Posthuman by M.C. Hansen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Science Horror, Body Horror, Extreme Horror
“Something was affecting the very being of every animal species in Decoy that it didn’t kill, something that caused madness as well as created intelligence – something, something. But what?”
“What are we going to find in there?” he asked, noting the hospital, and remembered why they were there. “Nothing you haven’t already seen,” said Hollie, exiting the Humvee. But it wasn’t true. There were plenty of dead bodies; however these were nothing like the corpses Kaufman had seen out in the desert. The remains here were ghastly, like malformed ghouls out of some horror video game. Most of the beds were empty at first, but as Hollie led them nearer the terminal ward, they were almost all filled with the abhorrent forms.”
“This is exactly what he wants,” he said. “He’s been luring us here from the very start.”
“The public library became his land of liberty, and the books his freedom fighters. Every narrative he was able to get his hands on fascinated him, plunged him into worlds that he never knew existed; and yet they mystified him too, puzzled him more deeply than any abstract philosophy. Love and hate were baffling, jealousy confused, and compassion was an alien planet. Indeed, emotions as a whole generally perplexed Kaufman. That didn’t stop him from reading, but in time those stories did reveal just how rice-paper thin and deficient his life was.”
Kaufman was raised to not feel emotion, the people of Decoy, Nevada call him “the Droid”. As an adult he is searching for ways to create any emotional response, he seems to find something there when he flirts with hanging himself from his rafters. But something goes wrong and he accidentally hangs himself for real.
Miraculously, Kaufman awakes on the floor, heart pounding, gasping for breath, the rafter overhead broken. He is not the only remarkable resurrection occurring at that moment. A young brother and sister awake on the edge of a cement aqueduct after drowning and a Doctor regains consciousness after being shot by her kidnapper. It seems the rest of the town however is not so lucky. Something has happened to the town of Decoy.
“Kaufman felt like he was grabbing at rejected storylines from the Twilight Zone for answers. No, there had to be a logical, scientific explanation for what was going on. He just needed to look around some more to find it.”
“You should listen to your brother Jessica, he’s right, I am here to help. It’s a changed world out there. Different from anything you’ve ever seen or known. You need to be careful. Be extra wary of strangers. Don’t trust anyone, because everyone you meet will be jealous of what you’ve become. They’ll try to use you, even hurt you. So stay away.” The man paused for emphasis, “Especially from me.”
“There were people out there. Probably state troopers or the military. They must be setting up a perimeter, playing damage control and preparing to collecting their damn test results. Soon the government would come in and hush up any remaining survivors. They’d call it quarantine, but it meant the same thing. The media would be pitched some red herring to misdirect public attention and any living subjects would be “disappeared.” They would be held against their wills and forced to undergo endless medical experiments.”
A madman gains control of a government genome project and the outcome is disastrous. Written from several points of view. A mix of Sci-fi, thriller, and horror. Be aware this book is dark and graphic, not for young readers or the feigned of heart. I am neither of those and was enthralled and curious through the entire book. Did they really die and come back to life? What is causing the whole town to have gone mad? How far has the madness spread? I had to keep reading in order to answer the questions that kept rising up in my mind. Very descriptive and I felt like I could picture the scenes right in front of me.
“The nearest cities were more than sixty miles away and he knew, felt absolutely certain, that whoever had left those prints wasn’t the source of the blood – but the cause of it; and all at once, a premonition took root in his mind. He was going to meet this bleeder of bodies. Soon. Kaufman just hoped he’d leave that encounter alive. At the entrance of the police station, another massive lake of blood was darkening in the afternoon heat, pooling out from some source just beyond the main doors. There was so much of the crimson liquid that it possible to believe that it might be spilled paint, except the odor was of slaughter rather than latex.”
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