Infected

by Scott Sigler

  Can we see? Show us.

  He hopped to the junk drawer. In the back was a much-abused Michigan road map. Most of the Upper Peninsula was obscured by a huge ink stain in the rough shape of a kidney bean, but it didn’t mar the map’s southern area. He found Wahjamega in the “thumb” area that was Michigan’s hand shape. He folded the map a few times, leaving Wahjamega visible, then found a pen (one that didn’t leak) and circled the town. Perry scrawled, This is the place. The phrase, and the circled town, seemed to call to him, and he wondered why he had written the words.

  He turned his arm so that the Triangle could see the map.

  There was a pause, then a brief flicker of the searching sound, and then overflow emotion exploded in his body.

  Yes that’s it!

  That’s it!

  We must go to Wahjamega!

  Their joy felt exquisite, all-encompassing, a drug that instantly roared through his veins and pulsated in his brain. The strange symbol again filled his world.

  A pattern of lines and angles. The image seemed to swell before his eyes, glow with power like some mystical talisman. Everything else faded away, the world turned to black, leaving only the symbol floating before him, powerful and undeniable. This was Triangle overflow, he knew, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want it to stop. The symbol was their purpose, their meaning for existence. They wanted it more than they wanted food or even survival.

  They have to build this, and I have to help them, help them build…it’s so beautiful…

  Perry shook his head, fought his way out of the narcotic trance. His breath came in short gasps. The fear again, but different this time, different because he’d actually wanted to help them. They’d been in his thoughts before, but never so bad as that.

  He realized he was holding a knife in his left hand. The map lay on the counter, drops of blood blocking towns like the craters of some nuclear bomb run. He saw that the knife tip was bloody before he felt the pain. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, he slowly turned his head to examine the underside of his right forearm.

  In that short trance, he’d carved the symbol into his skin. Three inches long, it shimmered in wet red lines. The deep scratches oozed a little blood that trickled down in thin rivulets, rolling past either side of his thick biceps. He hadn’t felt a thing. He stared at his handiwork:

  The Triangles wanted to go to Wahjamega, needed to go the way a junkie needs another fix. Wanted to go to Wahjamega and build something this symbol represented, whatever the hell that was. If they wanted something that badly, it couldn’t be good for him. But he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The Soldiers were coming, and at this point one direction seemed as good as the next. The important thing was to get the flying fuck out of the apartment.

  Putting his exhaustion up on a mental shelf, he hopped to the bedroom. That strange smell hit him again. A nasty smell, a rotting smell. This time it didn’t waft away on some invisible air current, but lingered. He ignored it—he had more important things to worry about.

  He hauled a duffel bag out of the bedroom closet, then thought better of it and grabbed his backpack. Nothing big, just the nylon one he’d used to haul books around campus a million years ago. He imagined that hopping with a weighted duffel bag hanging from one arm might prove difficult.

  As he put the backpack on his bed, he saw that it glistened with spots of wet blood. It took him a few seconds to register that the sticky red smear had come from his hands.

  He was still covered in blood, both Bill’s and his own.

  Time was a factor; he knew that far too well. After all, there was a man crucified to his living-room wall. A dead guy with friends and coworkers who wore snappy little uniforms and who would love nothing more than to put several bullets into Perry’s diseased body, but he couldn’t go outside covered in blood and gore.

  He quickly hopped to the bathroom and stripped his clothes. They were soiled with blood, both wet and flaky-dry. Perry felt the burst of overflow excitement as the Triangles in his back, his arm and in…in…in other places…looked upon the world together for the first time.

  There wasn’t time for a full-out shower; a naked sink-washing would have to suffice. Besides, he didn’t even want to look in the tub and see the floating remnants of the scabs that heralded the start of this waking nightmare.

  The last clean washcloth quickly turned pink as he scrubbed the blood from his body. Flakes of dry blood fell into the running water. He turned off the sink, let the washcloth fall to the floor, grabbed a towel and started drying off.

  It was at that moment he noticed his shoulder.

  Or rather he noticed the mold.

  The mold was under the Band-Aids, green gossamer tufts peeking out past plastic edges. The fine little hairs looked like the last downy strands growing on an old man’s head before baldness finally takes hold.

  That’s where the strange smell had been coming from: his shoulder. The musty, rotten scent filled the bathroom. The Band-Aids remained firmly affixed to his wound, but under the strip he saw something else, something black and wet and horrible.

  The Band-Aids had to come off. He had to see what was in there. Perry used his fingernails to pull a small corner of Band-Aid off his skin, enough for him to get a good thumb-and-forefinger grip, then slowly tore it off.

  The flap of skin peeled back; a gummy ribbon of stagnant black goo ran down his chest, hot at first, and ice cold by the time it had reached his stomach. The smell that had only hinted at its power during the past day was now released, a satanic genie billowing out of a bottle; it filled the bathroom like a cloud of death.

  The dead stench instantly made Perry’s stomach turn inside out—he spewed bile into the sink, where some of it mingled with the running water from the tap and headed down the drain. Perry stared at the wound, not even bothering to wipe the vomit from his mouth and chin.

  There was more of the viscous muck packed in the wound, like black currant jelly at the bottom of a half-empty jar. The dead Triangle had rotted. Horror stole his breath and made his heart hammer a triple-time beat of desperation.

  The consistency resembled a rotten pumpkin a month after Halloween—pasty, runny and decomposing. Green tufts of the same gossamer mold spotted both the wound and the dead Triangle. Shiny black rot clung to the mold filaments.

  The most disturbing part of the image in the mirror? He wasn’t sure if all the rot came from the dead Triangle’s fork-punctured corpse. Some of the green mold looked as if it grew right out of his skin, like a creeping, crawling messenger of demise.

  The sink’s running hot water slowly clouded the mirror. In a daze, Perry wiped the steam clear—and found himself face-to-face with his father.

  Jacob Dawsey looked haggard and gray. He had sunken eyes and thin, smiling lips that revealed his big teeth. He looked as he had in the hours before Captain Cancer finally stole him away.

  Perry blinked, then fiercely rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them his father still stared back. Somewhere in his brain, Perry knew he was hallucinating, but it didn’t make the experience any less real.

  His father spoke.

  “You always were a quitter, boy,” Jacob Dawsey said, his voice the same thick growl that always preceded a beating. “You get a little booboo and now you want to give up? You make me sick.”

  Perry felt hot tears well in his eyes. He blinked them back—hallucination or no, he wouldn’t cry in front of his father.

  “Go away, Daddy. You’re dead.”

  “Dead and still more of a man than you’ll ever be, boy. Look at you—you want to give up, let ’em win, let ’em put you down.”

  Perry felt anger surge. “What the hell am I supposed to do? They’re inside me, Daddy! They’re eatin’ me up from the inside!”

  Jacob Dawsey grinned, his thin, emaciated face showing the teeth of a skeleton. “You gonna let ’em do that to you, boy? You gonna let ’em win? Stop acting like a woman and do something about it.” The steam steadily clouded the mirr
or, slowly obscuring Jacob Dawsey’s face. “You hear me, boy? You hear me? You do somethin’ about it!”

  The mirror clouded over. Perry wiped at it, but now only his own face stared back. Daddy was right. Daddy had always been right; Perry had been a fool to try and escape what he was. In a violent world, only the strong survive.

  Perry took a slow, deep breath, and prepared his mind for what he had to do.

  Time to get his game-face on.

  61.

  THE CALL (PART TWO)

  Officer Ed McKinley turned left onto Washtenaw Avenue and headed east toward Ypsilanti. Traffic slowed all around the Ann Arbor police cruiser, just a touch, even for people who traveled at the speed limit. In the passenger seat, Officer Brian Vanderpine stared out the window, far more alert and attentive than usual.

  “Eight dead,” Brian said. “Man, that’s a lot.”

  “That’s the tenth time you’ve said that, Brian,” Ed said. “How about you give it a rest?”

  “I just can’t get over this. Shit like this doesn’t happen in Ann Arbor.”

  “Well it does now,” Ed said. “I’m not surprised, really. We’ve got foreigners from all over the damn planet going to school here. And every last one of them thinks America is evil.”

  “Yeah, we’re evil, but they sure are happy to come here and get an education from us.”

  Ed snorted. “Yeah. I guess the schools aren’t evil, just everything else about our culture. Funny how that works out so well for them.”

  “I would love to find the bastard responsible for all this,” Brian said.

  “You think the feds know what they’re doing?”

  Ed shrugged. “I dunno. Something fishy is going on, that’s for sure. They show up exactly when this shit goes down. Not before. We get no warning, just a body count.”

  The radio squawked: “Car seventeen, come back.”

  Brian grabbed the handset and thumbed the “talk” button. “Car seventeen here, go ahead.”

  “How far are you from the Windywood apartment complex?”

  “We’re heading east on Washtenaw at Baldwin,” Brian answered. “Only a couple of minutes away from Windywood. What’s up?”

  “Disturbing the peace. Complaint is from an Al Turner who lives in apartment B-303. Says the guy below him is screaming and has been for days. The screamer is listed as Perry Dawsey, apartment B-203.

  Brian turned to look at Ed, a quizzical look on his face. “Perry Dawsey. Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “I wonder if that’s the same kid that played linebacker for U of M a few years ago.”

  Brian again thumbed the “talk” button. “Roger, Dispatch, we’ll check it out.”

  “Be advised,” the dispatcher said. “Complainant says Dawsey is very large and potentially dangerous.”

  “Roger that. Car seventeen out.” Brian hung up the handset.

  Ed frowned. “Very large and potentially dangerous? That sure sounds like the Perry Dawsey I saw play.”

  Brian squinted against the bright winter sun. He remembered watching U of M’s “Scary” Perry Dawsey. “Very large and dangerous” certainly fit the bill. It was just a disturbing-the-peace, but he didn’t like the sound of this call, not one bit.

  62.

  PLAY THROUGH THE PAIN

  In through the nose, out through the mouth. One last, deep breath.

  Focus.

  Play through the pain.

  Perry reached up with his right hand and sank his fingers deep into the wound. He didn’t bother trying to control his screams of pain, he just hooked the fingers and scooped. Fingernails scraping hard against his open flesh, he yanked the Triangle’s squishy black corpse out of his body. The tail offered only minute resistance before it broke off, weakened by rot that had turned the body into little more than paste. Perry tossed the handful of gore into the sink, where it landed in the trails of puke and steaming water.

  He scooped twice more, screaming anew each time, grabbing everything he could out of the wound. Blood again poured down his chest, running down his crotch, down his inner thighs to form small puddles on the floor.

  Pain filled his mind, rusty barbed wire wrapped tightly around his soft brain, but he knew he had to stop the bleeding. Stop it fast. He stared at the wound—it was now a fist-size hole, and quite a bit beyond the abilities of simple Band-Aids.

  He scooped up the bloody washcloth from the floor and hopped into the kitchen. He pressed the cloth to the wound, jamming it painfully into the hole, trying to stem the flow of blood. The duct tape was in the junk drawer, silver and big and ever so sticky. He had to let go of the wound so he could use both hands to tear off big strips of tape, which he stuck to the edge of the counter.

  He again crammed the washcloth deep into the gaping, bleeding wound. He lashed a piece of tape on top of the cloth, then stuck it firmly to his back and chest. Repeating the process five more times, he had a duct-tape starburst with arms spreading out from the wound, over his shoulder, over his chest, down his chest and under his arm. Wasn’t exactly the Mayo Clinic, but, as Daddy used to say, good enough for who it’s for.

  Bill’s friends would be here any minute.

  It was time to go.

  He used a handful of paper towels to wipe the blood off his body as he hopped for the bedroom. He jammed clothes into the backpack. Two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, a sweatshirt and all the clean underwear and socks he could find.

  With one leg rendered nearly useless and his left shoulder screaming with pain every time he moved, he pulled on his jeans. Each second was an eternity of anxiety; he expected the door to crash inward, smashed open by one of those heavy door rammers you see on Cops when the police break into yet another slime pit of a house. The door rammer (on which some clever soul would stencil the witty words knock-knock) would be followed by goons in biowarfare suits, every inch of their bodies covered so they wouldn’t come into contact with the Triangles. They’d be toting big-ass guns, and they’d have itchy trigger fingers.

  He threw on a black Oakland Raiders sweatshirt and struggled with socks and hiking boots, his ravaged leg making even this simple task difficult.

  Perry wanted a weapon, anything he could get his hands on, something to let him go down fighting, go down like a Dawsey. In the kitchen, he tossed the whole knife rack, Chicken Scissors and all, into his backpack. He grabbed his keys and coat. He didn’t even give a second glance at Bill, who still stared blankly at the carpet.

  Bill, rudely enough, didn’t bother to get up and see him out.

  Perry left the apartment, his eyes scanning up and down the hall, looking for Soldiers. He saw no one. He realized he’d left the map inside, but he didn’t need it—if he made it out of Ann Arbor alive, he knew exactly where he was going. He started to move down the hall, which was still bloody from his battle with Bill, when the Triangles spoke again.

  And their words stunned him. It was the worst thing he’d heard yet.

  A hatching is coming.

  63.

  HOWDY, NEIGHBOR (PART THREE)

  A hatching is coming!

  Perry’s mouth went dry. His face flushed with hot blood, he felt his very soul shrivel and blacken like an ant burned by a magnifying glass. Hatching. It was coming. He’d been right, it was like the caterpillar and the wasps—he’d served his purpose, and now it was time for their gruesome exit.

  His big body began to shiver uncontrollably.

  “You’re hatching?”

  Not us,

  someone else is nearby nearby.

  He felt a minor wave of relief combined with a trace of hope—not the hope that he had been saved, but the feeling that there was someone else, someone in the same predicament, someone like him who could understand.

  Perry hopped toward the stairs that led to the outside door. He didn’t notice his foot hit the blood-soaked carpet; subsequent hops left a string of footprints with wet red traces that echoed his boot’s tread pattern.

  It felt good to
be dressed again. He’d felt scummy all covered in blood, in clothes that should have been incinerated rather than washed. He was dressed and getting out of the apartment that had held him prisoner for days.

  His shoulder throbbed loudly where he’d scooped out the rotting Triangle. The jostling backpack straps pulled against the washcloth and the wound, but the duct tape held firm. It was going to be a bitch removing that “bandage.” Maybe he’d be dead by then, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

  We’re hungry.

  Feed us feed us.

  Perry ignored their words, concentrating instead on managing the stairs. He leaned heavily against the sturdy metal rail, cautiously taking one step at a time. It was amazing how much easier things were when you had two feet.

  Feed us now.

  Feed us now a hatching is coming. A hatching!

  “Just shut up. I don’t have any food.”

  He made it to the ground floor without incident. After days in the cramped apartment, it would be nice to be back outside again, no matter what the weather—it could be the burning pits of hell past that door, and he’d hop out whistling “Singin’ in the Rain.”

  A wave of overflow panic hit him, a blindside tackle that had his adrenaline level soaring before he realized the fear wasn’t his own.

  “What is it? What’s happening?”

  Columbo is coming!

  Columbo is coming!