Welcome to Death Valley
By J. L. Young

Deep in the southwestern U. S., a ship was placed in the vast wastes of California. Record Temperatures leave this area quiet as the proverbial tomb.

A ship 389 miles from the nearest ocean purposely moored on a slip fault, a fail-safe. That ship was registered as the U. S. S. Falling Star. Aboard that ship, my colleagues and I tasked with creating a vaccine to end a terrible DNA mutating virus that has spread to the far reaches of our little wet dustball.

I was the sole survivor of that experiment, one of 630 men and women. An outbreak had taken the lives of all aboard the cargo ship, but one. At first, nothing seemed the matter. We were successful in creating a vaccine. It showed promise. We were about to present our findings, and the vaccine when the event happened.

The killed form of the Phage virus had resurrected itself within the vaccinated hosts. Its surface proteins were deactivated, but somehow they reactivated. They were voracious in their biological purpose.

Rampant cancerous growths appeared on all the test subjects. For some reason, it spared me. The virulent disease spread unabated. The virus attacked healthy tissue and spread to the rest of the ship. The personal protective equipment proved impotent against the strain’s onslaught.

If the hosts survived the initial symptoms, the second stage was excruciatingly painful. Organ failure soon followed. To protect the world, I cremated the bodies. I knew I was next. I took the sidearm of a Marine and chambered a round, cranked up the furnace, and leaped into the blue flames. Despite the intense pain, I shot myself.

I awoke, the steel slab beneath me felt cold on my naked skin. The sidearm was distorted and blackened. I pushed myself out of the furnace and fell to the floor. My throat felt parched and the first thing on my mind was water. I climbed the ladder and walked aft to the galley. There, I took a drink. It burned as though I was drinking straight Everclear.

The pain subsided, but the thirst remained. I returned to the lab, performed a biopsy of several organs, and subjected each sample to a round of different solutions. Everything necessary and healthy for the human body was now toxic. Some, like water, tore apart the cellular membranes. When I applied known toxins. Every one of the samples thrived.

It has been forty years since the outbreak. Other virologists have succeeded where I have failed. I was Doctor Marshall Bach. Now, I’m Sephtis. I am eternal death.