Parchman

PARCHMANJEREMY P. HORGAN
This is work of fiction. Names, characters, places andincidents either are the product of the author’s imaginationor are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual Persons,
living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 Jeremy P. Horgan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may bereproduced or used in any manner without writtenpermission of the copyright owner except for the use ofquotations in a book review.
COVER ART BY THE FUNKY BOOKS CO.
DEDICATION
Toyah
CHAPTER ONE
“The year is 2037 and the world is facing extinction.
The Cure which we originally thought was a natural event has cured theentire planet of any illness and disease. What we hadn’t accounted for wasthe consequences of over population and the decimation of our naturalfood supplies. With the population increasing at an alarming rate with nonatural death attrition we became overpopulated with a significantlyreduced food supply.
Crime became common place and although murder and suicides havealmost entirely wiped out most of the other countries on Earth thesurvivors of America fight daily for food and to stay alive. Those whodon’t eat become something else, something feral, something inhuman.
My father, who was a scientist for the government, along with me havespent the last ten years underground on a Government base, right up untilthe last few weeks when Commander General Roderick went rogue andtried to take over as leader of the base.
The Commander General had conspired to implement a plan that wasintended to wipe out half of the remaining country with the goal ofpreserving food supplies for the rest of us. Needless to say we had to puta stop to this plan before he could put it into place.
A group of young adults living on the base including Logan Mathers, theson of the current President Nathaniel Mathers, travelled halfway acrossthe country to one of the most notorious prisons in the world looking for agenius Professor called Clarence Brittle. We thought he could help stopthe Commander General’s plan to murder millions of survivors of TheCure by creating an antidote.
In doing so we discovered that The Cure was actually a man-madeexperiment which the government had exploited under the previousPresident.
The government had worked alongside the five major pharmaceuticalcompanies in the United States to make a cure for all disease to sell at aprofit. The had plan backfired when the government did not realize theimplications of what this would mean to America and the rest of the worldwith regards to our natural food consumption.
The prison in Parchman, Mississippi, which was being run by infamouscriminal Isaac Mendez and Professor Clarence Brittle was, and still is, oneof the last self-sustaining communities in America of more than threehundred people that we know of and the prisoners who live there are nowreformed. They continue to help nearby survivors by feeding them fromtheir own supplies.
The cities are overrun with Savages. The Savages were once human butwill now stop at nothing to find food regardless of what it is or who it is.Their bodies have adapted to become apex predators and they are thescourge of anyone who gets in their way.
Their way of life is very different to the survivors. The lack of food, butwith no ability to die as a result of malnourishment, has turned them intokillers who are unable to empathize or adapt to a normal lifestyle and theyhave slowly regressed back to being animals. Their sole purpose is to huntfor food. As a result they have become pack creatures who hunt anythingthat could be considered a meal, which often means turning on each other.
We have lost two of our group, Brad Junior and Faye, to the murderousSavages on our mission to the prison.Danny Mathers, Logan’s brother,went to the Nebraska reservoir to thwart the Generals plan to poison thewater supply by destroying the dam there. However we now know that thesadistic Frank McGregor, security detail to one of the men behind the plan,was sent to deal with Danny who is now presumed dead.
Having been exposed the Commander General escaped the base with a crack unit of military guards and left the President to die in the base cellsby setting explosives to destroy the base. His current whereabouts areunknown.
My father, Ethan Wanikiy died a hero helping to prevent the CommanderGeneral’s plan and saving Logan and myself from his unwitting partner incrime, Joshua Goldsmith, a former aide to the President.
Thankfully President Nathaniel Mathers was rescued from the cells by amystery woman called Rose and we all managed to escape the collapse ofthe base along with the rest of the community of government workers whohad lived there.
The comfort of the base seems months ago but it has only been weeks.
Although we succeeded in foiling the Commander General’s plan to wipeout half the country, the backlash has meant we are all alone andvulnerable to the elements on route to one of the major cities looking forshelter and supplies.
Food is in short supply and the size of our group means we are strugglingto move as a unit to an area that we can set up our own commune and lookfor resources to start building a new life. Our fuel reserves are all butdepleted and most of the community is having to travel by foot as ourvehicles have been left behind, unusable without gas. Some of our peoplehave splintered off on their own never to be seen or heard of again.
We pray that we can make it to our next destination, but our relationshipsand friendships have become fractured as we all start to suffer the sameslow torture that the Savages did before they ran out of food.
If