Note: This is the start of the "Chapter 2" branch. The story follows Susan Moyer, a 24 year old married woman as she, her husband, and her coworkers deal with the changes of the Infamous Five happening all around them.
My car was old but it still had a good horn.
-HOOOOONK!-
"Come on! Move you stupid mother FUCKERS!"
I swore like a sailor and sipped on my mocha as traffic crawled on the 33. Construction backups again. A very light rain was falling. It was one of those annoying drizzle rains that was just UNDER what the intermittent wipers wiped on their lowest setting. I had to keep turning the windshield wipers on and off every so often to keep the windshield clear. If I just left them on intermittent, they would start squawking. I really shouldn't be drinking these mochas every day; lord knows I don't need the calories. More people were honking, but it wasn't doing any more than mine had. I decided to turn up the radio to try to drown out the noise and relax.
But the radio was soon interrupted with a news bulletin.
"This is a GNN News Special Alert. Officials in Birmingham England are reporting today that small rashes that conform with the so called "P rashes" of the Infamous Five have started appearing on an estimated 200-300 of its citizens. Officials at the CDC and the WHO have already confirmed these rashes do inf act conform to those associated with mutations by the self-proclaimed "Infamous Five" bio terrorist group. This is the first CONFIRMED report of the group operating outside of the United States. Officials ar..(click).
I shut it off. I am so sick of hearing about that stuff. It's been going on for over two years now! How have they not caught these fuckers? I then tried in vain not to think about all the crazy transformations I had heard about as I continued on my drive to work.
When I arrived in the office I went right for my desk, only to find my best friend Rachel there waiting for me. This usually meant she had some good gossip.
"Morning Rachel" I said.
"Good morning Susan. Hey, you know Bob, from accounting?"
"Kind of, yeah"
"Well he's PREGNANT!"
"What? No way!"
"I'm serious! I noticed he had a bit of a pot belly when I last saw him a few weeks ago, but today when I rode up with him on the elevator I could see he has a TOTAL baby bump!"
"Oh my god! I didn't even know he had been reprogrammed!"
"Yeah, me either. I asked around and he was in Seattle with his wife visiting her sister in law when you-know-what happened."
Ugh. I thought to myself. I did know what. Seattle was now home to people with the opposite genitalia as they used to have. I'd hate having a penis. I wouldn't miss the periods and cramping, but always having...stuff protruding out of you seemed unpleasant to me. I chatted with Rachel a little more about pregnant Bob but then we got a look from Todd across the way, and we decided we should get back to work.
Rachel and I worked in parts distribution department for a medical device support company. It was our job to make sure all the field service people got all the software updates, hardware, updates, procedures, parts yada yada. It was a lot of paperwork, and a lot to remember. It was one of the few places hiring here in Green Spring when I got out of college two years ago. I had graduated from Harving University, just 22 miles away from Luke university where all the weird crap had started happening my senior year. I remember all of us being very nervous that our university might get hit too.
Luckily nothing happened in our area before I graduated. My then fiancee now husband Roger and I moved here to Green Spring right after my graduation when he got an amazing job offer.
My own job was OK, nothing exciting. Mostly fulfilling part order calls and part clarification requests from field service. I did like my coworkers.
There were 5 total people in our department. Me, Rachel, Doug, Todd, and Mike.
Todd wasn't the oldest at 35 but had been here the longest. He was kind of our default leader because our actual leader, Erika, never visited us. Erika wasn't ever very hands on, but since she changed she just stayed in her office most of the time. She had been the very first person in our whole company to be reprogrammed. Even though there were a lot of transformation victims here now she still felt like a freak. Whenever one of us needed something Todd would usually be coaxed into going into her office and talking to her. Todd had a wife and a seven year old son.
Mike was a recent hire, about 6 months ago. He has only been here in Green Spring a year. He has a wife Trinity had just bought a house out in Greenwood. They have only been married a couple months but he mentions frequently they were trying for their first child.
Doug is a divorced 42 year old. He has two teenage daughters he sees on alternating weekends. He's kind of a pervy bald guy, but when you get to know him you can tell he has a good heart.
Rachel was a perpetually single 31 year old. She is the type that is constantly hooking up with losers, and then acting surprised when they turn out to be losers.
It was a long drawn out workday, but at least it was Friday.
One odd call I took today was from a field agent named Sharon Worthington. It always throws me off a bit when she calls now because I was so used to hearing her old voice for all these years. Sharon got caught in a bio-attack a month ago, and is now an Asian man, at least physically. I haven't chit-chatted with "her" in a while; I hope her husband and kid are handling this ok. I know Sharon often talked about how hard it was for them to adjust to her new body. Her young daughter still won't call the strange man living in her house now "mom".
Over the last two years we have had about 22 of our service agents get caught in bio-attacks so far. That's out of over 650 agents nationwide, though. However, 18 out of those 22 have been in the last 6 months.
Finally, 5pm came, and not a moment too soon. I was ready for a pint at Legendary Pete's Bar.
