What? Oh. Very observant of you, my little doctor. It doesn’t seem to have healed at all, does it? I feel better, but the sensations in this body are always so muddled. No... no, there they are. The tiny things are still there, chewing away, weaving themselves into my blood and muscle.
Oh, perhaps. However, in retrospect, I think I shall remain in this skin. If there is any chance for me to survive, it will be in this form, yes? As Maxwell I had an hour or so left, less if you decided to conserve any more resources. No, I believe Cairax has a far better chance of fighting off the infection... or any of the dangers that apparently come with it.
Gentlemen, I asked you to please keep—-ahhh, there. See what has happened? I did warn you about the tail. Doctor, please, please, do not waste your time. You and I both know there is no chance he survived that. My dear friend, perhaps you should place your rifle down on the floor and lie face down. That will be a safer place for you to avoid your companion’s fate. Thank you. Doctor dearest, if you could get next to him. I would hate for you to be hit by any loose metal when I go through the wall.
Where? Back to the shore, back to the sand. While we fritter away time here the contagion continues to spread. We need every hand fighting it for as long as they can and I have, if you will pardon the phrase, an appetite for destruction. If we are all lucky, being in this skin may give me several days, perhaps weeks, to rip and shred.
No, no, my dear little doctor. You are perfectly safe. I may look like a monster, but I am still Maxwell Hale inside this skin. I would never harm another human being.
Very well. I would never deliberately harm another human being. Is that better?
The ingratitude of some people...
NOW
Twenty
Mike and John stood in the small parking lot across from the cells and debated what to do with the prisoner. “Does he need to eat?”
John shrugged his lanky shoulders. “Of course he needs to eat.”
“Yeah but he’s...” Mike shrugged back and scratched his beard. “He’s an ex. Does that mean he only eats people or meat or what? What do we give him?”
“Good point.”
“I mean, I haven’t had any meat in two months. Remember when they found that case of tuna?”
“Yeah.”
He mulled it over. “They’ve gotta have some canned meat stored away in the food bank. You think they’d free up some Spam or something for a prisoner?”
“I don’t know if Spam counts as meat either.”
“Well, fuck him. If we get him something and he doesn’t want it we can eat it.”
“Good point,” nodded John with a grin.
They banged on the door. “Hey,” called Mike. “You hungry? What do you want for breakfast?”
A thump and some scuffling came from inside.
“What’s his name?”
John’s narrow shoulders bounced again. “I don’t know. Everyone just said the dead guy.”
They unlocked the door. The ex-Seventeen had fallen off his cot and was struggling to his feet. The cell stank and the blood had dried in a wide scab across the floor.
John peered around his partner’s bulk and cleared his throat. “Hey, dead guy, what’s your name?”
The ex’s skin had gone chalky gray. He stared at Mike and displayed his engraved tooth. His jaws clacked together once.
Mike glared back at the ex. “Don’t give me any of that gang attitude, dipshit,” he said. “We’re trying to be decent people. You play nice, we’ll get you some breakfast, maybe something to read, whatever. You want to be a dick, we can just leave you in here.”
The ex took a shaky step forward, then another. It raised its hands.
John took a step back. “Mike...”
The dead thing snapped its teeth together again. And again and again. It made an awkward grab at Mike’s beefy arm and opened its mouth wide.
He took a quick step back just as John grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled. They stumbled through the narrow door, tripped over each other’s legs, and fell. The ex shuffled out after them and tripped over a swollen crack in the pavement. It dropped onto John’s leg with its mouth open and began to chew.
“SHIT!” Blood blossomed through his jeans, as John tried to shake the zombie off Mike rolled to the side and drove three hard kicks into the ex’s skull. His sneaker slapped and bent on its head, but knocked it off his friend. The jaws flung a few red drops as they clacked together.
John dragged himself back and Mike fired one last kick at the dead thing. He tried to scamper away and the ex followed him. It crawled on all fours and bits of fresh calf dropped from its mouth.
“HELP!” screamed John. He tried to hold his hand over the wound as he pulled his skinny frame back. “EX! Ex inside the wall!”