Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 15

land, just as we had on Earth. After repeated pleas
to stop were ignored, the Taque had enough. The
Taque were a highly intelligent and curious race.
Seeking out new cultures and planets to learn as
much as they could. They coexisted with the life
around them and were shocked by the humans’
treatment of the planet they shared.
Without warning they attacked by contaminating
the water with a genetically engineered virus that
only affected humans. The Taque didn’t foresee the
virus continuing to evolve, after the death of the
host, into a multi-organism entity. An entity that
reanimated the dead it inhabited. Very contagious
dead. Zombies, real zombies, not science fiction,
but reality. They didn’t talk or try to eat your brains
but they did want to infect as many as possible,
to multiply and survive. Just like any other living
organism. They were like jellyfish. Made up of
many individual organisms to create a collective
whole. They weren’t evil or malevolent, but they
were deadly.

I stand alone. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one
left. There is nothing around me but desolation and
death, destruction and despair. I look at what used to
be my city. A burned out wreckage of a once thriving
metropolis.
I struggle to hold on to my sanity as the things I’ve
seen, and the things I’ve done, creep into my mind.
They’re all just a blur of fear and horror. As I stand
here, I can’t help but think back, to the beginning,
back when life was normal. It started with a genetically
modified virus, modified to kill. It was germ warfare
on a scale unseen before, with side effects only heard of
in horror stories.
The Taque wanted the humans gone from the planet
we both colonized. There was peace at first but human habits hadn’t changed since leaving a world we
destroyed behind. It wasn’t long before we started
strip mining, clear cutting, polluting the air, water and

When people started to reanimate, pandemonium broke out. A virus that was killing us was bad
enough but the dead trying to kill us was beyond
comprehension. You had to be careful how you
killed them as well, as one touch, one drop of
blood and you were next.
Luckily the collective controlling the body was
simple and unintelligent, going on instinct alone.
All they wanted was to touch people. It was easy
to trap them and burn them, destroying the virus.
However people continued to infect others without knowing, so the virus spread quickly. I lost
everyone, everything I ever loved or cared about. I
was away at college when my family contracted it
from the tainted water. My mother, father, brother, his wife and their unborn child all gone before
I returned home. We were