Hyper Life

The lab was nearly empty now, what with all the spectators gone. Just because the results of their experiment were not dramatic enough for the possible backers to hang around for. Of course the reality was that no one was sure that it had worked at all, which was probably why everyone had left.

Dr Jansk thought that once they'd had time to study the reading, and were sure that something had actually happened, then there would be no end to the enthusiasm of her colleagues in the institution. But for now all she had to show for the time and money spent was an experimental tank full of dead flies.

She watched her three guests walking away, the old greying principle in the lead and the two women from the government behind him. In her youth she'd have worried about the military wanting to back her research, but now she was just glad that anyone was interested. Even if they didn't come through with any money the very fact that they had been interested would keep the principle happy for another semester. With a sigh she turned back to her experiment.

Her experiment had been intended to show that she could accelerate the life cycle of a living organism, and so far she had proved she had the most expensive fly killer in history. Still wearing her protective suite she undid the lid of the tank and poured the remains of the flies into the sample pot of the analyser. Once she had ground down the flies and extracted their DNA she would be able to tell whether the accelerated life cycle had changed anything about her flies, besides killing them.

What Dr Jansk hadn't noticed was the one weakened fly that had survived in the corner of the tank, a fly that in a blink of an eye had crawled out of sight.

While Dr Jansk was still pouring the dead flies into the sample pot the surviving fly had crossed the room in a blur of motion, drawn to a scent from the office next to the lab. In that office Rebecca, Dr Jansk's research student was making sure that all the paperwork for their experiment was complete, just to keep the pen pushers from accounts happy. Rebecca barely noticed the touch of the stray fly as it landed of her blouse collar, or even when it rested at the nape of her neck, holding onto the blonde strands of hair that she wore tied up whilst in the lab.

Between one beat of Rebecca's heart and the next the fly had laid its eggs and died, tumbling from the white cotton of her blouse, towards the motionless heat of her skin. It would have normally have laid some three hundred eggs at a time, but so tired was it that it could barely manage a hundred. But this fly had been living an accelerated life, a characteristic it had shared with its eggs. So before the shrivelled carcase of the dead fly had fallen more that a few millimetres the eggs had hatched, and the larvae had burrowed into the new host.

Rebecca was unaware of her new role in the life cycle of Dr Jansk's experimental flies, for as the dead flies still flowed into the sample pot the grubs matured, and burrowing back to the surface of Rebecca's neck they spawned another generation of flies. These flies they explored their new territory before laying their eggs, some in the moist crevices of Rebecca's nose, mouth, and the more adventurous in her genitalia. By now there were tens of thousands of eggs. These eggs also hatched, sending larvae burrowing back into their new host. By now signals from nerve endings in her neck had made their way towards her brain, and within another four generations of flies she became aware of a tingling sensation on the back of her neck. Of course there were now many millions of flies laying eggs in her skin, and far more grubs feeding on her flesh as they stocked up, ready to mature into flies once more, to lay yet another, exponentially larger hoard of eggs on the blissfully unaware Rebecca.

Still within the first second of the stray fly finding its way to the girls neck the flies had reached their fifth generation, and Rebecca's flesh had been replaced by a mass of competing flies and grubs that like their ill fated brethren in Dr Jansk's experimental tank, had exhausted their food supply. Of course these fast life cycle flies were not confined to the finite food sources of the experiment. As Rebecca's skeleton, now stripped of all flesh, started to spill out of her clothes as she tumbled to the floor, the hoard of flies set off in search of more food, leaving the short lived bacteria they had left behind to putrefy what was left.

In the hallway Mike Jackson was on his way to a tutorial he had with a bunch of first year Eng. Lit. students, not a job he really enjoyed as at this stage few of them were really interested in learning anything. Looking up from his notes that he was reading as he walked along he to noticed the swarm, or at least a dark blur. Before he had time to more than register that something was different the swarm had reached him. In an instant, or several generations of flies, his mouth was invaded, grubs had burrowed throughout his lungs and generations of grubs had erupted through his skin. Mike had provided the swarm with a convenient refreshment stop in their search for food. And of the lecturer, there was another putrid tangle of clothes and bones falling to the ground.

The effects of Dr Jansk's procedure seemed to be limited as the flies life cycle seemed to be slowing, but by the time they found their next meal stop they were still living millions of times faster than their natural brethren.

Further down the hallway, in the darkness of an empty tutorial room, Dr Franks was discussing mid term assessments with Jane, one of his undergraduate students. As was usual with Dr Franks the discussion involved loosening clothing and exploring the girl thoroughly, something to which she acquiesced to willingly. Of course she didn't have much choice if she wanted to improve her grades, and how was she to know that it was Dr Franks' desire for her that had reduced her grade in the first place.

As Dr Franks pressed his engorged cock against her exposed, firm, belly, he tugged at her blouse to get a better grasp of her palm sized breasts. He muffled his grunts by pressing her mouth to his, and with practised ease her skirt fell to the floor, freeing her for his next stage.

It was as he was lifting the passive student onto his cock that the swarm encountered his pheromones in the swirling air currents of the hallway, and following them to their source found Jane and Dr Franks, their skin bonded by sweat. To the swarm this was an opportunity not to be missed, and without hesitation they settled upon the straining couple. Jane, the student, had her eyes closed, trying to imagine that she was having sex with anyone other than the slimy Dr Franks, but when the first wave of tingling swept over her skin it startled her and she instinctively opened her eyes. But to the swarm the blink of an eye was an eternity, and by the time her eye lids had started to move her eyes and the brain behind them had fed a multitude of grubs, and her skull had already shattered under the pressure of the straining mass of grubs that had grown to maturity in her brain case.

Once more the horde moved on, only now being swollen to twice its original size, having taken the chance to feed well. Outside another tutorial room, around the corner from Dr Frank's ill fated rendezvous with his student, was the room that Mike Jackson had been heading for. He wouldn't have been surprised in the least to see Karen and Pete waiting outside, as he knew they could hardly stand their more studious class mates who were probably already at work in the room. The two students were being none to discrete, the way her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and his around her waist. They were all but kissing, something they were not allowed to do in college. Of course Karen's bangle like earrings were not exactly regulation either, but when the horde reached them such issues became irrelevant. Whereas the first accelerated fly had started generations of breeding that had consumed poor Rebecca in a few seconds, the swarm now consisted of many thousands of egg laden flies.

Where Karen had been gazing into Pete's clear blue eyes, and Pete was thinking it was his lucky day, a darkness fell around them. Every orifice was filled with eggs as each fly laid its burden in the students warm flesh. With many thousands of flies each laying hundreds of eggs Karen and Pete's mouths, ears, anus and genitalia were split asunder by the maggot masses that erupted through their young flesh. In a tiny fraction of a second the darkness cleared as the flies went through their pupa stage. Karen and Pete's bones still stood, entwined as they had done before the arrival of the mass, but now there was no flesh or skin, and even their clothes were coated by spent pupa casings. Gravity had barely had time to notice that their bones were no longer supported by muscles when the bulk of the newly emerged flies poured around the edges of the door to reach the waiting tutorial group.

While part of the swarm had found the unfortunate tutorial group, a smaller offshoot had encountered Esther, where she as on a bench looking out the triple glazed windows at the snow piling high in the car park.

The mini-swarm of a few thousand egg laden flies reached Esther as she day dreamed of another warm evening cuddling up to her boyfriend tonight. With her lips pursed in a gentle sigh she offered the perfect opportunity to the swarm. The first wave reached her and deposited their eggs, over three hundred for each fly, around her gums. Some forced their way past her nasal hair to lay in the moist cavity of her nose while the slower and less fortunate egg bearers had to make do with encrusting her eye lids with their tiny eggs. Such was the speed of the flies life cycles that in less than a tenth of a second the eggs had hatched, sending thirsty larva searching for nourishment. In that tenth of a second Esther had started to notice the blurred presence of the swarm, but as the millions of thirsty larva burrowed into her flesh in search of food a burning sensation of dying nerve endings started to envelope her.

Esther's face was now swollen, her skin stretched over the wriggling mass of larva. Her eyes no longer saw the snow outside, having been drunk dry by the larva that were now chewing up her optic nerves to reach an as yet virgin pool of food. Still less than a fifth of a second from the eggs first being laid, the flies progeny reached their second larva stage, where they moved on from their liquid diet, and onto proteans and fats.

In their maggot form they could feed much more quickly. The bulk of the early eggs had been laid in the warmth of the back of Esther's throat, and these maggots now tumbled down that passage, an all consuming maggot mass that pulsed under the roll neck of her sweater and into her chest. In their greed the mass of fattening maggots expanded her chest, stretching the cashmere of her top against her undulating skin.

Those larva that had sought sustenance in Esther's brain were having a harder time of things as when they turned into maggots their bulk was trapped by the girls skull. Fortunately as a mass the maggots were incredibly strong and Esther's head fell apart, letting the maggots reach the outside once more. This was fortunate timing as the maggots had reached maturity and they needed to find safe places in which to pupate.

As the escapees of the girls shattered skull wriggled off to take root on the walls and carpet around the unfortunate student, the main maggot mass burst her girls chest asunder. Unlike her skull that was falling downwards in fragments the girls chest was confined by the flexibility of her sweater. So as the bulk of the maggots wriggled between the knit of her sweater the framework of bare bone that was her ribs held together. This gave the second generation of egg laying flies, newly emerged from their pupa stage, a framework upon which to lay. Esher was now far beyond caring, with her brain converted to its own mass of maggots, but this second generation consisted of millions of egg laying flies that lay their burden on her exposed ribs and spine.

Once more they hatched, and the maggot mass they produced tumbled down into Esther's abdomen, consuming all flesh before them. At her groin the mass split once more. Some following each nylon covered leg until they became trapped in impermeable folds of inedible material, with the bulk tumbling free from between her legs to flow onto the floor, a great predatory mass of maggots that hadn't yet finished feeding.

This mass tumbled around the corner in search of more nourishment, having converted Esther from earnest student to maggot mass in less than a second. A second that was far too short to give Lucy any warning of what was about to happen.

Lucy had just dropped her pen on the floor, so happened to be looking in the right direction to see the approaching maggot mass. Unfortunately the hyper-life maggots were moving so fast that she never had time to react to the approaching blur.

The maggots swarmed up her legs, piling upon each other until they reached the top of her knee high boots. From there they could travel over and within her flesh. The pulse of carnivorous maggots tunnelled up into her pelvis, consuming her buttocks and loins. When they penetrated her abdomen they were fully mature, so rending their way from her belly they poured out to find safe locations to pupate in.

Their hunger had left Lucy tottering on her devastated legs, with the bulk of her intestines falling towards the cavity that the maggots had left in her abdomen. It had all happened to fast for Lucy to feel any pain, but she did feel the horror starting to overwhelm her. She had just started to reach out for support when the nest generation of flies erupted from their pupa. In less than a blink of an eye millions of eggs were laid on and within her, eggs that hatched into devouring larva less than a tenth of a second later.

Instantly her upper body was rendered by the larva, the transformation of her face into a grinning skull leaving her glasses balanced on a slither of cartilage where her nose had once been. Her brain had also been devoured, but as the larva were still in their first stage they were able to enter and exit her skull via the optic nerves, leaving her skull intact. With Lucy's carcase stripped of any further sustenance the starved mass of hungry larva left their hatching ground behind. Lucy's skeletal framework still tumbling to the ground as they sensed new sources of food. They had sensed the refectory.

The refectory was nearly empty this time of day, as most of the students who had to be at the college this afternoon were in their classes, and those that had no reason to be here had stayed at home. But there was dozen or so here, waiting for friends who were in classes, or trying to avoid travelling back to the poorly heated dorm rooms through the snow.

Just like the college itself there was a nearly even split between men and women, but like anywhere students met it was like staying with like. So the table near the door had four guys who were loudly joshing each other and anyone else who'd pay attention.

A few empty tables away were five girls, apparently ignoring the boys table.

Beyond this table, looking out the long window that ran the length of the refectory, were two more guys, and sitting alone, furthest she could get from all the rest was a solitary girl.

The only other occupants of the room were a boy and a girl who had just walked in, leaving the door to swing closed behind them.

Miranda was the girl sitting furthest from the door, but despite having successfully ignored most of the activity of the other students she could not help staring at the couple who had just come in. Miranda saw that Fran was holding Michael's hand, and they were walking in step seemingly unaware of anything else in the room. The sight was painful to Miranda as until only a week ago Miranda had believed that her and Fran were an item. But their couple status had never been public, this was a small town after all, but where Miranda appeared desperately feminine, Fran was almost a tom boy. So by rights it should have been Miranda's sexuality that wavered.

But Miranda sat here alone, dressed in her sweaty track suit from a hard workout in the gym, and there was Fran, short skirt and preppy shirt and sweater, coming back from the library with her 'boyfriend'. Miranda saw the doleful way her former lover was looking up into Michaels eyes, but there seemed to be confusion on Fran's face. Following Fran's gaze she noticed that Michael had blurred, or at least her vision of him had. He seemed to jerk, then her vision re-focused, and there was a grinning skeleton there, holding Fran's hand. It still wore Michael's clothes, but even they were streaked with an awful looking gunk.

Looking back to her former lover she saw that Fran's skin was rippling, her features too were starting to blur but this time because she seemed to be ballooning up. Her previously luscious throat had swollen into a treble chinned monstrosity that spilled over her shirt collar. In fact all of Fran's exposed skin seemed to bulge under some mysterious pressure. Miranda was distracted by a shout from the table that the four guys had been sitting at, but now one of them had been replaced by a grinning skeleton just like Michael's.

Miranda started to get to her feet, not knowing what to do for her former lover, but in the split second it took her to get off her seat Fran's flesh had exploded away from her skeleton in a bloody black mist. A mist that had somehow taken two more of the guys at the table. Miranda wasn't the only one who had seen what was happening. The remaining boy at that table was shouting, scrambling out of his seat and away from the three bare skeletons that were collapsing across the table.

At the table where the girls were sitting they seemed unaware of the events nearer the door. They were too busy staring at the remains of the dumpy girl who had seemingly dissolved, her remains pouring from the roll neck sweater. The purée of putrid girl flesh washing over the table and floor around her. None of the students could see the hyperactive flies and maggots as they stripped their friends for sustenance, but they could see the results of this activity.

The last boy seemed to fall apart as he tried to get to his feet, but Miranda was distracted by the screams coming from the girls table. With one of their companions already collapsing into a bloody heap of cloth the rest of them were panicked. As Miranda watched she saw Louis, a girl she had known since kindergarten suddenly jerk to her feet. Then her white shirt turned black and crimson as her putrefied flesh exploded from her bones. At the same table, unnoticed by Miranda, Louis's sister slumped in her seat, her flesh seemingly evaporating in an instant. What putrescence did remain soaked into her clothes.

Miranda noticed an itch on the back of her hand, a movement under her skin. The itch seemed to spread rapidly as her breath seemed to halt. The room around her blurred, but unknown to her this was part of the egg laying swarm reaching her. Miranda was distracted so did not notice the two terrified boys by the window who just had time to meet each others gaze before they became fleshless skeletons. Nor did she see the final girl who having failed to clear the table fell apart, her loose bones falling into the putrid pools her companions had left.

Miranda did have time to look towards where Fran had stood, but by now her former lover was a pile of putrefied flesh and bone by the door. In less than 5 seconds the swarm had erased the students in the refectory. Now they desperately needed more sustenance and the swarm split into clumps that scoured the rest of the college for food.

With each generation the effects of the experiment was wearing off so that by the time the swarms the extremities of the college the flies were almost slow enough to be visible. Still there was little that the students or staff could do about them but when the maggot masses tumbled through the library the students had time to panic. Some even managed to reach the exits of the room before they collapsed into putrefying masses. But the last area to fall to the bugs was the administration section. This was set on the other side of a glass covered atrium from the rest of the college. Due to penny pinching on the heating budget, and also to dissuade students from hanging around near the entrance, the atrium was kept colder than the rest of the college. This fact meant that the swarms did not venture that way until they were absolutely desperate for food.

The massed insects swarms eventually crossed the cold barrier, flooding into the warmer administration centre. The physical force of the millions of flies knocked the receptionist off her feet, then buried her and the three students she'd been talking to under a black mass of insects. Their struggles were brief.

A smaller wave reached Steph and Jenny where they were talking by the coffee machine. They'd both started at the sound of the receptionist hitting the ground, and being bored Jenny stepped towards the sound. The oncoming insects were still too fast to see so the first that either woman knew about them was when Jenny's long hair became coated in black flies. Then the insects seemed to flow down the open neck of her blouse and up her trouser legs. Where Jenny had got a mouth full of bugs Steph had that extra split seconds warning, so the flies never gained entry that way. unfortunately for Steph the thong that she wore under her short skirt provided little resistance to the inquisitive flies, and they found somewhere equally useful to lay their eggs.

Burying her face in her hands Steph tried to flee the mass of flies, still unaware that they were more than an irritant she didn't notice the flies that crawled in her clothes. Some where trapped between her waistcoat and shirt, some had slipped under her collar or up her sleeves and were exploring under her shirt. But the fortunate ones had laid their eggs in her ass and genitalia. These eggs hatched into burrowing larva that quickly penetrated her abdomen, spreading their hyper active decay.

Jenny's fate had been sealed more quickly as the eggs laid in her throat matured, sending the questing larva into her lungs. Where the larva went they deposited bacteria and fungus that helped putrefy the flesh around them. This putrefaction made it easier for the grubs to move and eat and the resulting gunk filled every body cavity with decay in seconds. Jenny tried to vomit up the flies that had entered her mouth, but the resulting expulsion sprayed decayed fragments of her internal organs around her before she tumbled to the ground.

As Steph stumbled blindly through the office she was unaware of what had happened to Jenny, she was even unaware of what was happening to herself. Her body was bloating up under the pressure of gasses released by her decomposing innards and she found herself venting noxious fluids and gasses from both ends. Her limbs had swollen to monstrous proportions and the fabric of her suite was straining at the seams when she suddenly seemed to wither. The maggot mass had breached her belly and released the putrefied slurry in one great noxious burp.

Once the bloated maggots had wriggled to freedom, looking for somewhere to pupate, Step's body was still. Such was her misfortune that she was still concious of her situation even though her entire body below her neck was undergoing what a doctor would call butyric fermentation

With most of her flesh liquefied and soaked into the carpet the rest of her skin was devoured by hyperactive moulds and fungi, leaving a bare skeleton wrapped in soiled clothing. The only thing to identify that this mess had once been called Steph was a spray of short blonde hair in the vicinity of the bare skull, and a pair of spectacles that she had been holding seconds before.

The college principle had watched these events unfolding just outside his office where he was saying goodbye to the potential backers who had been to visit Dr Jansk earlier. He barely had time to turn away before the mass of flies reached him and his guests. The swarms made no distinction between the hard nosed IP lawyer and the decorated soldier, both were just so much bio-mass that would feed another generation of young larva. It was their good fortune that the entire swarm was once more concentrated, and twenty million maggots made very short work of the two women and the principle. But these were the last of the food supply, and with nothing more to feed on the swarm turned on itself in a cannibalistic orgy. An orgy that lasted for accelerated generations until the final dying fly sank into the mound of its decaying brethren.

Back in her lab Dr Jansk noted with disappointment that the remains of her flies had liquefied in the few seconds since the end of the final experiment. This confirmed that the flies had not been as clean as she had hoped as they must have been carrying some bacteria to decompose so rapidly. Deciding to leave the cleaning up until tomorrow, or maybe leave it for Rebecca, Dr Jansk sealed the now worthless sample pot. The visitors from the government had left a few minuets ago, not even waiting to be shown the final experiment, so there was no need to be dressed in this silly isolation suit any more. She'd only worn it so that the bankers could see where some of their money had gone.

Unzipping herself took a couple of minutes as it was something she relied on Rebecca for, and when the girl didn't come when called she assumed that she must have gone with the money people. Dr Jansk knew that the girl would go far, as even now she knew the key to a successful career wasn't science, it was keeping the money happy. Something that Dr Jansk kept forgetting. Realising her mistake she abandoned the suit in the lab and putting on her cleanest lab coat she hurried over to the administration offices. It was still only a few minutes from when she had first opened the isolation container, but that was hundreds of generations for her flies. Flies that had long since exhausted all the food that the community college had to offer.

Dr Jansk decided to cut through the back corridor to make sure she could see the money people before they left. She wouldn't normally have come this way as she thought there was something on in one of the lecture theatres down her. She thought it was probably an exam but she'd been so busy with her work that she hadn't really paid much attention to the memo.

She was surprised therefore when she noticed that the door to the theatre was open and there were no sounds coming from within. Not wanting to be delayed she spared the briefest glance inside, but there was no one there. There was some pungent fluid all over the floor, some of which had spilled out into the hallway. There were also heaps of stuff near each of the desks, and a pile of bags and backpacks near the door but no sign of any students. As she hurried away she wondered if the radiators had leaked again forcing them to abandon the exam, or maybe a fire drill she hadn't noticed.

She was still hurrying along considering possibilities when she turned the last corner and walked towards the atrium. So busy trying to get her hair back into shape after having spent so long in the isolation suit that she tripped over something on the floor. She failed to stay on her feet but did manage to break her fall. Rolling onto her back she sat up and had a look at what she had fallen over. She didn't have to look far as her foot was still entangled on what looked like an old dish cloth. Then she saw the ID tag. It was the kind of tag that all the staff at the college were meant to wear at all times, but like most of her colleagues she kept hers in her desk drawer. In fact there was only one person she knew who did always wear her ID tag, Lucy who worked on campus security. She wiped off the dark encrustations that obscured the photo, and recognising the face that had broken many a saphic heart she knew it was Lucy's. She got to her feet, still holding the mysterious ID tag and saw that the object that she'd been entangled with might even be a grotesquely stained uniform, for she thought she could make out a shoulder badge and epaulettes. Further back down the corridor, in a large stain that covered the floor, was another object, more cloth, boots, and what looked like bones!

Dr Jansk couldn't believe her eyes and throwing the ID badge behind her she sprinted across the atrium and into the administration offices. There she found more putrefied bodies, still wrapped in recognisable clothes. Where ever she looked there were more, until after stumbling blindly thought the offices she fell into the principles office and stopped, having no where further to run. Looking around there was a mound of decay behind the principles desk. She recognised what it was as she'd just seen the results of her experiment degenerate into something very similar. In the door way was a similar mound that she'd nearly stepped in. Near this mound was a military cap that not long before she'd seen Catherine wearing. She knew that somewhere under that putrid mass would be the woman's remains. On the other side of the elongated mound was the briefcase that the 'civilian adviser' had been carrying. There was no doubt in Dr Jansk's mind that her experiment was connected to all of this, she just didn't understand how. What she did know was that she wanted to get out of here.

She stepped around the decaying heap in the doorway, and taking care to step around all the other remains she made it out into the atrium again. Here where the air was cool, no longer full of the pungent reek of putrid flesh, she tried to think.

The sound of a car horn penetrated her thoughts, and looking up she say the headlights of a car shining into the atrium. This was the first sign of anyone else alive she had seen since this nightmare had begun. She stumbled out into the snow, past a final heap of clothes still encrusted with frozen flies.