Rice Of Cannibals

Abraham was on the way to the Herald lab where he was working as a scientist. He was returning to work after enjoying the holidays with his parents. The laboratory was situated in a small village named Rampur about thirty miles away from Indore city. He is a member of a team of scientists working on a project. He was warned against telling anybody outside the laboratory about the project. The Herald wanted to keep it secret.

As Abraham started from home early, he was not in hurry. In addition, he was used to driving his car slowly for he don't want to get hurt in an accident.

when he arrived at the Herald, he didn't find the guard on the post. The company had a guard at the entrance gate of the laboratory. The gate was opened. He drove his car to the parking. Seeing the cars of all of his fellows, he thought all of his fellows were on duty. On the left of the parking, the red roses were blooming in a flower bed. He likes roses and was waiting for roses to bloom. These red roses reminded him of a special thing and he did not help but smile.

He proceeded to enter the laboratory. the laboratory was a two-storey building extended in about fifteen thousand square feet and surrounded by a high barb-wired wall. There was no window in the first storey. Only had ventilators. The second story had three small windows. Between the high wall and the building, there was a beautiful front garden and a parking place. There was a dense forest behind the building and there was a big farmhouse in front of the Herald.

Rampur was about a mile away from the Herald. Rampur was a small village having a population of two thousand people. The Herald was almost a secluded place. The villagers had no interest in the lab and they didn't like to do near the lab.

There are about twenty employees in the lab. A team consisting of six scientists including Abraham was involved in an important and secret project. All of them were prominent in their fields.

Opening the iron door, he entered the laboratory. Passing through the entryway, he reached the chamber of Dr Sameer. He knocked at the door. Finding no response from Sameer, he pushed open the door and entered the chamber. He found nobody inside and he found books and stationery scattered on the floor. A cupboard, chair, and a broken laptop were fallen on the floor. All was as if there had been a clash in the chamber. He got cautious and began to look around. All of a sudden his eye fell on the splashes of blood on the walls of the chamber. His eyes then fell on the floor at a corner and he found the spots of blood there. He got afraid and run out of the chamber. He entered the second chamber and here he found all the things of the chamber were broken and scattered on the floor. When his eyes fell on a table in a corner, a chill ran down his spine and he began to scream in fear. There was a head amid the thick spot of blood on the table. He ran out of the chamber screaming.

He was so frightened and confused. He didn't know what to do and where to go. He rushed to his car and closed himself in it. It took him some minutes to overcome his fear and be calm. He thought for a while and then he called the police.

It was very hard for him to remain there where his fellows were brutally attacked and one of the fellows was brutally beheaded. The head was of Miss. Anuradha. A brilliant and young scientist. He didn't know who did this murder. He didn't even know what happened to the rest of the fellows, Whether they were alive or not. He began to think about what could be behind the incident. All of a sudden a thought came to his brain. He decided to go into those special underground chambers to check whether all is well there. He came out of the car and moved cautiously to the laboratory. His heart was beating very fast and his body was shaking with fear but he thought this was necessary to look into those chambers at least once all is fine there. He entered the laboratory and proceeded to the lift which would take him to the underground chambers. On the way, he stopped at the cabin of project leader Dr. Ajeet. He found the cabin empty, all the records, equipment, and a computer were not there. When he entered the laboratory, he found all the types of equipment broken and shattered on the floor. He thought that it must be a case of robbery and murder.

When he was about to open the door of the lift, he heard footfalls. Before he could turn to see whose footfalls it were, someone strike him from behind with something heavy on the head and he fell on the floor and lost his consciousness.

inspector Pratap along with three Constables reached the Herald. To his strange, he found no one there. "Where is that man named Abraham who called me?" He told to his men. They entered the Herald and took an intensive search and they recovered three more dead bodies in addition to the head of lady scientist Anuradha. They search the whole building for hours to collect pieces of evidence.

The next day, all the news channels were telecasting the news about this incident in the Herald. In the state, everybody was talking about the Herald. The management of the company was silent over the incident. No statement from the company. No officials from the company were available to give answers being asked by the media. The police department assigned the case to Inspector Pratap for investigation.

After barking some days on this incident, the media found another topic for barking and forgot this incident. Families of those employees who were missing were searching for them. Nobody knew whether these scientists were alive or not. Several weeks passed but Pratap and his team were still clueless. There was no eyewitness of this incident. Only the post mortem reports of deceased employees were available which said that they were killed in cold blood and then eaten. The carnivorous animal could eat the dead bodies but who destroyed the laboratory? who beheaded Anuradha? and where are other employees? All these questions were unsolved. As per the forest department, there were no carnivorous animals in the forest around the Herald lab and Rampur.

One day Pratap got a call from the Rampur police station that one of the missing scientists named Abraham was found seriously injured on a farm of Rampur and he was referred to the city hospital for treatment. Pratap immediately reached the hospital. But Abraham was not in the condition of giving any statement.

Pratap was waiting eagerly for the recovery by Abraham so that he could take his statements. He was the only source of knowing what was going on in the laboratory.

One night Pratap got a call from the hospital that Abraham attacked a nurse on duty. He rushed to the hospital. Upon reaching the hospital he found that Abraham had run away from the spot. The attack a violent and brutal. The nurse got seriously injured and lost her three fingers. As per an eyewitness Abraham tried to eat the nurse's fingers.

The doctor who was treating Abraham said that all of a sudden Abraham got aggressive and attacked the nurse without any provocation.

Meanwhile, in Rampur, the cattle in the village began to disappear especially at night. Villagers began to guard their cattle. One night two people who were grading their cattle went disappeared. The matter was reported to the Rampur police station. The body parts of one of the missing people were found in the forest. The police registered the case of murder. The cases of missing cattle and people and recoveries of half-eaten dead bodies were increasing with each passing day in the Rampur and other nearby villages. Several rumors were flying in the villages about it. Some were saying it was the act of carnivorous animals and man-eaters and some were saying it was the act of ghosts. People stopped going out of houses at night. Being failed in handling the situation, the local police sought help from higher police officials.

The matter was assigned to inspector Pratap. Now Pratap had two mysteries to solve. Both the mysteries involved the killing of people. Pratap believed that there was a connection between both the mysteries.

Pratap formed a team consisting of sub-inspector Shankar and fifty constables and set off for Rampur. They also took a sniffer dog with them.

After running away from the hospital, Abraham remained hidden for three days in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. Now he was not as he had been before. Whatever had happened to him that day in the Herald, changed his life forever. He could feel these changes, but he could not do anything. One day he felt a strong desire to see his wife and that day at late night he came out of the hiding place.

It was after midnight, Daisy, the wife of Abraham was in her home alone. Sleep was far away from her eyes. She was a professor of biology in a college. After the disappearance of her husband, she was sad and was doing all she could in search of her husband. Hearing the call bell, she thought for a moment that it might be her husband and she opened the door. To her great surprise, it was her husband Abraham. She began to cry with joy. She was so happy at the sudden arrival of her husband that she forget the advice of Pratap to inform the police immediately if her husband happened to arrive home. Abraham said to Daisy that he was hungry. She went to the kitchen to prepare something for him.

After two days when her housemaid came home to work, she found the door opened and Daisy was nowhere. she found blood spots in the kitchen.

Here Peatap camped at the Rampur and began the investigation. People from Rampur and other adjacent villages were coming to tell what was happening.

Pratap visited the spots at Rampur and the adjacent forest where the dead bodies of people were recovered and looked for any evidence but found nothing. He took the report from the forest department for the presence of carnivorous animals in the forest. As per the forest ranger, there are only some monkeys, rabbits, and wild boars in the forest. Forest ranger also reported the finding of some strange footprints near a stream in the forest. Pratap visited the spot and took a photograph of the footprints. These footprints were the same in shape as that of humans. But they were different in size and number of toes. They were bigger and they had only four toes on each foot.

On the way to the village, Shanker asked Pratap, "what do you think about these footprints?"

Pratap said, "these are certainly not the footprints of tiger, bear, wolf, and apes. Whose else can these footprints be?"

Nobody has the answer to this question.

He said to Shanker, "it is a creature with four toes in each leg who is behind all these incidents."

The next morning an old man came to the village by car. He was enquiring the villagers about a woman who was working as the Herald and was his daughter. The headman sent him to the Pratap. He was thin, sad, and worried. Seeing Pratap he came to the point without any formality. He said, "are you inspector Pratap?"

Pratap said, "yes, what can I do for you?"

He without any formality began to say, "I am in search of my missing daughter Neelima who works as a scientist in the Herald. Something went wrong in the laboratory and since then she is missing. Her mobile phone is switched off. Dead bodies of some employees were recovered. All other employees are missing. My daughter is one of those missing employees. God knows what happened to her." He paused to wipe his tears.

Pratap said to him, "You came to the right person. I am investigating that matter. Please tell me all you know about the Herald and your daughter."

The old man took out a photograph from his pocket and gave it to Pratap and said, "this is the photo of Nileema, my daughter."

Pratap looked at the photo. She was a young and attractive girl of age around thirty years. Then he asked the old man some questions. The old man was a retired professor from Bhopal, a metro city. He told Pratap that his daughter was a genetic engineer and she was working on a project related to human genes in this lab.

All of a sudden a thought came to Pratap and he said to him, "can you tell me on what topic of human genes she was working on?"

The old man thought for a moment or two and then said, "once she told me that her team was working on altering the genetic makeup of humans to make the humans more powerful and intelligent. That is all she told me about her work."

Pratap thought for a while and then said, "I need to know more about the experiments being carried out in the Usher. Do you know someone else in the laboratory?"

The old man said, "I know the guard but he too was missing." The old man remained silent for a while and then said, "she has the habit of diary writing. I have her diary which she forgot in the home in Bhopal in a hurry to catch the train. I think it would be useful to your investigation. In this diary, she wrote many things about the laboratory. " saying so he took out a diary from his travelling bag and gave it to Pratap.

Pratap thanked him for giving him the diary and note down his address and assured him to inform him if he get any information about his daughter.

Shankar read the diary carefully. She was a good writer with beautiful handwriting. He read on a page that Rehana gave birth to four children but she did not mention who Rehana is. On another page, she wrote all the children of Sakina are growing rapidly but did not mention who is Sakina. She wrote on a page about the rapid growth rate and behaviour of adolescents. It was clear that there were some people other than staff members were living in the Usher.

The next day, Pratap told Shanker about the diary and asked him, "in your opinion who can be these people in the lab?"

Shanker thought for a while and said, "I think these people might be volunteers on whom the experiments and testing were being carried out. And it might be possible that these people are behind all what happened in the lab."

Pratap said, "and we do not have any information about these people. We did not find any document related to research work being carried out in the laboratory. Several types of equipment had been broken and destroyed. It appears that someone had tried to destroy the evidence."

Shanker said, "and someone killed the scientists to keep all the experiment secret."

They once more went to the Herald in search of the evidence but returned empty-handed.

Due to night patrolling, there was a sharp decline in the cases in the Rampur and other villages. But the area of activities of these new creatures was increasing rapidly.

One day Pratap and Shanker were passing through a hamlet fifteen miles from Rampur during their night patrol. The way was narrow and dark, with no street light or light from the huts. All of a sudden, Pratap saw in the light of the headlamp of the jeep that someone was standing along the way and was waving a hand to stop. Pratap took his pistol out and ordered the driver to stop the jeep.

The jeep stopped near it. Pratap saw it was a woman. The woman came to the Pratap and begged, "please save me, they are behind me." Pratap opened the door and looked at that woman in the light of the pocket torch. Her face seemed familiar to him. He asked her, "who are you and what are you doing here in this forest?"

She replied, "I am Nileema. An employee of the usher. "

And he recalled that he had seen her face in the photograph given to him by that old man.

He immediately took her in the jeep. He said to her, "don't be afraid. You are now safe and tell me all what happened in the Usher that day and what type of experiments were being carried out in the lab."

She remained silent for a few moments as if she were trying to calm herself and thinking of where to start her story. And she began to reveal the mystery.

She said, "we were working in the Herald for the improvement of the human race using genetic modification. We got success in creating more powerful, agile, and wiser humans but something went wrong in the experiment and this generically modified human became cannibals. We want to destroy these types of humans but our headquarter did not allow us to do so. There is another characteristic of these humans that they have a great reproduction rate and a very short gestation period of only one month. That will certainly help them in increasing in number."

Pratap asked her, "and what happened at the Usher and how?"

She replied, "At first the behaviour and the diet of these generically modified humans were the same as those of normal humans. But after some time the behaviour of these GM humans began to change. They got aggressive and their canines grew larger than normal humans. They began to deny to eat vegetables."

She paused for a moment and took a heavy breath and said, "one day all of a sudden one of these GM humans got aggressive and attacked an employee who was serving them food. He tore the flesh from the body of the employee and chewed it." And she paused.

Pratap questioned, "and then?"

She said, "we reported the matter to the headquarter. Headquarter ordered us to remain silent on this incident."

She paused and thought for a little while and said, "the employee who was attacked got ill. We want to send him to the hospital for treatment but the headquarter sent a team of doctors to treat him in the laboratory. Meantime one more incident of attack happened and one more employee got injured and later fell ill. But the headquarter still forced us to be silent."

She looked at Pratap and said, "then happened what we had not thought even in our wildest dream. One night all these GM humans revolted and came out of their chambers and began rioting. They killed and ate many employees. The GM humans now became cannibals. I somehow managed to flee from the lab and took refugee here in a hut."

Pratap was returning to camp in Rampur with Nileema. He told her about his meeting with her father. She was very happy to hear this. All of a sudden, they saw some people standing on the road. The driver blew the horn to remove them. But they did not move aside. When the jeep came nearer to these people, Nileema began to scream in fear, and Pratap and the driver got shocked. Before they were the GM humans with stark white, heavily built bodies and long and protruding canines. They were looking like a monster. Pratap ordered the driver to stop the jeep and took put his revolver and opened fire on them. Hearing the sound of firing, the other following jeeps stopped and the policemen began to jump out and took the position.

These GM humans were armed with sticks, stones, and knives. pelting stones. They rushed the police. Pratap was in no mood of leaving these monsters. But they prove smart fighters, they quickly retreated and taking positions behind the trees and thickets, began to pelt stones and sticks at police. Someone hiding behind thickets began gun firing at the Police party. Immediately the police party began to retaliate. The fight lasted for about half an hour. They couldn't stand gun firing by police and retreated in the dark forest. Police searched the area and recovered ten dead bodies of GM humans and arrested five injured. Police also recovered the dead bodies of those who were firing guns at police. They were nobody else but Abraham and his wife. Why did Abraham and his wife go with those cannibals and attack the police? Nobody had an answer to this question.

Neelima's father was still in Rampur. He got very happy to see her daughter alive and unhurt. The dead and injured GM humans were sent to high-tech laboratories for scientific studies.

The news of the creation of a GM human who was cannibal by the Herald spread like a wildfire. The company had to face severe criticism. Governments were taking legal action against the company. After various tests and experiments, scientists found a special protein in the saliva of the cannibals which was responsible for making normal humans cannibals. The protein comes into contact with normal humans when a cannibal bites them. Once entered into the human body via cut or wound, the protein affects the brain in such a way that a normal human becomes a cannibal. This finding was dreadful for nobody knew how many normal humans had been attacked by the cannibals.

The incidents of attack by cannibals were spreading rapidly in other cities and towns despite heavy deployment of forces. The number of cannibals was increasing, With each bite by the cannibals on normal humans.

Within a few days, there was havoc in the streets of many cities and towns. Hundreds of remote villages were attacked and destroyed by the cannibals. Thousands of people bitten by the cannibals became cannibals. And these cannibals were capturing the cities and snatching the weapons from the defeated forces.

Pratap was fighting with extraordinary bravery to protect the Rampur from the cannibals. One evening he got news from the headquarters that the cannibals had captured the suburban area where his family lived. Forces got failed in an attempt to recapture the area and the cannibals were making people prisoners. Hearing this news Pratap was nervous. He decided to go there with some of his men. But all of a sudden, a mob of cannibals attacked the camp. The fight lasted till the next morning. He and his men fought bravely but could not save Rampur. They had to retreat.

He along with his men left Rampur and moved to the city. Reaching the city he found the situation was out of control. Streets were covered with dead bodies and blood. People were fleeing to safer places. He somehow managed to reach the street by the evening where his home was. He found all the homes in closing his home had been burnt Nothing left except ruins, smoke, and ash. Being shocked he was staring at the ruin of his home. All of a sudden he heard the footfalls and growling, he turned and saw it was his wife. He began to shiver to see her condition. There were several wounds in her body given by the cannibals. She was now a cannibal ready to attack him. She grabbed at him but he ducked and began to run away from her. She was behind him. When he reached the next street, a mob of cannibals was behind him to make him a cannibal. Soon he will be engulfed by this mob and become a part of this mob. The sun was about to set like human civilization and the darkness was spreading in the streets like these cannibals.