Story Background & Synopsis

I have done some planning for my novel. To keep myself organized I'm using a 2 year novel writing book I picked up a while ago and smushing the week long assignments into one (or two for the short ones!) a day. If I stay on schedule, cross my fingers, I'll finish with a day to spare so I can celebrate Halloween and maybe start my novel at midnight depending on where I am. SO! Without further ado, I will introduce my novel's plot.

North America and most of Central America have been lost to a group of mutated humans. The outbreak starts in a town I hold much love for, Wichita, KS. The mutations begin when people who are listening to music in Wichita begin to hypnotically dance. If they or the music source is interfered with, they become violent until the music is returned and they are allowed to dance again. This stage is short lived. They begin the first steps of the conversion with aggressive hair growth throughout the body, the restructuring of their jaws to allow for large fangs, and accelerated growth of finger and toenails. Once the transformation begins, the person becomes aggressive with those around them due to the mistaken belief that the others are causing the pain associated with the transformation. The aggression is particularly centered on anyone not transforming. Once the initial set of people are exposed in Wichita, the transformations are transmitted by listening to music sang or played by one of the transformed creatures.

Though the transformations are too quick to spread to other areas via air or ship travel without being discovered well before reaching the destination, authority powers throughout the world had to immediately implement search procedures for anything which could contain a recording of the creature's music. In most public places any visible speakers, radios, or related music paraphernalia has been vandalized to the point of uselessness or removed by the owner. In a hasty panic, some people have made themselves and their families deaf. As society moves further away from noises, many people begin learning sign language. Many countries sent troops to South America to stop the spread of the creatures, and were successful in creating a solid line of defense at the Panama Canal.

The main story occurs seven years after the initial transformations. A cure has been found for those creatures who have been exposed to the music created by the creatures. Nobody knows if it will work on the creatures who heard the original music, and it cannot make creatures who were born as creatures into humans. They will travel from Panama to Wichita via the Pan-American Highway and establish a base camp in Wichita. Once there, their task (should they choose to accept it...and they do) is to study the phenomena there to see if the original music is reproducible and to capture creatures from the original exposure to test the cure on.

I have a few characters already, but they need a tad bit more fleshing out before I can give you a peek.