by Sean Platt
I don’t ever want to leave this bed.
Every morning should be like this.
Nowhere to go, no rush to wake up.
He reached out and touched Mary’s shoulder — soft and warm — then traced his fingertips along her neck until she opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Hi, Baby,” she said.
“Hi.”
“What do you wanna do today?” she asked.
“Would it be horribly rude if I said ‘you’?”
“Ha, ha. Didn’t you get enough last night?”
Somewhere in his brain, a memory stirred from the nightmare — something hideous, chasing him.
No, don’t think about the dream. This is reality.
Don’t think about what happened.
Mary reached up and ran her palm over Ryan’s face, then through his hair as he closed his eyes and luxuriated in the delight of her touch.
“I had the weirdest dream,” she said, causing him to open his eyes and look at her.
“You had a weird dream? So did I. What was yours about?”
“I woke up and the whole world was gone.”
“I had the same dream,” he said. “That is so weird.” He sat up in bed. “I was looking for you, and . . . ”
Another vision from his dream flashed in his memory: a black creature with soaking-wet flesh; bright light beaming beneath its skin and rows of rotting teeth plaguing its misshapen mouth.
Ryan closed his eyes trying to shake the vision from his mind before it took over.
Oh God, I’m dreaming now. No. No. I don’t want to wake up.
Stop thinking about the monsters.
I’m here, in bed with Mary. We’re in Warson Woods, where everything is perfect.
He opened his eyes, and Mary smiled, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about dreams. I want to … ” he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he leaned toward her, cupped her soft face in his hands, and took in her scent.
No, this isn’t a dream. You don’t dream the scent of your wife.
He kissed her neck and she sighed, filling his ear with her warm breath.
He felt his cock stiffen beneath the covers.
“God, I love you,” he said, leaning closer and running his open hand under the covers, over her stomach and up to her breasts, cupping the bottom of her left breast and slowly closing his fingers over her nipple which hardened at his touch.
“I love you, too,” she said, reaching over and under the sheets to pull him closer.
Their moment was shattered by a scream.
He opened his eyes, startled, as she crawled frantically backward in the bed, trying to get away from him as fast as she could, her eyes wide in horror.
“What?!” was all she could gasp, staring down at him.
What’s wrong?
He looked down, figuring maybe she’d seen a giant bug beneath the covers, but then he saw the source of her horror: not a bug, but his lower half, a mutated, twisted, monstrosity, with wet, luminescent black skin, twisted limbs, and something gnarled and malformed where his cock should have been.
“What are you?!” she screamed.
Ryan woke up sobbing, his heart torn by cruel reality yet again.
Ryan had been awake for an hour or so when he felt something horribly wrong.
He had sensed something weird the day before, but wasn’t sure what it was. The scientists had administered a serum, supposedly with cells from the kid, Charlie, who had somehow managed to resist the same mutation, even with infection.
It seemed like a shot in the dark — the sort of fringe science Ryan didn’t understand or particularly have much faith in. But he had nothing to lose. He was all alone, in constant pain, and had been turned into some kind of half-human/half-alien monster. All Ryan had when they found him was the promise that death might end his misery.
Now, perhaps they’d given him a new gift — hope for a normal life. A cure.
Ryan felt nothing following the injections, though he’d been waiting eagerly to feel something — anything — different. He longed for some measurable change, for better or worse. Something to let him know for certain that things were shifting inside him.
But Ryan felt nothing, at least not until last night, when the first flush of odd started slowly flooding through his system. It was nothing he could explain, but it was definitely new, and he felt certain it had something to do with the injections.
Either way, Ryan hoped it was a good sign.
That ended this morning, an hour after waking when he suddenly found himself seeing through someone else’s eyes and feeling their thoughts.
It was Charlie.
He was standing in his cell watching an old, fat, naked man in the cell next to him. Something about the old man terrified Charlie. Ryan knew because he felt Charlie’s fear no differently than if he’d felt it himself.
He saw the dark thing that had once been inside the old man — the Darkness Ryan sensed spreading through the world. It was a part of the creatures that had infected him. He could feel its echoes in his blood. This Darkness was different, though, perhaps even its leader.
The Darkness flowed from the old man, into a guard, and then into Charlie.
Oh God.
Charlie’s mind was then a prisoner of the Darkness, walking through the cell, carrying the guard It had momentarily possessed to the elevator. It pressed the guard’s hand to the touch pad, then set Itself free.
The Darkness murdered the first guard it met, ripping the head clean from his body. A second guard charged the Darkness, but It opened Charlie’s mouth and spewed out a part of itself into the air, then onto the Guardsman’s face and down his throat, until It started to spread inside that man, too.
Ryan felt a horrible cracking inside his mind, a mental fissure from too many perspectives. He cradled his head in his hands, then dropped to his knees, screaming through the pain of his three sudden perspectives: a terrified Charlie witnessing the horror before him, the Darkness inside Charlie, and the stewing Darkness inside the Guardsman.
The Darkness continued to seep through the halls, in search of an exit. It wanted to follow Callie and Boricio so It could find someone — a child It wanted to kill.
As It met resistance, Its compromised Guardsman trailed beside It, shooting anyone trying to stop them. The Darkness and the Guardsman quickly made their way into the civilian sector, where they infected or murdered everyone in sight.
“Oh God,” Ryan cried, helplessly watching from the horror in his mind.
He pounded on his cell, screaming for someone to free him so he could help.
“Open the cell! Let me out!”
No one answered.
Ryan fell to the floor, screaming and helpless.
Forty-Seven
Boricio Wolfe
Dunn, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
Boricio leapt from his bed and threw a wad of covers onto the floor, then bolted to his window, tore a handful of curtains to the side, and peered out and into the empty yard below.
Boricio was certain he’d see something outside, sitting there like danger waiting to hatch. But the yard was empty, unlike Boricio’s overburdened mind.
He’d had another beer-battered bullshit of a dream; fucked up beyond all reason, this one with him marching over every end of the impossible. He’d spent his last few hours sleeping, lost in a neverending eternity of demons in hell, and Monopoly games with Rip van Creepy, except van Creepy was a little kid again. And the dreams were weirder for how real they seemed, as if he weren’t just dreaming — he was seeing something yet to come.
He went into the bathroom, took a shit, then threw on his shoes and returned to the window, shook off the haze of déjà vu and stared outside at all the empty he wasn’t expecting to see.
Boricio wondered why he couldn’t shake the weird feeling. Maybe it was a scent in the air that
most of his mind was too stupid to understand but some other part of him picked up on and was filtering forward and telling him, “Hey, pay attention, fucker!”
As he’d been telling Paola while trying to show the girl how to shoot straight, some shit you knew faster than you thought. That sorta crazy shit happened in nature all the time. It was people that ignored it. Boricio read about how some botanists at some college infected a group of tobacco plants with a virus. Within days, another group of plants near the infected ones sensed the danger, and produced a chemical in their leaves to protect themselves.
That was crazy shit. And this shit was like that shit, though Boricio didn’t quite know how, or what he was sniffing. Because he didn’t understand the scent in the air, he didn’t know what to do. He took a final look outside before turning from the window.
It was probably just the unease of sleeping without anyone in the house able to stand guard. Boricio hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since back when he was bunking with Charlie and the rest of the boys. If he couldn’t relax enough to get some decent shut eye, it meant he was either always awake, or haunted by nightmares.
He was majorly on edge, still a bit drunk from his late night shooting the shit with Mary, and just a little fucking exhausted. Ever since he’d healed Luca and aged a decade, he’d yet to feel the same kind of energy he had just a month ago.
But at least he wasn’t hungover. Boricio didn’t get hangovers. No matter how much he drank, Boricio couldn’t remember a single time where he had felt fucked up the following day. Level of consumption made no matter. Boricio could drink himself anywhere from tipsy to totally fuckered, then wake up the next morning with a fanny cleaver fat enough to fuck the remainder of the day.
Frequency of drink didn’t mean dick either. Whether Boricio got himself drunk three times a week or three times in one day, inebriation faded equally fast. He would collapse into bed, drunk, then wake eight or so hours later, hungry as fuck. But this morning, Boricio was suffering from a helluva dry mouth, a slight headache that threatened to start pounding, and a flash of irritability at how shit in his head was messier than a murder scene.
Boricio grabbed his knife and gun, then shoved them both into his pants before leaving his bedroom and heading downstairs.
Boricio could smell the pancakes. They had 800 or so giant bags of pancake mix, and an equal amount of syrup that Charlie and the crew had grabbed up a while ago from a Costco, excited as if they’d hit the lottery. Unfortunately, pancakes didn’t have the protein Boricio was constantly craving, and preferred first thing in the morning. Judging from the speed at which they were shoving forkfuls into their mouths yesterday, Paola and Luca seemed to be loving them like stupid kids usually did.
But Boricio was starting to worry about the lack of protein, for him and for all of them. They’d need to make a run soon to find some beef jerky, beans, or start hunting some fresh meat. Too many shitty carbs made you fat, slow, and stupid.
And being fat, slow, and stupid was a one-way ticket to the morgue post-Oct. 15.
Boricio stepped into the large dining room, then looked over at Mary tending to a pancake on the portable stove.
“Morning, Miss Mary,” he said, looking around the dining room, surprised to see he’d beat both Paola and Luca downstairs, despite the pounding in his head. “Where are the Happy Meals?”
She looked up. “Well, good morning. I’m surprised to see you walking.”
Mary smiled, and Boricio was surprised to find himself liking it, and without a dirty thought to chase it.
“Paola’s been up for a while,” Mary said. “She went upstairs to wake Luca, since he’s still sleeping. I’m surprised you guys didn’t cross one another in the hall. Want a pancake?” She lifted the pancake with a fork, then set it on a wide plate and held it out for Boricio.
It was the light-brown color of a beautiful woman; Boricio couldn’t have cooked it better himself. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, taking the plate and wishing the hammers would stop slamming nails into his skull.
Paola came running downstairs, then spilled into the dining room. “Mom,” she cried, her voice slightly high and flying way too fast to not have trouble chasing behind it.
“What is it, Honey?” Mary moved her eyes from the frying batter to Paola.
“It’s Luca. He’s not waking up. And there’s nothing I can do. I keep calling him and shaking him, and I even punched him in the arm once I worked up the courage to do it, but nothing is working.”
“Is he breathing?” Mary asked.
“I . . . I think so.”
“What do you mean, ‘you think so’?” Boricio said, his mouth full of pancake. “Fuckers either suck air or don’t. There ain’t no in-between when it comes to breathing. Is Rip Van Creepy sucking air or not?”
Paola said, “I guess so, but not very much.”
Well, FUCK!
Boricio dropped his plate onto the counter, then bolted up the stairs and charged into Luca’s room.
The man-kid had to be okay. It wasn’t even that Boricio cared, necessarily; it was that the old fucker was stringing the shit of their world together. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, but Boricio somehow knew that without Luca things would take a sharp detour into Fuckedsville.
“Hey, buddy,” Boricio yelled, a foot into his room. “Time to stop dreaming about the Golden Girls. Wake up, and I promise we’ll find you some granny porn, so you can tug your raisin.”
One look at Luca, and Boricio understood why Paola wasn’t sure if he was breathing. He looked damned close to dead.
Boricio dropped to a knee and started to shake Luca.
“Is he okay?” Mary asked, suddenly in the room even though Boricio hadn’t heard her come in.
Before Boricio could answer, the sound of an engine roared from the front yard, then up into the room, bringing Boricio another sting of déjà vu.
Engines meant enemies and enemies meant fights. Fights likely meant death. Even if that death was dealt to someone other than Boricio, it was an inconvenience to his morning quiet.
Boricio leapt from the bedside and was at the window in a second, peeling the curtains aside. He turned to the girls. “A black van. Looks like it’s been beat to hell.”
His eyes returned to the window, then Boricio suddenly broke into a grin as the passenger door opened and Callie stepped out. He turned to Mary and said, “Holy fuck yeah, I know her.”
Boricio was smiling, though it faded like a hot fog when he saw the ugly mother fucker, bald as an 8-ball, and wearing Bluebeard’s eye patch, climb from the driver’s side. Something about the way the asshole was walking, gave Boricio the same wretched sense of déjà vu he’d felt when waking that morning, then again a minute before.
This shit isn’t right.
Two fresh fuckers — a guy who looked like former military and then a pasty faced soft guy who looked to be in his early thirties — joined the party.
Boricio didn’t know who the three fuckers with Callie were. He only knew that he wanted to murder the Jolly Roger before he had the chance to open his big, ugly mouth. Something about the man made Boricio immediately angry. But something else about him made Boricio almost want to run and hide, something no man had ever made him want to do before.
Fucking Luca broke me. And now he’s gonna die before he can fix me!
It was good to see Callie, but if she was a hostage, and those men meant to harm her, or him, or anyone on Team Boricio, well then they had minutes to live, whether Boricio was frightened or not.
He closed the curtains and turned to Mary.
“I need you to stay upstairs,” he said. “You know the drill: Don’t come down for dick.” He looked from Paola to Mary, all four eyes on his, then over to Luca, who was finally starting to lightly snore — a good sign, even though he still lay there looking mostly dead. “Go to my room and get my shotgun, get Little Lamb her peashooter, then both of you stay in here with Luca. I want all three of y
ou in the same place. Got it?”
“Got it,” Mary said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna take my two friends Peacemaker and Snaggletooth, then go downstairs and see what needs to be seen.” Boricio lifted his shirt and showed Mary his pistol and sheathed knife pressed against the tan canvas of his tight abs.
“Okay,” Mary said, swallowing. Paola trembled beside her.
Boricio nodded again, left the room, then ran down the hallway to the stairs, leapt them in a trio of strides, and jumped past the bottom four, quickly eclipsing the distance between living room and front door.
Boricio could see the three fuckers and Callie out the window, but mostly as blurs and shapes. His hand was a foot from the knob before he saw the shit that soured his throat and held his breath hostage.
No.
No fucking way.
It isn’t possible.
Boricio had seen plenty of beer-battered bullshit, and about a billion pounds of goddamn impossible since he woke up too fucking early on October 15, lucky to wake up at all, wondering if the woman he cut had disappeared like all the rest of the planet’s fuck-all.
This was something different.
This changed the meaning of the goddamn word impossible.
Boricio swung the front door and stared into the eye of the bald scarred man; a horrible man with an intelligent stare.
The man who looked exactly like him, but fugly.
Like the man’s looks, his voice was Boricio’s, even though it wasn’t quite.
Boricio tore his eyes from Fugly, then turned them to Callie who seemed shockingly calm, especially since she was standing right beside the impossible, and even tilting her head so she could see it from all sides.
“Good morning, Boricio,” said the fugly fucker who couldn’t possibly exist. “We’ve come for Luca.”
Forty-Eight
Boricio Bishop
