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May. 15th, 2013 10:07 pmThe newspapers called it 'a plague of angels.'
Hundreds upon hundreds, overnight, after the meteor shower that wasn't. People who woke up, or didn't, and claimed to be angels, crying out for Heaven and their brothers and sisters. Some called themselves by angel names. Some knew only that they had fallen from a great height, and they were frightened, and they wanted to go home. They cowered in the arms of their families, wracked and inconsolable. They walked from the waters and the alleys, their clothes singed and their faces streaked with tears of pain, hands held out beseechingly. They spoke dead languages and cursed and pleaded, and they were all of them lost.
Some remembered enough to know that they walked now in filth where they had once flown, and lashed out.
In an hour, the hospitals filled up with angels. In a day, the police stations did. In a week, the jails. Men, women, teenagers, even children, all afflicted with the same symptoms of the same madness. Angels drew knives on the street, gouged out their own eyes, fell upon their own families. They howled and wailed or sometimes said nothing at all, only stared mutely, or wept, and there was no explanation, no cure with therapy or drugs or reasoning that could stop them or reach them. The rest of the world struggled to rationalize and explain. It was called an omen. It was called an act of God. It was called a military experiment, and a mass delusion, and a result of drugs in the water reservoir.
By the fourth week, the monsters began to creep forward. The ones that had slunk away, or remembered enough to be angry, enough to be dangerous. Some styled themselves vigilantes, believing the strictest pursuit of justice was their calling. Some simply hated everything around them and wanted it to be destroyed by any means possible.
Hundreds upon hundreds, overnight, after the meteor shower that wasn't. People who woke up, or didn't, and claimed to be angels, crying out for Heaven and their brothers and sisters. Some called themselves by angel names. Some knew only that they had fallen from a great height, and they were frightened, and they wanted to go home. They cowered in the arms of their families, wracked and inconsolable. They walked from the waters and the alleys, their clothes singed and their faces streaked with tears of pain, hands held out beseechingly. They spoke dead languages and cursed and pleaded, and they were all of them lost.
Some remembered enough to know that they walked now in filth where they had once flown, and lashed out.
In an hour, the hospitals filled up with angels. In a day, the police stations did. In a week, the jails. Men, women, teenagers, even children, all afflicted with the same symptoms of the same madness. Angels drew knives on the street, gouged out their own eyes, fell upon their own families. They howled and wailed or sometimes said nothing at all, only stared mutely, or wept, and there was no explanation, no cure with therapy or drugs or reasoning that could stop them or reach them. The rest of the world struggled to rationalize and explain. It was called an omen. It was called an act of God. It was called a military experiment, and a mass delusion, and a result of drugs in the water reservoir.
By the fourth week, the monsters began to creep forward. The ones that had slunk away, or remembered enough to be angry, enough to be dangerous. Some styled themselves vigilantes, believing the strictest pursuit of justice was their calling. Some simply hated everything around them and wanted it to be destroyed by any means possible.
