In the seemingly tranquil town of Nirvana, Sheriff Buck Evans and Deputy Lisa Raines’ days are usually filled with lost cats and parking disputes—until a catastrophic coding error at the tech giant FaceForce unleashes an unexpected menace: zombie cats. Sparql John and Bob Lee, the not-so-genius coders behind the chaos, initiate a catastrophic experiment that turns fluffy felines into ferocious, undead predators.
The mayhem escalates as Carlos Austin, lured from Honduras under the guise of a job at a logging facility, finds himself a guinea pig in horrific genetic experiments. Transformed into a werewolf with a conflicted soul, Carlos’s transformation mirrors the dark underbelly of tech ambition gone awry.
Amidst the chaos, Sheriff Buck Evans and Deputy Lisa Raines are thrust into the unexpected center of this zombie cat apocalypse. The fate of humanity rests on their shoulders. But in an America where disinformation and conspiracy theories are the norm, Sheriff Buck Evans knows one thing is certain: This was a bad day to stop smoking weed.
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It could have been his pounding down three cans of Red Bull at two in the morning or having only four hours of sleep in a three day period, but Sparql John had, what he thought, was a genius idea.
Sparql was a nickname programmers gave to John Looper given to a simple query screwup he committed in the Sparql programming language. Some programmers joked that he should have conjunctioned when he disjunctioned.
Yeah, I didn’t get it either. So a computer scientist who worked with him said, “It’s funnier when you see it written out. So this is what he wrote:
?v WHERE { ?v ?p :) };
I looked at what he had written and shook my head. He flipped his iPad back around. “Did I insert an extra space or something?” he asked, not understanding my incomprehensibility. He shrugged, “Anyways, Disjunction John doesn’t have a good ring to it. Now Disjunction Dave does. But his name is John, so we went with Sparql John.”
Bob Lee was another douchebag who worked alongside Sparql John and both were in charge of writing the programming code for Mark Zuckerberg’s FaceForce. A computer code that could electronically rewrite an animal’s genetic code. John and Bob named their code VAMPYR, which by all common sense was clearly not a good name for a coding language that literally programs biological life. (I later learned that several executives disapproved, but Zuckerberg overrode all of them and approved the name.)
So John had this idea and bounced it off Bob who eventually just said, “You know, the worst that can happen is, what? All sixty of the lab’s cats are killed?”
John nodded.
“Fuck it. They’re cats. If anyone says anything, we’ll just say there was a bug in the system that we need to root out. If they need more cats, there’s probably a colony out back behind the parking lot.”
“What about the bio guy?” John said.
“Who? Rahul? Fuck him,” Bob said. “That jerk is on a H1-B visa. He won’t say shit.”
John sucked down a half can of Red Bull and gave him a thumbs up. Fifteen minutes later he finished typing his commands, compiled the code, and ran it.
Instantly the ear shattering demonic shrieks of sixty cats tore through the hallways and rooms. A chorus of lengthy, high-pitched, guttural screams that seemed to have no end.
John and Bob looked at each other. John said, “Shit dude! That didn’t sound good!”
“Fuck...me,” Bob slowly said, drawing out each syllable as if he was stoned.
Rahul slammed open the door to the computer lab. He was a thin guy, but had a deep voice, heavily accented. “What the hell did you two just do?”
John peeked around the computer monitor. He shrugged. “Nothing.”
Rahul looked at Bob. Bob frowned, a dumbfounded look on his face. “You know I was about to ask you that same question.”
Rahul glanced at the two of them. His jaw quivered angrily. Stanford tech guys, he thought. Assholes. Every single one of them.
Bob said, “Why don’t you check on the cats and we’ll check our end. Could be a bug. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
Rahul raised his hand to say something. Squinting his eyes, he opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He turned around and pulled the door open and stormed out.
“I told you he wouldn’t say nothing,” Bob whispered. “You could disembowel an infant in front of him and he knows the moment he goes to the cops and makes FaceForce look bad, he’s fired and his ass is being deported back to India.”
“Why don’t you go check on the cats and see what the fuck just happened?” John said.
“Me? No way. You go. It was your bright idea.”
“But you agreed to it.”
“Fuck you, Sparql,” Bob said.
John slapped his empty can of Red Bull off the desk and stood up. “Don’t ask me for any favors, asshole.”
Bob rolled his eyes and made a face and slid the keyboard closer to himself.
John walked out of the computer lab which was a former JC Penney’s and he walked down the mall’s main thruway down beyond where the kid’s playground used to be. There, in a former Gap and Gap Kids, was the animal lab filled with cats. Bob and Sparqle John nicknamed it Pussy Gap because, like most Stanford educated dropouts, their maturity still barely exceeded a twelve year old’s.
Rahul stood inside staring at the cages, his hands on his hips, an exhausted look on his face. Ten years earlier, he would have looked like a Gap shopper trying to remember what length he wore in a boot cut jean.
“Hey,” John said all meekly as if he was just innocently strolling by.
“What!?” Rahul yelled.
“Jesus, you don’t have to yell, dude.”
“You killed all the cats, you fucking idiot!”
John arched his brow and pushed out his lower lip, exuding a puzzled expression.
Whenever he was caught in a lie or simply caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing, his face reflexively distorted itself into this stupid, weird expression. “Me?” he said, pointing at himself.
Rahul glanced at him and said, “What the hell is wrong with your face?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You look like you’re having a stroke.”
John put his hand to his face, trying to feel it, his expression, as if he would be able to identify a drooping eyelid by touch. “No,” he said. “Maybe it’s too many Red Bulls. I drank fourteen of them today.”
Rahul rolled his eyes and shook his head. He muttered to himself. Then he opened the cage in front of him and pulled out a dead tuxedo cat by its tail. It’s eyes and mouth were open as if it was frozen in a yawn. Six wires were connected to the cat’s brain. Rahul yanked these out like man yanking the price tag off a new shirt he just put on. Then he tossed the cat to John.
John yelped and jumped back and the dead cat landed head first on the tile floor making a hideous, thock sound.
“Didn’t your father teach you how to catch?” said Rahul.
“Not with a fucking dead cat.”
Rahul grabbed a dead orange cat. Tore out the brain wires and tossed it at John. “Jesus,” John said, catching the cat, then feeling it’s dead weight, he dropped it in disgust. “What’s your problem?”
“I’ve got to remove and tag sixty dead cats. Do you know how much fucking paperwork that is?”
John looked at him. The same dumb expression on his face.
Rahul said, “Obviously, you don’t. So since you caused this mess, why don’t you help grab these cats from the cages and pile them against the wall over there,” he pointed.
“I would but---”
“Fuck you, John. You don’t have any code to compile, now help me out and earn your paycheck for once.”
It took forty minutes of yanking wires out of cat brains and piling the corpses into a rounded pile, so that the corpses can then be bagged and marked for incineration. When it was over, John didn’t ever want to see a cat for as long as he lived. It was too visceral like having to hug and comfort a crying girlfriend. The digital world was so much better.
John made tight fists and looked at his palms. “You got any hand sanitizer?”
Rahul looked at him like he was looking at a stupid dog. “What?”
“Hand sanitizer?”
“Wash your hands in the fucking bathroom.”
“You don’t have to be rude about it,” John said.
A low moan emanated. Angry. Guttural.
“What the hell was that?” said John.
“What?”
“There was a moan.”
“I thought it was your stomach growling.”
“No,” John paused, hearing it again. He pointed at the pile of corpses. “It’s coming from there.”
Rahul turned. Now there were three moans coming from the pile. “Jesus,” he said, seeing the pile of dead cats begin to undulate.
“They’re still alive,” John said.
Suddenly there was movement. A white paw. Then a black paw. Then a tabby paw. Then a cat looked up at Rahul, its pupils like large black circles, hissed. “Christ,” Rahul said. He stepped forward and grabbed one of the cats.
He screamed.
A large white cat sunk its teeth into his wrist. He swung his arm, but the cat, its teeth and claws embedded in his flesh, hung tight to Rahul’s arm. “Help me!” Rahul screamed. He swung his arm again. Blood splattered across John’s face. Suddenly another cat lunged for Rahul. Then a third. They dug their claws into his legs and climbed him. One sank his teeth right into Rahul’s crotch.
John stepped back. His heart raced. He could barely make a sound. The cats one after the other were leaping on Rahul, their voices like high pitched demon screams. The seventh one tore its little fangs into Rahul’s nose. Then another tore into his throat. He gurgled and finally fell to the floor.
Blood spurted from his jugular like a fountain.
John looked at the pile of zombie cats, moving and squirming like a pile of maggots. He turned and ran to the door. Then he suddenly felt a cat tear its claws into his pants and bite into his hamstring. He tumbled to his knees and punched the cat in its demonic cat face. Three cats jumped on his back. Then five more. Then six more. They tore the flesh from his hands, his ears.
John gasped.
He saw the tuxedo cat to his right, the one he didn’t catch. She hissed. Then bit into his cheek like a goddamn piranha. John screamed and then he felt the skin of his cheek pulling as if it was a piece of elastic. The cat snarled and pulled. Its strength was unreal. Finally a hole formed in his cheek. And the hole quickly grew bigger and the tuxedo cat snapped its head to the right and the flesh from John’s ear to his lip tore off, exposing the red muscles in his face.