Soil after harvest

(click here for part 1)

(click here for part 2)

Author’s Note

They discovered a bacteriophage that could inject and propagate inside microplastics. This strategy allows it to hide from the body’s immune system, uninterested in spreading to biological material. Once matured enough to outgrow the plastic, it hatches and begins consuming biological material. By this point, there’s nothing the body can do to fight back. They called them ‘lactids,’ as it was originally believed that the specimens could only grow from plastics derived from milk proteins treated with formaldehyde. They watched as it overcame that hurdle in the lab, it seems. Once hatched, these lactids eat and grow, consuming their human host and any other lactids they encounter. This process of consumption and growth culminates in ’emergence,’ the moment when they break free from their human host, leaving behind a contagious husk of a corpse. I’m still looking for records from infected subjects describing what the symptoms first feel like. If Dad’s notes are accurate, though, and they lost some of their samples, I may end up being able to write it myself.

Subject profile

Sex: female
Age: 36
Height: 5’6″
Weight: 137lbs
Nominal health history
Nominal psychological profile

Amniochorial plasticenta already present; subject 5 months pregnant.
As stated in previous profiles, no subjects (including infants) screened were found to be free of microplastics in the blood.

Subject deemed viable for type 1 incubation. No additional microplastic volume required to achieve standard hatch rate. Secondary opportunity to study fetal tissue is of particular value.

Subject approved. Introduction scheduled

Notes from demolition site

Spanish flu has taken many in my town. I too have felt it in my body, but by strength of constitution persevered. Though the sickness has passed, body aches remain. A burning itch beneath the skin, headaches, weakness. Delirious dreams of biting and scratching.

Emergence Investigator’s Log
Fifth incident

Her skin looks like soil after harvest. Crags and divots everywhere, a mess. Exit wounds stretched and torn from escaping things. She was dead long before they emerged. Even the smaller ones could do enough damage to internal organs to cause the kind of internal hemorrhaging she surely suffered. Once they’re big enough to emerge, they abandon the corpse. I guess they’re driven away from the presence of their kin more than they’re driven toward the easy food source.

The weather-worn living room is disgusting to walk around. Half-eaten furniture, holes in the walls and ceiling, dried bits of flesh strewn about, and all of it soiled by rain and animal activity from the past week.

My job is to investigate emergence reports, and I’m getting used to scenes like this. Someone gets sick. They ignore the signs, the itching and burning inside. Eventually they begin to isolate themselves, seeking out abandoned areas and then succumbing to the internal damage caused by the hatching lactids. Ultimately, they end up like this – a rotting husk of meat, an unfinished meal left behind by their body’s former inhabitants.

I’m not going to find the ones that emerged here. They scatter like cockroaches when they hit the open air. We’re lucky that they fear themselves as much as we fear them. They surely know as well as we do that anything a lactid sees is merely a food source, nothing more. If I’m honest, I prefer the big ones. At least they kill quickly. I’m certain I’ll eventually get one of the small ones beneath the skin, and then it’s over for me. I’ve heard that small enough ones can get in through small cuts and eat away for days before the irritation seems more unusual than a run of the mill infection.

Time to get out of here, before it gets dark and they start to hunt. Dissapointing, honestly. This still isn’t the one we’re looking for.

Author’s Note

I wake up and remove my plastic night guard, placing it in its plastic case. I brush my teeth with my plastic toothbrush’s plastic bristles. I shower in my plastic tub. I use shampoo from a plastic bottle and put bodywash on a plastic loofah.

I pour milk from a plastic jug into a plastic cup. I eat a handful of grapes from a plastic bag. I swallow a pill from a plastic bottle. I pull bread from a plastic bag, remove cheese from its individual plastic wrapper, take lunch meat from a plastic packaging, combine, and slide into a plastic sandwich bag for lunch. I throw away the plastic wrapper into my plastic trash bin with a plastic trash bag inside. The plastic lid swings closed.

I swig bad office coffee through a brittle plastic lid on a waxy paper cup. I place my sandwich on a plastic plate and put it into the microwave. I select a salad from the break room market. Its plastic clamshell container contains plastic silverware and dressing in a plastic to go container. I take my food to my desk and place it in front of my plastic keyboard to eat.

After work I go to the store and push a plastic shopping cart. I check out my items and place them into plastic bags, which I load into my car. At night I put in my plastic night guard and go to sleep.

I was never safe.