We trudged back to the "office" in companionable not-silence.
"Gods, you smell too!" he said to me.
"I got the picture, dork. Now leave me alone for a minute. I'm thinking." I responded.
Thinking I definitely was. Neckerts weren't common in North American folklore. Sure, a lot of Germans immigrated to the United States, but it was like 200 years ago or more by now. Even the most traditional of families wouldn't have kept something so minor as neckerts in their lore for this long. Sheesh. I think the only thing I found in my research on them before dunking my head under this particular bit of water, was one source from about 1600. So why were they here and now?
Granted, lots of random folklore nasties have been showing up since the Change. But most of the appearances have been more run of the mill stuff from popular legends. I think the Change took the legends that were most common in a particular area and used them for fodder. I'm not sure if that's true in other countries or not, considering I can't get there anymore. But since they're out of touch, I can make up any damn explanation I really want to.
I was too young to remember the horror that some people experienced when all the technology just stopped working. Everything manmade that required power of any sort became defunct all at once. That horror was secondary, however, to the real one.
I hear it started in Iowa, just like the old political caucuses used to. Some kind of virus mutated and started this whole trend that led us into fairytale hell. The only ones really spared were either the products of random genetic recombination, or the nerds like me and Andrew. You can't get social diseases if you're totally antisocial. I'm just glad that it had such a short lifespan. Once it wiped out most of the human population, it lost it's virulence. Basically the results of the virus' action could breed on their own, so it no longer needed to spread.
People would come home and find a family member transformed into some nightmare beast and then that was the end of thinking altogether. Each family member attacked their loved ones first. Most couldn't figure out the way door handles worked with claws or hooves anyway and so had to wait for some bonehead to come home and open the door. The lucky ones starved to death in their new state before anyone could come for them. There was quite a range in metabolisms of the freshly minted monsters. Some could linger for years without eating, while a few could only make it about 24-48 hours.
