by
Stefan Zappia

When World War I breaks out, Liam Reinsman, a sensitive young man from the British countryside, enlists in the Royal Army to battle the Germans on the killing fields of France. After a year of fighting, the weary soldier boy and his brother come face to face with an evil that makes human conflict seem a childish game. From beneath the earth rises a mad, feral army of mutated abominations mankind calls the Cancer. Liam’s brother is killed and regiments on both sides are laid to waste as the Cancer eats, tortures, and murders its way across Europe. Having turned tail and ran, a disgraced Liam joins forces with a secret society that has emerged from the shadows to aid the world in this dire hour. Through blood, death, and hell, Liam will come to discover his destiny is to save the world.

13,500 words

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Excerpt:

The news of a war came in June. Kids have shallow minds to happenings like that, so back then it felt like nothing more than another turn of the world’s spigot: the same of the same, nothing a lad of sixteen should concern himself with. Save it for the riper years. We were far too focused on savoring every little ray of European sunlight.

The declaration followed a month later, when Summer achieved her long-awaited apotheosis. I remember how our parents’ faces shifted furtively from anxious grimaces of trepidation to inchoate smirks of fabricated serenity as they swiveled their heads to us while reading the morning papers, taken off guard by our silent bare feet approaching.

The sky was abundantly blue that day, leering through the window so picturesque and deceitful. Never before had it looked so rich. But I didn’t go outside that day; I stayed in bed and cried noiselessly. I was the older one, but I had always been more sensitive than Danny. He sat outside and played with ants till sundown shifted into a splotchy purple dusk. Something in their stare, in their lie, and in the ethereal blue above sent something horrible into me. I saw something in their eyes, and in the ocean floating over our world. I couldn’t understand what it was then. But I do now… Lord knows I do.

Another month passed, and dominoes were falling across the land. I knew it, and my parents didn’t hide it. They just hugged me tighter each day as if something were pulling them from me, or I from them. Summer was hot, but every few hours some frore gust snaked by for a split-second and shot terror up my spine. Danny never seemed to notice it, though. I could not enjoy the fleeting days of our splendid isolation, for my soul was preparing for what my mind could not perceive.

Tuesday was the day our island empire joined the fray, its spear tip waxed to thrust into the enemies of our allies with valiance and honor. I felt patriotism, sure, but mostly I wanted to defend my parents. Mum was sickly (of mind and body) and dad had lost his legs during the Boer Wars. Danny, a year younger, was the prideful one. His resolve stirred my own, and together we enlisted. Were it not for him, I don’t think I could’ve done it. Danny’s not here anymore. He was eaten a year into the whole thing...