The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution

• Prologue
  
• One- The Change
  
• Two - News
  
• Three - Day Shift
  
• Four - Murder
  
• Five - No News of Murder
  
• Six - Skulking
  
• Seven - Haunting
  
• Eight - Night Shift
  
• Nine - Goth Knights
  
• Ten - Guns and Hacking
  
• Eleven - The Last Warning from Thomas Nolan
  
• Twelve - Battle of St. Michael's
  
• Thirteen - End of Days
  
• Fourteen - Feeding Frenzy
  
• Fifteen - The End of an Era
  
• Sixteen - Gathering Disciples
  
• Seventeen - A Fugitive
  
• Eighteen - Word at McDonalds
  
• Nineteen - The Sanctuary of St. Michael's
  
• Twenty - Right Now
  
• Twenty-One - Interrogation
  
• Twenty-Two- The World Falls Apart
  
• Twenty-Three - Massacre of St. Mike's
  
• Twenty-Four - The Hero
  
• Twenty-Five - A Night at the Bomb Shelter
  
• Twenty-Six - Mr. Anti-Christ
  
• Twenty-Seven - The Heretic
  
• Twenty-Eight - The Apocalypse Scenario
  
• Twenty-Nine - The Army of Bertrand
  
• Thirty - The Circle of Twelve
  
• Thirty-One - The Horror of the Mountain
  
• Thirty-Two - The Battle of the Mountain
  
• Thirty-Three - The Monster
  
• Thirty-Four - The Saint
  
• Thirty-Five - Barry's Tower
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Generation Apocalypse: Sneak Peak
  

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

If Stan Needleman had known he was sitting down to his last supper, or that his death would be among the first of millions, he still would have chosen baked beans. It wasn't just that they were all he could afford on his retirement savings, but also that their preparation required no more effort than opening a can.

He didn't like to phone for pizza after he'd had a few beers, not trusting his ability to safely interact with other humans. What if he got the change wrong and the driver ripped him off? Even now the alcohol haze had enveloped his brain, and it was barely 9 p.m. He always made it a rule not to drink before five, assuming that at least twelve hours a day without booze meant that he wasn't an alcoholic.

The greasy kitchen table needed clearing, but he managed to shove over enough dishes so that he could find space for the can, his newspaper and his bottle of Bud. A train roared overhead on the 'L' behind his little century house, but Stan had lived there so long that he barely noticed its passage. Two minutes into supper, however, he did hear a cautious tread on his front porch. As a recluse, Stan was very familiar with the sounds of his house when not buried by rushing trains--the fan in the living room, the compressor of the fridge, the low mumble of the game show on the T.V. This was different. This was someone sneaking a peak through his front window.

A desire to attack surged in his chest--a chance to do something, to be the hero that he had always assumed he would be in life, rather than the pathetic drunk he had devolved into after Vietnam. Even there he'd been disappointed, having signed up after college expecting battle and adventure, but after basic training he'd been placed in a backwater mailroom in Saigon, never seeing much of anything and certainly no action. He hadn't re-enlisted for a second tour of tedium.

Stan heaved out of the chair and headed for the living room, trying to be stealthy himself, but he stumbled on some beer cans on the way. A heavy figure was silhouetted against the porch window by the streetlights.

"Stan? You in there, buddy?"

Stan flipped on the living room lamp with the wall switch. A man with long hair and a long beard stood on the porch. His leather biker jacket must be stifling in this summer heat, and that was a clue to his identity. Stan remembered the skull and crossbones sewn into the back of the jacket, the kind that could be the emblems of a bike gang but probably weren't, and he remembered the owner always wearing it like a medal of valor.

"Marcel?"

"Hey, man, let me in. We gotta talk."

Talk? Stan knew this biker want-a-be from way back when they used to drink together at O'Malley's, more because they landed side-by-side at the bar rather than from friendship. Evenings at O'Malley's had been out of the budget since the stock crash had crushed not only Stan's investment income but the value of his rotting house.

"Wow," said Stan after he had turned on the hall light and pulled opened the front door. "It's been years. You haven't changed a bit."

But he had changed. If anything Marcel looked better. His hair, still thin and gray on top, was glossier, and his skin stretched tighter across his cheeks. He still had a belly that pushed open his unzipped jacket and sagged over his belt, but Stan guessed the man had lost a few pounds.

"Neither have you, man." Marcel hugged him as if they were long lost friends rather than distant acquaintances.

Stan pushed him back by the shoulders, trying to feign that this close personal contact was normal and not uncomfortable. "Good to see you. Come on in and I'll get us some beer."

Marcel followed him closely into the kitchen, accepting the beer that Stan retrieved from the fridge and taking a seat, either unaware of the filth or good at pretending he didn't notice the squalor.

"What brings you around?" Stan took his own seat on a wooden chair, one he had repaired and painted himself after finding it left out by a neighbor for garbage. He tipped his beer back, satisfied to have an excuse to keep drinking. Marcel just held his beer in his lap, as if he might at any moment drink from the bottle but just hadn't gotten around to it.

"A lot of things are changing, man." Marcel leaned back and shoved over enough dishes so that he could rest one arm on the table as he sat back to pontificate. "You see, we all got choices to make now."

"Don't tell me you got religion." Stan used the voice he reserved for Jehovah Witnesses at the front door.

Marcel laughed, rich and loud, showing yellow teeth. "Awe, you always were quick, but no, man. Not that kind of religion. Not the kind where you gotta believe in something without proof."

"What other kind is there?" The man was selling something, of that Stan was now sure and he didn't like sales calls. He opened a pack of cigarettes, dropping the plastic wrapper to the floor, and held them out to Marcel, who declined with a wave of meaty fingers.

"I met this guy, see," Marcel said. "He told me he could make it so that I could live forever."

Stan fought not to roll his eyes. "In the kingdom of heaven. I know, I know."

Marcel slowly and emphatically shook his head. "No way, baby. I mean right down here on this very planet." He leaned forward, putting the beer down on the table. "You don't believe me?"

Stan just shook his head. How could he make the man leave? Should he pretend he had an appointment and just go for a walk around the block? Then he saw the switchblade. Marcel must've had it up his sleeve and had let it slip down into his palm. It opened with a snick.

"Like I said, you don't have to believe on faith." Marcel raised his left hand as if taking an oath. He put the blade to his exposed wrist. "I can show you."

"Wait, Jesus, don't!"

But it was too late. The knife cut deep, and blood leaked from the cut and dripped to the floor. "Watch it heal." Marcel kept his wrist up, the palm of his hand out so that Stan would have a good view.

"What. The. Hell." Stan forgot to light the cigarette in his hand as he watched the red line get thinner and finally knit together. Marcel wiped the blood from his wrist to show bare skin with no cut and no scar.

"I got the bugs," said Marcel. "I've evolved."

"What are you talking about?" Stan took a big drink from his beer, trying to reason this out. How could anyone heal that fast?

"The bugs. Never was good in school, but they tell me they're real little, like cell-sized parasites, and there's millions of them in me. I give them what they want, and they keep me fixed up. A bit at a time they take the place of your own cells, and they can be anything--like stomach cells or heart cells. Don't know about brain cells."

"So it's like a disease?"

Marcel shook his head. "No, way better than that. Diseases kill you."

"Little aliens?" Stan had read a lot of sci-fi in his younger days and still enjoyed the movies.

Marcel's eyebrows rose. "Never thought of that. Don't think so though, but if they are, they been around for centuries, just not many people have them, are evolved like me."

"I don't get this evolved thing. What does that mean?"

"It means I'm better than you. I'm super human. You could stab me right now and I wouldn't die, lessen maybe you cut off my head. Otherwise they'd fix me right up like you just saw."

"That's incredible." Stan stared at the bare wrist. "Have you seen a doctor or talked to a university guy or something."

A train squealed by on the 'L', and Marcel glanced briefly over his shoulder at the back door. "Hell, you're practically under the tracks here. But listen, buddy. Here's what I can do for you. I can evolve you too and you can be like me, and you can stop eating crap like that." He pointed to the can of baked beans with the fork sticking out.

For a moment Stan thought he was talking about better food, but the look on Marcel's face was sly and penetrating, and Stan allowed an impossible suspicion to enter his mind.

"What would I eat?"

Marcel nodded and smiled as if at a private joke. "I told my local wrangler that you would figure it out pretty quick. You were always a savvy guy and you never believed the crap in the papers. So I'll give it to you straight up. You have to drink blood."

"You're a vampire?" Stan would have laughed but his gaze was on Marcel's healed wrist. How else?

"Not like in the movies. This is totally real. See my teeth?" He opened his mouth wide to show off all the way back to his molars. "No fangs, see. No garlic, no religion, no bats." He fluttered his hands in the air like wings. "The sun is a problem, cause the bugs are sensitive to some kinda radiation. But other than that we're nothing like vampires. We're hybrids."

"But you drink blood. Do you get it from blood banks or what do you do?" But he was pretty sure he knew what Marcel would do if he needed to drink blood. Stan began to think about his dad's old .38 in the drawer in the bedroom upstairs. Was it even loaded? Could he outrun Marcel down the hall and up the narrow stairs? At the best of times he only climbed those stairs at night to go to bed, and not every night because sometimes he passed out in the La-Z-boy. And he was already drunk and wobbly. What about the crucifix in the drawer of the telephone table in the front hall, the one from his mother's coffin? Would it hold Marcel at bay?

"The world's changing, man," said Marcel. "There's going to be two sides: hybrids like me and monos like you. But I'm giving you chance to evolve, man. You can be like me." Marcel held the blade up to his wrist. "I just give this a little flick and you lick up the blood as fast as you can before it heals. It'll take about a day or so for you to really feel it, cause they start by feeding on your own blood so that they can make more of themselves, but when the change happens you'll know and it'll be great." He pointed the blade at the beer bottle. "You won't need that anymore."

"And if I say no?" But Stan already knew the answer in his very soul, and he fought to suppress the fear.

"That'd be a damn shame. I like you buddy, but I gotta eat and I need blood to survive. If there wasn't the quota, if we weren't building the army, I wouldn't evolve anyone cause why make more competition? But I got orders and I gotta evolve one guy a night." He barked out a short laugh. "Go figure, me, in an army and taking orders. Who'd a thought?" He leaned forward, holding his wrist closer, the blade starting to bite. "So, you gonna be the lucky guy who lives forever? Is tonight your night?"