Infected

36.

wake up we hungry

Waking up on a linoleum floor was getting to be an annoying habit. His head hurt again. This time, however, he immediately identified the pain as a hangover.

The kitchen lights glared in his eyes. He saw flies behind the clear plastic that sat in front of the fluorescent lights. The bugs had flown up there, looking to do whatever it is that bugs want to do with lights, then they got cooked, burned to a crispity-crunchity finish.

His leg ached. His stomach grumbled. Loudly. First thing in his mind (besides the bugs) was the fact that he hadn’t really eaten anything in three days. Depending, of course, on how long he’d been out this time. No sunlight filtered in from the living room, so obviously it was sometime in the evening.

Perry looked down at his leg. The bleeding had stopped. The shirt had gone from athletic gray to a sickly dried brown, a tie-dyed T-shirt suitable for Marilyn Manson.

Dried blood smears coated the linoleum floor, blackish brown against the shiny white. It looked as if a three-year-old had come in from playing in the rain, covered in puddle mud, then rolled on the floor.

His leg hurt with the dull, throbbing, pulsating pain of a recent wound struggling to heal. There was no sign of the Big Six acting up; from those areas he felt no itching, no pain. That didn’t make Perry feel any better; there was no telling what the little bastards were up to now.

“Big Six?” A rather unhealthy smile tickled the corners of Perry’s mouth. “That’s not quite right. I got another one. You’re not the Big Six anymore-now you’re the Starting Five.”

He wanted to find the fork, the one he’d used to pull the creature from his body. He wanted to see what the blue thing looked like when it wasn’t latched on to his leg like a suckling kangaroo imbedded in the pouch of its mother.

His leg not only hurt like a bitch, but felt funny in a way he couldn’t quite identify. What had the Triangle done on the way out?

Perry rolled to his stomach and struggled to rise without putting weight on his bad leg. He hopped up on his good leg and leaned on the counter, then scanned the floor for the fork. It had slid against the refrigerator.

He took one careful hop, leaned on the other counter, then stooped to pick up the fork.

“I hope it hurt, you fucker,” Perry said quietly as he examined his grisly trophy.

The Triangle looked like flaky, dried-up black seaweed wrapped around the fork in a permanent death embrace. He could barely make out the once-triangular shape, as it was now a lifeless hunk of crap without form or function.

But it wasn’t the body that held his rapt attention or made his jaw hang open with astonishment and an additional serving of fear. It wasn’t the body at all.

The creature’s tail was just as dry, light and stiff as the body, but the very end was something totally unexpected. Hooked, bony protrusions stuck out of the end like little claws or teeth. Perry gingerly touched one-sharp as a knife. As sharp as the butcher’s knife he’d used to cut into his own leg like some narcissistic cannibal. Some of the claws hooked inward; these showed visible breaks and cracks. They must have helped hold the tail to the shinbones. Five of the claws, however, pointed outward or hooked wickedly upward, toward the now-dried head.

“But how would that help hold on to anything?” Perry murmured.

“What the hell is this?”

His lip curled in revulsion as their purpose became suddenly clear. The outwardly curved hooks couldn’t help hold the tail in place-they could only cut and slash if the creature were pulled from its human burrow.

That’s why his leg had bled all over, because he’d dragged five of the quarter-inch, razor-sharp claws through the meat of his calf and out his shin.

They were a defense mechanism. Intended to hurt Perry if he tried to remove the Triangle. Now that he knew what was buried in his body, the claws served as a warning a warning of what would happen if he tried to remove any more. He’d been lucky with the leg-if one of these wicked claws had cut through an artery, it would have killed him. no try it again

Perry wondered if he should try it again, try to get the rest of them out. But brute force obviously wasn’t the way to…to…

Perry blinked a few times. His mind dry-fired, stayed blank as he tried to comprehend what had just happened.

He’d clearly heard a voice. Was he going loopy? His mind filled with vague memories of his homespun surgery and that same voice echoing through his drunken head. Great. On top of dying, now he was developing a split personality. He was going loopy. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Insane in the membrane.

“I’m crazy. That’s it. I’m apeshit crazy. That’s the only answer.” you no crazy we no think so

That one stopped Perry cold. He managed a parched swallow and ignored an untimely rumble from his underpaid belly.

The voice had said, “we no think so.”

We.

As in more than one.

As in…

As in the Starting Five.

Perry was beyond speechless-he was thoughtless.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Perry whispered. sonofabitch the voice echoed, a voice he heard as clear as day, although his ears didn’t pick up a thing. He could hear the voice in his head-no vocal characteristics or tone, just words. sonofabitch feed us

It was them. The Starting Five. They were talking in his head. Perry leaned heavily against the counter, in danger of falling to the floor as if struck by a physical blow. His rashes had turned into triangles, and now they were talking to him. Should he answer them?

Hello, Perry thought-no response. He tried concentrating, focusing. HELLO, he thought, as hard as he could. Still no response. feed us we hungry

“Feed you?”

A response slammed through his head like the roar of a Rose Bowl crowd on New Year’s Day. yes yes yes feed us we hungry

They’d answered him. Perry squinted his eyes and “thought” as loudly as he could. Why’d you answer me that time? He waited, but again heard no response. Answer me!

His stomach grumbled loudly, the sound bordering on an internal roar. Despite the shock of hearing voices in his head, he couldn’t deny the gnawing feeling in his gut.

“I’m pretty hungry myself,” Perry whispered. so are we feed us we hungry

His head lifted with final understanding. “Can you hear me?” yes we hear you

“You can talk into my head, but you can’t hear my thoughts?” we send words through your nerves your nerves no send words back are you hungry now

What escaped Perry’s mouth was somewhere between a laugh and a cry and a stutter. A sick, twisted bark of despair, a laugh that may have once echoed through Andersonville, Buchenwald or any of history’s dark places where human beings give up all hope.

Perry fought back tears, tears that welled up in response to an emotion he couldn’t define. His chest felt tight. His one good leg felt weak. He leaned heavily on the kitchen counter, head hanging down, eyes staring at the floor but seeing nothing. feed us we hungry

The voice in his head grew louder, as did the grumbling in his stomach. Sudden stabbing pains in his belly snapped him out of his grim reverie. He hadn’t eaten properly in days. Grinding hunger combined with a slight echo of sickly pink nausea. sonofabitch feed us we hungry

The voice in his head (it felt funny to use that term in all seriousness, for it was a term reserved for comedy or bad horror novels, but now it was simply accurate) gave up all attempts at sentence structure and moved toward steady chanting. feed us feedus feedusfeedusfeedus

Perry hobbled a bit to open the fridge and survey the contents. Some leftover tuna fish; a mostly empty tub of Country Crock; a mostly full jar of Hershey’s chocolate syrup; an old, slightly gamey jar of Smucker’s strawberry preserves; and-stop the presses-an unopened jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce.

Perry removed the jar from the fridge and explored the cupboard, looking for noodles. True to his current run of luck, he had none, only some Rice-A-Roni and a half-empty bag of Cost Cutter plain white rice. He also found one can of Campbell’s Pork amp; Beans, half a loaf of bread and a three-pound can of butter-flavor Crisco. What a time to realize that he’d let his shopping duties slip.

It was enough to get started, anyway-he felt so hungry he wouldn’t have turned down chocolate-covered cockroaches. He crammed two slices of bread into the toaster and another into his salivating mouth. He opened the pork and beans and took a big sniff, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes then dumped them into a bowl and tossed them in the microwave. He finished chewing the bread and stuffed another piece into his mouth before the toast came up. He immediately put in two more slices.

The microwave timer beeped insistently. Perry removed the scalding-hot bowl, grabbed his toast and hopped to the table. It was covered with blood. His blood. He decided to eat standing at the counter. He leaned over to the silverware drawer, grabbed a fork and dug in even though the beans were still hot enough to burn his tongue.

Aside from a piece of toast and some egg yolk, he’d gone days without food. His body rejoiced in the meal. The pork and beans tasted better than anything he’d ever eaten before-better than shrimp, better than steak, better than fresh lake trout.

By the time he polished off the beans and all the bread, he felt much more himself. His hunger satiated for the moment, his thoughts centered on the rather unique problem at hand. He realized that the Starting Five hadn’t made a peep since he’d started eating.

“Hey,” Perry said. He doubted anything could feel as surreal as talking to Triangles embedded in his body, which apparently talked back to him via his own nervous system.

“Hey, are you there?” yes we here

They sounded calmer, far more relaxed than when they’d complained of hunger.

“Why aren’t you talking?” He wanted to hear them talk, both because he wanted to know more about these bizarre horrors and because they had been quiet for days, and when they’d been quiet, they had grown. wait to eat food comes now

That phrase sent a shiver through his chest. He immediately understood the situation. The Triangles were like a tapeworm or something, absorbing the food he digested. Even though he had huge triangular organisms living in his body, he found the internal vampirism even more horrifying.

These critters were anchored into his muscles, tendons and skeleton, and tapped into his bloodstream like a baby cow nursing off a mother’s teat. Anger swelled up inside him, hot and tumultuous and lava-red. But as the anger brewed, so did a realization.

They couldn’t eat unless he did, which meant they weren’t feeding on him. The good news? They’re not eating you from within. The bad news? They’re growing inside you even faster thanks to a highly nutritious pork-n-beans buffet. He felt violated, like the victim of some horrible, biological rape.

He grew more aware of the pain in his body. His head hurt. His leg hurt. His stomach felt a little queasy. His eyes kept closing. He wanted to crawl into bed and give up, forget about the whole thing and let fate run its sadistic course.

He made it as far as the couch, hopping carefully on his one leg before easing himself onto the welcome and waiting cushions. The couch seemed to caress his body, sucking away his stress, taking it, perhaps, under the cushions with the dirt and loose change. Maybe he’d die in his sleep, but he couldn’t stop sleep from coming.