Their walking speed was fast, and they possessed uncanny strength! And they had one feature: long, curved fangs that leaked evil acid!

Oh, Earth…

Doomsday had arrived!

The rotten bodies – Rotties – and the animals fell on the human survivors, biting and biting and biting!

And anybody that was bitten eventually got swollen and blew up, turning into gasified substances that moved in the air towards that horrible crater in the Sinaki Plateau.

That damn alien fed on the human gas fodder and got stronger slowly, painstakingly. Obviously, it was going to need a lot of human gas to regain its health and full abilities. But it was in no rush, no. It had all the time in the world, yes sir, because time was relative to that beast. Years on earth were like hours to that beast, because it had lived in a different time zone!

Survival on earth had become dire!

The system had broken down completely!

Governments, authorities, and law everywhere were destroyed.

Electricity was ripped off the grid; food and water became scarce commodities because the earthquake and tsunami destroyed most establishments and sources. Humans all over the world were scared to go out because of the Rotties and the savage beasts roaming the land!

People banded together or escaped into tiny hiding places and foraged for food and water and the basic needs. There was no class or discrimination anymore. It was back to the stone age where the toughest took and the weakest perished, where death in a gruesome manner had become a normal way of life!

The world had come to an end!

Horror life had started.

Death was now as common as breathing!

Chaos!