35
Caroline Caldwell also follows the sound of the strange voice. She’s aware, of course, that it’s not test subject number one who’s singing. But equally she’s sure that whoever it is doesn’t represent a threat. Until she sees him.
The man sitting on the bed looks like the punchline to a bad joke. He’s dressed in a hospital gown that’s fallen open, exposing the nakedness beneath. Old wounds criss-cross his body. Deep troughs in the flesh of his shoulders, his arms, his face mark where he’s been bitten. Except that bitten doesn’t seem to cover it; he’s been fed on, lumps of his physical substance torn away and consumed. Scratches and tears ruck his chest and stomach, where the hungries who partially devoured him grabbed him and held on. The two middle fingers of his right hand have been bitten off at the second joint–a defence wound, Caldwell assumes, sustained when he tried to push a hungry away from him and it bit down on his hand.
The blackly comic touch is the bandage on his elbow. This man came to Wainwright House with something trivial like bursitis and–as many people do–experienced complications while he was being treated. In this case, the complications were that hungries feasted on his flesh and made him one of them.
He’s still singing, seemingly unaware of Melanie standing directly in front of him, of Caldwell in the doorway of the room.
“The raven… croaked… as she sat… at her meal…”
It’s so apposite to her thoughts, Caldwell is thrown for a moment. But he’s not answering her, he’s only singing the last line of the quatrain. She knows the song, vaguely. It’s “The Woman Who Rode Double”, an old folk ballad as depressing and interminable as most of its type–exactly the sort of song she’d expect a hungry to sing.
Except that they don’t. Ever.
Another thing they don’t do is look at pictures, but this one is. As he sings, he holds in his lap a wallet, of the kind that has a loose-leaf insert for credit cards. This one holds not cards but photographs. The hungry is trying to flick through them, with one of the remaining fingers of his right hand.
His movements are intermittent, and the gaps, in which he sits still, are very long. Each failure to turn to the next image elicits another line of the song.
“And the old woman… knew what… he said…”
Involuntarily, Caldwell’s eyes find Melanie’s. The glance they exchange asserts no kinship, unless it’s a mark of consanguinity to be a rational and defined thing in the face of the impossible and the uncanny.
Caldwell steps into the room and circles the infected man slowly and warily. The marks of violence he bears are, she sees now, very old. The blood from the wounds has mostly dried and flaked away. Each is rimmed with an embroidery of fine grey threads, the visible sign that Ophiocordyceps has made its home within him. There’s grey fuzz on his lips, too, and in the corners of his eyes.
It’s possible, she thinks clinically, that he’s remained in this room, on this bed, ever since he was infected. In that case, some of the bites on his arms might well have been self-inflicted. The fungus needs protein, primarily, and although it can make do with very little, it can’t live on air. Autocannibalism is an eminently practical strategy for a parasite to which the host’s body is only a temporary vector.
Caldwell is utterly fascinated. But she’s also, after what happened outside, aware of the need for caution. She retreats back to the door, and beckons for the girl, the test subject, to join her there. Melanie stays exactly where she is. She’s identified Caldwell as the greater threat, which is actually far from an unreasonable assumption.
But Caldwell doesn’t have time for this bullshit.
She takes out the gun that Sergeant Parks gave her, which up until now has rested undisturbed in the pocket of her lab coat. She thumbs the safety and holds it, in both hands, out towards Melanie. Aiming at her head.
Melanie stiffens. She’s seen what guns can do at very close quarters. She stares at the barrel, sickly hypnotised by its nearness, its deadly potentiality.
Caldwell beckons again, this time with a toss of her head.
“And she… grew pale… at… the raven’s tale…”
Melanie takes a long time to decide, but at last she crosses to Caldwell. Caldwell takes one hand off the gun, steers Melanie out through the door with a hand on her shoulder.
She turns back to the male hungry.
“All kinds of sin I have rioted in,” she sings. “And now the judgment must be.”
The hungry shudders, a quick convulsion running through it. Caldwell steps hurriedly back, swivelling the gun to point it at the centre of the thing’s chest. At this range, she can’t miss.
But the hungry doesn’t charge. It just moves its head from side to side as though it’s trying to locate the source of the sound.
“So…” it rasps in that almost-not-there voice. “So. So. So.”
“Leave him alone,” Melanie whispers fiercely. “He’s not hurting you.”
“But I secured my children’s souls,” Caldwell croons. “So pray, my children, for me.”
“So,” the hungry croaks. “So…”
“Get out of the way,” Sergeant Parks says. His hand is on Caldwell’s shoulder, brusquely pushing her aside.
“… phie…” the hungry says.
Parks fires once. A neat black circle, like a caste mark, appears in the centre of the hungry’s forehead. It slips down sideways, rolling off the bed. Ancient stains, black and red and grey, mark the place where it has sat for so long.
“Why?” Caldwell wails, in spite of herself. She turns to the sergeant, her arms thrown wide. “Why do you always, always shoot them in the fucking head?”
Parks stares back at her, stony-faced. After a moment, he takes her right hand in his left and pushes it down until it’s pointing at the ground.
“You want to get demonstrative with a gun in your hand,” he says, “you make sure the safety is on.”