The Melting

by Christopher Coleman

  “I have a weapon,” I say, and then I take another step forward.

  The crab stares at me for a beat, but then, as instinctually as the others did when I stepped down from the RV just a few minutes earlier, it begins to walk backwards, lurching, ungraceful in its movements. The wrinkle of terror that shone in the eyes of the outside crabs appears above the one I’ve got in my sights now.

  And for this crab, there is nowhere to run. He’s trapped.

  It starts to move quickly now, stumbling over its bare feet, and then it turns to run forward and, not seeming to understand its environment, slams shoulder-first into the giant receiving door, the rattle of metal ringing through the cavernous room like a gong.

  The crab loses its footing and falls to the ground, slipping at first as it scrambles back to its feet, wheezing in fear, growling in terror at no one in particular.

  “Dom!” Smalley screams.

  I’m only a foot away from the crab now when it finally looks up at me, its expression morphing entirely into anger as it bears its teeth, threatening.

  “Bring it, bitch,” I say, barely whispering as I mouth the words.

  The crab lunges at me, erupting from its crouching position like some giant albino frog, its arms stretched, fingers grasping as it reaches for my throat.

  I feel the cold tips of thin fingers brush against my Adam’s apple, but they never find their aim. I dodge them with a confident bob of my head, narrowly escaping the grip of the crab’s talons as I lean back, my feet never moving from their spot, avoiding the full reach of the crab’s arms like a boxer avoiding a wild left hook.

  The crab stays on its feet, and its momentum sends it stumbling toward me. But having missed its mark, it’s now off balance, out of control, and almost falls face first. It places the palms of its hands on the floor to stay upright, and I turn toward it, pivoting so that the back of the crab’s head is now directly below me. For an instant it looks as if the creature has bowed before me in defeat.

  But that isn’t what the position means at all. There is no submission coming from this monster. Feeling trapped, unable to escape the fire of the flare, its only instinct now is to kill the threat. To kill me. And I can see in the veracity of its movements that it will continue to fight until either I’m dead or its path to safety is clear.

  But I have no intention of allowing the beast to leave, and I’m willing to take the challenge to the death. But I know it won’t come to that. Not today. I’ve discovered something. I know something about their weakness that I didn’t know an hour ago. A new hope has sprung up within me, a new hope about survival and escape from this prison camp of Warren and Maripo County.

  And the only way I can be sure that my new weapon is as powerful as these creatures would lead me to believe is to use it.

  These thoughts all occur in a fraction of a second, and the crab is still bent down in front of me, its face to the ground, exposing the back of its skull and neck to the sky. Finally, it turns its head up slowly toward me, inhumanly twisting its neck until the ghost’s eyes are staring up at me, shimmering in their sockets, vibrating with anger.

  I see the tension in its thighs as it makes a move to stand straight, to lift its head back up to eye level. Its mouth is fully open, teeth chomping like a piranha, exactly like the crab locked in the cage of the gift shop.

  Without an utterance or a breath or a single moment of doubt, I plunge the flare down into the thing’s forehead, stabbing the sizzling fuse directly between the crab’s eyes. And then, with the strength and will of demonic possession, I twist the tip of the flare back and forth, drilling it as far as it will go into the beasts head, finally extinguishing the flare on the surface of the crab’s skull like a giant cigarette.

  I rotate the stick of fire several more times, even after the crab’s destruction is inevitable, just for good measure. But there is only silence now. There are no sounds of screaming or growls of rabidity; there is only the burning sound of flesh devouring the final cells of life that still remain.

  But the crab isn’t dead. Not yet. What the creature has abandoned vocally, its face displays in the form of true pain. It flails its arms desperately toward its head, trying to locate the source of the pain, but not quite able to find it.

  I stop rotating the flare and then push on it with all my weight, forcing the crab down onto its back before finally releasing the tube of death.

  The crab’s arms still wave impotently over its face, but the eyes of anguish and facial expressions of disaster are gone. It has reverted back to its default manner of being, cold and lifeless, detached from the horrors of its situation.

  I stand up straight and stare down at the red cylinder that now rises from the center of the crab’s face like a rocket ship, one that has crashed on the surface of the moon perhaps, the black burn mark in the center of the crab’s head the crater.

  There are a few more timid waves of the crab’s arms before it finally drops them to the side where they smack to floor like wet eels. These are the final movements of the thing before it finally dies.

  And then something bizarre begins to happen.

  The round black crater mark in the center of the crab’s head begins to grow, the entire circumference of the ring expanding on the crab’s forehead like an oil slick in the ocean. There’s no more heat coming from the flare—the flame has been extinguished by the blood and fluids inside the crabs head—but the damage created by the fire seems already to have been done. I continue to watch the spreading virus of char, which has now covered the cheeks and chin and neck of the crab. Within seconds, the entire upper body of the dead beast is as black as coal.

  And it continues to spread.

  I hear footsteps behind me and I pivot toward them, my arms raised in a kung fu pose, flashlight in hand, ready to take on the next crab in line, now feeling a particular sense of power over this new species of murderers.

  But it’s only Jones and Smalley that have arrived. They’ve extricated themselves from their makeshift fortress and are now standing beside me, watching the growing disintegration of the crab lying at my feet.

  “Damn professor,” Smalley says, “you got a knack for this. You’re like Van Halen or something.”

  “I think you mean Van Helsing?”

  “That’s what I said, right?”

  “We have to go,” Jones says, not offering his comments on any of the events that just occurred over the last few minutes. He lowers his voice a notch. “We have to get Bram to a doctor.”

  I return my gaze to the crab and am instantly mesmerized by the sight. The burn created by the flare has consumed the entirety of the crab, and it begins to fall apart—quite literally—its face and entire upper body now little more than a pile of ashes.

  “Dom, did you hear me? Bram needs a doctor now.”

  “What doctor?” I ask, barely processing the words, confused and saddened by the impossibility of the statement.

  “I don’t know. We need to try to find one though. He’s dying.”

  I break my fixation on the crab and walk with Smalley and Jones over to where Abramowitz is sitting up against the rear of the trailer cart. He’s still conscious; his eyes are open and he’s breathing, albeit with great effort.

  Jones and Smalley somehow managed to tie off the wound with a tourniquet—a feat that I’m astounded by, given the fact that they were being hunted during the process—but there is still an extraordinary amount of blood beneath Abramowitz’s severed leg. And sweat falls of his face in large drops, like a tropical waterfall, despite the chilly air that hangs in the receiving room.

  He lifts his head, struggling to meet my eyes, and when he does, I look away.

  “Doesn’t look good, does it professor?”

  I look back at him, locking in on his stare, feeling it’s the proper thing to do for a military man at the brink of his death. And it’s also proper to tell the truth. Or at the very least not lie. “No it does not, Bram.” My voice is stern, unsympathetic. “But
there’s no sense losing hope. There’s some good news: I cleared the storefront. Got all those sons of bitches to flee.”

  Bram raises his eyebrows, impressed. “How’d you manage that?”

  I pull my shirt sleeve up to my shoulder and flex my rather unsubstantial bicep.

  Bram coughs out a laugh. “I see.”

  “The RV is ready to go. I can pull it around back and then we’ll get you loaded up inside. I don’t know that doctors are the most plentiful these days, but we’ll do our damndest to find you one. We’ll get you some help.”

  Bram smiles again, and I can tell that if he had a little more energy the smile would have been a full-throated laugh. “Help? Well geez professor, that’s just wonderful!” Bram’s voice is raspy and wet, terminal.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I say, regretting the lie immediately. It’s almost instinct. They’re the words I’ve heard said to a hundred actors in a hundred movies, and I can’t help repeating it now. It’s an impulse, I suppose, to offer whatever comfort is available in the moment, even if the situation is as hopeless as it is now.

  “What’s in the bag?” he asks, noticing the satchel across my shoulder.

  “Couple of knives I found in the rigs out back. A couple packs of cigarettes.”

  He smiles again. “You don’t say?”

  I return the smile. “I do say.”

  “Bum a smoke?”

  “Bum the pack if you like.”

  “Let’s start with one and see where it leads.”

  “You’ll get hooked on ‘em is where it’ll lead. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  “I’ll take my chances, amigo.”

  “We have to go, Dominic,” Jones commands. And then, despite Abramowitz’s presence, says, “He’ll die if we don’t get out of here.”

  “I’m dead or I’m not, Jonesey. What’s been done is done. And me leaving here isn’t going to change that. I’ll just die in the RV.”

  I’m touched by the compassion in Abramowitz’ voice and the effort he’s putting forth to keep his friend from panicking.

  “There’s nothing to be done about it now, Mr. Jones. There’s no hospitals anymore. No medicine. And even if there is some lone doctor out there in the wilderness, we’ll never find him. It’s done. I’ll either make it or I won’t.”

  “Then you won’t! Not just sitting here you won’t.”

  Abramowitz smiles and shrugs. “Then I won’t. So let me have my cigarette.”

  Jones walks away shaking his head, and I move in close to Abramowitz, tapping the top of the Winston soft pack and popping a single tube of tobacco out into my hand. I put that one between my lips and then pop out another and place it between Abramowitz’s. “I’m gonna join you if that’s okay, but first I need to find us some matches. I’ll be right back.”

  “Have at it, sir.”

  The aisle directly outside the receiving area—aisle eleven—contains automotive and grill supplies, and within seconds I find a box of large wooden matchsticks. Beside them is a ring of automatic grill lighters, the long wand types that are filled with butane and eject a small flame at the end with the click of a button. I grab the box of matches and all four of the sealed wands, stuffing those into my satchel, feeling certain they’ll come in handy at some point in the future.

  There are also two flares of the variety I’ve just used on the roaming crab, and I load those inside as well.

  On the way back to the receiving room, I push open the cardboard drawer of matches and take out a matchstick, striking it against the grainy side of the box. The flame lights instantly and I place it against the tip of my dangling Winston, inhaling as I do, lavishing in the sweet smell of the tobacco as it fills my nostrils. I stop and close my eyes for just a moment as the sweet rush of nicotine floods my head and chest. God I miss smoking.

  I exhale the smoke and walk back inside the receiving area, heading directly back to the cage where Abramowitz continues to struggle. I flick another match against the box and then hold the flame near the cigarette barely clinging to his mouth.

  And as the flame nears his face, he screams the shrill scream of terror.

  I step back, astonished at this reaction, not quite knowing what it’s in response to. “What is it? What happened? Is it the pain?”

  Abramowitz doesn’t answer; he only stares at the flame, eyes wide, shoulders pushing back against the metal of the carts, trying to get as far from me as possible.

  “I think he’s delirious,” Jones says. “I think he’s in shock.”

  Abramowitz shakes his head, shivering in fear, his mouth open wide, the cigarette now lying on the floor, the whiteness of the paper stark against the dark gray floor.

  “Oh my god,” Smalley says, backing away from the cages. “Oh my god, look at his leg.”

  Abramowitz’s right pants leg, starting at a location about halfway up his shin—the place where his foot was severed from the rest of him—and ending at the lower part of his thigh, has disintegrated beneath him into the puddle of blood below. His leg underneath has turned to a solid white, matching the cigarette below.

  “What is happening?” I say, rhetorically, astonished. I’m confused more than frightened at this point.

  “It can’t be,” Jones utters. “I...It can’t...”

  I look up to Abramowitz’s face again, and the expression across it has transformed from one of resolve and peace—peace at the certainty of his demise, I assume—to one of distress and disbelief. He takes in a labored breath and tries to lean forward, attempting to get a glimpse of what’s happening below, but he doesn’t have the strength to move his torso more than a few inches. “I can feel it,” he says, his voice a whispery awe.

  Smalley, Jones, and I back up almost in unison, as if we’ve just discovered that Abramowitz is the carrier of some catastrophic plague.

  To this point, it hasn’t occurred to me exactly what happened, about the cause of the wound. It was the crab obviously, but the means by which Abramowitz’s leg was separated from his body is unknown.

  “What happened?” I ask slowly, suspiciously, not focusing on either of my companions as I ask the question.

  “What do you mean?” Smalley replies.

  I look up at Smalley now, squinting. “I mean to his leg. How did it happen?”

  “He was at the door, keeping watch. You saw him.”

  I nod. “And?”

  “He said he turned just for a second, I guess to see if you made it out of the door or not, and then the instant you rolled out, I heard the scream. I turned and the thing had him by the shoe. It crawled up his leg like some kind of, I don’t know, crab, actually. Bram scrambled away at first, I thought he was going to get away, but it got him by the ankle. And then...” Smalley swallows and takes a deep breath. “It took a giant bite right on top of his shin. It sounded like it was biting an apple.” Smalley looks at Abramowitz sheepishly, seemingly embarrassed by her lack of discretion. She lowers her voice and turns her back to the dying man, whispering now. “Then it started to ravage his leg. And when Jones finally pulled him away, well, there we are.”

  I stay silent, not sure exactly the purpose of my questions, unclear what help the answers will be to Abramowitz now. But it’s information. If it doesn’t help us now, it may be useful later.

  “Is that why he’s turning white?” Smalley asks, again, her voice a little louder than necessary. But it is, of course, the only question.

  I look back to Abramowitz and notice the white crab features—I don’t pretend they’re anything but that now—have moved from his right thigh and have now spread up the entire right side of Abramowitz’s body. The right side of his coat and pants have turned to ash, as if chemically dissolved, like the fabric has been dipped in hydrochloric acid. Under the jacket and the layers of clothing is a naked, featureless form resembling something that used to be human.

  “Holy Christ!” Jones cries, putting his hands to his mouth, his eyes massive

  The white virus continues
spreading, and it seems to be happening more quickly now, with each inch that overtakes the body happening faster than the last. The white infection covers Abramowitz’s right shoulder and is now crawling up his neck like ice.

  “Kill me,” he grunts, instinctively realizing that soon his mouth will be covered, his tongue dissolved, that he won’t have the chance to repeat the request. His effort to utter the words sounds immense, painful, and I have no designs on torturing him to say them again. Especially because he’s right; there is nothing else to do for him now.

  My first thought is to break open the package containing one of the automatic lighters, and to hold the flame near the new crab’s skin, to gather more data about what happens in the presence of fire. I know that every animal has an instinctual fear of fire, but the crabs seem more fearful, almost irrationally so. The scenario to test the effects further is perfect, particularly because even if Abramowitz transforms entirely by the time I get the package open, he won’t be able to do much damage with his leg severed.

  I’m lost in these thoughts now, sweating the perspiration of a madman. But I can’t do it. Even if it was something Abramowitz wanted, even if it was for our future survival, it would be a monstrous thing to make him suffer for my own experimentation. In seconds, I discard the plan, ignoring the guilt that it leaves in its wake.

  Instead, I place the duffel on the ground and reach inside, grabbing two of the Bowie knives from the rigs. I hold them both up in front of my eyes, and then quickly return the smaller one to the bag.

  I walk solemnly to Abramowitz, knife in hand, trying to build up courage, to harvest the resolve I’ll need to do what I must.

  I nearly scream at the sight of Abramowitz now. His face is a featureless curtain of white, his eyebrows and hair are gone, as if erased from his head like a pencil drawing from construction paper. His eyes have become the tiny orbs of black that all the ghosts possess.

  But unlike the former crabs, there is no fight from him. It’s as if the transition has paralyzed him, similar to the way a snake shedding its skin or a lobster molting into its new shell becomes helpless during the process. He looks completely vulnerable, and I feel overwhelmed with sadness for this newly formed creature.